Crisis captured on film
A filmmaker has warned the world must stand with the people of the Amazon to save the rainforests.
Eilidh Munro, 29, from Edinburgh, says it is too easy to blame the loggers or farmers when poverty and dishonest politicians are driving deforestation.
She said: “While the impact of the people who clear the forest for logging or agriculture is negative, these will often be people who are escaping poverty elsewhere or, in the case of the indigenous communities, their only option to make money. It’s a problem that stems from politicians encouraging people to do things that are going to financially benefit the state – not the individual or the environment – but telling them that it will.”
The Amazon rainforest, home to one-tenth of the planet’s animal and plant species, around one million indigenous people and 390 billion trees is still in the grips of an uncontrollable blaze. The fires were originally tacitly encouraged, say environmentalists, by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who has emboldened loggers and farmers to clear and burn land since taking office in January.
Eilidh and environmental journalist Bethan John have filmed Voices on the Road, a documentary due to launch later this year, which shows the effects of fire, logging, and farming.
Focusing on a new road being built through a protected UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Manu Biosphere Reserve in the Peruvian Amazon, the team wanted to give a platform to indigenous people.
In November 2018, the small team spent 40 days trekking through the Amazon jungle in south eastern Peru – near where the blazes are currently raging in Brazil – alongside expedition teammate Shirley Jennifer Serrano Rojas, a biologist from Cusco.