This is the conclusion of Israeli scientists studying storm formation in the Amazon basin. While some particulates (ashes, aerosols) do promote rain formation, a well known fact for several decades now, their excess actually does the opposite: preventing rain and restricting the formation of clouds. This may affect the ongoing process of global warming in several ways: restricting rain in wildfire and highly polluted areas and reducing the overall cloud cover of Earth and hence its albedo, allowing for more solar radiation to reach the surface. More details at Science Daily.Ref. O. Almaratz et al., Lightning response to smoke from Amazonian fires. Geophysical Research Letters, 2010. Pay per view.
20-22 citizens and 9-12 policemen are said to have died in violent incidents at the Amazonian town of Bagua, near Ecuador. Other 30-36 civilians were also injured. Figures vary depending on sources. The locals had been protesting against the new Peruvian laws that would allow for easier exploitation of Amazonian oil, lumber and mining resources by multinational corporations with no respect for the ecology of the rainforest or the health and rights of the natives. Eventually the Peruvian government sent armed helicopters that opened live fire on the protesters killing many. This act has been denounced as the largest genocidal action in the alst 20 years. The new ultracapitalist laws that the Peruvian parliament is set to approve have been massively rejected by the natives, who make up a sizeable fraction of all Peruvians, and the subsequent revolts have brought the government to declare the state of emergency in 5 regions.Sources: Rebelión , BBC, Al Jazeera..
Yesterday I mentioned that Peruvian natives were protesting actively against a law that allows selling the forest land to multinationals, and that President García had declared the emergency rule in the affected provinces. Today I read that they have stopped the protests, not as result of military intervention but because the Congress has supressed those laws. The laws were decreed by the President under temporary special powers but have been now revoked by a congressional comitee, much to the frustration of the pseudo-socialist (neo-con) Alan García.
Peru is among the South American states that has worse reputation in regard to indigenous rights. Yesterday I read at BBC (not major headlines, you can guess) that the goverment has decided to declare the mergency rue in several Amazonian provinces in order to annihilate the protests of some 65 native ethnicities that have arisen against oil multinationals, blocking the abusive developements in the area that are killing the enviroment and the peoples who live in it. This uprising has been triggered by the new land sale law promoted by US vassal Alan García after signing a free trade agreement with the empire of the North. Native Peruvians consider this law to be just a blank cheque for multinationals to exploit and destroy the jungle at the expense of the enviroment and their lives and, therefore, decided to blockade hydroelectric, oil and gas industries in the area. The reaction of the government has been military rule in the affected provinces.
Al Jazeera has today an interview with Jose Carlos Mereilles, the man who located and pictured the uncontacted Amazonian tribe that made headlines some days ago:"... the Peru side of the Amazon is a no man's land where everything is permitted.
"The Indians are being pushed into Brazil, which causes conflict with Indians already here, but if they stay in Peru they know they will die after contact with loggers".
(...)
"Alan Garcia [president of Peru] declared recently that the isolated Indians were a creation in the imagination of environmentalists and anthropologists - now we have the pictures. Now the pictures exist for the whole world".
(...)
He claims Brazil has 69 references to isolated tribes with little to no contact with the outside world – 22 of which have been confirmed, several by Meirelles himself.
Previously the government policy was to integrate isolated tribes into society after contact, but studies showed two-thirds died within months of the first contact.
"That is not contact, that is genocide," Meirelles said.
So he and some colleagues were instrumental in changing policy to "no contact".
"These people have lived on their own for 500 years and that is their choice," he said.
"They can decide when they want contact, not me or anyone else. The policy of FUNAI is protection, we do not want to contact them; to run experiments on them to know about who they are, how they live or what ethnic group they belong too."
"As long as they are there, they are fine."
Marina Silva, for the last 6 years Minister of Enviroment in the Brazilian Government, a staunchly defender of the integrity of the rainforest (about whom I wrote a month ago), has resigned.
Source: BBC: Brazil's Amazon Minister resigns.
Reasons? Many but basically that the ecological prorities of Lula's government are heading towards none at all. Two huge hydroelectric dams, a nuclear plant, authorization for genetically modified crops and the centralization of Amazonian matters in a different ministry basically meant she was being sidelined by the right-wing cattle-rancher and blindly developist anti-ecological forces.
It's, as I see it, sad news for the planet and sad news for Brazil as well. Once again it becomes evident that right-wing policies can be carried on by nominally leftist authorities. They had a name for that: violin governments, because they are held with the left hand but played with the right one.
All right, excessive title maybe - but catchy, certainly. It's an inspiring story anyhow.
Al Jazeera reports on the life of Marina Silva, Brazilian Minister of Enviroment, in charge of the protection of most of the Amazon rainforest. It's pretty interesting: she was born in a seringueiro family, who extracted rubber from wild trees in regime of semi-slavery, she used to be an illiterate maid who lernt to read and write in just 15 days when she was 17. Inspired by Chico Mendes, the seringueiro enviromentalist and social leader who was murdered by landowners' death squads in 1988, she took up the cause of the Jungle and now she is in charge of its protection.
Her boss, President Luis Inázio Lula da Silva, is also from modest extraction: he was a shoe-shiner before becoming politician.
Marina Silva in her youth
She says:
The Amazon forest lost 17 per cent of its vegetation in the last 400 years but the majority of this deforestation was done in the past 30 or 40 years.
That is why it is necessary to change the course of the process of development that has been happening in the region and take it into a new direction. Reduce the level of deforestation, and make a change in the model of development that has been implemented.
We need to bring a new paradigm where the standing forest is more valuable and viable than cutting the forest for other economic activities. That is possible.
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