Nature magazine hails Minister Marina Silva as “Amazon protector”
Brazil’s Minister for the Environment and Climate Change Marina Silva has been named one of the ten most influential people in the world for science by Nature magazine, one of the leading international scientific publications. The list was published Wednesday (Dec. 13).
The minister is described by Nature as the “protector of the Amazon” and the one who helped reverse the rampant deforestation taking place under Jair Bolsonaro’s government. According to the magazine, in a year of bad environmental news, with record global warming, scorching heat waves, and fires, she was able to send a message of hope by announcing on August 3 a 43 percent drop in deforestation alerts based on satellite images of the Amazon between January and July 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.
Minister Silva also resumed the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm), which the Bolsonaro government had discontinued. She also re-established support for policing in the region to enforce environmental regulations. From January to July, the Brazilian environmental authority Ibama issued 147 percent more fines for environmental crimes than the average for 2019–2022.
The magazine points out that Bolsonaro’s administration slashed fines for environmental crimes by 40 percent, adding that logging in the Amazon surged 60 percent from the previous four years.
Nature’s list highlights the role of people who have helped make discoveries in science and who have drawn attention to crucial issues. The magazine itself explains that this is not an award or a ranking, but a selection compiled by Nature editors to highlight the most interesting stories of the year.
