Rio museum brings reality of Amazonia to urban Brazilians
Rio de Janeiro, Dec 17 (EFE).- The immensity of Amazonia, its natural riches and the customs of its inhabitants are all on display in an exhibit that opened Friday in Brazil’s second-largest city with ambitions of creating a sense of urgency about preserving the world’s largest tropical rainforest.
Curators at Rio de Janeiro’s Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow) spent more than four years assembling the information and images to create an interactive, immersive experience.
Amazonia, which encompasses parts of Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela and French Guiana, is home to more than 30 million people belonging to 400 different indigenous groups and to thousands of species of flora and fauna.
The multifaceted exhibition also shows the toll taken on the Amazon biome by illegal mining and logging and the uncontrolled expansion of agribusiness.
More than 8,000 sq km (3,100 sq mi) of forest have been destroyed this year in the Brazilian Amazon.
Amazonia is experiencing a “critical moment” due to high levels of deforestation and the exhibit is meant to raise awareness about the threat, curator Leonardo Menezes told Efe.
Brazil, he said, needs “a new model of socio-economic development based on scientific knowledge, in the practices and wisdom of the traditional peoples and on the commitment to conserve the forest.”
Ecotourism, the sustainable exploitation of medicinal flora found only in Amazonia and scientific research are some of the activities that could be incorporated into such a model.
The exhibit is set to run through June 12, 2022, and starting next month, people who can’t visit the museum will be able to access a virtual version of the exhibition online. EFE mat/dr
