National Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA)

Val highlights two main objectives as INPA chief: to increase the number of doctoral degrees awarded by his and other institutions in the Amazon and to better and more widely disseminate the results of studies performed by the institute’s 200-plus scientists. Both goals feed into the new phenomena that many hope will spur a new cycle of economic development in the region – biotechnology. The argument: by developing products and medicines from plants and other organisms people can create wealth from the forest without tearing it down. “Biotechnology is extremely important for social inclusion and for environmental protection,” says Val.

Visitors to Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, who cannot take the time to get out into the rainforest should visit the INPA forest or “bosque” - which is located in town and open to the pubic.

What follows is the edited text of an interview with Adalberto Val conducted in late 2006.

What is INPA’s mission?

The National Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA) is involved in generating information about the environment in the Amazon. Not only generating, but also “socializing” that information (disseminating in a way it can be used). It is very important that scientific research in the region generates conditions for the improvement of the quality of life of the people of the region.

Traditionally the Amazon region was isolated from the rest of the country. If you go back to the Treaty of Tordesillas, which was broken by Treaty of Madrid, there was always an unequal division between the North and the South. And the North always supplied resources – financial, with the exploitation of a series of products from the region, and later as a depository of biodiversity.

The international attention that the Amazon received in the 1950s convinced the Brazilian government to create the National Institute for Research in the Amazon as a strong response to the idea at the time of the internationalization of the Amazon.

The institute became stronger over time, as one of the principal institutes that generate information about tropical regions, especially the Amazon. Of course a large part of our research makes comparisons with studies done in other regions around the world.

But our focus is on generating scientific information about the Amazon and the socialization of this information.

From the beginning we’ve been concerned with security issues. At that time security was defined more in a military sense, the state’s interest in protecting the region. Today the concept of security is much more related to knowledge – information you have about the region.

How many researchers do you have now?

We have about 230 researchers, in the most varied fields of knowledge – but principally in the biological sciences. Zoology, botany, genetics, ecology, entomology. And the institute has left an important legacy for the region –human resources training through its graduate programs. Right now we have about 500 graduate students at the institute. That’s very important for a region that has a shortage of qualified people. If you look at the legally-defined Amazon, it accounts for about 60% of Brazilian territory. It includes the state of Maranhão, a transition area, the state of Tocantins, and the state of Mato Grosso. In this region all told, paradoxically, we have just 1,500 PhDs. Brazil today is very competitive as a country in graduating new PhDs. Brazil graduated 10,000 PhDs in 2005. So the annual output is nearly 10 times of the total number we have in the Amazon. This is a very important bottleneck – not only training but also for socialization, people working on a permanent basis in the region.

From other institutions?

They’re going to earn diplomas from INPA. Students and researchers from other institutions form a universe of about 1000.

What’s interesting is that some of these students come from outside the region, especially for the Southeastern part of the country, and they end up staying here. About 80% of our students end up staying in the region working at a university or research institute. Our Botany Department, which has been doing this for over 30 years, has already graduated nearly 1000 professionals with MAs and PhDs.

Brazil is a leader in Latin America, especially in terms of the Amazon. Our graduate program, through a cooperation treaty, helps train people from neighboring countries. We have several students from neighboring countries who later return to their home countries. This is related to something else related to environmental issues that we must always remember: borders are man-made; nature doesn’t respect them. You can’t expect fish to arrive at the Venezuelan border and not cross. Or that birds won’t migrate across borders. If we want to develop a strong policy of preservation and sustainable use of the region, we need to include all the of the actors – including those beyond our borders.

It is not only a frontier of knowledge, biology has advanced to the sub-molecular level, and to understand what happens at a sub-molecular level, we need to study the interaction of organisms with their environments. And the biggest place where this happens is in the tropics, here, in the Amazon, in Africa. So when we want to study the DNA of an organism, to try to understand what’s written in its genetic code, the modifications that took place during the process of evolution, what this information means, you go back to study the organism where it lives and its interaction with the environment. This is extremely complicated to understand.

The lack of qualified personnel is evident. If make a map of the world, Brazil, the United States, Europe, Japan, these places invested a huge amount of money to decipher the genetic code of several species. What does this information mean? How will this information be used? Once you try to understand the genomes of organisms that cause tropical diseases, for example, you must understand the biology of the organism in its natural environment. This biology is extremely delicate in the tropics. There are a series of interactions and matrixes that we can’t learn about because we don’t have the people.

So the issue of human resources training, not only for the Amazon, but for tropical regions around the world, including Africa, I would say it is a requirement. There is no alternative. Or we do this or these regions will continue to be relegated to the 2nd, 3rd or 4th level.

You’re from São Paulo. How did you become involved with the Amazon?

The Amazon, for Brazilian biologists, has always been a dream. Not just for Brazilians but for biologists around the world. But the Amazon was always and continues to be very far away for Brazilians from the south. It is always a distant region. We don’t know much about it or how to get there.

I was finishing my course in biology and an opportunity arose to make an official visit to the region. I ended up liking it here. I decided to stay. So I did my masters and doctorate. I’m an example of that 80% that ends up staying here. Fortunately, after my doctorate, I was able to do a post-doctorate in Canada. I was there for three years. That gave me some extremely relevant training to allow me to continue studying the fish of the region. My work is with fish.

One thing that stands out in terms of human resources remaining here is that the internal distances in the Amazon are great. And science is a social activity. I need to talk to my peers personally and discuss our plans and projects. And the scientist in the Amazon isn’t near anyone else. The group that is doing work most similar to mine is two hours away by jet. So the distances are complicated. Not to mention the distances outside the region. From here to São Paulo takes four hours by plane. I make the equivalent of a round-trip across Europe and back.

You started in May 2005 as director. What are your main objectives?

I have to initiatives that I consider extremely important. The ability of the institute to generate information is enormous. If it wasn’t for this ability of our researchers, during the difficult periods in terms of federal funding, we wouldn’t have survived. But our researchers have an amazing ability to successfully obtain funding for their research. There are several factors that rank INPA as one of the principal Brazilian institutes in terms of generating information about the environment.

I would very much like to strengthen the institute two key aspects. One is already strong but I’d like to strengthen even more because I see opportunities – that is, graduate education. Over the last nine years I have worked together with CAPES, the federal agency that evaluates graduate programs in Brazil, and in parallel with my work at the institute I have represented the biological sciences area one before CAPES. I learned a lot and I see enormous possibility of the institute to work with other institutions in the region to speed up human resources training in terms of MAs and PhDs.

In addition to new departments, we’re thinking about developing partnerships to improve and speed up this process. I always say that I can build an institution without buildings, without equipment, but not without brains. We need brains.

The other issue, where INPA has been very timid, and where we want to turn things around, is in the “socialization” of information. Again, I see the interaction of all the forms of dissemination of information, at all levels. Local, regional, national, international. We have to use all the tools available. The socialization of information is a complex activity in the sciences. And as with any complex activity, there is no single solution. It is no use to just use the web, just a magazine, just television. You have to use all the tools, and in the widest possible way.

But I’m worried about one thing: our ability as scientists to decodify the information is very low. We are good at talking with our peers. I can write an article and have it approved by a leading journal, but I can’t write a newspaper article for a weekend reader. We have immense difficulties with decodifying this information. So we need go-betweens, a bridge between scientists and the general population. Even in the most developed countries, the creation of this go-between is in still a work-in-progress. There are few people in the world who do it with quality. This is an area where we need to advance a great deal the world over. It is a right of the society all over the world to access the information that is generated inside research laboratories. National governments support these institutions, so those societies deserve access to the information.

We have these two challenges. There’s big. There’re not trivial. And they involve complex activities. Fortunately we have the help of professionals at the institute, in Ascom, to help. We have publishing house inside the institute that will – in addition to technical material – begin to produce other material. We’re going to work on the production of television programs and radio programs. Here in the Amazon the distances sometimes make it prohibitive to send a magazine. But radio is an interesting option.

Many people are betting on biotechnology as a new motor of development in the Amazon. What’s your take on that?

If you analyze all of the developed countries of the world, you’ll see that none of them developed with the forests in tact. They all had to destroy their forests to develop. Unfortunately, at the time they didn’t have access to this tool called biotechnology. Fortunately, this became available now – at a time when we have immense pressures on the Amazon. Biotechnology can be a tool for social inclusion. It can permit, if we can forge this go-between between research institutes and the wider society, us to protect the environment while at the same time improving the quality of life.

Why are forests destroyed? Because people need to eat. They have to earn money. If I don’t have an alternative to soybeans, these guys will keep planting soybeans. If I don’t have an alternative way to build houses and furniture, they’re going to continue to cut down mahogany in the forest. If I don’t have an alternative to the materials I’m mining in the region, I’m going to keep on mining.

So enter science with the tool of biotechnology. It is very important because it brings inside closed entities the possibility of producing what the forest that the environment produces. So now I can produce perfume, cosmetics or medicine, and generate income for the families involved, without having to produce a paste from a whole slew of felled trees in the forest. Biotechnology is extremely important for social inclusion and for environmental protection.

With our rate of fishing in the region, we may have had to put an end to the fishing boats for some species. On the other hand, the use of the tools of biology to produce these same organisms in organized fish farms has increased our production of protein to the point where we can export to other parts of the country that need this food source. And we begin to reconstitute the stocks in the natural environment, which were diminished.

So I see biotechnology as a key tool, even a vital one, for the preservation of the forest.

What stage would you say biotechnology is at right now?

The beginning. I would say that we need another 10 or so institutes like ours in the region, and other three or four or five institutes like CBA scattered about in different parts of the region, more universities to educate the people of the region. The examples that we have are successful, and the project is interesting. But so that we can get to the point we want, we need to strengthen the capacity of human resources in the region. We don’t have people.

And we have to develop very strong tools to distribute the benefits. What happens usually is that the research begins out in the field in the interaction with the people of the interior of the Amazon, we move to the laboratory, and we publish our papers, and at that point a big company appropriates this information without setting up a process to distribute the benefits to improve the quality of life of this entire chain that’s behind.

We had a conference recently about the distribution of benefits. I think we have a long way to go all around the world. This is not just a question of being patient but an international political issue, at some point we’re going to have to involve all the countries and have a clear protocol about the division of benefits.

This goes beyond the debate about the knowledge of indigenous peoples?

It includes that, but it is larger. Just imagine. The nations of the world that produce more information would be more vulnerable in this context than those that produce less. But those that produce less information end up having a greater effect on their people. But imagine, today we begin studying something that takes years, even decades, to reach the possibility of having a new product that can cure an illness or something. We have an investment here that comes from several countries, that published their results, and then you get to the point where there’s a possibility. At that point, a company comes in, treats everything as secret, and two or three years later there’s a new drug, a new process. All this initial part, with significant investments, often from various countries, is forgotten. We need to find a formula so that this information in the public domain can be remunerated and see some benefits.

It is very complicated. I don’t see an ideal formula, but we need to begin talking about this. Otherwise, people will say, “So we protect petroleum but not information that our indigenous populations have?” or “So we protect only the products of the forest but not the forest?” How does this work? We have to develop a protocol.

Some Brazilians have criticized the presence of large numbers of foreign researchers in the Amazon. How do you see that?

I think that scientific cooperation is extremely important. Without cooperation we’re not going to do the science. The important thing is the ability that the partners have to ask questions.

A fundamental point in this story is that it is no longer possible for any country to think it can put up a fence around its property, for a country to create a market reserve for its own scientists. A market reserve in science is the stupidest thing in the world. Today you can access material from any bioregion in the world anywhere. I’ll give you two examples. The Amazon could not survive without the arrival of ships in the region’s ports. Current technology requires ships, when they offload their cargos, to take on water as ballast. This ballast water contains an infinite amount of biological material. Any scientist in the world can access this. Another example, how can we stop the migrations of birds? You have swallows that leave Canada and fly to the Amazon. When they return, they carry in their stomachs a whole bunch of material from insects here in the region. They could collect the material in the stomachs of these swallows and do a series of analyses. Our fish migrate from here to Venezuela.

This information is not hard to get.

More examples. Our country exports crafts. Crafts are made from biological material. Glazed fish. Wood. If you tell our governor that we can’t export crafts, he won’t like it much. And the society either. Ornamental fish. They’re everywhere. Fruit concentrate. Agricultural products. This is all biological material.

What we need today to competitive is to improve our ability to generate information. And our ability to generate information is directly proportional to our ability to work with other scientists – be they Brazilians or foreigners.

Different than in the past, these agreements must be based on well defined protocols on scientific cooperation. I think Brazil has moved forward considerably in this realm. So we don’t need to fear cooperation. We should implement it in order to increase scientific production.

This is directly related to the previous question about the sharing of benefits. We have to work together with the idea that the research will lead to a product or process and that these benefits will be adequately shared when that happens.

An abbreviated version of this interview origially appeared in EcoAmericas, a monthly report on development and the environment in Latin America.

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