In Western capitals, the fate of the world’s largest rainforest is seen as the paramount issue in Brazil’s presidential election, a critical issue for a world struggling to stem the climate emergency.
But the fires and deforestation that are ravaging it have taken a back seat to a campaign reduced to invective and controversy.
Many Brazilians admit to “more urgent” concerns than those of this gigantic jungle located thousands of kilometers from them.
“I don’t know, it’s so far away! But it’s obvious that it’s important and that we have to take care of it,” said the 27-year-old surf instructor, also believing that there are “more pressing problems” than the Amazon.
The economy, crime, education and corruption are generally cited as the main concerns of Brazilians two days before the election.
“The country has huge social inequalities, we are just recovering from a pandemic. Today, the concern for many Brazilians is to be able to survive one more day. To have a job, to eat, access to healthcare health,” Daniel Costa Matos, 38, a computer analyst in the capital Brasilia, told AFP.
Although he thinks the issue of the Amazon is “extremely important”, his biggest concern is corruption.
A 36-year-old climate activist, Giovanna Nader notes disappointed that “the climate crisis, deforestation in the Amazon, are still far from the daily reality of many Brazilians”.
On her podcast and her Instagram she never ceases to sound the environmental alarm bell: “we must educate, educate and educate”, she repeats.
– “We feel alone” –
Most Brazilians have never set foot in the 6.7 million km2 of the immense Amazonian forest, straddling nine countries or territories, the essential part of which (62%) is located in Brazil.
Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas, is 2,800 km north of Rio, more or less the distance between Paris and Moscow.
“What worries us a lot is that the vision of Brazilians on environmental protection is very superficial,” explains Dinamam Tuxa, coordinator of the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB).
“Sometimes we feel alone fighting against the powerful big companies that exploit our territories,” he said, regretting the lack of “commitment among the Brazilian population”.
Fires and deforestation are nothing new in the Amazon. However, the disappearance of hectares of virgin forest has increased by 75% under the mandate of Jair Bolsonaro compared to the previous decade.
His rival, former left-wing president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2003-2010), only briefly addressed the Amazon issue during the campaign, mainly to go fishing for votes in the Amazonas.
The theme will remain one of the major absentees from the electoral campaign.
“It has become a campaign of too many personal attacks between the two candidates, to the detriment of the debate on the Amazon,” laments Karla Koehler, a 35-year-old artist who sunbathes on Ipanema beach. in Rio.
Latin America’s largest country has more than 33 million hungry people, according to the Brazilian Food Security Research Network, and some 11 million people who cannot read or write, according to the government.
The country of 215 million also has one of the highest crime rates in the world, with 47,503 violent deaths in 2021, nevertheless a decade low, according to the Brazilian Forum for Public Security.
For Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the NGO collective the Climate Observatory, “the challenge is to make people and their leaders understand that environmental issues are directly linked to factors such as hunger, housing, crime and the economic crisis”.
