Environmentalism in Rio Grande do Sul refers to the movement constituted by scientists and laymen in defense of the environment of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Although there are some records of protests against environmental destruction as early as the 19th century, a more consistent movement only took shape in the mid-20th century, following scientific advances and realizing that the destruction and emerging threats at this time were already significant. Since then, environmentalism has proven to be a topic of growing popular appeal.
A pioneer of Brazilian environmentalism, the state has a significant history in this field, and has often presented innovative proposals. Rich in biodiversity, Rio Grande do Sul has developed a series of initiatives for the promotion of research, teaching and dissemination of ecological concepts, both in public and private spheres; the government has made and continues to make large investments in projects of various kinds, such as sanitation, the recovery of degraded areas and the creation of protected areas. There are multiple environmental associations, cooperatives and NGOs, which promote activism and present promising practical results, and the subject is developed in schools and communities, in general with good receptiveness.
However, the state also faces the issues of pollution, deforestation and desertification, among others, and is suffering the impacts of progressive global warming, which pose important challenges for its future development, besides having a long list of endangered species, many of them already considered locally extinct or in the process of imminent disappearance. In addition, enforcement is often precarious, hampered by chronic shortages of human and material resources, and reports of abuses are frequent. The controversies about the theme are also great, generating deadlocks, and powerful political and economic interests that oppose it hinder the advance of the matter. In recent years, the state environmental legislation has been drastically weakened.
History of environmental awareness in the state
Precedents
Many accounts survive from travelers and explorers of past centuries about the richness of the fauna and flora, and the beauty of the landscape of Rio Grande do Sul. In the 17th century, Jesuits reported the existence of tapirs on the coast. In 1703, Domingos da Filgueira taught how to take advantage of the abundance of deer and capybaras in the fields. In 1738, government provisions tried to protect the people of the Rio Grande and Pelotas regions from the jaguars that lived there in great numbers, and in the early 19th century, the traveler Nicolau Dreys reported the existence of hunters who still sold fifty pelts of the feline per month. In 1857, Avé-Lallemant was amazed by the number of birds living on the shores of the Lagoa dos Patos, which were covered in scrub, and was delighted with the exuberance of the flora in the region of São Leopoldo. At the end of the 19th century, mullet were still being caught in Porto Alegre and dorado was still being fished in the Sinos River. When Italian colonization began in the northeast, in 1875, the region was virgin and covered by the araucaria forest.
Much of this wealth no longer exists. Forests and animals have disappeared, pollution has taken over many rivers, and urbanization, cattle raising, and agriculture advanced, profoundly altering the primitive landscape. Environmental consciousness was slow to form, although some of those travelers already pointed out the dangers of unbridled exploitation of the environment. Reinhold Hensel, arriving in the state in 1865, was one of them, and in his writings recorded that the birds that Lallemant had described as abundant less than a decade ago were already scarce, that the hills of Porto Alegre, also once covered with trees, were already largely taken over by undergrowth, and, in observing the way German colonization was taking place in the Sinos valley, expressed a prophetic concern:
Beginning of the movement
Although in the 1940s there was significant environmental legislation at the national level, notably the Forest Code (1934), in the state, awareness was practically null. At this time Father Balduíno Rambo appeared and in a monograph of 1941, he denounced the predatory action of the logging industry in the Uruguay River valley and recommended the creation of two forest parks, one in upper Uruguay and the other in the Aparados da Serra. In his work A Fisionomia do Rio Grande do Sul (1942), he dedicated his last chapter to "Nature Protection," defending the protection of natural monuments, endangered species, and the integration between man and nature, stating: "A people that neglect this element would lack an essential requirement of true total human culture, and would be unworthy of the abundance of the land, as the prodigal hand of the Creator has gifted it." He was a pioneer, preceding the ecological studies of Wanderbilt Duarte de Barros, the first director of Itatiaia National Park (the first national park to be founded).
Around the same time, the first ecological inspector of the state emerged, Henrique Luís Roessler, an accountant at the State Port Delegation, who, on his initiative, dedicated himself to observing hunting and fishing activities on weekends, obtaining accreditation with the Ministry of Agriculture to officially act as an inspector. He lost it, however, by fining without authorization tanneries that polluted the rivers in the São Leopoldo region. In 1955, he founded the União Protetora da Natureza (Nature Protection Union), the first environmentalist organization in Brazil, and then began publishing pamphlets and a series of articles on ecological issues in the newspaper Correio do Povo, in Porto Alegre. To those who could not engage, he pleaded "a prayer for dying nature, asking that the merciful Omnipotent modify the predatory mentality of our people."
Roessler wrote his last article in 1963, and soon afterward, with the military coup of 1964, the Brazilian social movements were disbanded, dissolving also the incipient environmental movement. However, among the organizations that supported the coup was the Ação Democrática Feminina Gaúcha (ADFG), led in the 1970s by Magda Renner, who turned out to be an active environmental advocate. She was influenced in the direction of her ecological work by a lecture given by José Lutzenberger in 1972 at the Agronomists Association of Porto Alegre. Lutzenberger was prominent in the national movement, having published articles in newspapers and founded in 1971 the Gaúcho Association for the Protection of the Natural Environment (Agapan) together with other supporters of the cause, particularly Augusto Carneiro. These activists are owed mainly the resurgence of environmental awareness in the state, at a time when environmental problems in Brazil were becoming serious, and making Rio Grande do Sul the pioneer of the Brazilian ecological movement.
The two associations would develop a long and fruitful series of awareness campaigns, linked to a larger process of building conscious citizenship when the military regime was in its most oppressive phase. According to Maria Cristina da Silva, the environmental issue played a channeling role for the population, prevented from expressing their concerns, anxieties, and insecurities: "The ecological movement was the cause that united all the complaints." Magda Renner recalled that it was necessary to act with a specific strategy: "We wrapped the issues very well in 'pink paper' because we were going to the street when any street demonstration was forbidden," achieving important results. As an example, in 1974, ADFG and Agapan led a movement in defense of the Guaíba islands that resulted in the creation of the State Park of the Jacuí Delta in 1976. In 1975, ADFG held the first national ecological meeting, bringing together more than five hundred people, and where a pioneering project for recycling household waste was presented, ten years before any similar government initiative in Brazil. In 1978, it mobilized the country, including several government agencies, when the "red tide" was unleashed in Hermenegildo, on the southern coast of the state.
Agapan, in turn, promoted weekly meetings and lectures in its headquarters, disseminating studies and distributing thousands of pamphlets, and became notorious in its fight for the preservation of Lake Guaíba, particularly fighting the pulp mill Borregaard (now Riocell), receiving collaboration from government officials.The Borregaard pulp mill in Guaíba was known as the center of an ecological struggle in the 1970s. The stench of its gas emissions reached the capital and generated protests, besides dumping liquid effluents into the lake. It was shut down in 1973 as a result of popular mobilization. The case became emblematic. For Dorfman & Stanislawski, it was "one of the most important ecological struggles in history" and, according to Lilian Dreyer, when the company was installed, while being hailed as the lever of the state developmental pull,
Expansion and maturity
Magda's and Lutzenberger's activities earned them national and international recognition. Lutzenberger lectured all over the country and produced a number of articles. In 1976, he launched the book Fim do Futuro? or Manifesto Ecológico Brasileiro, which consolidated his leadership in Brazil and developed a strong style of criticism supported by scientific data. In 1977, largely due to his initiative, the Guarita State Park was founded in Torres, and in 1987, after leaving Agapan, he created the Gaia Foundation. Later he joined the Collor government as Secretary of the Environment, inviting Magda to be part of the National Council for the Environment team. She held simultaneously a seat on Bird's Brazilian NGO committee.
Other organizations began to emerge: In 1974, the Interdepartmental Center for Ecological Studies was created at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul; in 1978, Coolméia was created, a cooperative of consumers and farmers that fought against the use of pesticides and offered organic products. At the same time, several ecological reserves were created, such as the Lami José Lutzenberger Biological Reserve, owned by the Porto Alegre municipality, and others managed by the state government, such as the Camaquã State Park, the Podocarpus State Park, the Espinilho State Park, and the Ibitiriá State Park. The state press was especially receptive and gave space to news on the subject, many times in an emotional tone, as can be seen in headlines from the 1970s: "Deforestation: The Amazon could become a desert", "Agony of our rivers", "Saving nature to save human beings", "Pollution: death coming from the air". Such news became frequent, and while newspapers took advantage of the problems to sell more, it also indicated a dramatic change in public opinion, which became more interested and sensitized on a large scale.