Environmental Journalism in Brazil’s Elusive Hotspots: The Legacy of Euclydes Da Cunha

Abstract

Environmental journalism has recently made a comeback in Brazil after almost half a century of irrelevance, while the push for quick and wasteful economic development has overshadowed any competing political priorities. Its return to newspapers front pages and television prime time is confronting Brazilians with a reality they have long tried to ignore: the enormity of the deforestation problem in the Amazon region and of the depletion of crucial rivers throughout the country. No wonder environmental journalism was first greeted with suspicion when triggered by the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development, as a foreign source of bad news undermining the local perception of Brazil as a bountiful and inexhaustible tropical paradise. A true national debate about conserving Brazil’s natural resources is still lacking. As this article shows, environmental journalists need to look back to the rich tradition of environmental journalism in Brazil decades ago, exemplified by no one better than Euclydes da Cunha in his masterpiece Os Sertões published in 1897.