BRASÍLIA, June 24 — On the ground in Brazil, the scars of a four-year assault on science are still fresh. By nightfall, researchers here describe a familiar dread as they watch the United States undergo what many call the most drastic attacks on science in its modern history. Budget cuts, undermined transparency, and the casting of scientific expertise as partisan — it is a playbook Brazilians have already lived through.
Between 2019 and 2022, under former President Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s government systematically dismantled the country’s research infrastructure. It 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 branded as ideological enemies. 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. The result was immediate: an explosion in deforestation rates, wildcat mining, invasion of public lands, and great social conflict.
The instability drove many young scientists out of the country. The Serrapilheira Institute, a nonprofit that promotes science, found that about 10 percent of its young grantees left Brazil. They moved to the United Arab Emirates, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United States.
Now, with the current US administration imposing unprecedented budget cuts on federal research agencies, Brazilian scientists see a mirror. The lesson from Brazil is blunt: science philanthropy cannot wait for the political storm to pass. During the Bolsonaro years, private institutes and foundations stepped in where the state retreated, keeping research alive in a hostile environment.
For American philanthropists facing a similar moment, the Brazilian experience offers a stark warning. When the government abandons its role as a guarantor of scientific inquiry, the burden falls on private actors to protect the research enterprise.
The alternative, as Brazil’s deforestation numbers and brain drain show, is a rapid unraveling of both environmental and scientific infrastructure. What to watch next: whether US science philanthropy will follow the Brazilian model of direct intervention, or whether the erosion of federal research capacity will accelerate faster than private funding can fill the gap. On the ground in Brasília, the lesson is already written in the landscape — and in the labs that emptied out.
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