Brumadinho will be nothing compared to what will come with the devastation of the Amazon.

The tragedy in Brumadinho (MG) will pale in comparison to the gigantic social, economic, and environmental catastrophe that scientists and national and international media outlets are predicting for the entire national territory and part of South America if the Brazilian Amazon continues to be devastated by agribusiness, mining, and logging, and becomes a vast Cerrado or an immense African savanna in the coming decades.

Over the past 12 months, experts have issued numerous warnings about the serious climatological consequences that will come to Southwest and South Brazil with the resurgence, in the last four years, of the high rates of deforestation detected by satellites in the nine states of the so-called Legal Amazon, which together measure five million km², corresponding to 60% of the Brazilian territory.

Similarly, scientists and the media predict that it won't be long before the Amazon increases the devastation of its total area from the current 20% to 25%, a percentage from which experts attest and guarantee that the forest biome will begin to disappear, irreversibly transforming into yet another Brazilian savanna. Without the forest, the region will cease to generate its own rainfall and the humidity (also called "flying rivers") that it produces to feed the rainfall in Southeast and South Brazil, as well as neighboring countries.

From then on, the very serious consequences of the environmental catastrophe that will befall Brazil begin, with increased drought in the Northeast and a lack of rain and water to produce and feed more than 63% of the Brazilian population concentrated in the Southeast and South regions, with the same liquid scarcity extending to the populations of other countries in the Southern Cone, such as Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.

This environmental tragedy in South America is only likely to worsen and accelerate due to the complete lack of commitment from Jair Bolsonaro's government to preserving Brazil's vast rainforest. His stated priority in the region is to further boost his agribusiness, even expanding production onto indigenous lands (generating even more deforestation), a process that will be difficult to regulate and monitor under the jurisdiction of his Environment Minister, Ricardo Salles, who is under investigation for environmental crimes.

As a preview of his complete lack of commitment to forestry, Bolsonaro immediately transferred the management of the 118 million hectares (13,8% of the national territory) of indigenous lands from the Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of Agriculture, headed by his ruralist friends, precisely those responsible for most of the devastation that has occurred in the Amazon so far.

In this particular case, even Acre, the land of Chico Mendes and currently governed by a politician who is a staunch supporter of Jair Bolsonaro (Gladson Cameli, of the PP party), could see part of its vast forest transformed into gigantic soybean plantations in the coming years.

Scientists are issuing numerous and constant warnings.

The most recent international warning about the risks that the Bolsonaro government poses to the Amazon came on January 24th, when the American scientific journal... ScienceIn an editorial signed by Brazilian researcher Paulo Artaxo, professor of environmental physics at USP and one of the country's leading experts on the Amazon and climate change, the importance of the vast forest as a regulator of the climate in South America was highlighted. According to the professor, the fight against Amazonian deforestation between 2005 and 2012, which reduced the rate from 27.772 km² to 4.571 km² per year, transformed the country into a global leader in mitigating climate change.

According to Artaxo, instead of acting against the devastation of the forest, the Bolsonaro government is likely to fuel it. “Instead of addressing Brazil’s crises with a renewed commitment to science and sustainable solutions, the Bolsonaro government is favoring the interests of agribusiness and mining, which are intensifying these activities in the Amazon,” the researcher points out, recalling that in the last four years, Amazonian deforestation has increased again. reaching eight thousand km² last year.

According to the USP professor, environmental policy needs to be based on scientific knowledge. "The Amazon is the clearest example of this need. Development without a foundation causes far more devastation than economic gains. It can backfire, in the sense of destroying the environment without the economic return that was imagined," the researcher explained.

In an interview published in the second week of January by the magazine... National GeographicScientist Carlos Nobre, a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies at USP, a senior scientist at the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), and one of the authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's global report, was also emphatic in saying that the Amazon is rapidly moving towards ceasing to be the largest forest cover in the world and transforming into a biome similar to the Brazilian Cerrado.

Already anticipating these immense impacts in his pioneering studies of 1991, Carlos Nobre told the magazine that the signs that worry scientists are the death of Amazonian tree species and the increased duration of the dry season in the region. "And the savanna will come irreversibly, because it will be the biome in equilibrium for the new climate. By decreasing local rainfall, it will also reduce river flow," warned Nobre.

On January 7th of this year, the American television network CNN also highlighted the great concern of environmentalists regarding the fate of the Amazon during the four years of the Bolsonaro government.

After denouncing that the Amazon rainforest is already being cut down to make way for livestock farming, soybean planting, mining, and the construction of new highways, the CNN He highlighted the richness and strategic importance of preserving Brazil's vast forest for the global climate balance.

"The Amazon rainforest is an ecological marvel. Its waterways and canopy provide a rich ecosystem for one-tenth of all the world's species and help regulate the temperature of the entire planet. But the election of far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro as Brazil's new president has worried many about the future of the forest," the article notes.

Finally, in early April of last year, South American water experts met within the framework of Mercosur to discuss the necessary protection of the "flying rivers," originating from the moisture diverted from the Amazon and considered essential for supplying rainfall in southeastern and southern Brazil and most South American countries.

Present at the meeting in Montevideo, Uruguay, the president of the Brazilian Institute for Environmental Protection (Proam), Carlos Bocuhy, warned that "Brazil and the other Mercosur countries have homework to do," which is to protect their largest water ecosystem, a natural phenomenon known as flying rivers, which creates and carries rain inland, guaranteeing the lives of living species, human beings, cities, agriculture, and industrial activities. According to Bocuhy, without protecting the areas that feed and maintain this transfer of moisture and rain, there will be no sustainability for South America.