Between 2019 and 2022, Brazil’s federal government cut the budgets of its two main science funding agencies to a fraction of their former size. An essay published by SSIR argues that the United States, now cutting federal research agencies at a pace it calls unprecedented, is walking a road Brazil has already traveled, and that private philanthropy has lessons to take from the trip.
The essay describes the Bolsonaro years in detail. The two agencies were the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development. Universities were harassed and researchers were branded ideological enemies. The Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, known as IBAMA, which monitors and fines breaches of environmental law, was dismantled, and the administration celebrated an 80 percent drop in IBAMA fines on rural properties. Deforestation, wildcat mining and invasions of public land followed, along with great social conflict.
Scientists left. The Serrapilheira Institute, a nonprofit that promotes science, found that about 10 percent of its young grantees had moved abroad, to the United Arab Emirates, Portugal, the Netherlands and the United States.
What philanthropy can and cannot do
Brazil’s private science funders are small. Serrapilheira, the Ciência Pioneira Initiative, the Boticário Foundation and the Alana Institute together represent a very small fraction of the public science budget. The essay treats that as a strength of sorts: science is a public good, it argues, and only elected governments should finance a national strategy. Philanthropy works better as a “creative laboratory,” co-funding government programs and backing risky, curiosity-driven work by early-career scientists.
Some crises call for temporary action, though. The essay points to COVID-19. Bolsonaro called the disease a “little flu” and a “fantasy,” and replaced a Health Minister who had doubted hydroxychloroquine with an army general who had no medical experience. Nearly 700,000 people in Brazil died of COVID between 2020 and 2022.
Todos Pela Saúde, founded in April 2020 and led by the bank Itaú Unibanco together with universities, hospitals and public authorities, stepped into that gap. It paid for diagnostic research, coordinated epidemiological data and supported vaccine-related studies. It also developed affordable rapid-testing kits and produced models of effective interventions, which let state and municipal officials respond with more precision.
The fight over data
Environmental data came under attack as well. After Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) released figures showing rising Amazon deforestation, Bolsonaro accused it of spreading lies and soon dismissed its director. Responsibility for publishing fire data then passed to the National Institute of Meteorology, under the Ministry of Agriculture. In 2019, Norway and Germany froze new contributions to the Amazon Fund.
Since then, MapBiomas, which supplies land-use data from satellite imagery and is funded by national and international philanthropies, has given the country a second source beyond INPE. Foundations have convened scientists, policy makers and civic leaders to talk about shared data governance. A Science Meets Philanthropy seminar took place in November 2025 at the University of São Paulo, and a group of institutions is now discussing a Brazilian science philanthropy alliance.
Communication and a global safety net
The essay also makes the case for funding science communication. It notes that Undark has reported on philanthropy’s role in sustaining journalism: Media Impact Funders found that the top 25 funders gave $1.1 billion to journalism from 2018 to 2022, and nearly three-quarters of the 47 organizations surveyed raised their grantmaking. In Brazil, the Serrapilheira Institute has backed more than 130 science journalism and media initiatives, including podcasts and YouTube channels. It has also supported Agência Bori and Amazônia Vox, platforms that connect researchers with reporters. Bori sends Brazilian research to registered journalists under embargo. The Ciência Fundamental column in Folha de S.Paulo explores basic scientific questions for general readers through the eyes of young scientists.
Finally, the essay says Brazil’s experience showed how thin the world’s defenses are. Thousands of scientists saw projects collapse and funding vanish, and only a handful of international partnerships could offer temporary refuge. It proposes a network of private foundations offering emergency fellowships and temporary posts abroad, working in both directions so that Latin America or Europe could host US researchers whose work becomes politically untenable. The model would borrow from rapid-response funds, shared mobility programs and open-access data partnerships.
