Drought, fires, floods. The climate emergency becomes art and in the center of São Paulo, the most populous metropolitan area in South America that represents urbanization and land consumption on the continent like no other, it becomes a giant mural that has attracted the attention of the press around the world, even earning the cover of the New York Times. The work, signed by'Brazilian artist Mundano, not new to awareness-raising works on social and environmental issues, stands on a 1.500 square meter wall and was created precisely with the mud of the floods which hit Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil in April, and with the ashes of the fires which more recently, between August and September, devastated a significant part of the Amazon and other biomes of the South American country, such as the Cerrado or the Pantanal. Only in the month of August and only in the largest rainforest on the planet did it go an area as large as Sicily up in smoke and the Rio Madeira, the main tributary of the Amazon River, has gone dry like never before: an environmental disaster that can once again be blamed on climate change, in this case a drought that this year has hit all of South America and in particular Brazil, where in some regions it hasn't rained for over 3 months.
The mural depicts indigenous activist Alessandra Korap
The activist belongs to the Munduruku tribe, threatened by the anthropization of the protected areas of the forest both through mercury contamination and through deforestation, in particular that due to the project of the American company Cargill Inc., which would like to build, in the heart of the Amazon, the Ferrograo, a 1.000 km railway network to make the movement of extracted raw materials even faster. The infrastructure, according to environmentalists' complaints, would sacrifice a green surface equal to that of 285 thousand football fields and it is precisely to Cargill that Mudano addresses himself through the sign that appears in the center of the graffiti: “Stop the destruction #keep your promise”. According to the author, the US company is not only not respecting its commitment to eliminate products derived from deforestation in its production chain by 2025, but it would like to increase soy exports in the Rio Tapajos area, without respecting protected areas and without involving indigenous communities. "We can still get out of this," Mundano argued in an interview with the local press, "but violations of environmental laws must be severely punished."
Climate Change in Brazil: What Could Happen in the Future
Never before have climate change struck Brazil so tragically, with the aforementioned floods in Rio Grande do Sul that caused 180 deaths and damages amounting to billions of reais, but even more so with what is happening in the Amazon, now at the mercy of the agri-food industry and mining exploitation. From 1985 to today, therefore in less than 40 years, the green heart of our planet has lost 12,5% of its surface area, equal to the territory of the entire Colombia. According to experts, at this rate, by 2050 the Amazon could effectively disappear. And therefore no longer guarantee the survival of the Earth.
