Brazilian scientists reeling as federal funds slashed by nearly half
After years of austerity, researchers fear that the latest dramatic cut will destroy the country's science.
Brazilian
scientists have been left horrified by a 44% slash to the federal
science budget, announced by the country's government on 30 March.
This
will leave the Ministry of Science,Technology, Innovations and
Communications (MCTIC) with its lowest budget in at least 12 years at
just 2.8 billion reais, equivalent to US$898 million — a 2.2 billion
reais cut from the 5 billion reais of funding that the government had
originally proposed for 2017 (see ‘Drastic cuts’).
The
cut is part of a general trimming of 42 billion reais from the federal
budget, which amounts to 28% over all government departments — so the
cut to science is particularly severe. President Michel Temer says the
measure was a tough but necessary response to Brazil’s escalating fiscal
deficit. The country faces the worst recession in its history, and
recovery has been much slower than expected: gross domestic product
growth predictions for 2017 were revised down from 1.4% to 0.5% last
month.
Researchers argue that science has already taken too heavy a toll from the economic crisis. Since 2014, a series of funding cutbacks
has meant abandoning a flagship exchange programme to enable Brazilian
students to visit leading institutions abroad, and major projects — such
as the Sirius synchrotron, a 1.75 billion reais machine — have been put
in jeopardy. The number of research papers published in Brazil is also declining, according to one preliminary estimate from 2016.
Adding to those woes, Temer demoted the science ministry as he took office in May 2016 and fused it with the communications ministry. And a constitutional amendment passed by the new government has capped federal spending to inflation-level rises for 20 years, killing hopes that the tide may turn any time soon.
Fleeing scientists
The
new budget is “an atomic bomb strike on Brazilian science”, says
physicist Luiz Davidovich, president of the Brazilian Academy of
Sciences. He warns that the cuts will cripple research and development
for decades to come. “Were we at war, one could think this was a
strategy by a foreign power to destroy our country. But instead it’s us
doing this to ourselves.”
Sidarta Ribeiro,
head of the Brain Institute at the Federal University of Rio Grande do
Norte in Natal, Brazil, holds a similar apocalyptic view, saying: “This
is an act of war against the future of Brazil. Scientists will flee the
country.” He cites the case of Suzana Herculano-Houzel, a renowned
neuroscientist who shut down her laboratory in 2016 and left Brazil for
the United States. “If I hadn’t foreign money for research I’d be
shutting down myself," he adds.
Fernando Peregrino, president of CONFIES,
the Brazilian association of science funding agencies and university
foundations, agrees. “There will be a huge break-up of teams which will
be hard to rebuild,” he says. “We’ve climbed another step down.”
Scientists were concerned about funding before the announcement. Davidovich and Helena Nader, president of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC), pre-emptively wrote letters to Temer and to Henrique Meirelles,
the minister of finance, warning of the impact of a potential cut on an
already tight science budget. “The government has acted without
listening to the State. It shows an utter shortsightedness,” Nader says.
The MCTIC told Nature
that it has already started to gauge the full impact of the cuts.
According to the ministry, actions to mitigate them will be announced
shortly.
Ribeiro says the drastic cutbacks may
have one silver lining: they may fuel the 22 April March for Science in
Brazil. The SBPC formally joined this month’s march, inspired by the
Trump-resistance movement in the United States, and has been calling on
scientists all around Brazil to join. “We need to paint for war and
occupy public spaces,” says Ribeiro. “Respectfully, but consistently.”
Nature
doi:10.1038/nature.2017.21766
