Mariana Silva : Amazon Forest Environmental Warrior

अकेला चना और आमेजन जंगलों का भाड़ !

Marina Silva hails from a part of Brazil so remote that even Brazilians say it is not real. O Acre não existe — Acre doesn’t exist — goes the bon mot, a playful nod to the isolation of the sweltering Amazonian state, which more than a few have struggled to find on a map.

But it was this densely forested sliver

of Brazil, hanging off the nation’s north- western frontier, that forged Marina (as she is universally known) into an environmentalist. It was here she began a lifetime of green activism that is now reaching a peak with her appointment to what is one of the world’s most consequential jobs.

The  64-year-old daughter of impoverished rubber tappers was sworn in for another stint as Brazil’s environment minister last week under the new leftwing government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. During her first term in office from 2003 to 2008, Marina was hailed for her unflinching devotion to forest communities and an almost fanatical focus on reducing deforestation, even as her methods riled powerful farming interests. 

Today she faces the same mission, but with much greater urgency.

Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest has soared in recent years and drawn attention of activists world over. Estimates suggest an area the size of 3,000 football pitches is razed every day, dramatically undercutting the rainforest’s role as a carbon sink for global emissions. Parts of the bio-sensitive zone which cuts across nine Latin American nations now emit more carbon than they absorb.

Growing up in rural Acre, Marina witnessed first-hand the devastation that accompanies deforestation. When a bulldozing crew arrived to construct a highway near her hamlet when she was 14, they brought an epidemic of measles and malaria. Soon two of her younger sisters were dead. Then a cousin and an uncle. Her mother died months later.

After contracting hepatitis, the ado- lescent Marina moved to Rio Branco, the state capital, where nuns taught her to read and write. Working as a maid, she funded her education and studied history at a local university. There she met Chico Mendes, an environmentalist and rubber tapper, who was later murdered by cattle ranchers, and she began her career of green activism.

Long before protecting the Amazon became a platform that could reliably win the votes, Mariana parried her passion for the environment into politics, winning local elections and becoming the then-youngest ever federal senator at 36. When Lula set up his first govern- ment in 2003, there was only one choice for environment minister. In her first stint as environment minister she was able to reduce  Amazonian deforestation by as much as 70 per cent. Her administrative and financial initiatives included new management of public forests, the creation of a forest service and a biodiversity institute and several funds for the main- tenance of the Amazon.

However, her unyielding manner offended agricultural and mining interests, who complained she was holding back development by refusing to give out environmental licences. Tensions rose with Lula. While Marina described deforestation as a “cancer”, the president referred to it as “a nodule, which may or may not be malignant”. Frustrated she resigned in 2008. 

She says  “Destroying the Amazon is destroying the planet,” she once said, “and if I don’t care about that because I need to make a profit on the next soyabean crop or ship- ment of wood, I’ve broken the social bond. That is what this is all about.”

Presence of Marina gives hope that there are warriors who cares about our Mother Earth. She is also a source of inspiration to the environmentalists in India who feel that activism does not yield any result.