Worrying lack of transparency in Amazon data

In order to construct effective public policies in any area of government and any country in the world, public access to information is crucial. In the Brazilian Amazon, deforestation and land conflict are recurring issues, but essential data about these problems are not readily available to the population. A recent study from NGO Instituto Centro de Vida has shown that government websites publish less than 30 percent of vital environmental statistics about the Amazon.

While Brazilian legislation allows members of the public to request said data from government agencies, by way of the Access to Information Act (LAI), the same study found that only 53 percent of these solicitations are...