THE NOBLE SAVAGE - Looking into the rainforest and seeing salvation

As last week's dramatic pictures of uncontacted Amazonians attest, `primitives' remain a Rorschach

Except, perhaps, for the purpose of bow-and-arrow target practice, the members of the "uncontacted" Amazon native tribe captured in dramatic photos released last week have no use for us. We, however, need them.

Specifically: We need them to continue to exist as members of an uncontacted Amazon native tribe. Our consciences – in particular, our baby boomers' consciences – demand it.

"It's not necessarily totally logical," says Candace Slater, a University of California-Berkeley professor who has studied the Amazon since 1988. "But it doesn't have to be."

The tribe in question lives in Brazil's rainforest, near the border with Peru. Thanks to photos taken by the Brazilian government's Indian affairs department, whose researchers flew a plane over the tribe's land in late April and early May, we now know its members live in thatched huts, use bows and arrows, sometimes paint themselves with red and black dyes to show aggression, and do not enjoy free-but-unsolicited air shows. And that's all.

Ignorance, of course, is rarely as blissful as when it gives you licence to make things up. For centuries, explorers, travellers and assorted others have filled the yawning gaps in their knowledge about the various natives they encountered with strong opinions about the various natives they encountered.

Natives were, first, "savages," barbaric and uncivilized, people to be killed or avoided. Then, as early as the 17th century but especially in the Romantic era of the 18th, they were promoted to "noble savages" – no longer "superstitious fanatics, poverty-stricken in material skills and resources, half-crazed by fear, and continuously at war," wrote Annemarie de Waal Malefijt in Images of Man: A History of Anthropological Thought, but "naturally good, living from the fruits of nature, well adapted to their environments, and above all poetic and creative. As such, they stood in stark contrast to modern city dwellers, who were slaves of their own institutions and laws, corrupted by their own technology and science, and decadent in their morals."

We've retained – or some of us have retained – some of both perceptional traditions. American conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh referred to the red-painted tribe members in the photos as "these savages"; in the age of the Blackberry, many of us can't help but feel a certain bemused awe that, as Condé Nast Portfolio magazine's Liz Gunnison wrote last Friday, the members of the tribe "don't even have Facebook profiles!" In some small way, we slaves-of-the-office still want to be them.

Mostly, though, we – unlike previous generations – couldn't care less about their lives. As a survey of Canadians' environmental attitudes released in April helps explain, we just want them to keep on living as they live.

Are members of the tribe privileged or deprived? Are they savage or enlightened? In today's Western industrial democracies, those questions have been – on a basic level, at least – settled. We don't need lessons from red-dyed Amazonians.

We do need those Amazonians, however, for one important purpose: to assuage our guilt about the way we've treated the planet. Once-idealistic baby boomers, in particular, thought they were going to change the world for the better; instead, goaded by the slide shows of haughty former vice-presidents, many of them now feel they've made it worse. In the April poll, conducted by Harris/Decima, 79 per cent of respondents 55 and older agreed their generation has done "an unacceptable amount of damage" to the environment; so did 74 per cent of respondents 35 to 54. Their fundamental problem, then: They're legacy-conscious – 75 per cent of survey respondents said that, as they get older, they "think a little more about the impact I have on those around me and how I want to be remembered" – but they aren't confident their legacy will be positive.

When Canadian boomers are asked to assess the last 25 years, they are typically satisfied with society's accomplishments, says EKOS Research president Frank Graves. "What's surprising is that when you ask them to do the same exercise and cast their view of the future, they go, `No. I think things are going to be less prosperous, less ethical. There are going to be terrible problems with the environment. There are going to be terrible problems with geopolitical instability and terror.' So this sense of achievement that people have going backwards 25 years, which is largely the boomers' legacy, they don't extend to their children, the next generation."

Which is why the "uncontacted" tribes of the Amazon are important to them. If such people still exist in such environments, unsullied by the evils the people of the West have inflicted on the world, there is some paradise left at the fringes of the West's global parking lot. If Eden has been preserved, for somebody, somewhere, all is not lost.

"There's so much worry about global warming, about oil, about all these kids of things that seem to be cataclysmic, and here are these people, somehow, embodying the things people would like to believe the world either is or could be," says Slater, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese who wrote the book Entangled Edens: Visions of the Amazon.

"It's the untouched," she says, "the timeless, and in there the hope that somehow, things can still be saved. I think the Amazon continues to be something that is thought of as timeless, authentic, original...and even if you have one Indian tribe that's untouched, there's a sense that these are things that remain."

A myth, probably – and a myth based on myths.

It is highly unlikely, Slater, anthropologists and activists say, that the tribe in Brazil has never had contact with other groups, highly unlikely that it was completely unaware of Western civilization until the April flyover.

The tribe is probably a remnant of a larger tribe that was decimated during the rubber boom about a century ago, says Fiona Watson, a Brazil expert and campaign co-ordinator for Survival International, a group that lobbies for the rights of tribal peoples.

"And in the rubber boom," Watson says, "there were all sorts of atrocities – massacres, killing, enslavement, and many Indians died from disease...There's this very strong historical memory, and that kind of memory is handed down. I think that accounts for the fact that they clearly don't want contact."

Even in Eden, unfortunately for us, there are no blank slates.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/438984

Swedish tycoon's firm fined for destroying Amazon rainforest

Rio de Janeiro, June 8 (IANS) Brazilian authorities have slapped a fine of $234 million on a company owned by Swedish tycoon Johan Eliasch for illegally felling 230,000 trees in the Amazon rainforest, Spain's EFE news agency reported Sunday.

London-based Eliasch is being investigated in Brazil by the Abin state intelligence agency for allegedly illegally buying large swathes of the rainforest and grassland in order to commercially exploit it through a company known as Gethal Amazonas S.A., the news agency quoted officials as saying.

Eliasch has also been accused of owning the property without valid certification, Brazil's official Agencia Brasil news agency reported.

The fine levied Saturday by environmental agency Ibama was for illegal "extraction, transport and sale" of close to 700,000 cubic meters of lumber equivalent to 230,000 trees.

Gethal Amazonas has been given 20 days to appeal the fine, Ibama said.

Brazil's agrarian reform body, or Incra, has registered 33,000 properties acquired by foreigners covering a total of 5.5 million hectares in the Amazon.

The announcement of the fine comes as the Brazilian government is seeking to reaffirm its commitment to protecting the rainforest.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's administration has come under fire by environmentalists following the release of official statistics showing that deforestation of the Amazon has been accelerating.

The Amazon rainforest in the northern part of South America is the biggest forest in the world and is also the last big space covered with tropical plants and animals.

It is shared by nine countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname, French Guiana and Guiana.

http://mangalorean.com/news.php?newstype=local&newsid=80489#

MarketBasket: Beverage with benefits

You may never have seen an açai (ah-SIGH-ee) berry, but the antioxidant-rich fruit from the Brazilian rain forest has about 60 percent more disease-fighting antioxidants than pomegranates, the latest superfruit to star in nutrition news.

Tart, with little naturally occurring sugar, the pure juice of wild-harvested açai is sweetened here with organic agave nectar (acceptable for some diabetics).

Along with original açai, the juice comes flavored with natural blueberry (our favorite), raspberry, passion fruit or mango concentrate.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/food/marketbasket/20080605_MarketBasket___Beverage_with_benefits.html

BRAZIL: Climate Change Will Weaken Renewable Energy Sources

To Brazil's credit, 45 percent of its energy comes from renewable sources, three times as much as in industrialised countries, but for that very reason it will be more vulnerable to climate change, according to a new study.

Climate conditions forecast for the final three decades of this century will reduce the amount of energy produced by renewable sources all over the country, except in the case of sugar cane, said Roberto Schaeffer, one of the coordinators of the study by the Institute of Engineering Graduate Studies and Research (COPPE) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).

Potential wind energy generation could fall by 60 percent, owing to less frequent high winds in central areas of the country. Production of biodiesel could also be seriously affected because a warmer climate would reduce, or eliminate, production of oil-bearing crops in northeast and west central Brazil.

Hydroelectric power stations, which generate 85 percent of Brazil's electricity, will be adversely affected by scantier and more irregular rainfall, according to the study, which was released on Monday.

Paradoxically, the projected fall in hydroelectric power generation is expected to average one percent if there are high levels of greenhouse gas emissions -- scenario A2 as defined by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- but 2.2 percent if emissions are lower, as in scenario B2.

According to Schaeffer, this is a "conservative" forecast, which would be more pessimistic if small dams lose generation capacity when reservoir levels are low, and torrential rains are concentrated in a short period, necessitating opening of the flood gates and loss of stored water to avoid bursting the dams.

Furthermore, the rise in average temperatures will cause electricity consumption in Brazil to rise by eight percent by around 2030, according to extrapolation from climate change forecasts for 2071-2100.

The northeast, already Brazil's poorest region, will be the hardest hit: its semi-arid area is expected to be even drier, it will not be able to produce crops for biodiesel, and the Sao Francisco river basin, its main source of hydroelectricity, could lose 7.7 percent of its generating capacity by the end of the century.

The study on Climate Change and Energy Security in Brazil, carried out by eight researchers working with the Energy Planning Programme at COPPE/UFRJ, is intended to demonstrate that plans for the future cannot be based on present conditions but must take the projected climatic effects into account.

"A greater degree of uncertainty" has been added, which means better data are needed about the multiple factors that affect energy generation, such as the untapped potential of Amazon jungle rivers and the effects of climate on their flow rates, said Alexandre Szklo, another of the study’s lead authors.

Policies to encourage alternative energy sources should continue to be implemented, in spite of climate change, he said. Wind energy may lose 60 percent of its total potential, but "exceptionally favourable" winds will be concentrated on shores and coastal waters, so that "investments will be more feasible" in this sector, Szklo said.

Uncertainty has increased, but the overall picture can be viewed with "a certain equanimity," because reduction of one or two percent in hydroelectric output "is within the sector's margin of risk," said Mauricio Tolmasquín, the head of the Energy Research Corporation (EPE), a planning body at the Ministry of Mines and Energy.

Hydroelectric power will continue to be the most important component of Brazil's energy matrix. Future technology may be able to compensate for the losses of oil-yielding crops in the northeast, such as castor oil and soybeans, and wind intensity will remain useful along the Brazilian coastline, where population and energy demand is concentrated, Tolmasquín said at the presentation of the study.

Climate change requires "heroic hypotheses" for future alternatives, such as producing biofuels by enzymatic hydrolysis, which is already technically possible but prohibitively expensive, and advances in energy storage processes, said Luis Fernando Legey, coordinator of the COPPE Energy Planning Programme.

"Consumption habits" must also change to save energy, given the growth of the world's population, he said.

In the view of the head of the National Electrical Energy Agency, Jerson Kelman, high tension transmission lines can solve the problems created by climate change in the worst-affected parts of the country.

Brazil has 80,000 kilometres of high tension lines and its power grid is totally interconnected, so energy shortages in one region can be offset by another.

During the 2001 energy crisis, some parts of Brazil suffered blackouts and energy rationing. The south of the country, which had plentiful rainfall, could spare electricity for other regions, but there were not enough power lines then, said Kelman, who was also present at the presentation of the research study.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42642

A tribe is discovered in a clearing of the Brazilian rainforest: should we leave them alone or prepare them for the 21st century?

IT'S like a scene from an Indiana Jones blockbuster – but this time it's for real. Photographed from a passing plane, painted figures stir in a clearing in the Amazonian rainforest. Two men with bows and arrows crouch, ready to fire at the overhead aggressor, strings drawn back and ready for release.

They are ritually painted bright orange with pigment from an Amazonian tree, while just feet behind a figure painted black – a woman in a white loincloth – also stares up into the sky.

Beyond them the entire village is coming to life. Other tribesmen emerge from traditional thatched longhouses armed and prepared to fight. Young children scamper for safety as the small aircraft, recording their lives and confirming their existence to the outside world, circles above.

They live in six huts in the depths of the Brazilian rainforest, without any known contact with the 'civilised' world, and the body language of the tribe suggests they have a way of life worth defending. From the images collected and posted on the internet last week, all – adults and children alike – look fit and healthy. They have none of the material trappings of the developed and increasingly overdeveloped world, but appear none the worse for it.

So stunning was this glimpse into a long-forgotten era in the Acre region on the Brazil-Peruvian border that many observers assumed at first that the images were faked. But the Brazilian government body that monitors the existence of the dwindling band of 'uncontacted' tribes insists its pictures are both genuine and taken for good scientific reasons.

"We did the overflight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist," said uncontacted tribes expert José Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Júnior, who works for Funai, the Brazilian government's Indian affairs department. "This is very important because there are some who doubt their existence."

However, the release of the images has sparked a debate over whether their way of life is now more at risk because more people are aware of the village's existence. How long will it be before wealthy adventurers and tourists go in search of an authentic Amazonian experience? How long will it be before illegal loggers attempt to clear them off their land to get at valuable timber without obstruction?

Their discovery now poses a range of moral dilemmas for the authorities. Should the tribe be left alone to continue their contented sustainable lifestyle for as long as they can? Or should contact be forced, by scientists of good intent, to prepare uncontacted peoples for their inevitable first encounter with the 21st century?

Dr Nicole Bourque, a Glasgow University anthropologist who has studied Amazonian cultures, said that even among experts views are divided. "Some will say leave them untouched. Others, probably the majority, will say more contact is inevitable. So the best thing you can hope for is managed contact, where you send an appropriate person in to prepare them for what might happen. At least then the first outsiders they meet are decent people."

It is impossible to calculate with any accuracy how many tribes of uncontacted people survive in the world's jungles. The best guess of experts in the field is that around 100 small groups remain, mostly in the Amazonian rainforest – an area the size of western Europe. Other isolated remnants are also believed to exist in remote areas of densely forested islands, such as Papua New Guinea.

How many of these are genuinely unaware of the modern world is also unknown. "To be honest, I think first contact is a bit of a myth these days," Bourque said. "Even if they are genuinely uncontacted, then they will probably have been in contact with other similar Indian groups who have had contact with outsiders."

What is certain is that "contact" almost always ends in disaster.

A decade ago, fabled "first contact" was made with the Murunahua group, living in an area to the west of the tribe in last week's pictures, in the Peruvian jungle. About 100-strong, they were surviving well until illegal loggers came in search of mahogany, much prized in the making of Western-style furniture, and for which a market still exists despite international condemnation of felling trees from virgin forest. David Hill, a researcher for Survival International, a global charity that campaigns for the civil rights of threatened indigenous people, has witnessed the aftermath.

"They were forcibly contacted by illegal loggers, who shoot to kill, and since then 50% of them have died. Some were shot, but most died from diseases that were introduced to them." Simple viruses such as the flu, for which Westerners have developed a range of natural defences down the generations, can prove fatal to peoples who have always lived in isolation.

Last year, Hill travelled to Peru to interview the remnants of the tribe. One survivor, Jorge, who was shot in the eye by loggers, told him: "When the loggers made contact with us, we came out of the rainforest. That was when the disease began. Half of us died. My aunt died, my nephew died. Half of my people died."

The group now live in a more conventional village and have adopted Western-style clothing and a money-based economy. However, other Murunahua groups still exist, still living the traditional way, in communities deep in the forest – and they do not seem to want to be 'discovered'. "What has happened," says Hill, "is they have moved even deeper into the forest."

Hill is delighted that last week's image of the Acre tribe – believed to be related to the Tano and Aruak tribes – made global headlines. "It puts pressure on governments to stop the logging," he said. "I have no doubt that the aim of the flight was right, because it was to discover where the uncontacted tribes are living, how many of them there are and how they are living, with the ultimate goal of defending their land and their rights. If you don't know where they are, then you can't protect them as well.

However, Survival International is firmly in the camp of leaving the tribe on its own. "We would warn sternly against further contact," Hill said, citing the proven threat of disease.

A practical way of protecting the tribes is to come down heavily on the loggers, and the Brazilian government has closed down 28 illegal sawmills in Acre state.

Another is deterring the curious. The difficulties of reaching these areas means they are beyond the reach of most Western tourists, which explains the vicarious popularity of programmes such as the BBC's Tribe, in which former army officer Bruce Parry lived with various remote tribes around the world.

Although the programme makers embedded Parry in tribes that had clearly had extensive contact with outsiders, his presence raised the question of whether global exposure could bring long-term benefits.

Where Parry goes now, however, well-heeled tourists are sure to follow. In the highlands of West Papua, travellers can already pay $8,000 to be led into the jungles for what are labelled as "first contact" experiences.

Bourque for one is saddened. "You get the curiosity factor and you want your picture taken with a tribesman so you can tell your friends at home or post it on your blog. People do not think about the long-term impact on these communities."

However, she believes that contact with friendly outsiders is preferable to conflict with potentially hostile commercial interests, and that the time may be close when uncontacted groups have to be gently eased into the modern age.

"It would be better if first contact came from the appropriate people with the right motives and the right medical support, who could prepare them for the future and what might happen."

Hill wants to put off that day for as long as possible. "Everyone is aware of globalisation and the way we are all converging in so many amazing ways. But isn't it fantastic that there are pockets of the world where there are people content to be outside all that?"

http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/A-tribe-is-discovered-in.4139868.jp

Brazil Launches Large Reforestation Program in Amazon

Brazil on Friday formally launched a large reforestation project to grow 1 billion trees in the country's Amazon area in five years.

The project, "One Billion Trees for the Amazon," was launched at an inaugural ceremony attended by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Ana Julia Carepa, governor of the state of Para, where the Amazon situated.

At the ceremony, Lula and Carepa symbolically sowed seeds of endangered species of trees. The final target is set for 2013.

The project will involve 143 municipalities in Para to consolidate the state's image as a protector and repairer of the Amazon rainforest.

Along with the Bank of the Amazon and government-funded Banco do Brasil, the Para government will finance the program with subsidies worth 600 million U.S. dollars.

The project will benefit 120,000 agricultural producers, who will help reach almost half of the final target.

The program will also prevent the emission of over 10 million tons of carbon per year, part of Para's climate change plan aimed at reducing carbon emissions, deforestation and environmental degradation.

Additionally, the Brazilian government will set up a research center to study native species in the Amazon, and develop technology for the genetic improvement of species.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1412098/brazil_launches_large_reforestation_program_in_amazon/

0ver 1,000 sq km of Amazon rainforest devastated in April

About 1,123 square kilometers of the Amazon rainforest were devastated in April, up from 145 square kilometers in March, the Brazilian National Space Research Institute (Inpe) said in a report Monday.

The deforested area is almost as large as the city of Rio de Janeiro, which has an area of 1,182 square kilometers, the report said.

The report showed that 794.1 square kilometers of the deforested land, which represents 70 percent of the total, were in Brazil's midwestern state of Mato Grosso.

Brazil's northern state of Roraima ranked second with 248.8 square km of deforested land, and the state of Rondonia, also in the northern region, was third with 34.6 square kilometers, the report said.

The state of Amazonas, the largest in Brazil, has the lowest deforestation rate with 8.4 square kilometers, the report added.

The results registered in April show the rising tendency of deforestation in the region, the report said, adding that there were 639 square kilometers of deforested land in January and 724 square kilometers in February.

The Brazilian Amazon has a total rainforest area of about 4 million square kilometers. Over the past 20 years, since Inpe started to monitor deforestation via satellites, 700,000 square kmhave been destroyed, an area equal to a soccer field being cleared every 10 seconds in the region.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-06/03/content_8305060.htm