The Amazon Rainforest is 2.6 million square miles of rainforest that cover a great deal of South American territories, such as Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana, but it is chiefly located in Brazil. The Amazon is home to “10% of all Earth’s plant and animal life”, as well as more than “24 million people ranging from a variety of locals and indigenous groups. Unfortunately, the Amazon is a victim to countless acts of deforestation that present themselves in several ways, such as forest fires, illegal logging, cattle ranching, and more. One of the primary culprits of this injustice is the newly elected President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, who has made it his mission to censor these horrible acts from the public and the outside world for the benefit of his own agenda The act of censorship is defined by the New World Encyclopedia as “the editing removing, or otherwise changing speech and other forms of human expression” especially when it comes to the mass media.
This censorship typically involves the suppression of ideas or facts via the promise of criminalization, or maybe just the regulation of the media. When it comes to the Amazon Rainforest fires. it is evident that corporate censorship is at play, as the destruction of the rainforest would give rise to more opportunities for developments to be made in that area and give corporations the ability to make money from the land, Bolsonaro, a strong advocate for development, continuously denies the existence of these forest fires. In a press conference with Reuters, the President stated. “This story that the Amazon is going up in flames is a lie and we must combat it with true numbersi”.
In 2019, Bolsonaro fired the head of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Ricardo Galvan, under the premise that he was spreading “false” information about the prevalent forest fires in the Amazon. Galvao, along with some cohorts, are now working on bringing attention to this global issue that could end up being completely irreversible should action not be take. Ecologist Filipe Franca stated that this was just “another clear example of how the current government is trying to control the freedom of speech of Brazilian scientists. Numerous environmental employees at various institutions have complained about the growing sense of censorship among superiors in their field and have even gone so far as to remove their names/credentials from research articles and papers to protect both themselves and their jobs.
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At the G7 Summit held in Biarritz in 2019 the video feed was cut as plots to pressure Bolsonaro into intervening in the forest fires were about to be disclosed between Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, both of whom are outspoken critics of the president Bolsonaro has decreased funding to the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, which has also caused the “ transfer all employees out of three of the state’s four federal environmental protection offices” who are in charge of defending the rainforest. All this evidence points to clear and present censorship of the destruction of the Amazon under Bolsonaro’s “leadership” in the hopes to bring more profit to major corporations that would benefit him. Bolsonaro has done all of this under the hope to censor this newfound information and prevent it from spreading further.
The act of repeated denials, the firing of Ricardo Galvao, and the addition of armed Force personnel to institutions such as INPE all point to acts of censorship on Bolonaro‘s pan in order to limit the amount of accurate information conceming the devastating forest fires from getting out into the world. How will this affect out world in the long run then? According to an article written by Bright Side should the amazon continue to burn at the current rate in which it is, we could see a loss of medical possibilities, as many of the plants in the Amazon hold medicinal propenies that are used for current day diseases, Half of the world‘s plant and animal species would be killed off and we would see a loss of 80% of our world’s food variety too. There would be longer spells of dry weather and more floods in the surrounding area. The air quality would decrease dramatically and about 5-6 times the amount of greenhouse gases would be released into the atmosphere, And to top it all off, approximately 30 million people would lose their homes President Bolsonaro has used his political agenda to destroy one of the world’s most significant pieces of land, and through his position of power he continues to censor the events to preserve the “integrity” of the Brazilian government while also aiding major corporations in their goals of profit from the Amazon.
