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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/oct/10/i-think-boy-im-a-part-of-all-this-how-local-heroes-reforested-rios-green-heart>
"From his vantage point at the top of the hill where he grew up, Luiz Alberto
Nunes dos Santos gazes down at the city below. White apartment blocks are
nestled among mountains covered with luxuriant vegetation. The statue of Christ
the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain appear through gaps in the trees. The sea
is just about visible in the distance.
Rio de Janeiro’s striking blend of urban infrastructure and tropical jungle,
cradled between granite peaks and the sea, earned the city Unesco world
heritage status in 2012. Yet few people realise that the verdant forests
cloaking Rio’s dramatic hills are largely the result of human intervention.
“None of this was here before. Nothing, zero trees,” says Santos, motioning
towards the woods surrounding Tavares Bastos, a small favela clinging to a hill
that overlooks Guanabara Bay. The 40-year-old, who uses the name Leleco,
planted some of those trees himself as part of a pioneering reforestation
project run by the municipal government.
Leleco initially got involved with the project because he needed a job. Twenty
years on, he leads three small teams to maintain and enrich restored forests at
Tavares Bastos and two other sites. It’s challenging work that involves toiling
away in the heat, scrambling up steep slopes with delicate seedlings and
constantly weeding invasive non-native species such as bamboo. Still, Leleco
couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
“I feel responsible when I look at all this, how it was before and how it is
now. I see birds that weren’t here before, animals that have come back into the
forest, and I think, boy, I’m a part of all this,” he says, with a hint of
pride.
The programme, known today as Refloresta Rio (Reforest Rio), was set up by the
city government in 1986. By 2019, it had transformed the city’s landscape,
having trained 15,000 local workers like Leleco, who have planted 10m seedlings
across 3,462 hectares (8,500 acres) – roughly 10 times the area of New York’s
Central Park.
Reforested sites include mangroves and vegetation-covered sandbars called
restinga, as well as wooded mountainsides around favelas.
Over time, some sites have been abandoned due to the disengagement of the local
community or security concerns linked to the violence widespread in Rio’s
favelas. But the overall programme has outlived nearly a dozen mayoral
administrations and can now be considered a public policy, advocates say."
Via
Fix the News:
https://fixthenews.com/273-cathedral-thinking/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
