The “Jungle Guardians” of Rio de Janeiro. Ana Márcia, their leader, second from left to right.Leonardo Carrato
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“This garden is the apple of my eye,” says Ana Márcia Rodrigues on the way to the corner of the Favela Borel in Rio de Janeiro, where there was once a landfill. Next to a still quite polluted river there is now a discreet garden with native and medicinal plants, which a group of women carefully tends. Aunt Márcia, as everyone in the neighborhood knows her, and her colleagues are part of the Guardians of the Jungle, an innovative project by the Rio City Council that puts the residents of these communities at the center of the environmental fight.
The wonderful city lies in the lush biome of the Atlantic Forest, which once covered the entire coast of Brazil. Now only 27% of the original coverage remains. In Rio, the jungle and the city coexist, and although this symbiosis works spectacularly from a bird’s eye view, the reality at street level is different. Favelas are often built on slopes that were previously covered with vegetation. It is not uncommon for the poorest neighbors, who usually live in the highest and most inaccessible areas, to cut down some trees to build their modest brick houses. Aside from the environmental impact, these slope constructions often end in tragedy with landslides caused by summer rains. The city council assures that the horizontal expansion of the favelas, which was more common in the 80s and 90s, is controlled and that now the growth is more vertical, adding floors to what has already been built, but nevertheless the boundaries of these neighborhoods such hot zones.
A heron rests on the river bordering the Morro do Borel favela.Leonardo Carrato
Márcia climbs to the top of her favela to reach the reforestation area. On the way, some drug dealers armed with rifles ensure that there are no attacks by the police. At the border of the favela, where houses once stood, a mango tree and small bushes now grow. One of the guards’ duties is to ensure that no one builds here. Balancing environmental protection and social emergencies is not easy; it requires negotiation and dialogue. Therefore, the role of these women, highly respected in their neighborhood, is fundamental. Márcia, who has been a self-employed environmental educator for 27 years, is grateful for the city council’s support. He receives aid of 1,700 reais per month (about $340). “I used to be alone and it was hard work, but now we are a group and even have companies that help us,” she explains happily. Now she jokes that she no longer has a life of her own: her fellow carers constantly warn her when someone leaves rubbish where it doesn’t belong, or when the reforestation seedlings need repairing. Communication via WhatsApp groups works like lightning and ultimately improves the capillarity of the city council, which acts much more quickly in the event of serious irregularities, for example in sending the environmental police.
The goal of the program is primarily environmental, but it also has positive side effects on the self-esteem of women with tedious daily routines. Márcia admits that until recently she was very depressed because she couldn’t find work. “Now I feel empowered, as they say.” There are a total of 122 women in 25 favelas across the city, but the program is expected to grow in the coming months. Participants receive training to either improve their knowledge of the rainforest or flood protection or to learn how to edit videos and refine their influencer profile on social networks. Thanks to the program, the mayor’s office hopes to achieve gender parity among environmental workers next year; Currently 70% are men who are mainly involved in hill reforestation.
The primary objectives of the project are to prevent irregular construction and the proper disposal of waste, but it goes further. An example of this is the case of Alexandra Roque from the Providencia favela in the center of the city. When he arrived here decades ago, he settled on a vacant lot at the foot of the hill. To repair the sloping soil in front of his house, he used leftover sofas and beds that he found in the landfill next door. The landscape now resembles an orchard in the middle of the cement, which is also a kind of informal community center where, with the help of another guardian, Lene Silva, she grows aromatic plants and all kinds of fruits and vegetables, but also coffee, cotton, annatto or cinnamon. She teaches remedial classes for neighborhood children and classes for women and teaches tough pedagogy about the benefits of recycling or dry toilets. During the pandemic, he decided to make natural soap and has already distributed almost 27,000 liters. The residents of the favela fight over their recipe.
Containers with solutions for making natural soap.Leonardo Carrato
Lene Silva de Sousa, one of the representatives of the Guardians of the Jungle program. Leonardo Carrato
A garden created in Morro da Providência by one of the guardians, Leonardo Carrato
Her lifestyle, more in line with the eco-fashion trends that rarely reach these neighborhoods, is still an eccentricity for the majority of her neighbors, but she is one of the mayor’s office-signed agents of change. In any case, she is very critical of the way public authorities usually deal with favelas. “The institutions are increasingly coming up with a proposal. When they want to do something, they give a nice name to the ugly thing they’re going to do, with people from the outside designing a model that seems wonderful to them but doesn’t work for us,” he notes. As he talks incessantly, behind his house you can see the huge tower of the cable car that leads up to the favela, a pharaonic work created in the heat of the Olympic splendor and which has been abandoned for several years. Roque is grateful for reaching out to the people of the region for the first time to find solutions. He attributes this to current Environment Minister Tainá de Paula, an architect and urban planner who is black and grew up in the favelas.
This progressive politician explains on the phone that this different perspective is key to the functioning of the program, which is based on the premise of “environmental racism” and that certain sectors and areas have historically been excluded from the larger environmental debate. “In Rio, the transition between the favela and the jungle is very poorly resolved (…) The people who are in these areas act strategically to ensure that there is no progress (of urbanization) and that there are reforestation practices. “It makes little sense to commission people from outside to do this work, because every area has its own characteristics. It is very important to create a local perspective that is sensitive and close to public power,” he says.
Tainá de Paula, Minister of Environment and Climate of Rio de Janeiro and promoter of the “Guardians of the Jungle” project. Leonardo Carrato
The secretary assumes that the main challenge for environmental work in these neighborhoods is the coexistence of organized crime, and assures that women act according to certain “safety protocols”, in reality with the same care that they do in their daily lives apply. Many favelas are controlled by drug trafficking groups or militias. These latter mafia organizations dominate most of the western part of the city, the very area where most construction takes place and where there is most territorial tension. Almost weekly, the mayor’s office shows up with bulldozers to demolish buildings built by paramilitaries. Although the city reforests between 40 and 60 hectares each year on hills that were converted to pasture years ago, the urban appetite is greater. Despite the obvious lushness of Rio’s greenery, the city has a forestry deficit, comments the minister. The new Guardians are coming to do their part and change this reality.