And The Rivers Ran Dry

Whilst the south of Brasil is still recovering from the worst floods in living memory, another news story, even more terrifying grabbed the headlines. There have always been relatively dry periods in Amazonia when water levels drop and the riverbanks become visible.  But the photographs last year of dozens of beached river dolphins, skeletal fishing villages wilting in the cracked mud, and the hunger and desperation of communities who depend on the river’s bounty for their existence, were another warning of potential environmental collapse. Climate scientists ran data models and concluded that we are rapidly accelerating towards another tipping point. In this version of the apocalypse, the Amazon is no longer able to regenerate itself after droughts. Brasil is the world’s largest exporter of iron, beef and soya, and the extensive deforestation required by large-scale agriculture and mining, has greatly exacerbated the region’s vulnerability. In the predictive model, trees, plants and animal species begin to die off and once verdant forest becomes desert. It is a vision of the future that is a trope in a sub-genre of science fiction that I call ‘catastrophe literature.’ In 1981 at the height of the military dictatorship, the Brasilian author Ignacio de Loyala Brandão,  wrote a harrowing dystopian novel, Não Veras País Nenhum, which translates into English as, And Still the Earth. São Paulo has been transformed into a hell hole. Searing temperatures, constant dust, synthetic food and drinking water manufactured from recycled urine, have made the city virtually unliveable. Parched throats, nose bleeds and weeping eyes are the norm. The last remaining green reserves are sold to international corporations, and in areas afflicted by terminal drought, ceremonies are held for the last living trees. Real breathing fauna are only to be seen in luxury art galleries where they command prices far in excess of a Picasso painting. Once fertile land lies barren. The sea is stagnant, the water, toxic. As befits a totalitarian society, the control of mind and body are imperative in averting social unrest. Scientists, historians and intellectuals are blamed for everything that has gone wrong. Education is reformed and stripped of critical  thinking. Illiteracy proliferates. At the centre of this vortex sits  an all-powerful State, known colloquially as the ‘Scheme’,  who instigate a mass vaccination programme, injecting tranquillisers directly into the blood stream. Oblivious to the looming cataclysm, the population survives in a fragile state of apathy in which environmental devastation is rendered picturesque. Nothing is beyond the power of ideological manipulation and in a double-think master stroke, even the destruction of the Amazon, which is now a vast undulating ocean of sand, is portrayed as a triumph of environmental management. The government issues a statement: “History will record that the Scheme has given the country one of the great wonders of the world. It's not just Africa that can be proud of its Sahara... As of today... we also have a marvellous desert, hundreds of times bigger than the Sahara, more beautiful. Magnificent. We are communicating the ninth wonder to the world. Soon, the press will show the yellow plains, the dunes, and curious dry riverbeds."[i]

[i] Brandão, Ignacio de Loyala, Nao Veras Páis Nenhum, (Global Editora; São Paulo, 1996), p65. Originally published in 1981. My translation.