By Heverton Lacerda
Localisms aside, we are obliged to recognize that certain Gaucho achievements serve as a model across borders. Some are good. It was from Rio Grande do Sul that Brazil and Latin America expanded their environmental movements, especially this one, which currently forms a large family of altruistic activists. If added together, the hours of thousands of people who dedicate themselves, or have already dedicated themselves, to the defense of the environment without financial compensation would result in a stratospheric account. If they were paid, with the currency that the market knows, the value would certainly be in the billions. But it's not about money.
Even before Agapan inaugurated the scenario of persistent environmental struggles, since its foundation, on April 27, 1971, other gauchos, such as Father Balduíno Rambo (1906/1961), from Tupandi, and the preservationist Henrique Luiz Roessler (1896/1963), ), from Porto Alegre, with his União Protetora da Natureza, already warned of what could be - seen from that time on - the drama we are experiencing today, that is, an unprecedented environmental crisis, and possibly without a return to the climatic balance that once provided the opportunity for life to flourish here.
What makes Agapan, which completes 51 years of uninterrupted and 100% voluntary struggle, a pioneering entity and has been operating for longer in Brazil and Latin America - who knows, even in the world - is exactly the persistence and continuity that the organization environmentalist can maintain. Since its creation, thousands of people have come together and dedicated precious time of their lives to the motto “Life always comes first”. Lutzenberger, our patron, an international celebrity, ran Agapan for three terms, six years. Edi Fonseca, the first female president, presided for ten years. The environmentalist who led Agapan the longest was the biologist and architect Francisco Milanez. In addition to them, several others – equally important – were part of the entity's board of directors and councils. We keep fighting!
*President of Agapan (Article originally published in the newspaper Correio do Povo on April 27, 2022.)
Reproduction Correio do Povo