World Environment Day: 50 years after the event that started the debates, the Amazon is at the center of the discussion
June 6, 2022
08:06
Marcela Leiros – Amazon Agency
MANAUS – In 1972, an event became the center of world attention. The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, known as the “Stockholm Conference”, which took place in the city of the same name in Sweden, became a milestone by bringing together more than 100 countries to deal with a subject that until then did not receive much attention: the environment. And the relevance of the event was such that June 5th was established as the World Environment Day, a date to draw society’s attention to environmental problems and the importance of preserving natural resources, which turns 50 years old this Sunday, June 5th.
Other events have followed that conference, such as Eco-92 and the climate conferences, known as “COPs”. Since then, attention to the environment has grown and placed a specific region in the center: the Amazon. The environmentalist and director of the Association for Wildlife Conservation (WCS Brazil), Carlos Durigan, recalls that the largest biome on the planet has always had prominence.
“The Amazon is and always has been an icon in environmental debates,” he said. “What we see is an increasingly stronger engagement of society in the ideal of sustainability, we had many advances from the theoretical and ideological point of view. However, we are still struggling to put into practice what we have generated of knowledge and ideas to build a truly sustainable human way of life, and this is evident in recent years.”
The analysis can be exemplified. Last month, the Amazon Rainforest once again attracted the world’s attention when billionaire Elon Musk, considered the richest person in the world according to Forbes, announced that he intends to implement satellites in the Amazon region to connect 19,000 schools in remote areas, where network cables do not reach, to the Internet, and also to install more environmental monitoring systems.
Environment on the agenda
The environmentalist Carlos Durigan also points out that despite the advances and the engagement, there is still “regression” both in the fight against environmental destruction and in the fight against climate change, which is a result of it.
“It is impressive how we have regressed to the point that we are now witnessing a considerable increase in the degradation of our natural heritage, threats to indigenous peoples and deepening social crises, and various threats on a global scale, as is the case of what is happening in relation to climate issues,” he added.
Durigan also recalls that since the 1960s and 1970s, scientists were already warning about the worrying process of climate change.
“It was a debate that took place in restricted circles and there was still a lack of technology to prove the processes that, at the time, were suggested as causes of this process. Since the 1990s [at Eco-92], we have had an important increase in investments in science and in conservation actions, and in the case of knowledge there was a huge advance that made it possible not only to measure and monitor ongoing processes, but also to predict with greater accuracy what may happen in the future. So, today we have science showing us that we have reached a critical point that demands real commitments and quick actions to change attitudes, because we are already in a process of major changes in the climate, and we can literally feel it in our skin,” he added.
Muriel Saragoussi, socio-environmentalist, explained that catastrophic events such as the rains in Pernambuco and Petrópolis, and even in Germany, as well as the historical floods and droughts in the Amazon, are results of climate change.
“We already see them in our daily lives, and if we had better applied what both governments and society have committed themselves to [in the conferences], and companies among them, we wouldn’t be in the situation of counting hundreds of deaths in events that are consequences of human actions,” he concluded.
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