Felipe Guimaraes jumps on a surfboard in the sand and shows tourists the basics of surfing. Here, on Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro, the ailing Amazon couldn’t feel further away.

In western capitals, the plight of the world’s largest rainforest is seen as a key issue in Brazil’s election, with much at stake for a world scrambling to contain the climate emergency.

But fires and deforestation have taken a back seat in a messy and divisive election campaign, and many Brazilians have bigger concerns than those happening in a vast area thousands of miles away.

“I don’t know, man, it’s so far away, but it’s obvious that taking care of the Amazon is important and good,” says shirtless surf instructor Guimaraes, 27, adding that there’s more “visible problems” than the rainforest there.

Many Brazilians cite the economy, crime, education and corruption as their top concerns.

“The country has enormous social inequality, we are just recovering from a pandemic. Some Brazilians today are only afraid of surviving another day. Having a job, having food on the table, access to a doctor,” said Daniel Costa Matos, 38, an IT analyst from the capital Brasilia, told AFP.

While he considers the Amazon “of extreme importance,” his biggest concern is corruption.

“The climate crisis, the problem of deforestation in the Amazon, is still far from reality for many Brazilians,” says 36-year-old climate activist Giovanna Nader, who sounds the environmental alarm with her podcast and Instagram account.

“We have to educate, educate, educate.”

For Brazil’s indigenous community, the struggle can often seem lonely, even after four years of sounding the alarm about violent, environmentally unfriendly policies they say took place under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

Most Brazilians never visit the rainforest. The capital of the Amazon, Manaus, is about 2,800 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro.

It’s about the same distance between Paris and Moscow.

“What worries us a lot is that Brazilians’ vision for environmental protection is… very superficial,” says Dinamam Tuxa, executive coordinator of the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB).

“Sometimes we feel alone that we are fighting against such a powerful force, namely the big corporations that are exploiting our territories, and that there is no commitment from the Brazilian people.”

Fires and deforestation are not new problems in the Amazon. However, destruction under Bolsonaro has increased by 75 percent compared to the previous decade.

His rival, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has also grappled with the issue, only briefly touched on the rainforest during the election campaign, particularly when collecting votes in the Amazon itself.

But it was largely absent in an election campaign marked by disinformation and extreme polarization.

“It has turned into a political campaign with many personal attacks between the two candidates. So I think we’re seeing more of a focus on… fake news than on Amazon, for example,” said Karla Koehler, a 35-year-old artist sunbathing on Ipanema Beach.

“I think this is a very specific election… It’s about political survival” and “upholding fundamental democratic rights”.

Bolsonaro’s critics see him as a threat to democracy and the country’s future after a tenure marred by Covid carnage, attacks on the judiciary and the media, and warnings he would not accept an election defeat.

Lula, on the other hand, is still associated by many with a massive corruption scandal that saw him serve an 18-month sentence before the charges were overturned on procedural grounds, without exonerating him.

According to the Brazilian Food Security Network, more than 33 million people suffer from hunger in the largest country in Latin America. According to government statistics, around 11 million people cannot read or write.

The country also has one of the highest crime rates in the world, with 47,503 homicides in 2021, a number that was nonetheless the lowest in a decade, according to Brazil’s Public Safety Forum.

“The challenge is getting people and their leaders to understand that the environmental agenda is directly related to factors like hunger, housing, crime and the economic crisis,” said Marcio Astrini, the executive secretary of the climate observatory, a coalition of environmental organizations groups.