What should be expected from the future of the Amazon, considering all the challenges the region has been currently experiencing? Is there any magic and still unused formulation, able to detain the advance of climate change, often provoked by human action? And how much time do the region's fauna, flora and inhabitants have left before it's too late?
These were some of the guiding questions for the launching of the research entitled “Amazon urban futures”, on December 12th, in Belém. The unprecedented initiative, led by the MIT Media Lab – a component of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – constitutes a partnership with Laboratório da Cidade [City Laboratory], Faculdade de Arquitetuta e Urbanismo da UFPA [UFPA Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism] and Museu Emilio Goeldi (MPEG) [Goeldi Museum]. The objective of these institutions is to develop studies and formulate alternatives capable of solving socio-environmental problems in urban centers in the Amazon.
According to Gabriela Bilá, a researcher at the MIT City Science Group in Brasília (DF), the investigation brings together different angles and several ‘hands’ that can contribute to the work of reconfiguring the spaces of the city. “Our idea is that it will be a long-term and multilateral action, over a period of years. What we present here is our first spark. We are not building our neighborhoods and resources adequately, but our dream is to develop a research about what a city in the Amazon can be, because we have potential, we could be a showcase for the world, of new ways of living in a forest. We are in the city, but first of all, we are in the middle of a forest”, argues Bilá.
EXCHANGE
The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory based in Cambridge, United States, that explores the intersection between computing and the arts - and encompasses a diverse community of students, researchers, faculty members and staff working in different fields of knowledge. According to the director of MIT Brazil, Rosabelli Coelho, the exchange of experiences between scholars from inside and outside the Amazon expands the search for new initiatives, based on the success and failure of what has already been going on in other parts of the world.
“I think now is the time to map whatever is working, both here and in other places, so that we can have a scale. Without scales, we will not be able to improve conditions. So, this exchange of knowledge is crucial for us to do things that work. It often seems like we didn't exchange ideas, didn't look at history, didn't see what was done in other places. We have to take advantage of this knowledge and these exchanges so that we don’t keep on doing more of the same”, says Rosabelli.
The past is part of the solution
Although the central theme is the future of the Amazon, the past is also at the center of the debates, as a path to be explored in search of innovative solutions. Archaeologist Helena Pinto Lima argues that it is important to rescue traditions from pre-Columbian peoples – societies that lived in America before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 – to improve the inhabitants' relationship with nature and among themselves.
“We have a lot to learn from the way of organizing, interacting with the environment, building nature that these indigenous peoples of the past, ancestors of our contemporary populations, can teach us. I believe these legacies, whether of the biodiversity that we find in the region, or of the ways of being, living, inhabiting the rivers and the Amazon region as a whole, can give us clues to think about the future as a community here in the region”, says the archaeologist Helena Pinto.
Helena, researcher and curator of the Archaeological Collection of the Emílio Goeldi Museum, also emphasizes that there is no point in thinking about the future as something distant, which should only affect later generations. For her, it is essential that everyone understands their role in creating a fairer city.
COMMUNITIES
“There is no doubt that we face global challenges, challenges for the entire Amazon region, which have to be considered based on large-scale public policies. But I also call people and local communities, whether urban, central, peripheral, forest peoples. We, in contemporary communities, have a lot of experiences to exchange, and also a lot to learn about the forms of organization that the people of the past bequeathed to us. The future we are building means all of us, in the Amazon cities, in the forests, in our relationships with rivers and landscapes. The future is now and we are building it”, ponders Helena.
The future must be imagined along with those who live in the city
When he visited Combu Island, in Belém, for the first time, MIT researcher Luis Alonso Pastor was surprised by the cartography in Pará. It is as if the capital were far from the forest, separated by the Guajará Bay. But it was not a mere geographical issue according to him. There are different distances that separate the urban nucleus from the imaginary one person has of a city that grew in a forested area: “I had an idea of what the Amazon was, but the reality is very diverse and very complex. The city is on the other side of the river, separated from everything else”, says the Spanish researcher.
The reality jolt, however, led the researcher to challenge the public with a proposal to think about what the Amazon of the future would be like, through free imagination. In his presentation, Pastor brought examples of how filmmakers project an ideal world on screens measuring approximately 540 inches. He also said that it is necessary to think outside the box together with the local population to transform any place into a fairer place.
HARMONY
“We cannot imagine this future from the outside. We have to come here and imagine with you which Amazon we want to build. I imagine a future not only for the region, but for the entire planet, in which human beings live in harmony with nature. For many centuries we lived in harmony, but in the last few thousand years we have started to separate ourselves a little from nature. The last 100 years have been dramatic. We really fell apart, we didn't understand when nature, previously, used to give us everything. So why don't we go back a little and find that middle ground where we can learn from nature, to respect it, and nature will also continue to give us when we give back to it? I don't know what this really means, but I believe that with the technologies available today, with the human quality we have reached, we can really go against the grain to achieve this goal”, says Pastor.
Sister laboratories realize diversity
According to the director of MIT City Science, the North American Kent Larson, there are two models of urban development – formal and informal – that guide the growth of cities. Driving electric cars, carrying out work in a hybrid format (in-person and remote), in which workers have the autonomy to carry out tasks wherever, whenever and however they want, and building houses in which the dynamic occupation of space reduces the size of the home and increases the quantity of residences, to serve the largest number of residents, without increasing the built area, are some of the possibilities of breaking the bubble and starting a new cycle of respect for nature and its populations.
An experience that went very well in Boston, in the United States.
However, it is the informal model that prevails in several Amazonian cities, with a predominance of lack of basic sanitation, precarious housing located in stilt areas and with roads built to favor the flow of automobiles to the detriment of public transport and low-cost means of transportation. carbon emissions - and even from rivers, where riverside populations travel with their main means of transport, boats.
COLLABORATION
Between the ideal model and the real one, would there be a third way, capable of balancing two very different realities? Larson rules out this possibility.
“There is certainly no one-size-fits-all approach, because there is a lot of diversity. It means to say that what works in Boston won't work in Belém. So that's why we're here. We need to establish connections with people who know local cultures. They know that Belém is different from São Paulo or Rio, and they need to take the types of tools and design ideas and public policies and adapt them to their local needs”, he highlights.
The director emphasizes the role of the City Science Network in trying to adapt solutions to each reality, according to the results of the research prepared by local collaborators who help collect data for the institution. “We know we can’t work in all these different places around the world. So, we have local researchers who are finding ways to make a local impact, responding to local culture and history, and everything that is unique about the place. The Amazon is a very diverse region, and therefore there is no way we can achieve this ideal solution, one that will serve all communities here. And that is exactly why the way we work with city science is by creating sister laboratories, together with local researchers, who are experts in this reality”, explains Larson.
Amazon must be viewed in the plural
Because it is considered the region with the greatest biodiversity on the planet, and the largest biome in Brazil, the Amazon is not seen as an urban complex space, recalls architect Natalia Figueredo. And this reiterates concepts that researchers try to overturn, as they do not encompass the plurality of the region. One of them concerns the fact that the Amazon is “exotic”: concepts like this do not allow local territories to be treated as heritage and reinforce the social and climate injustice that plagues local inhabitants.
“We need to see the Amazon as a whole. See that it is a territory in the plural.
Because it is only with this perspective that we will really be able to engage with the problem we have at present, in this territory, and the problem that surrounds it globally. For us to really understand the magnitude of this importance, we need to leave the place of the invisible, of the other’s, the colonial, the exotic. And I believe that there is no sustainability in exotic territories”, says Natalia.
HISTORICITY
The architect from Pará argues that the Amazon is a historically constructed heritage - and that, from it, it becomes possible to shape a new future for humanity, respecting the utopia that the past carries, and valuing the rebirth of a new relationship with nature.
“I don’t believe there is a solution for this future that we are going to build. What exists is an invitation to observe, for us to build it collectively, for us to recognize different temporalities. Our past does not begin with the arrival of the Portuguese here. We had an ancestral Amazon by this moment. We can rebuild, regenerate and, above all, we can take care of this heritage that is so important for global balance”, she states.
INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERSHIP
The production of Liberal Amazon is one of the initiatives of the Technical Cooperation Agreement between the Liberal Group and the Federal University of Pará. The articles involving research from UFPA are revised by professionals from the academy. The translation of the content is also provided by the agreement, through the research project ET-Multi: Translation Studies: multifaces and multisemiotics.