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Brazil Rainforest Analysis Sets Off Political Debate

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO, Published: May 25, 2008, The New York Times

SÃO JOSÉ DOS CAMPOS, Brazil — Gilberto Câmara, a scientist who leads Brazil’s national space agency, is more at ease poring over satellite data of the Amazon than being thrust into the spotlight. A report produced by Gilberto Câmara, above, a scientist who leads Brazil’s national space agency, has been criticized for its heavy reliance on a relatively new measure of deforestation.

But since January, Dr. Câmara has been at the center of a political tug-of-war between scientists and Brazil’s powerful business interests. It started when he and his fellow engineers released a report showing that deforestation of Brazil’s portion of the rainforest seemed to have shot up again after two years of decline.

Since then, Dr. Câmara, who leads the National Institute for Space Research here, has found himself having to defend his agency’s findings against one of Brazil’s richest and most powerful men: Blairo Maggi, who is governor of the country’s largest agricultural state, Mato Grosso, and a business owner known as the “Soybean King.”