Who Will Protect The Brazilian Rainforest and Its Communities?
May 14th, 2008 by SocProf and tagged Brazil, Development, ecology, Economy, Environment, Indigenous peoples, Mass Violence, Sustainability
Via the Independent (see also the Guardian), Marina Silva, the very popular Brazilian Minister of the Environment, throws the towel over the protection of the rainforest.
What made Ms Silva quit? *Drumrolls* Strong resistance to her environmental policies by business lobbies and parts of the government (shocking, I know). With the departure of Ms Silva, it is the global credibility of the Lula government in terms of environment that is taking a hit. As brilliant as everyone seems to recognize she is, she was not able to stop the unrelenting pace of deforestation, land disputes and forest fires.
“The worldwide boom in agricultural commodities has created an unparalleled thirst for land and energy in Brazil, and the result has been a potentially catastrophic land grab into the world’s largest remaining rainforest. The Amazon basin is home to one in 10 of the world’s mammals and 15 per cent of its land-based plant species. It holds more than half of the world’s fresh water and its vast forests act as the largest carbon sink on the planet, providing a vital check on the greenhouse effect.”
And Lula has become a big defender of biofuel production, you need land for that. But the straw that broke the camel’s back in the case of Marina Silva was when Lula signed the authorization for massive road and dam-building projects in the Amazon basin, threatening the sustainable management of the region. Such management was taken away from her and given to another minister, a much more business friendly minister. All these developments were noted with alarm by the WorldWatch institute:
“In Mato Grosso, as in other parts of the Amazon, the rapid expansion of agriculture is triggering mounting tensions between locals and environmental authorities. Satellite imagery released in January showed that as much as 2,700 square miles (4,345 kilometers) of the massive Brazilian Amazon was cleared between August and December of 2007-about 60 percent more land than during the same five months in 2006. Experts attribute the rising deforestation to growth in global meat consumption, which is driving soybean and beef production, and to a lesser extent to the boom in biofuels, which is reportedly pushing cattle ranchers off conventional farmlands and deeper into the Amazon.”
The results of these tensions have been an increase in violence against advocates for the indigenous peoples. And ranchers seem to be the worst offenders in their criminal land-grabbing and their tendency to shoot anyone who opposes them. Murders and death threats are quite common:
“Most notoriously, the American nun Dorothy Stang, an advocate of sustainable agriculture, was brutally shot in 2005. A rancher was found guilty last year for ordering the killing.
John Carter, an American-born cattle rancher in Mato Grosso who is featured in this week’s Time magazine, has been receiving death threats, said Nepstad, who is a friend of Carter’s. “He left me and others the phone number they should call to see if he’s still alive because… he is very outspoken for good land stewardship,” Nepstad said.”
But back to the independent, why is Ms Silva so well-known and popular in Brazil (and why have never heard of her?)
“The resignation brings a sad close to Ms Silva’s relationship with President Lula, whose personal story closely mirrors her own remarkable journey as the daughter of an impoverished rubber tapper who rose to be a government minister and internationally recognised environmental champion. Ms Silva spent her childhood drawing rubber sap from trees and hunting and fishing to help support her large family in the Amazonian state of Acre. It was only heavy metal poisoning from polluted water and the contraction of tropical diseases that brought her to the city as an illiterate 16-year-old. Working as a maid, she taught herself to read and put herself through university, emerging as a vocal figure in the rubber tappers’ union and a close ally to Chico Mendes, the movement’s inspirational leader whose brutal murder would cause an international outcry.
Together the pair led a campaign to halt the disastrous deforestation and rampant eviction of forest-dwelling communities to make way for the logging and ranching that still threaten the Amazon.
The tappers’ idea of creating sustainable reserves where forest people can make a livelihood from extractive industries has become a global model for managing forests and Acre now has a two-million-hectare reserve.”
Well there you have it. It is very rare for the defenders and representatives of indigenous people to get access to the mainstream resources unless there is a European celebrity like Sting to parade you around or whether you take matters into your own hand relatively aggressively as in the case of the Zapatistas. Otherwise, as a minority among minorities, indigenous peoples do not stand a chance against a global capitalist system whose hunger for natural resources and land has no limits. They are powerless because they do not fit the norms of global culture of capitalism (via the BBC, if you can, also catch the radio program on BBC World Service, The Amazon Paradox). At the same time, some of them are starting to think that if everyone else is making money off of their ancestral land through illegal logging, maybe they should do the same:
So now, what are the enemies of the rainforest? The Independent conveniently provides a list:
RANCHING
The explosion of cattle ranching exactly mirrors the dramatic increase in deforestation. The world’s leading beef exporter has ignored the link and pumped more money into slaughter houses with the help of the World Bank.
MINING
The soaring price of gold and minerals has revived old mines and spurred the creation of hundreds of new ones. Major mining projects not only require large clearings in the forest, they also leave a toxic legacy of pollution.
DAMS AND ROADS
Every study shows that more roads bring more people and destroy more forest. But the cycle continues. There is noevidence that massive hydroelectric dams deliver benefits to communities or cheap electricity.
SOYA
The worldwide boom in agricultural commodities has bitten enormous chunks out of the rainforest. Vast soy plantations supply the demand for livestock feed and bio-fuels, and make a fortune for agribusiness giants.
Photo Credit: Stephen Ferry/Getty in the Guardian.
Posted in Biodiversity, Corruption, Development, Economy, Environment, Human Rights, Indigenous Populations, Mass Violence, Sustainability |
