Amazon protector: the Brazilian politician who turned the tide on deforestation 亚马逊保护者：这位巴西政治家扭转了森林砍伐的局面

This story is part of Nature’s 10, an annual list compiled by Nature’s editors exploring key developments in science and the individuals who contributed to them.
这个故事是《自然》杂志年度十大科学进展名单的一部分,该名单由《自然》杂志的编辑们编制,旨在探索科学领域的关键发展及其贡献者。

In a year that brought unrelenting bad environmental news, with record global warming, searing heatwaves and fires, Marina Silva delivered a hopeful message on 3 August. Brazil’s environment and climate-change minister announced that there had been a 43% drop in deforestation alerts on the basis of satellite images of the Amazon rainforest between January and July 2023, compared with the same period in 2022. This was a sharp shift from the previous four years, which had seen a marked rise in such alerts.
在一个充满了不断的糟糕环境新闻的年份,全球气温创纪录升高,炎热的热浪和火灾不断,玛丽娜·席尔瓦在8月3日传递了一个充满希望的信息。巴西环境和气候变化部长宣布,根据对亚马逊雨林的卫星图像,2023年1月至7月间的森林砍伐预警数量与2022年同期相比下降了43%。这与前四年森林砍伐预警数量显著上升的趋势形成了鲜明对比。

The turnaround for environmental protections in Brazil started on 1 January, when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office as president and Marina Silva assumed her current role. It’s her second time heading the ministry of the environment and climate change, which she ran previously between 2003 and 2008, during Lula da Silva’s first and second presidencies.
巴西环境保护的转变始于1月1日,当时路易斯·伊纳西奥·卢拉·达席尔瓦就任总统,玛丽娜·席尔瓦开始担任现职。这是她第二次领导环境与气候变化部,她曾在2003年至2008年期间,也就是卢拉·达席尔瓦第一和第二任总统期间,先前担任过这一职务。

During her first time in office, Marina Silva tackled rampant forest-clearing activities by leading the development of the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm) — a programme that achieved an 83% decrease in deforestation between 2004 and 2012 in the Brazilian Amazon.
在她首次担任职务期间,玛丽娜·席尔瓦通过领导制定《法定亚马逊地区防止和控制森林砍伐行动计划》(PPCDAm)来应对猖獗的森林清除活动——该计划在2004年至2012年间使巴西亚马逊地区的森林砍伐率下降了83%。

But many of the protections she helped to put in place were dismantled by the government of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president from 2019 to 2022. During his term, the government issued 40% fewer fines for environmental crimes, and logging in the Amazon increased by about 60% compared with the four previous years.
但是她帮助建立的许多保护措施被贾伊尔·博索纳罗政府拆除了,他是2019年到2022年的巴西总统。在他的任期内,政府对环境犯罪的罚款减少了40%,亚马逊的伐木量比前四年增加了大约60%。

Silva and her team started this year, she says, “with the tough mission to reconstruct what had been dismantled and, at the same time, create new results for environmental policy”.
席尔瓦和她的团队今年开始了,她说,“艰巨的任务是重建已经被拆散的东西,同时为环境政策创造新的成果”。

From an early age, Silva has embraced difficult challenges. She was born in 1958 in Rio Branco, Brazil, in the heart of the Amazon region. Coming from a poor family of 11 children (3 of whom died young), Silva started work at an early age along with her siblings, extracting latex from rubber trees. She wanted to be a nun and didn’t learn to read or write until she was a teenager.
从小,席尔瓦就接受了艰难的挑战。她1958年出生于巴西里约布兰科,位于亚马逊地区的中心。出身于一个有11个孩子(其中3个早逝)的贫穷家庭,席尔瓦和她的兄弟姐妹一起从小就开始工作,从橡胶树上提取乳胶。她曾想成为一名修女,并且直到青少年时期才学会读写。

Silva met environmental activist Chico Mendes (who was killed in 1988 by a rancher) on a course in rural leadership in the mid-1970s and started her career in environmental activism, which led eventually to politics. In 1994, she became Brazil’s youngest elected senator at 35 years old.
席尔瓦在1970年代中期的一次农村领导力课程上遇到了环保活动家奇科·门德斯(他在1988年被一名牧场主杀害),并开始了她的环保活动家生涯,最终通向政治。1994年,她以35岁的年龄成为巴西最年轻的当选参议员。

In her current role, Silva is not always in alignment with the current government, says Pedro Jacobi, an environmental-governance researcher at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. The Lula da Silva government intends to increase drilling for oil and gas — including at the mouth of the Amazon River, says Jacobi. So the environment ministry is “walking on thin ice all the time”, he says.
在她目前的角色中,席尔瓦并不总是与现政府保持一致,巴西圣保罗大学的环境治理研究员佩德罗·雅各比说。卢拉·达席尔瓦政府打算增加钻探石油和天然气的活动——包括在亚马逊河口地区,雅各比说。所以环境部一直“如履薄冰”,他说。

But in terms of controlling and preventing deforestation, Brazil is doing its homework, says Natalie Unterstell, president of the Talanoa Institute, a climate-policy organization based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. “Marina Silva’s leadership on this agenda is very important and she is doing an extraordinary job,” says Unterstell.
但是在控制和预防森林砍伐方面,巴西正在做它的功课,里约热内卢气候政策组织塔拉诺瓦研究所所长娜塔莉·温特斯特尔说。“玛丽娜·席尔瓦在这个议程上的领导非常重要,她正在做着非凡的工作,”温特斯特尔说。

One key achievement was launching a revamped version, on 5 June, of the PPCDAm programme to protect the Amazon, which the Bolsonaro administration had shut down. Silva also reinstated support for policing the region to enforce environmental regulations. And it was soon clear that the policies were working. Between January and July, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) issued 147% more fines for environmental crimes than it had averaged during similar months between 2019 and 2022.
一个关键成就是在6月5日推出了改进版的PPCDAm计划以保护亚马逊雨林,该计划曾被博尔索纳罗政府关闭。席尔瓦还恢复了对该地区的警力支持,以执行环境法规。很快就明显看出政策正在发挥作用。从1月到7月,巴西环境和可再生自然资源研究所(IBAMA)对环境犯罪的罚款数量比2019年至2022年同期月份的平均水平增加了147%。

According to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), deforestation in the Amazon from August 2022 to July 2023 is estimated to be 22% below what it was in the previous 12 months. The rate is the lowest since 2018, but is about twice that of 2012, when deforestation was the lowest since INPE satellites began taking measurements in 1988.
根据巴西国家空间研究所(INPE)的数据,2022年8月至2023年7月亚马逊地区的森林砍伐量预计比前12个月下降了22%。这一比率是自2018年以来的最低水平,但大约是2012年的两倍,2012年的森林砍伐量是自1988年INPE卫星开始测量以来的最低点。

Silva says one of the keys reasons why environmental protections are working is that a wide swathe of the government is promoting this agenda. “What fills me with joy,” she says, “is to see at work a concept that is very dear to me — that environmental policy should not be restricted to only one sector, but traverse all ministries.”
席尔瓦说,环境保护之所以有效的关键原因之一是政府的广泛部门都在推动这一议程。她说:“让我感到欣慰的是,看到一个我非常珍视的理念在实践中——环境政策不应仅限于一个部门,而应贯穿所有部委。”

But ending deforestation is not enough. “If countries do not reduce their CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels, forests run the risk of being destroyed due to climate change, in the same way. So we need a civilizational change, a change in our ways of life.”
但仅仅结束森林砍伐还不够。“如果各国不减少他们来自化石燃料的二氧化碳排放,森林仍然面临因气候变化而被破坏的风险,这种情况是一样的。因此,我们需要文明的改变,改变我们的生活方式。”

She likens herself to a strong fibre from an Amazonian tree, which is used to bind wood to create rafts. “This is how I see my work,” she says, “bringing together those who are available and whatever is necessary to form a support surface in the challenging journeys of our time.”
她把自己比作亚马逊树木中的一根坚韧纤维,这种纤维被用来捆绑木头制作筏子。她说:“这就是我对自己工作的看法,把那些愿意参与的人和所有必需的东西结合起来,形成一个支撑面,以应对我们这个时代的艰难旅程。”