The Amazon rainforest -- one of the oldest darlings of environmental activists -- has a new prescription for protection that couldn't have been possible in the early days of its plight. The Brazilian government recently announced that they will make free satellite internet available to native Indian tribes throughout the Amazon region as a way to enhance monitoring, management and conservation efforts.
The goal is to "encourage those peoples to join the public powers in the environmental management of the country," Francisco Costa of the Environment Ministry said in a statement. "The government intends to strengthen the Forest People's Network, a digital web for monitoring, protection and education."
Local governments will be charged with the task of installing telecenters in various places, including deep in wilderness areas on indigenous land, and the federal government will then supply satellite internet connections to those sites.
A piece on the new development suggested conflicting views over whether networking tribes through the Internet would strengthen tribal culture by interlinking previously isolated people and allowing widespread environmental education, or whether the presence of technology and the Internet would undermine and ultimately degrade the chances of cultural survival in the Amazon.
Because the need to simultaneously address and fuse indigenous people's issues, environmental protection and new technology is a relatively new challenge, the longer term cultural implications can't always be foretold. At the same time, because numerous factors contribute to the demise of cultural traditions, there are times when the introduction of a new technology can help support or restore networks of indigenous knowledge and prevent the progress of threatening diseases and environmental crises that might ultimately harm the population much more drastically. Provided that the introduction of new tools takes place with attention to local needs and sensitivity to cultural circumstances, there's the possibility to preserve what's ancient with the integration of something completely new.
It would be hard to argue that there's any place in the world where the introduction of the Web hasn't changed the culture around it, though of course there are many examples in which it's been change for the better. No doubt the ability to learn and share more information about the degradation of the Amazonian rainforest amongst the people most intimately tied to it will help make conservation efforts more effective. How it will effect the cultures there will only be determined over time.
