No artist portrayed the beauty of the Brazilian rain forest flowers better than Margaret Mee. This British Botanical painter, one of the finest of the last century, helped publicizing abroad the importance of the country’s biodiversity.
She moved to Brazil in the mid-50s (when she was already 47), where she remained till the end of her life, in 1988. In her 15 expeditions to the Amazon region, plus several to the cerrado (the country’s savanna) and the Atlantic rain forest, Mee produced a detailed images of the country’s flora, namely orchids, bromeliads and cacti.
Lack of comfort, tropical diseases or safety never deterred her – she would walk into rivers, climb trees full of ants and stand under huge tropical storms if that was needed to get the best angle. And to guarantee her safety – she was menaced by gold prospectors once -, she always carried a gun. Frequently, she would navigate the Amazon tributaries in a canoe and enter the jungle by herself. Many of her watercolors reproduce plants that were not yet described by Science and were later named after her.
Downtown Veranópolis, in the Southern Rio Grande do Sul state
People don’t live in countries or states – they live in cities. Ultimately, it’s the local government, infrastructure and cultural services that define one’s quality of life. And quality of life in Brazilian cities is changing quickly, according to a study just released by IBGE (the main national statistics bureau). For the first time in ten years, IBGE raised information from 5,565 local governments to draw the profile the country’s municipalities.
Overall, they seem to be offering more sports and cultural opportunities, but they still have to improve their policies concerning the environment, minorities and human rights.
The report’s main conclusions:
Bookstores can be found in only 28% of Brazilian cities (it was 35.5% in 1999). Apparently, book sales remain similar, because readers prefer to acquire them through the internet or in supermarkets. Also, the number of video rental stores is getting smaller, after many years of growth. Today, they can be found in almost 70% of Brazilian cities, but they are losing their costumers to cable TV and the internet.
Once upon a time, God was showing an angel around the brand new Earth. “This is Indonesia – they will have tsunamis and volcanoes. And this is the US – they will have hurricanes and earthquakes”, he says. The angel points to Brazil: “what about this country?”. God answers that Brazil will have the best weather of the planet, no volcanoes or earthquakes, a real paradise. The angel scratches his halo and asks: “How come everything is so great there?”, to what God answers: “Just wait to see the people I will put there!”
This joke, told whenever a Brazilian is in a self-deprecating mood, reinforces a stereotype that is only partially true. Check the image I chose to open this post. This is Trindade island, a stone wall of volcanic origin off the coast of Espírito Santo state. It’s cliffs are so steep that only crabs and spiders are able to survive there. Many ships that tried to go there sank and the only safe way to reach it is by helicopter. Trindade is the living proof that even if Brazil is safer than the average, it is not 100% immune to natural catastrophes. Keep reading
Don’t miss this opportunity: great Brazilian artists, journalists, scientists, businessmen and philosophers speak their minds in the new TED conference series produced in São Paulo.
Some highlights (for the versions with English subtitles, click on their names and make sure the CC button, that turns on the captions, is on):
Regina Casé is the comedian who founded Asdrúbal Trouxe o Trombone troupe in the seventies, then gave life to memorable characters of the comedy show TV Pirata, in the eighties. In 1989, she met researcher Hermano Vianna and this led to a turning point in her career. Together, they created a group of studies and professional partnerships that caused her to shift the focus of her work from art to anthropology. This partnership gave way to Brazil Legal, Muvuca, and Central da Periferia, among other projects that bring to the little screen the realities of the country.
Fabio Barbosa, president of the Santander Group Brazil and my former boss, one of the leaders of the debate about corporate responsibility and sustainability in the country. A brilliant man with a very advanced vision. Since 2000, he developed a strategy at Banco Real (that now belongs to Santander) that includes offering lines of credit for companies that wish to comply with environmental standards and cutting companies that harm the environment off its client list (I was part of the team in charge of these cuts). The plan became the object of a study at Harvard University. Keep reading
Brazil is well positioned to achieve the Millennium Goals – the eight development objectives that the United Nations member states are supposed to attain till 2015. The federal government just released the fourth annual report detailing the country’s progress and the results are definitely encouraging.
Among its main conclusions (to make this easier on your brain, green indicates good news; orange, neutral. No item was fully bad, according to the report):
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Around 25.6% of the Brazilian population lived on less than $1 a day in 1990. The target for 2015 is 12.8%, but this number was down to 4.8% in 2008.
In 1996, 4.2% of the children were underweight. The target for 2015 is 2.1%, but the most recent statistics (2006) indicate that hunger is now affecting 1.8% of this population.
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Around 95% of the Brazilian kids between 7 and 14 years old are enrolled in schools.
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
For every 100 boys studying, there are 93.8 girls (in primary education) and 133.2 (in secondary education).
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
In 1990, there were 53.7 deaths of children under five per thousand babies born alive. In 2008, this number was down to 22.8. The 2015 target is 17.9.
Singer Seu Jorge, made with circles cut from magazines
"Toy soldiers", made of...idem
Pasta Meduse
'Action Photo (After Hans Namuth)', made with chocolate syrup
You may have heard of Vik Muniz, the highly successful New York-based Brazilian artist that experiments with all sorts of materials, from diamonds to chocolate, creating images both fun and inspiring. Now you can watch a sample of Waste Land, the documentary about Muniz that won the Public Award in the last edition of the Sundance independent film festival, in January. It shows his work with garbage pickers in Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill of Rio de Janeiro. It focuses on the transformative power of art and gives a pretty close look on the life of those who live from the trash and surrounded by trash.
And here, in the really cool TED conference series, Vik discusses what is creativity and shows some of his works.
The Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology released today a study that outlines how the country and the planet will (probably) evolve in the next 20 years. Produced by the Centro de Gestão e Estudos Estratégicos, the document offers a time line based on several sources. It is meant to help government plan its future strategies.
Part of its content is easily predictable, considering recent tendencies. But there are some surprises.
Among its main forecasts:
Economy
In four years, Brazil will go back to its tradition of successive commercial balance deficits
Brazilian Gross Domestic Product will be 925 billion dollars in 2015 (which means, less than our present GDP, around 1.6 trillion dollars. It is not very clear how Goldman Sachs, the original source of this information, came up with this number)
Brazil, the brand, will increase its value. The demand for products associated to the country’s cultural diversity will grow
According to the United Nations, animal traffic is the third main illicit activity practiced in the planet, after drugs and weapons traffic. It is a 20-billion-dollar a year business and one tenth of it is in Brazil. Practically all the wild animals trade in the country is illegal and approximately 30% of it is for export.
Birds of exuberant feathers, monkeys and turtles are among the main victims of this commerce. Generally, they are captured in the Northeast of Brazil and brought to the Southeast – mainly to the states of Rio and São Paulo. Then, they are smuggled to neighboring countries by road or waterways. Finally, they are flown to their final consumers in the developed countries. Frequently, they are hidden in boxes without ventilation and food. In many cases, the tips of their wings are cut or their eyes are blinded, in order to avoid escapes. Thanks to these exhausting trips, around 90% of these animals die before reaching their destination. It is still very profitable: a blue macaw can be sold for 60,000 dollars in the international market.
In Brazil, a convicted animal smuggler may spend from six months to one year in jail and pay a fine up to 5,500 reais (around 2,900 dollars).
*Sylvia Estrella is a Brazilian journalist and translator specialized in the Environment and also Aviation.
From useful to futile, numbers that help explaining the country.
43% of adults that live in state capitals are overweight.
Those who have access to the internet spent 2.8 days connected in the month of September.
9% of the kids born in 2008 were not registered.
473 million reais ( 256.6 million dollars or 184.5 million euros) were collected by the government of the city of São Paulo thanks to driving and parking tickets. 99% of the Brazilian cities have budgets lower than that.
57% of the inhabitants of the city of São Paulo would like to move away (Is this related to the previous number? Maybe).
Brazil is the 88th country in the education ranking produced by Unesco. Paraguay and Bolivia are in better shape.
1 in 5 Brazilians that have a formal job works for the public service.
President Lula spent 87 days abroad in 2009 – a personal record.
9 in 10 Brazilians have a cell phone.
500 million reais (271.3 million dollars or 195 million euros) will be spent to fix up Maracanã stadium, in Rio, for the 2014 World Soccer Cup.
The Brazilian delegation to the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen last December had 743 members. It was three times bigger than the American delegation.
1819 houses and buildings at Brazilian roadsides have been used for child prostitution. It’s one every 27 kilometers.
