ITS ALL BURNING
Anytime I see 'information' rapidly spread through social media calling for action or calling out neglect I look it up. I'll admit I do get a lot of news updates from IG stories, but until its confirmed, feel resolutely skeptical about accepting these posts as truths.
This week, I experienced this skepticism as #prayforamazonia hit the circuit.
'Is this a new and unusual amount of burning?'
'Is it a fire that is out of control?'
'Who is the main beneficiary of the forest being burned?'
Of course awareness and alarm about preserving the world's greatest home of biodiversity is positive and should be a huge part of global conversations. These ancient trees absorb the shameful levels of carbon emissions industrialized nations create and allow us to continue breathing for now, the flora inform and inspire medicines and knowledge that are irreplaceable, the animals represent the diversity of complex relationships, possibilities for existence, and the magic of life, the people are simply trying to live and be respected enough as humans to be given political authority over the land they have existed in for countless centuries. For some reason all of these are things that in this time and place have to be fought to maintain.
Anyway, yes, humans are burning down huge parts of the Amazon in Brazil. The majority of it is sanctioned, if not totally legally, at least politically by the current Brazilian administration in order to convert the land for more farming and ranching aka global export profits. This is where shit feels tricky though. It is incredibly colonial to go around telling global south countries what they can and can't do. This is mostly a mess because of *Capitalism* - a white, western, Euro/American construct, which grew out of *Colonialism* and a disturbing obsession with power/posession/control/winning. In such dire times, how does the world simultaneously reconcile its deep hierarchical wrongs and produce/consume less out of empathetic collaboration without destroying more?
<ALSO worth remembering much of Southeast Asia's forests are also being destroyed on a daily basis for similar export monoculture crops like palm oil>
I'm maybe too depressed by it all to rant any more, but this among with many world actions, issues, leaders, are lining up for something major. I don't want to just say crisis or disaster because its too complex. Its not just beginning and its not all about to end (in terms of the world not the individual species :( :( :( :( ). Its just going to keep changing.
If you want to show you care about the Amazon and have financial resources to share, here are some Brazilian organizations to contribute to:
Socio Ambiental
Coordination of the Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon
Imaflora
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