Ten percent of Serrapilheira Institute’s young grantees left Brazil during the Bolsonaro years. They went to the United Arab Emirates, Portugal, the Netherlands, the United States. That is a concrete cost of dismantling science infrastructure — the people who would have built the next generation of research simply leave.
Brazilian researchers now watch the United States follow a similar path. Budget cuts to federal research agencies.
Undermined transparency. Scientific expertise branded as partisan. The scars in Brazil are still fresh.
Between 2019 and 2022, the government under former President Jair Bolsonaro slashed budgets for the two main federal science funding agencies — the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development — to a fraction of their former size. Universities were harassed.
Researchers were called ideological enemies. The environmental damage was immediate and measurable. The Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, known as IBAMA, which monitors and fines breaches of environmental law, was dismantled.
The administration celebrated an 80 percent reduction in IBAMA fines on rural properties. Deforestation exploded. Wildcat mining surged.
Public lands were invaded. Social conflict deepened.
That playbook is now being run in the United States. Brazilian scientists see a mirror. The dread is familiar.
They have lived through the budget cuts, the harassment, the casting of expertise as political. They know what comes next — researchers leaving, projects abandoned, environmental enforcement hollowed out.
The lesson from Brazil is blunt. Science philanthropy cannot wait for the political storm to pass. The Serrapilheira Institute did not wait.
It kept funding, kept supporting its grantees even as the government pulled back. But the institute could not stop the brain drain. Ten percent of its young grantees still left.
That is the limit of philanthropy — it can sustain, but it cannot replace the state’s role in keeping scientists in the country. What to watch next.
The United States is now where Brazil was in 2019. The budget cuts are unprecedented. The transparency is being undermined.
The attacks are systematic. If the pattern holds, American researchers will start leaving.
They will go to countries that still fund science. The damage will not be undone quickly. Brazil’s research infrastructure has not recovered.
The funding agencies are still operating at a fraction of their former budgets. The universities are still recovering from harassment. The environmental enforcement is still weak.
The cost of rebuilding is higher than the cost of maintaining. That is the arithmetic.
Brazil learned it the hard way. The United States is about to learn it too. The question is how many researchers will be lost before the lesson sinks in.
Ten percent of young grantees left Brazil. The United States has a much larger scientific workforce.
The numbers could be staggering. Serrapilheira’s experience offers a warning. Philanthropy can fill some gaps.
It can keep some projects alive. It can support some researchers. But it cannot stop the exodus.
It cannot replace the federal funding that sustains entire fields of research. It cannot rebuild the trust that is destroyed when scientists are branded as enemies.
The mirror is clear. Brazilian scientists see their own recent history playing out in the United States. They know what the next few years will look like.
Budget cuts. Harassment.
Deforestation. Brain drain. The only question is whether American scientists will learn from Brazil’s experience or repeat it.
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