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When will the Amazon hit a tipping point?

Scientists say climate change, deforestation and fires could cause the world’s largest rainforest to dry out. The big question is how soon that might happen. Seen from a monitoring tower above the treetops near Manaus, in the Brazilian Amazon, the rainforest canopy stretches to the horizon as an endless sea of green. It looks like a rich and healthy ecosystem, but appearances are deceiving. This rainforest — which holds 16,000 separate tree species — is slowly drying out.

Over the past century, the average temperature in the forest has risen by 1-1.5 oC. In some parts, the dry season has expanded during the past 50 years, from four months to almost five. Severe droughts have hit three times since 2005. That’s all driving a shift in vegetation. In 2018, a study reported that trees that do best in moist conditions, such as tropical legumes from the genus Inga, are dying. Those adapted to drier climes, such as the Brazil nut tree (Bertholletia excelsa), are thriving.

At the same time, large parts of the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, are being cut down and burnt. Tree clearing has already shrunk the forest by around 15% from its 1970s extent of more than 6 million square kilometres; in Brazil, which contains more than half the forest, more than 19% has disappeared. Last year, deforestation in Brazil spiked by around 30% to almost 10,000 km², the largest loss in a decade. And in August 2019, videos of wildfires in the Amazon made international headlines. The number of fires that month was the highest for any August since an extreme drought in 2010.

(www.nature.com, 25.02.2020. Adaptado.)

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“Culture is language”: why an indigenous tongue is thriving in Paraguay

Paraguayan Guaraní — a language descended from several indigenous tongues — remains one of the main languages of 70% of Paraguay’s population.

On a hillside monument in Asunción, a statue of the mythologized indigenous chief Lambaré stands alongside other great leaders from Paraguayan history. The other historical heroes on display are of mixed ancestry, but the idea of a noble indigenous heritage is strong in Paraguay, and — uniquely in the Americas — can be expressed by most of the country’s people in an indigenous language: Paraguayan Guaraní. “Guaraní is our culture — it’s where our roots are,” said Tomasa Cabral, a market vendor in the city.

Elsewhere in the Americas, European colonial languages are pushing native languages towards extinction, but Paraguayan Guaraní — a language descended from several indigenous tongues — remains one of the main languages of 70% of the country’s population. And unlike other widely spoken native tongues — such as Quechua, Aymara or the Mayan languages — it is overwhelmingly spoken by non-indigenous people.

Miguel Verón, a linguist and member of the Academy of the Guaraní Language, said the language had survived partly because of the landlocked country’s geographic isolation and partly because of the “linguistic loyalty” of its people. “The indigenous people refused to learn Spanish,” he said. “The imperial governors had to learn to speak Guaraní.” But while it remains under pressure from Spanish, Paraguayan Guaraní is itself part of the threat looming over the country’s other indigenous languages. Paraguay’s 19 surviving indigenous groups each have their own tongue, but six of them are listed by Unesco as severely or critically endangered.

The benefits of speaking the country’s two official languages were clear. Spanish remains the language of government, and Paraguayan Guaraní is widely spoken in rural areas, where it is a key requisite for many jobs. But the value of maintaining other tongues was incalculable, said Alba Eiragi Duarte, a poet from the Ava Guaraní people. “Our culture is transmitted through our own language: culture is language. When we love our language, we love ourselves.”

(William Costa. www.theguardian.com, 03.09.2020. Adaptado.)

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The business of climate change

A UN assessment published this week on the progress made in stemming the global loss of species made depressing reading. Not one of the 20 targets adopted by 196 countries in a convention on biodiversity in 2010 has been met. And the latest biennial Living Planet Report from the WWF, an environmental group, found that animal populations worldwide shrank by an average of two-thirds between 1970 and 2016. The falls were greatest in the tropics. In Latin America and the Caribbean animal populations fell by 94%, on average, during the period. It is some comfort that around the world biodiversity and climate change have become big political issues. In Australia koala bears have almost brought down a state government.

(www.economist.com, 18.09.2020.)

Para responder a questão, leia o texto extraído da primeira parte, intitulada “A terra”, da obra Os sertões, de Euclides da Cunha. A obra resultou da cobertura jornalística da Guerra de Canudos, realizada por Euclides da Cunha para o jornal O Estado de S.Paulo de agosto a outubro de 1897, e foi publicada apenas em 1902.

Percorrendo certa vez, nos fins de setembro [de 1897], as cercanias de Canudos, fugindo à monotonia de um canhoneio¹ frouxo de tiros espaçados e soturnos, encontramos, no descer de uma encosta, anfiteatro irregular, onde as colinas se dispunham circulando um vale único. Pequenos arbustos, icozeiros² virentes viçando em tufos intermeados de palmatórias³ de flores rutilantes, davam ao lugar a aparência exata de algum velho jardim em abandono. Ao lado uma árvore única, uma quixabeira alta, sobranceando a vegetação franzina.

O sol poente desatava, longa, a sua sombra pelo chão e protegido por ela — braços largamente abertos, face volvida para os céus — um soldado descansava.

Descansava... havia três meses.

Morrera no assalto de 18 de julho [de 1897]. A coronha da Mannlicher ⁴ estrondada, o cinturão e o boné jogados a uma banda, e a farda em tiras, diziam que sucumbira em luta corpo a corpo com adversário possante. Caíra, certo, derreando- -se à violenta pancada que lhe sulcara a fronte, manchada de uma escara preta. E ao enterrarem-se, dias depois, os mortos, não fora percebido. Não compartira, por isto, a vala comum de menos de um côvado de fundo em que eram jogados, formando pela última vez juntos, os companheiros abatidos na batalha. O destino que o removera do lar desprotegido fizera-lhe afinal uma concessão: livrara-o da promiscuidade lúgubre de um fosso repugnante; e deixara-o ali há três meses – braços largamente abertos, rosto voltado para os céus, para os sóis ardentes, para os luares claros, para as estrelas fulgurantes...

E estava intacto. Murchara apenas. Mumificara conservando os traços fisionômicos, de modo a incutir a ilusão exata de um lutador cansado, retemperando-se em tranquilo sono, à sombra daquela árvore benfazeja. Nem um verme — o mais vulgar dos trágicos analistas da matéria — lhe maculara os tecidos. Volvia ao turbilhão da vida sem decomposição repugnante, numa exaustão imperceptível. Era um aparelho revelando de modo absoluto, mas sugestivo, a secura extrema dos ares.

(Os sertões, 2016.)

¹ canhoneio: descarga de canhões.

² icozeiro: arbusto de folhas coriáceas, flores de tom verde-pálido e frutos bacáceos.

³ palmatória: planta da família das cactáceas, de flores amarelo-esverdeadas, com a parte inferior vermelha, ou róseas, e bagas vermelhas.

⁴ Mannlicher: rifle projetado por Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher.