NEWS | FEATURESSCIENCE science.org 27 MAY 2022 • VOL 376 ISSUE 6596 913ing reduction in personnel over the past
2 decades as researchers retired with no one
to replace them. The last time INPE was al-
lowed to add permanent staff was in 2012.
The cash-strapped government is reluctant to
allow hiring, in part because Brazil’s gener-
ous pension system has become a huge finan-
cial burden. Other federal research institutes
and universities face the same problem.
As a result, the number of full-time em-
ployees at INPE has dropped from some 2000
in 1990 to about 753 today. (Of those, 146 are
researchers, 460 work in technical positions,
and the remainder in management and ad-
ministration jobs.) Like most other groups at
INPE, Almeida’s Amazon monitoring team
relies mostly on temporary researchers with
external grants who often don’t stay long be-
cause of payment delays and the instability of
living without a job contract.
“Back in the day, it was superhard just
to find room to put up a desk at INPE,”
Almeida recalls. Nowadays, he says, “any
fellow [grantee] has their own office.” It’s
not just empty, he says. “The institute is
growing old.”
Younger scientists see little future there.
Digital ecologist Thiago Silva did his post-
doctoral research at INPE between 2010
and 2013, using satellite data to study wet-
land dynamics in the Amazon. Working
under Novo, he was one of two contend-
ers selected to be hired by the institute in- He turned down the offer, fearing he
might end up isolated and without enough
money—or even colleagues—to continue his
work in the long term. Silva moved to Scot-
land in 2019 to become a professor at the
University of Stirling. “We end up having
to leave Brazil to keep our research when
it would be much more beneficial to stay in
the country,” he says.
Novo’s last four graduate students have left
the country as well. Most of their research
lines were discontinued. “The situation is
nerve-racking,” Novo says. “You spend years
building a lab, buying equipment, and form-
ing human resources. And all that can disap-
pear overnight because those in charge of
policies lack long-term vision.”
The government says INPE can’t complain.
Marcos Pontes, who left as Brazil’s minister of
science, technology, and innovation in April
to run for Congress, told a local radio station
in February that the institute was “one of
the most privileged” units within the science
ministry. Pontes, best known as the country’s
first and only astronaut—he spent 9 days on
the International Space Station in 2006—said
every institute supported by MCTI had suf-
fered restrictions and no one could accuse
him of “making deliberate cuts” to INPE. De
Nardin agrees that the government isn’t sin-
gling INPE out for cuts.
Many critics see it differently. They say
Bolsonaro’s government has intentionally
targeted INPE, angered by its leadership
and transparency in monitoring deforesta-
tion and environmental crimes, which crit-
ics say the government’s pro-development
policies have encouraged. Since Bolsonaro
came to power in 2019, deforestation and
fires in the Amazon have risen to their high-
est levels in more than a decade. “INPE is
paying the price of the dismantling of the
environmental sector in Brazil,” says bio-
logist Izabella Teixeira, who served as envi-ronment minister from 2010 to 2016. To her,
INPE’s crisis reflects the Bolsonaro govern-
ment’s “ideological contempt for the envi-
ronment and science.”
The unruly president has not hidden his
dissatisfaction with INPE. “What happens
with a lot of INPE reports ... is that they just
copy the previous year’s reports,” he said
in 2019. Bolsonaro accused INPE of “lying”
about an uptick in forest destruction and
had Galvão—a renowned physicist—fired
from the director’s post for confronting him
in public about it. (Galvão was replaced by
Darcton Damião, a retired air force colonel
with a master’s degree in remote sensing
from INPE, who was succeeded by De Nardin
in October 2020.)
Many INPE employees and researchers
who spoke with Science believe the institute
is a victim of politics, but did not want to say
so on the record. “You see that people have
a scream stuck in their throats because they
don’t dare to express their ideas, fearing re-
taliation,” Novo says.
“Little by little, they are making INPE dis-
appear,” says Thelma Krug, who worked at
the institute for 37 years, where she helpedcreate the Amazon monitoring programs and
had a leading role as an environmental data
analyst. Krug, one of the three vice presi-
dents of the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-
mate Change, retired in 2019. “I left because
I could not agree to not speaking about what
was going on at INPE,” she says.IF INPE STOPS mOnitoring deforestation and
fires, companies and nongovernmental in-
stitutions based in Brazil and other coun-
tries can fill the gap. But the weakening of
the agency is also a weakening of Brazil’ssovereignty, Câmara says: “It is fundamen-
tal for the state to have the competence to
produce its own data.” Many scientists say
INPE can only recover if Bolsonaro is de-
feated during the presidential election in Oc-
tober and a new government takes over. The
campaign has yet to begin, and Bolsonaro’s
main competitor in the polls, former Presi-
dent Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, has not an-
nounced specific plans for science, although
he has alluded to prioritizing investments in
science and education. INPE flourished and
Amazon deforestation went down sharply
during Lula da Silva’s previous presidency,
between 2003 and 2010.
Novo is less optimistic. “Even if there is
a change in government, it will take a long
time for INPE to recover,” she says. Novo
could have retired 18 years ago but stayed be-
cause she loves her job. Now, she is just wait-
ing for her last students to finish their theses.
“I want to cry when I think about INPE’s des-
tiny,” she says, her voice cracking. jSofi a Moutinho is a science journalist in
Rio de Janeiro. Herton Escobar is a science
PHOTO: ©LUCAS LACAZ RUIZ/LATINPHOTO.ORG journalist in São Paulo.
Funding cuts have imperiled the National Institute for Space Research’s leading role in weather forecasting
and climate modeling in Brazil.