Brazil ex-minister, leader from Amazon area, warns of destruction

[struggle4progress]

Stephen Brown
Marina Silva. Photo: © Stephen Brown/ENI

Belem, Brazil (ENI). The ecological destruction of the Amazon region poses a serious threat to the planet, former Brazilian environmental minister Marina Silva has warned in advance of the World Social Forum, a global gathering addressing exploitative globalisation that opens on 27 January.

"There is no way to imagine the planet without the Amazon," Silva said in a speech to the 3rd World Forum on Theology and Liberation, which met in Belem, northeastern Brazil, near the mouth of the Amazon River, from 21 to 25 January.

The WSF said it scheduled its 2009 meeting in Belem to focus on the need to maintain the biodiversity of the Amazon region. Sharing a platform on 24 January with Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian liberation theologian now campaigning on the environmental threat, Silva described the maintenance of the Amazon forests as essential for the sustainability of the earth.

"We are facing an unprecedented crisis. It's not only environmental, it's not only economic, it's a crisis for civilisation," said Silva, a member of the Brazilian Senate for the Para region of which Belem is the capital. "It's not only a matter of losing resources. We didn't use to have the hurricanes we now have in the south of Brazil" ...

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