Empower Indigenous Brazilians to Save their Amazon

For more than month, the Amazon has been ravaged by a large number of fires in Brazil and neighboring countries. This unprecedented number of fires aggravates the climate crisis and, with it, the threat of increasingly harmful natural disasters.

As a response, AIDA has called for the governments of the Amazon basin to adopt urgent measures to stop the fires. AIDA’s Brazilian attorney, Marcella Torres, participated on a televised panel to discuss the impacts of the fires and to raise awareness of the situation. In addition, we called on citizens and the international community to pressure the governments of Brazil and the other countries of the region to reverse course and effectively protect the Amazon, its biodiversity, and the people who depend on it.

The consequences of these fires are particularly devastating for the biodiversity of the area and for the communities that inhabit it, making this a situation that requires increasingly urgent and effective actions.

The Amazon holds 20% of the Earth's unfrozen fresh water and is home to a quarter of the world's species. In addition, the Amazon jungle releases about 20% of the oxygen we breathe and stores 90 to 140 billion tons of carbon dioxide, regulating the global climate. The international scientific community has emphatically pointed out that the destruction of tropical forests causes 20% of greenhouse gas emissions.

For this reason, the Amazon ecosystem is vital for mitigating the climate crisis. The current fires demonstrate that the Amazon is now more vulnerable than before due to a combination of factors, including increased droughts, deforestation, unsustainable use of soil and subsoil, and development projects.

The Belo Monte Dam is one of the projects making the rainforest more vulnerable. That’s why we’ve worked relentlessly to support the indigenous communities fighting against it. As one of the biggest development projects in the Amazon, it’s impacts and the importance of our fight is now more relevant than ever.

Scientific evidence demonstrates that hydropower projects are a significant source of greenhouse gases—CO2 and, particularly, methane—and they have a significant role in aggravating climate change.

The policies, rhetoric and actions of Jair Bolsonaro's government have the same impact, actively dismantling due protection of the Amazon and its indigenous peoples. His administration intensified recent attempts to undermine Brazil’s progressive legislation on environmental protection and human rights - especially those of indigenous peoples, quilombolas (descendants of African slaves), family farmers and other traditional populations. They irresponsibly promote the expansion of the agricultural, livestock and extractive frontier in the Amazon, resulting in increased deforestation and the consequences we are witnessing today.

Because of this, we have publically demanded that our region’s governments take concrete actions to:

• Strengthen institutions and environmental norms,
• Immediately suspend rhetoric that encourages deforestation and the destruction of the Amazon,
• Stop the indiscriminate expansion of the agricultural, livestock and extractive frontier in the area,
• Adopt proper land use and planning,
• Ensure the existence and restoration of ecosystem life cycles, and
• Control deforestation and conserve the Amazon with the financial and technical support of multilateral international cooperation.

Links:

• AIDA Statement on the crisis in the Amazon

Last November, AIDA accompanied a delegation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on a visit to the Mïratu Village, located in the Paquiçamba indigenous region in the state of Pará, Brazil. Mïratu is one of the indigenous communities affected by the Belo Monte Dam. It was the first time the Commission has visited that area.

During their visit to the region, the Commission heard testimonies from indigenous people and fishermen who are fighting to maintain their traditional way of life despite damages including: the death of thousands of fish; the pollution of the Xingú river; forced displacement from their lands without adequate relocation; and the development of culturally inappropriate projects. The Commission also heard from representatives of Altamira, the city nearest the dam.

Village leaders reported that those damages have disproportionately affected women and children, and expressed that they were especially concerned over next year’s scheduled implementation of a plan to manage the flow of the Xingú River. Known as a consensus hydrogram, it would divert the water that indigenous and riverine communities, as well as plants and animals, rely on to survive.

Commissioners had the opportunity to confirm the severity of the impacts and understand the urgent need to revise the criteria used to define the residual flow that the Xingu must maintain in order to guarantee the subsistence and culture of indigenous and riverine communities in the Vuelta Grande region.

Overall, Brazil has been one of the largest violators of the human rights of indigenous communities. In their meeting with the Commission, the Brazilian Indigenous Communities Organization (APIB) presented these cases and expressed its concern over the current political landscape, in which a discourse of hatred and racism has been growing, even among government institutions.

Commissioner Antonia Urrejola Noguera, IACHR Rapporteur for Brazil, said that in Brazil, indigenous communities “suffer from frequent incidents of violence and lack of attention from public services, in addition to increased difficulties and obstacles surrounding claims to their lands,” while presenting the Commission’s preliminary conclusions.

Concluding its visit to the country, the Commission urged Brazilian authorities and society in general to recognize, address, and quickly resolve repeated violations of the human rights of indigenous communities. The Commission emphasized the case of the Mïratu indigenous community, affected by the environmental damages caused by the construction of the Belo Monte Dam.

We’d like to highlight the importance of the Commission’s historic visit to Mïratu Village, and recognize the negative impacts that the Belo Monte Dam has had on the human rights of the people of the Xingu River basin. It is now up to the government of Brazil to adopt the decisions and recommendations of the Commission, complying with the rule of law and protecting the people of their country.

With the current administration’s extremely questionable decisions that signal the weakening of guarantees for indigenous peoples in Brazil, the Amazon, and the environment as a whole, demonstrating progress in international institutions and a respect for the rights of indigenous communities—in cases like the Xucuru, the Xingu, and Guyraroka peoples—, is of critical importance to strengthen rule of law in Brazil.