11 September 20
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It's Live on the HomePage Now: David Sirota, Walker Bragman and Andrew Perez | The Health Care Lobby Is Trying to Buy Corporate Immunity From Both Parties
The GOP’s inclusion of a special liability shield for health care industry executives represents a victory for the powerful New York lobby group that has been paying Donald Trump’s former lawyer to directly lobby the White House on its behalf — and that has been been funneling millions of dollars to congressional Democrats during the COVID-19 outbreak, according to federal records reviewed by Too Much Information (TMI). In April, the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) drafted the original provision shielding health care industry officials from COVID-related lawsuits, and pushed it through the New York legislature with the support of Cuomo, whose political machine received more than $1 million from the group. Opponents charged that the law repealed a critical deterrent to corporate misbehavior and effectively rewarded executives at nursing homes where thousands of elderly residents were killed by the coronavirus. Under pressure, New York lawmakers subsequently limited the scope of the liability shield in their state. However, GNYHA’s president last month told state legislators that his organization was pushing a national version of the legislation in Washington, where it has spent $1.2 million on lobbying this year. In July, the Senate GOP included the same health care executive immunity language in their broader COVID-related stimulus proposal. McConnell’s new legislation shows that GNYHA’s sustained lobbying campaign has continued to pay off: The Republican leader copy and pasted the New York law into the so-called “skinny” coronavirus relief legislation his office released yesterday. Bill Reflects Push From Trump as GNYHA Employs Trump’s Former Lawyer McConnell’s new legislation reflects the Trump administration’s push for a liability shield at the same time that GNYHA has hired Trump’s former lawyer and prolific GOP fundraiser Albert Pirro Jr as a Washington lobbyist. Pirro is a long-time personal friend of the president — their relationship began thirty years ago when Trump hired him as a real estate attorney. He is the ex-husband of Fox News’ Judge Jeanine Pirro and was once sentenced to twenty-nine months in federal prison for tax offenses. Federal records show Albert Pirro has been directly lobbying the executive office of the president and other White House offices on behalf of GNYHA. The records say he has been lobbying on Medicare issues and do not say he has been lobbying on the corporate immunity issue. Pirro has only been filing disclosures as a Washington lobbyist since 2017, when Trump became president. GNYHA — which is one of only three Pirro lobbying clients in Washington — has paid Pirro’s firm nearly $2.3 million since hiring him in 2017. The New York Times recently reported that a number of nursing home companies, some of which have seen spikes in deaths due to COVID-19 along with allegations of mismanagement, have been recruiting Trump allies to lobby on their behalf in DC to secure relief funding, tax breaks, and a liability shield. Lobbyists close to Trump are working for TL Management, a nursing home operator that has seen dozens of COVID deaths; Genesis HealthCare, the largest nursing home chain in the country; and Life Care Centers of America. In addition to employing his allies, the Times noted that a group of nursing home operators held a fundraiser last year for Trump’s reelection campaign at the InterContinental hotel that raised over $3 million. Democrats Wavering as Cash Pours Into Party Coffers The corporate immunity provision’s passage may hinge on whether or not Democrats oppose it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have joined progressive activists in denouncing the GOP effort to include liability shield language in the next relief bill. However, as GNYHA has poured money into Democratic coffers, there are signs that the party’s opposition is far from guaranteed. GNYHA has delivered more than $11 million to super PACs backing House and Senate Democrats since 2017, and $2.5 million since the coronavirus crisis began. Amid that flood of cash, some Democratic lawmakers are now suggesting they could support a federal version of New York’s liability shield legislation. In May, the Hill reported that a number of Senate Democrats were open to the idea of liability protection for businesses to one degree or another. Names included Sen. Chris Coons, who said that he supported “a science-based, enforceable standard for the protection of employees and customers.” Freshman Sen. Doug Jones and Sen. Tom Carper also said they were in favor of a middle ground while Sen. Joe Manchin said he supported shielding small businesses. Meanwhile, senators Maria Cantwell, Jeff Merkley, Dick Durbin, and Tim Kaine wouldn’t rule out the idea of corporate immunity. “It’s critical that we combat this pandemic by taking immediate action to make our frontline workers safer,” Kaine declared in May. But soon after, he suggested that that it isn’t a “completely unreasonable topic” to consider COVID liability protections limiting workers’ rights to sue employers whose workplaces are unsafe. “On the other side, the Republicans are interested in liability protections, which is not a completely unreasonable topic,” Kaine said during a Zoom meeting held by the American Society of Association Executives in June. “I mean, we often have liability protection in health emergencies. Vaccine makers get liability protection from the federal level. So it’s not unprecedented that in a public health emergency, that you would do some kind of a reasonable liability protection.” Kaine’s comments came only two weeks after GNYHA poured $2 million into Senate Democrats’ super PAC, the Senate Majority PAC. In the past, lobbyists have found reliable allies in moderate Democrats in fighting for corporate immunity. In 1995, for example, Senate Democrats joined with other Democrats in helping Republicans override President Bill Clinton’s veto of a law that increased the amount of evidence required to file a securities fraud case in federal court. In 2008, nineteen Senate Democrats joined their Republican colleagues in backing retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program. President Barack Obama also supported that corporate immunity provision.
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Your 'Surge Capacity' Is Depleted - It's Why You Feel Awful  t was the end of the world as we knew it, and I felt fine. That’s almost exactly what I told my psychiatrist at my March 16 appointment, a few days after our children’s school district extended spring break because of the coronavirus. I said the same at my April 27 appointment, several weeks after our state’s stay-at-home order. |
enate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday released 
Yes, it was exhausting having a kindergartener and fourth grader doing impromptu distance learning while I was barely keeping up with work. And it was frustrating to be stuck home nonstop, scrambling to get in grocery delivery orders before slots filled up, and tracking down toilet paper. But I was still doing well because I thrive in high-stress emergency situations. It’s exhilarating for my ADHD brain. As just one example, when my husband and I were stranded in Peru during an 8.0-magnitude earthquake that killed thousands, we walked around with a first aid kit helping who we could and tracking down water and food. Then I went out with my camera to document the devastation as a photojournalist and interview Peruvians in my broken Spanish for my hometown paper.
Now we were in a pandemic, and I’m a science journalist who has written about infectious disease and medical research for nearly a decade. I was on fire, cranking out stories, explaining epidemiological concepts in my social networks, trying to help everyone around me make sense of the frightening circumstances of a pandemic and the anxiety surrounding the virus.
I knew it wouldn’t last. It never does. But even knowing I would eventually crash, I didn’t appreciate how hard the crash would be, or how long it would last, or how hard it would be to try to get back up over and over again, or what getting up even looked like.
In those early months, I, along with most of the rest of the country, was using “surge capacity” to operate, as Ann Masten, PhD, a psychologist and professor of child development at the University of Minnesota, calls it. Surge capacity is a collection of adaptive systems — mental and physical — that humans draw on for short-term survival in acutely stressful situations, such as natural disasters. But natural disasters occur over a short period, even if recovery is long. Pandemics are different — the disaster itself stretches out indefinitely.
“The pandemic has demonstrated both what we can do with surge capacity and the limits of surge capacity,” says Masten. When it’s depleted, it has to be renewed. But what happens when you struggle to renew it because the emergency phase has now become chronic?
By my May 26 psychiatrist appointment, I wasn’t doing so hot. I couldn’t get any work done. I’d grown sick of Zoom meetups. It was exhausting and impossible to think with the kids around all day. I felt trapped in a home that felt as much a prison as a haven. I tried to conjure the motivation to check email, outline a story, or review interview notes, but I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t make myself do anything — work, housework, exercise, play with the kids — for that whole week.
Or the next.
Or the next.
Or the next.
I know depression, but this wasn’t quite that. It was, as I’d soon describe in an emotional post in a social media group of professional colleagues, an “anxiety-tainted depression mixed with ennui that I can’t kick,” along with a complete inability to concentrate. I spoke with my therapist, tweaked medication dosages, went outside daily for fresh air and sunlight, tried to force myself to do some physical activity, and even gave myself permission to mope for a few weeks. We were in a pandemic, after all, and I had already accepted in March that life would not be “normal” for at least a year or two. But I still couldn’t work, couldn’t focus, hadn’t adjusted. Shouldn’t I be used to this by now?
“Why do you think you should be used to this by now? We’re all beginners at this,” Masten told me. “This is a once in a lifetime experience. It’s expecting a lot to think we’d be managing this really well.”
It wasn’t until my social media post elicited similar responses from dozens of high-achieving, competent, impressive women I professionally admire that I realized I wasn’t in the minority. My experience was a universal and deeply human one.
An unprecedented disaster
While the phrase “adjusting to the new normal” has been repeated endlessly since March, it’s easier said than done. How do you adjust to an ever-changing situation where the “new normal” is indefinite uncertainty?
“This is an unprecedented disaster for most of us that is profound in its impact on our daily lives,” says Masten. But it’s different from a hurricane or tornado where you can look outside and see the damage. The destruction is, for most people, invisible and ongoing. So many systems aren’t working as they normally do right now, which means radical shifts in work, school, and home life that almost none of us have experience with. Even those who have worked in disaster recovery or served in the military are facing a different kind of uncertainty right now.
“I think we maybe underestimate how severe the adversity is and that people may be experiencing a normal reaction to a pretty severe and ongoing, unfolding, cascading disaster,” Masten says. “It’s important to recognize that it’s normal in a situation of great uncertainty and chronic stress to get exhausted and to feel ups and downs, to feel like you’re depleted or experience periods of burnout.”
Research on disaster and trauma focuses primarily on what’s helpful for people during the recovery period, but we’re not close to recovery yet. People can use their surge capacity for acute periods, but when dire circumstances drag on, Masten says, “you have to adopt a different style of coping.”
Understanding ambiguous loss
It’s not surprising that, as a lifelong overachiever, I’ve felt particularly despondent and adrift as the months have dragged on, says Pauline Boss, PhD, a family therapist and professor emeritus of social sciences at the University of Minnesota who specializes in “ambiguous loss.”
“It’s harder for high achievers,” she says. “The more accustomed you are to solving problems, to getting things done, to having a routine, the harder it will be on you because none of that is possible right now. You get feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, and those aren’t good.”
That’s similar to how Michael Maddaus, MD, a professor of thoracic surgery at the University of Minnesota, felt when he became addicted to prescription narcotics after undergoing several surgeries. Now recovered and a motivational speaker who promotes the idea of a “resilience bank account,” Maddaus had always been a fast-moving high achiever — until he couldn’t be.
“I realized that my personal operating system, though it had led to tremendous success, had failed me on a more personal level,” he says. “I had to figure out a different way of contending with life.”
That mindset is an especially American one, Boss says.
“Our culture is very solution-oriented, which is a good way of thinking for many things,” she says. “It’s partly responsible for getting a man on the moon and a rover on Mars and all the things we’ve done in this country that are wonderful. But it’s a very destructive way of thinking when you’re faced with a problem that has no solution, at least for a while.”
That means reckoning with what’s called ambiguous loss: any loss that’s unclear and lacks a resolution. It can be physical, such as a missing person or the loss of a limb or organ, or psychological, such as a family member with dementia or a serious addiction.
“In this case, it is a loss of a way of life, of the ability to meet up with your friends and extended family,” Boss says. “It is perhaps a loss of trust in our government. It’s the loss of our freedom to move about in our daily life as we used to.” It’s also the loss of high-quality education, or the overall educational experience we’re used to, given school closures, modified openings and virtual schooling. It’s the loss of rituals, such weddings, graduations, and funerals, and even lesser “rituals,” such as going to gym. One of the toughest losses for me to adapt to is no longer doing my research and writing in coffee shops as I’ve done for most of my life, dating back to junior high.
“These were all things we were attached to and fond of, and they’re gone right now, so the loss is ambiguous. It’s not a death, but it’s a major, major loss,” says Boss. “What we used to have has been taken away from us.”
Just as painful are losses that may result from the intersection of the pandemic and the already tense political division in the country. For many people, issues related to Covid-19 have become the last straw in ending relationships, whether it’s a family member refusing to wear a mask, a friend promoting the latest conspiracy theory, or a co-worker insisting Covid-19 deaths are exaggerated.
Ambiguous loss elicits the same experiences of grief as a more tangible loss — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — but managing it often requires a bit of creativity.
A winding, uncharted path to coping in a pandemic
While there isn’t a handbook for functioning during a pandemic, Masten, Boss, and Maddaus offered some wisdom for meandering our way through this.
Accept that life is different right now
Maddaus’ approach involves radical acceptance. “It’s a shitty time, it’s hard,” he says. “You have to accept that in your bones and be okay with this as a tough day, with ‘that’s the way it is,’ and accept that as a baseline.”
But that acceptance doesn’t mean giving up, he says. It means not resisting or fighting reality so that you can apply your energy elsewhere. “It allows you to step into a more spacious mental space that allows you to do things that are constructive instead of being mired in a state of psychological self torment.”
Expect less from yourself
Most of us have heard for most of our lives to expect more from ourselves in some way or another. Now we must give ourselves permission to do the opposite. “We have to expect less of ourselves, and we have to replenish more,” Masten says. “I think we’re in a period of a lot of self discovery: Where do I get my energy? What kind of down time do I need? That’s all shifted right now, and it may take some reflection and self discovery to find out what rhythms of life do I need right now?”
She says people are having to live their lives without the support of so many systems that have partly or fully broken down, whether it’s schools, hospitals, churches, family support, or other systems that we relied on. We need to recognize that we’re grieving multiple losses while managing the ongoing impact of trauma and uncertainty. The malaise so many of us feel, a sort of disinterested boredom, is common in research on burnout, Masten says. But other emotions accompany it: disappointment, anger, grief, sadness, exhaustion, stress, fear, anxiety — and no one can function at full capacity with all that going on.
Recognize the different aspects of grief
The familiar “stages” of grief don’t actually occur in linear stages, Boss says, but denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance are all major concepts in facing loss. Plenty of people are in denial: denying the virus is real, or that the numbers of cases or deaths are as high as reported, or that masks really help reduce disease transmission.
Anger is evident everywhere: anger at those in denial, anger in the race demonstrations, anger at those not physically distancing or wearing masks, and even anger at those who wear masks or require them. The bargaining, Boss says, is mostly with scientists we hope will develop a vaccine quickly. The depression is obvious, but acceptance… “I haven’t accepted any of this,” Boss says. “I don’t know about you.”
Sometimes acceptance means “saying we’re going to have a good time in spite of this,” Boss says, such as when my family drove an hour outside the city to get far enough from light pollution to look for the comet NEOWISE. But it can also mean accepting that we cannot change the situation right now.
“We can kick and scream and be angry, or we can feel the other side of it, with no motivation, difficulty focusing, lethargy,” Boss says, “or we can take the middle way and just have a couple days where you feel like doing nothing and you embrace the losses and sadness you’re feeling right now, and then the next day, do something that has an element of achievement to it.”
Experiment with “both-and” thinking
This approach may not work for everyone, but Boss says there’s an alternative to binary thinking that many people find helpful in dealing with ambiguous loss. She calls it “both-and” thinking, and sometimes it means embracing a bit of the irrational.
For the families of soldiers missing in action in Vietnam that Boss studied early in her career, or the family members of victims of plane crashes where the bodies aren’t recovered, this type of thinking means thinking: “He is both living and maybe not. She is probably dead but maybe not.”
“If you stay in the rational when nothing else is rational, like right now, then you’ll just stress yourself more,” she says. “What I say with ambiguous loss is the situation is crazy, not the person. The situation is pathological, not the person.”
An analogous approach during the pandemic might be, “This is terrible and many people are dying, and this is also a time for our families to come closer together,” Boss says. On a more personal level, “I’m highly competent, and right now I’m flowing with the tide day-to-day.”
It’s a bit of a Schrödinger’s existence, but when you can’t change the situation, “the only thing you can change is your perception of it,” she says.
Of course, that doesn’t mean denying the existence of the pandemic or the coronavirus. As Maddaus says, “You have to face reality.” But how we frame that reality mentally can help us cope with it.
Look for activities, new and old, that continue to fulfill you
Lots of coping advice has focused on “self-care,” but one of the frustrating ironies of the pandemic is that so many of our self-care activities have also been taken away: pedicures, massages, coffee with friends, a visit to the amusement park, a kickboxing class, swimming in the local pool — these activities remain unsafe in much of the country. So we have to get creative with self-care when we’re least motivated to get creative.
“When we’re forced to rethink our options and broaden out what we think of as self-care, sometimes that constraint opens new ways of living and thinking,” Masten says. “We don’t have a lot of control over the global pandemic but we do over our daily lives. You can focus on plans for the future and what’s meaningful in life.”
For me, since I missed eating in restaurants and was tired of our same old dinners, I began subscribing to a meal-kit service. I hate cooking, but the meal kits were easy, and I was motivated by the chance to eat something that tasted more like what I’d order in a restaurant without having to invest energy in looking through recipes or ordering the right ingredients.
Okay, I’ve also been playing a lot of Animal Crossing, but Maddaus explains why it makes sense that creative activities like cooking, gardening, painting, house projects — or even building your own imaginary island out of pixels — can be fulfilling right now. He references the book The Molecule of More, which explores how dopamine influences our experiences and happiness, in describing the types of activities most likely to bring us joy.
“There are two ways the brain deals with the world: the future and things we need to go after, and the here and now, seeing things and touching things,” Maddaus says. “Rather than being at the mercy of what’s going on, we can use the elements of our natural reward system and construct things to do that are good no matter what.”
Those kinds of activities have a planning element and a here-and-now experience element. For Maddaus, for example, it was simply replacing all the showerheads and lightbulbs in the house. “It’s a silly thing, but it made me feel good,” he says.
Focus on maintaining and strengthening important relationships
The biggest protective factors for facing adversity and building resilience are social support and remaining connected to people, Masten says. That includes helping others, even when we’re feeling depleted ourselves.
“Helping others is one of those win-win strategies of taking action because we’re all feeling a sense of helplessness and loss of control about what’s going on with this pandemic, but when you take action with other people, you can control what you’re doing,” she says. Helping others could include checking in on family friends or buying groceries for an elderly neighbor.
Begin slowly building your resilience bank account
Maddaus’ idea of a resilience bank account is gradually building into your life regular practices that promote resilience and provide a fallback when life gets tough. Though it would obviously be nice to have a fat account already, he says it’s never too late to start. The areas he specifically advocates focusing on are sleep, nutrition, exercise, meditation, self-compassion, gratitude, connection, and saying no.
“Start really small and work your way up,” he says. “If you do a little bit every day, it starts to add up and you get momentum, and even if you miss a day, then start again. We have to be gentle with ourselves and keep on, begin again.”
After spending an hour on the phone with each of these experts, I felt refreshed and inspired. I can do this! I was excited about writing this article and sharing what I’d learned.
And then it took me two weeks to start the article and another week to finish it — even though I wanted to write it. But now, I could cut myself a little more slack for taking so much longer than I might have a few months ago. I might have intellectually accepted back in March that the next two years (or more?) are going to be nothing like normal, and not even predictable in how they won’t be normal. But cognitively recognizing and accepting that fact and emotionally incorporating that reality into everyday life aren’t the same. Our new normal is always feeling a little off balance, like trying to stand in a dinghy on rough seas, and not knowing when the storm will pass. But humans can get better at anything with practice, so at least I now have some ideas for working on my sea legs.
People wait in line to get tested for COVID-19 at Roseland Community Hospital in Chicago, Friday, April 3, 2020. (photo: E. Jason Wambsgans/Getty)
COVID Vaccine Trials Seek Black and Latinx Participants, but History of Medical Apartheid Sows Mistrust
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "As President Trump pushes to release a coronavirus vaccine before the November election, a National Institutes of Health report details how the process could be slowed by a lack of participation in vaccine studies by African American and Latinx people, many of whom mistrust the U.S. healthcare system due the history of racist medical exploitation."
READ MORE
Residents of the Mamiraua and Amana Sustainable Development Reserves, deep in the Amazon rainforest. (photo: AFP)
Why the Health of the Amazon River Matters to Us All
Rhett A. Butler, Mongabay
Butler writes: "Like the rainforest which takes its name, the Amazon is the largest and most biodiverse river on the planet: the Amazon carries more than five times the volume of world's second largest river - the Congo - and its basin is home to at least 3,000 species of fish. The river and its tributaries are a critical thoroughfare for an area the size of the continental United States and function as a key source of food and livelihoods for millions of people."
Yet despite its vastness and importance, the Amazon faces a deluge of threats: a dam-building spree across the basin is disrupting fish migration and nutrient cycling, large-scale deforestation is destroying habitats and increasing sedimentation, pollution from mining and agribusiness is affecting aquatic ecosystems, overfishing is diminishing the capacity of some species to recover, and drought and flood cycles are becoming more pronounced. The effects of climate change could exacerbate some of these impacts by increasing temperatures, the severity of droughts, and the incidence of fires. The mighty Amazon is looking increasingly vulnerable.
Few people understand more about the Amazon’s ecology and the wider role it plays across the South American continent than Michael Goulding, an aquatic ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) who has worked in the region since the 1970s studying issues ranging from the impact of hydroelectric dams to the epic migration of goliath catfishes. Goulding has written and co-authored some of the most definitive books and papers on the river, its resident species, and its ecological function.
In recognition of his lifetime of advancing conservation efforts in the Amazon, the Field Museum will today honor Goulding with the Parker/Gentry Award. The Award — named after ornithologist Theodore A. Parker III and botanist Alwyn Gentry who were killed in a plane crash during an aerial survey of an Ecuadorian cloud forest in 1993 — is given each year to “an outstanding individual, team or organization in the field of conservation biology whose efforts have had a significant impact on preserving the world’s natural heritage and whose actions and approach can serve as a model to others.”
According to the Field Museum, the Award “is designed to highlight work that could benefit from wider publicity and fuller dissemination of scientific results.” The Museum said it selected Goulding as “one of the world’s leading experts on Amazonian rivers and their biodiversity.”
“He is helping change our largely terrestrial view of conservation to one that puts rivers at the center,” said Field in a statement. “He pulls together multiple disciplines and collaborators across the Amazon basin to understand historical patterns, identify current concerns, and make recommendations for the future.”
“[Goulding] has been a driving force on a slew of peer-review articles that champion a basin-wide approach to understanding reproduction of Amazonian food fishes, especially long-distance migrants. His efforts have led to new approaches to Amazon conservation, focusing on its aquatic life.”
In a September 2020 interview ahead of the prize ceremony, Goulding spoke with Mongabay about his research and the current state of the Amazon.
Mongabay: What led you to pursue your career?
Michael Goulding: I have been interested in Nature and rivers since childhood. In college, I first became interested in geography because of a desire to travel to foreign lands, which soon led to an interest in the tropics, especially those of the New World.
While in college in California, I travelled extensively in Mexico and saw rainforests for the first time. This ignited my interest in rainforest. Along with a desire to study rivers, this led me to start thinking about just where to direct my career, and I soon settled on South America and, shortly after that, on the Amazon as it has the world’s largest rainforests and rivers.
My interest in fish was also since childhood, but learning of the unequalled diversity of Amazon fishes it was an easy zoological choice for the naturalist side of me.
In graduate school at UCLA, I focused on ecosystems, biogeography, conservation, ichthyology, and plant taxonomy to prepare to work in the Amazon. I was extremely lucky to be hired by the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA) in Manaus, Brazil while I also finished my Ph.D dissertation. This opportunity was the first conduit to realize my career dreams.
You’ve been working in the Amazon since the 1970s, during which more than 750,000 square kilometers of forest has been cleared across the basin. What are the biggest changes have you seen since the beginning of your career? Both in terms of shifts in the research field and ecological/environmental changes.
At the mega level, deforestation and dams on large rivers are the two major changes since the early 1970s when I made my first trip to the Amazon. Large-scale and artisanal mining and urbanization are the next biggest changes. Taken together, these changes now have synergistic impacts at the ecosystem level. Potential deforestation impacts became apparent relatively early, especially with the construction of the Tran-Amazon Highway in Brazil aimed at opening cattle ranches and settling agriculturalists from Northeastern Brazil to develop the Amazon.
Relatively little attention, however, was given to wetland forest destruction, especially on the floodplains of the lower Amazon River where jute farming and livestock ranching had taken a toll. The exponential increase in new highways and roads since the 1970s resulted in large-scale deforestation across a wide part of the Amazon, and especially south of the Amazon River. The expansion of the soybean frontier in the southeastern basins of the Amazon and agricultural and mining expansion in the Andes also led to serious deforestation and local pollution of westernmost headwaters.
Satellite imagery and GIS software in the last two decades made it possible to track deforestation accurately across the Amazon. The conceptual linkage of the rainforest to the hydrological cycle through the evapotranspiration role of trees greatly strengthened the need for an ecosystem approach to the Amazon. Ironically, however, since about the late 1980s most research and conservation attention focused on relatively small areas without complementary larger scale perspectives to place them in a larger ecological context. River flow impacts increase cumulatively in a downstream direction; thus everyone is downstream in some way. It became apparent that river basin perspectives provide an urgent synergistic view of upland and wetland impacts together at multiple scales across the Amazon if management conservation of the aquatic ecosystem is to be successful.
Since the late 1990s, the Amazon has experienced at least four major droughts. What are the implications of these droughts for aquatic life in the region?
Extreme hydrological events, either droughts or floods, or some combination, affects ecosystem function. For aquatic biodiversity, droughts are often of more concern than extreme floods, and the opposite is often true for human societies along the rivers. Extreme droughts lead to a great reduction of habitat space, especially on floodplains but also in rivers and streams. Increased fish and other biodiversity mortality increases because of limited space, increased predation and overfishing by local and urban fishers. The latter greatly exacerbates the already precarious management of fisheries. Likewise, other aquatic wildlife, such as turtles and the Amazon manatee, become even more vulnerable than fishes.
The long-term effects of large floods on aquatic biodiversity are more difficult to ascertain. It appears that they can increase fish production because of expanded space and a longer period of inundation. With extreme droughts and associated mortality, however, this theoretical advantage of large floods would disappear. Extreme flood levels for three or four years can also lead to die-offs of parts of floodplain shrub and tree communities, as they need an emerged period each year.
While a number of dam projects have been put on hold the past few years, there are still ambitious plans for hydropower expansion across much of the Amazon Basin. What are the potential implications of large-scale dam construction in the basin?
Most focus has been on large dams constructed on the Tocantins, Xingu and Madeira rivers in the eastern half of the Amazon Basin in Brazil. These dams are located on the ancient uplands referred to as the Brazilian Shield, which in the west extends somewhat across the Madeira River where its dams are located. The Brazilian Shield drains four large rivers, and the only one thus far not dammed is the Tapajós, though there are proposals to dam it as well. All four of these tributaries enter the Amazon Basin in its eastern half. To date, large dams affect their individual tributaries more than having a cumulative impact on the Amazon River or its estuary. Since the southeastern sub-basins are also major agricultural and mining frontiers, a synergistic combination of deforestation, dams, pollution and mining affects the rivers. We still do not know where the tipping point is, that is, at what point do x number of dammed major tributaries then begin to affect the ecology of the Amazon River and its estuary.
Unlike the other three Brazilian Shield tributaries, the Madeira has headwaters in the Andes of Bolivia and Peru. The two existing Madeira dams represent the first major basin-wide impact on the Amazon aquatic ecosystem. Although run-the-river dams with relatively low walls, the Madeira dams nevertheless block fish migrations, such as those of goliath catfishes that migrate upstream from the estuary to spawn in or near the Andes. A fish bypass constructed at the Santo Antonio dam near the city of Porto Velho in the state of Rondônia is not functioning as planned, and none exits at the Jirau dam upstream of it. This means that the Madeira dams block some of the most important fish migrations in the Amazon, and this has impacts as far away as the Amazon River estuary, the nurseries for some of the species. Similar to salmon, it appears that at least the dourada (Portuguese) or dorado (Spanish) catfish might practice homing, the biological phenomenon where a species returns to the general region of its birth. This would mean that the Madeira dams would drive a major population of the species to extinction and eliminate perhaps 40% of the spawning grounds of the species.
Thus far, the Andes has few large dams, though governments have identified six major potential hydroelectric dam sites near the outlets from the mountains. Unlike in the Eastern Amazon, the Andean large dams would mostly likely have high walls with deep reservoirs. The Andes are the sediment and nutrient bank for not only for the tributaries that drain them but for the Amazon River as well. Thus, high wall dams could seriously affect the chemistry and alluvial properties of a major part of the Amazon aquatic ecosystem, from more than 4,000 km upstream to the Atlantic. Decreased sediments and nutrients would lead to decreased productivity on the western floodplains and along the Amazon River to its estuary, all of which are important nurseries for fish. Most ecological and social focus is on the Marañón River at the Pongo de Manseriche, a gorge where the largest of the six potential dams is located. It is still unclear whether Peru will move ahead with the Manseriche dam.
A large number of small dams can often have even greater impacts than a single large dam. Small dam construction is exploding across the Amazon from the highlands to the lowlands, but especially in drier areas in the north and south and in the higher parts of the Andes. With predicted drier climates and expanded agriculture and aquaculture, and lack of stream management, small dam construction now presents a major ecological challenge in some parts of the Amazon.
Perhaps a major positive note on dam building in the region is that the Amazon River will remain the only large river in the world without a dam or locks. Although there were futuristic proposals to dam the Amazon River, none is feasible.
A generation ago there was a lot of discussion around the potential for fish farming in the Amazon floodplains to provide a more sustainable source of protein than land-based livestock. Has this materialized? And what are the implications?
Governments subsidized many of the first efforts but the private sector now leads in aquaculture development. Fish farming exists between ecological controversy and dreamland, with a practical center somewhere between.
Two major aspects of aquaculture are relevant to the Amazon, generally categorized as intensive and extensive fish farming. Most fish farming in the Amazon is intensive and uses excavated ponds or dammed streams, with floating cages in the floodplain lakes or in smaller river channels of only minor importance. Most aquaculture is for food fish with minimal production for aquarium and sport fishing species. There have been aquaculture projects aimed at export markets because of higher prices, though to date these have not been particularly successful. The most successful operations target high-priced species now threatened in the wild, thus opening an urban market for aquaculture more than aimed as decreasing overfishing of wild stocks.
An especially important species is the large fruit-and-seed eater called tambaqui in Brazil and often gamitana in Spanish-speaking countries of the Amazon. Overfishing has led to nearly commercial extinction of wild-caught large fish over most of the Amazon. The tambaqui was the most important commercial species captured in the Central Amazon during the 1970s but now is relatively unimportant in fisheries. Aquaculture now produces more tonnage of this species than the maximum wild catches registered decades ago, but this has done little to decrease overexploitation of wild populations. A large wild tambaqui can sell for more than $100, thus there is economic incentive to exploit it despite its rarity. Farm-raised fish contribute relatively little to overall food security since they are too expensive for lower income groups. In short, it seems improbable that aquaculture can substitute wild fisheries or decrease pressure on favored wild species.
Another big question is whether aquaculture could realistically be an alternative to livestock ranching, that is deforestation, for protein production and, if so, just how? Perhaps the main metric is whether quality fish, without subsidies, fetch the same price or cheaper as chicken since poultry is generally less expensive than beef and pork and more accessible to poorer economic classes. Chicken farming is just as intensive if not more so than aquaculture and operates in a similar manner in terms of processed feed for the captive animals. Thus, if the idea is to produce affordable protein for multiple economic classes, then poultry might be a better solution to alleviate fishing pressure on wild fish populations.
Aquaculture beyond any doubt has a role in the Amazon for urban markets. The main controversy is whether overexploited species, such as the tambaqui, would benefit from restocking. Extensive aquaculture involves placing nursery-raised young fish into the wild to replenish overfished populations. There are few experiments to know if this would even be successful in the Amazon and what impacts it might have, such as on genetic diversity of wild populations. Extensive aquaculture already exists to some extent with exotic rainbow trout in the higher Andes, but this has introduced exotic parasites, always a major concern to the health of native species.
Along with your colleagues, you’ve written a number of landmark books and papers on the aquatic ecology of the Amazon Basin. Which of your findings or projects are you most proud of?
My main criterion has always been rather our work was directly relevant to conservation and how does it fit into the big picture. At the most fundamental ecological connectivity level, this meant elucidating how rivers and rainforests are connected. I called this very simply “The Fishes and the Forest” since the two are dependent on each other. Fishes across the Amazon are highly dependent on wetland forests to which they migrate during the floods for food and protection from predators. Likewise, fruit-eating fishes are important seed dispersers for many wetland tree and shrub species.
Another large-scale phenomenon we worked on aimed at dispelling the idea that the Amazon’s second largest tributary, the Rio Negro, a blackwater river, could not support high aquatic biodiversity because of its extreme nutrient poverty, low pH and organic compounds that render it blackish or brownish in color. We were able to demonstrate that there is actually “Rich Life in Poor Water”, a concept vitally important not only for conservation of the Rio Negro but also other blackwater rivers in the Amazon.
A third major theme I worked on over decades, along with Ronaldo Barthem of the Goeldi Museum and other colleagues, was long-distance fish migrations from the Amazon River estuary to as far away as the Andean foothills. Demonstrating these migrations, and the scale at which they occur, demonstrated how the Amazon aquatic ecosystem connects biologically from the Andes to the Atlantic in what we termed “The Catfish Connection”. This has major implications in terms of infrastructure development impacts, including dams and headwater deforestation that can affect these continental-wide migrations.
Other projects included viewing fisheries at the ecosystem level, the importance of palm swamps, human use of the Amazon River floodplain and helping to develop a new river basin classification for the Amazon that enhances analyzes and spatial views of the aquatic ecosystem in its many facets. All of these works aimed at increasing an understanding of ecosystem scale and its implications for conservation and management planning.
What’s your outlook for the Amazon’s aquatic ecology? And what do you see as the best ways to maintain the health and productivity of the ecosystem?
The main positive that the Amazon has in terms of aquatic ecology conservation is its size, though this also presents the greatest challenge, as there are too few people and funds to analyze the in-water and on-ground impacts of deforestation, dams, mining, increased river traffic, urbanization and other influences at large river basin scales. Other than addressing these challenges through environmental policy, there must also be a scientific and social paradigm shift beyond a propensity to focus only on local areas. A complementary big-picture approach that integrates biological and social data is also required.
I believe the most fruitful approach that unites upland and wetland perspectives, and local and broader-based views, is integrated river basin management. This approach also addresses transnational concerns such as dams and migratory fishes, accumulative downstream pollution, headwater deforestation and the efficacy of protected areas and indigenous territories to aquatic ecosystem conservation and management.
If we view conservation outlook through the lens of major river basins and the Amazon River mainstem, which includes its vast floodplains, then some of the large sub-basins, such as Tocantins, Xingu, Tapajós and parts of the Madeira drainage, will continue to be highly modified by deforestation, dams and mining and they will eventually require restoration. The blackwater basins, such as the Rio Negro, will be less impacted as a whole because of poorer soils for agricultural development, though they will still face threats from mining operations and headwater deforestation. The roads and agricultural and mining frontiers moving down all major Andes-Amazon tributaries present transnational challenges to river basin management and together present the potential western ‘headwater tipping point’ of the aquatic ecosystem.
Brazil is downriver of all Andean countries in the Amazon Basin, thus it should be as concerned with what is happening in the Andes as in its own territory. Likewise, the Andean countries need to look downstream as many fish migrations that enter their territories originate in Brazil. The lower Amazon River floodplain has been heavily deforested. If wetland deforestation continues upstream, it will have major impacts on aquatic biodiversity and production, not only on the mainstem but on its tributaries as well. The Amazon mainstem is especially problematic because it has few protected areas and indigenous territories that could help manage its floodplains. Even where there are protected areas, the river channels are not included.
Maintaining the health and productivity of the aquatic ecosystem for biodiversity and human wellbeing requires taking on a series of basic steps in a realistic time framework, which will probably be decades. First, is addressing the need to scale-up conservation initiatives to basin levels, including coordinated transnational levels where required. Second, the critical importance of wetland forests for fish and other aquatic biodiversity, and human wellbeing, requires explicit legislation and implementation of the same to protect these habitats from conversion to livestock ranches, rice fields or other types of large-scale agriculture. At present, the fisheries suffer from a lack of sound management and lack of data collecting. Overfishing is becoming the norm. Community management projects help inform local challenges, but it will take urban fish market monitoring and enforced regulations across the Amazon to control overfishing. The lack of statistical data for a resource as important as fish in the Amazon is indefensible, and considering the many impacts taking place, it becomes even more egregious.
All Amazonian countries now have excellent scientists addressing ecological and social issues related to the Amazon aquatic ecosystem or parts of it. This human capital is an amazing asset and governments need to recognize it as such to inform and mitigate infrastructure development and the proper management of aquatic resources on which biodiversity and human well-being in the Amazon depend. Therein lies optimism for the future.
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
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