3273. In the Burning Brazilian Amazon, All Our Futures Are Being Consumed

By Elaine Brum, The Guardian, August 23, 2019

The Amazon is the centre of the world. Right now, as our planet experiences climate collapse, there is nowhere more important. If we don’t grasp this, there is no way to meet that challenge.

For 500 years, this has been a place of ruins. First with the European invasion, which brought a particularly destructive form of civilisation, the death of hundreds of thousands of indigenous men and women and the extinction of dozens of peoples. More recently, with the clearance of vast swaths of the forest and all life within it. Right now, in 2019, we are witnessing the beginning of a new, disastrous chapter. The area of trees being cleared has surged this year. In July, the deforestation rate was an area the size of Manhattan every day, a Greater London every three weeks. This month, fires are incinerating the Amazon at a record rate, almost certainly part of a scorched-earth strategy to clear territory. Why is this happening now? Because of a change in power.

A predatory form of politics called Bolsonarism has assumed nearly total, and totalitarian, power in Brazil. President Jair Bolsonaro’s chief project is to create more ruins in the Amazon forest, methodically and swiftly. This is why, for the first time since Brazil became a democracy again, it effectively has a minister against the environment.

For more than 30 years no environment minister has enjoyed the same autonomy as Ricardo Salles. He is a gofer for agribusiness, which is responsible for the majority of the deaths in the fields and forests, and Brazil’s greatest destructive force. The landowners lobby has always been part of Brazil’s government, formally or not. But today, this has reached a new level. They are not just in the government, they are the government.

Bolsonarism’s number one power project is to turn public lands that serve everyone – because they guarantee the preservation of natural biomes, the life of native peoples and regulate the climate – into private lands that profit a few. These lands, most of which lie in the Amazon forest, include the public lands to which indigenous peoples have the constitutional right to use, the public lands settled by ribeirinhos (people who have for over a century made their living by fishing, tapping rubber, and sustainably gathering Brazil nuts and other forest products), and the collective-use lands of quilombolas (descendants of rebel slaves who won their right to territories occupied by their ancestors).

Infighting is constant in the government, in part because the Bolsonaro administration employs the strategy of simulating its own opposition so it can occupy every possible space. Yet there is a consensus about opening up indigenous peoples’ protected lands and conservation areas. When it comes to transforming the planet’s largest tropical forest into a place for raising cattle, growing soybeans, and mining ore, there is no fighting at all. A few somewhat dissonant voices have already been deleted from the government.

Bolsonarism goes well beyond the man after whom it is named. At some point, it might even do without Bolsonaro. Deeply entwined with our global democracy crisis, Bolsonarism has been influencing the entire Amazon region, drawing out figures who have been hiding in sewers for years, sometimes decades, in other Latin American countries, where the fate of the world’s largest tropical forest is also being decided. And Bolsonarism, it bears repeating, is not a threat just to Brazil but to our planet, because it destroys the forest that is strategically vital to controlling global heating.

How do we resist this tremendous destructive force, this skilled destructive force?
For us to be capable of resisting, we must become the forest – and resist like the forest, the forest that knows it carries ruins within itself, that carries within itself both what it is and what it no longer is. We must lend shape to this political, affective feeling in order to lend meaning to our actions. This means shifting a few tectonic plates in our own thinking. We have to decolonise ourselves.

The fact that the Amazon is still regarded as something far away, on the periphery of our vision, shows just how stupid white western culture is. It is a stupidity that moulds and shapes the political and economic elites of the world, and likewise of Brazil. Believing the Amazon is far away and on the periphery, when the only chance of controlling global heating is to keep the forest alive, reflects ignorance of continental proportions. The forest is at the very core of all we have. This is the real home of humanity. The fact that many of us feel far away from it only shows how much our eyes have been contaminated, formatted and distorted. Colonised.

In the big cities of Brazil and the rest of the world, we are distanced from the deaths in which our small daily acts are accomplices. We have the privilege of not being forced to question the origin of the clothes we wear or the food we eat. But in the Amazon, if you eat beef, you know for sure it is beef from deforestation. If you buy wood, you know there is (almost) no truly legal lumber in Brazil. If you purchase a table or a wardrobe, you look at the furniture and think about how it was most likely made with wood torn off indigenous land or from an extractive reserve. In the Amazon, in the centre of the world, our relationship with the death of the forest and forest peoples, as well as with the death of family farmers, is direct. It is inescapable.

We need to humbly ask if the forest peoples accept us alongside them in the fight. They are the ones who know how to live despite the ruins. They are the ones who have experience resisting the great forces of destruction. If we are to have any chance of producing a resistance movement, we must understand that in this fight, we are not the protagonists.

We are the ones whoneed to let ourselves be occupied and allow our bodies to be affected by other experiences of being on this planet. But not as a form of violence, like the colonisation of the Amazon and its peoples; the colonisation still under way today, and going on at an ever faster pace. Rather, this time, as a form of exchange, a blending, a relationship of love.

Bolsonaro is not just a threat to the Amazon. He is a threat to the planet, precisely because he is a threat to the Amazon. Confronted with Bolsonarism’s accelerated forces of destruction, all of us, of all nationalities, must emulate the enslaved Africans who rebelled against their oppressors. We must forge communities like those established by Brazil’s escaped slaves. And since we don’t know how to do this, we will have to be humble enough to learn with those who do.

What is best, and most powerful, about today’s Brazil and the Amazon, in all its regions, are the peripheries that demand to be the centre. Our best chance lies in joining forces with the real centre of the world where the battle for the future is being waged.

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3272. The Amazon Is Burning Because of Rising Meat Consumption

By Eliza Mackintoch, CNN,  August 23, 2019

hile the wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest may constitute an "international crisis," they are hardly an accident.

The vast majority of the fires have been set by loggers and ranchers to clear land for cattle. The practice is on the rise, encouraged by Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's populist pro-business president, who is backed by the country's so-called "beef caucus."

 

While this may be business as usual for Brazil's beef farmers, the rest of the world is looking on in horror.

 

So, for those wondering how they could help save the rainforest, known as "the planet's lungs" for producing about 20% of the world's oxygen, the answer may be simple. Eat less meat.

It's an idea that Finland has already floated. On Friday, the Nordic country's finance minister called for the European Union to "urgently review the possibility of banning Brazilian beef imports" over the Amazon fires. 

 

Brazil is the world's largest exporter of beef, providing close to 20% of the total global exports, according the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) -- a figure that could rise in the coming years. 

 

Last year the country shipped 1.64 million tonnes of beef -- the highest volume in history -- generating $6.57 billion in revenue, according to the Brazilian Beef Exporters Association (Abiec), an association of more than 30 Brazilian meat-packing companies. 

 

The growth of Brazil's beef industry has been driven in part by strong demand from Asia -- mostly China and Hong Kong. These two markets alone accounted for nearly 44% of all beef exports from Brazil in 2018, according to the USDA.

 

And a trade deal struck in June between South America's Mercosur bloc of countries and the European Union could open up even more markets for Brazil's beef-packing industry.

Speaking after the agreement as announced, the head of Abiec, Antônio Camardelli, said the pact could help Brazil gain access to prospective new markets, like Indonesia and Thailand, while boosting sales with existing partners, like the EU. "A deal of this magnitude is like an invitation card for speaking with other countries and trade blocs," Camardelli told Reuters in July.

 

Once implemented, the deal will lift a 20% levy on beef imports into the EU.

 

But, on Friday, Ireland said it was ready to block the deal unless Brazil took action on the Amazon. 

 

In a statement Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar described as "Orewellian" Bolsonaro's attempt to blame the fires on environmental groups. Varadkar said that Ireland will monitor Brazil's environmental actions to determine whether to block the Mercosur deal, which is two years away.

 

He added Irish and European farmers could not be told to use fewer pesticides and respect biodiversity when trade deals were being made with countries not subjected to "decent environmental, labor and product standards."

 

In June, before the furor over the rainforest began, the Irish Farmers Association called on Ireland not to ratify the deal, arguing its terms would disadvantage European beef farmers.

 

 

Fires are raging in the Amazon forest. Here's how you can help slow all rainforest loss

Deal or no deal, Brazil's beef industry is projected to continue expanding, buoyed by natural resources, grassland availability and global demand, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 

 

And, with that growth, comes steep environmental costs. 

 

Brazil's space research center (INPE) said this week that the number of fires in Brazil is 80% higher than last year. More than half are in the Amazon region, spelling disaster for the local environment and ecology.

 

Alberto Setzer, a senior scientist at INPE, told CNN that the burning can range from a small-scale agricultural practice, to new deforestation for mechanized and modern agribusiness projects.

 

Farmers wait until the dry season to start burning and clearing areas so their cattle can graze, but this year's destruction has been described as unprecedented. Environmental campaigners blame this uptick on Bolsonaro, who they say has encouraged ranchers, farmers, and loggers to exploit and burn the rainforest like never before with a sense of impunity.

 

Brush fires burn in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso on August 20.

Bolsonaro has dismissed accusations of responsibility for the fires, but a clear shift seems to be underway.

 

And if saving the rainforest isn't enough to convince carnivores to stop eating Brazilian beef -- the greenhouse gas emissions the cattle create may be.

 

Beef is responsible for 41% of livestock greenhouse gas emissions, and that livestock accounts for 14.5% of total global emissions. And methane -- the greenhouse gas cattle produce from both ends -- is 25 times more potent that carbon dioxide.

 

An alarming report released last year by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, said changing our diets could contribute 20% of the effort needed to keep global temperatures from rising 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Namely, eating less meat.

 

Still, global consumption of beef and veal is set to rise in the next decade according to projections from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). 

 

A joint report predicted global production would increase 16% between 2017 and 2027 to meet demand.

 

The majority of that expansion will be in developing countries, like Brazil.

2768. The "Living Forest" Proposal to Fight Climate Change

By Miriam Anne Frank, Amazon Watch, December 7, 2017

On November 6-17, 2017, a delegation of Indigenous Kichwa leaders from the community of Sarayaku, deep in Ecuadorian Amazon, accompanied by Amazon Watch, traveled to the 23rd Conference of the Parties (COP23) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany, to promote their Kawsak Sacha ("Living Forest") proposal – a comprehensive vision for living in harmony with the natural world based upon their ancestral practices.

The Kawsak Sacha "Living Forests" vision is vital for many reasons, most fundamentally that maintaining the ecological balance of the Amazon is essential to Earth's health and capacity to mitigate climate change. The Amazon has long played the critical role of sequestering carbon but rapidly on its way to losing this sink function and become a carbon source due to deforestation. Consequently, protecting the Amazon rainforest, the largest of the world's tropical forests, must be central to climate change discussions and policies.

"My message here at COP 23 for the people, for allies of the world, is that we need to fight together, unite forces, because the states that are here speaking in our name are at a negotiating table where supposedly they are looking for solutions, but these solutions are for them, not for Indigenous peoples. Our people are in our communities, while they are here making decisions for us. They are putting prices on our natural resources, they are putting prices on us, without fully comprehending that within our territories we exist as communities with huge wisdom, knowledge, science, technology. So we are asking allied peoples to keep resisting, because this fight is how we must maintain life, and to have the freedom to express ourselves, " said Mirian Cisneros, president of Sarayaku.

The Kichwa from Sarayaku are gaining ground in alliance with Indigenous and frontline communities around the world working to defend the sacred and keep oil in the ground, including a strong bond with indigenous peoples of the Standing Rock community. As Franco Viteri, a historic Kichwa leader remarked during his visit to Standing Rock in September 2016, "My people are very conscious, because of our history and our tradition, just like the tribes here, of our connection with nature, with Mother Earth; we know that this is what gives balance to life here on earth. The transnational corporations, like those trying to build this oil pipeline, are blind because they don't understand the language of nature.”

Two years after COP 21 in Paris, elected leaders around the globe have proven their unwillingness to take the bold, urgent action needed to respond to the climate chaos beginning to wreak havoc on the planet. At COP23 Indigenous peoples continue to actively advocate their positions largely outside of the formal meetings they have limited access to. The Kichwa delegation took part in a range of actions to deliver their message – the Climate March, the Rights of Nature Tribunal – and multiple press opportunities, highlighting their truly sustainable solutions for advancing climate justice.

Inside the negotiations, the Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) – the Indigenous representative body focused directly on impacting the COP – realized what they consider a small victory in regards to the operalization of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform created at COP21 in Paris. This Platform was designed to create a space where they can exchange lessons learned and share their unique perspectives on reducing emissions, adapting, and building resilience. During the course of the two weeks the Parties at COP23 debated how much decision-making power they could concede to these nonparty "stakeholders.” In the final decision, a shared chairmanship by state and local communities and Indigenous Peoples' representatives was agreed to. While Indigenous Peoples clearly consider themselves rights holders (not stakeholders) in the UNFCCC negotiations the hope of the IIPFCC is that they - on the frontlines climate change - can increase their role in these intergovernmental talks and contribute to deciding their own future via mechanisms such as the Platform.

When Patricia Gualinga, a former Kichwa leader represented the global climate justice movement at the High-Level Segment at COP23 her impassioned speech contrasted sharply to those by heads of governments, reminding everyone that "Climate change is not a business.... We, the grassroots communities and Indigenous Peoples of the world, we have the real solutions. From the people of Sarayaku to Standing Rock, from the Ogoniland to Lancashire to the Ende Gelände movement here in Germany - we are all fighting against destruction and for a decent life. We are fighting for Climate Justice! ...Our struggle is for life, for justice, for Mother Earth. For women, youth, our children and their children. For our future!”

For the world to stay within the rise in temperatures per the Paris Climate Agreement, new fossil fuel production must be halted. Potential carbon emissions from the oil, gas, and coal present in the worlds currently operating fields and mines would take us beyond 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius of warming as per that agreement.

"Considering that global climate chaos is here and global experts are warning that three-quarters of the world's fossil fuels must be kept in the ground to avoid catastrophic climate change, protecting the Amazon is a greater priority than ever. We stand with Indigenous peoples and allies to stop Amazon destruction, advance Indigenous solutions, and support climate justice," said Leila Salazar-López, Executive Director of Amazon Watch.

2176. Peru Declares Environmental State of Emergency in Its Rainforest

By Dan Collyins, The Gaurdian, Janauary 26, 2016

Location is the Peruian Amazon rainforest drenched in oil.

Peru has declared an environmental state of emergency in a remote part of its northern Amazon rainforest, home for decades to one of the country's biggest oil fields, currently operated by the Argentinian company Pluspetrol.

Achuar and Kichwa indigenous people living in the Pastaza river basin near Peru's border with Ecuador have complained for decades about the pollution, while successive governments have failed to deal with it. Officials indicate that for years the state lacked the required environmental quality standards.

A new law published on Monday that sets out, for the first time, environmental quality standards setting acceptable limits for contaminants in soil, may be a key advance, say officials.

Peru's environment ministry has given Pluspetrol 90 days to clean up the affected areas and reduce the risk of contamination to the local population.

In declaring the state of emergency, Peru's environment ministry said tests in February and March found high levels of barium, lead, chrome and petroleum-related compounds at different points in the Pastaza valley.

Pluspetrol, the biggest oil and natural gas producer in Peru, has operated the oil fields since 2001. It took over from Occidental Petroleum, which began drilling in 1971, and, according to the government, had not cleaned up contamination either.

Several multimillion dollar fines have been levied against Pluspetrol in recent years. The company has appealed against all of the fines in the Peruvian courts, including an $11m (£7m) fine levelled in January for failing to complete an environmental clean-up of an oil block located inside Peru's largest national park, Pacaya Samiria, in the Loreto region.

"We know that there has been bad environmental behaviour by the company in the past because there were no regulations but also in the present because it's not acting responsibly and it's not giving the correct information about what's happening in the zone," Peru's environment minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal said of Pluspetrol to local media.

In a statement, his ministry said the government began administrative actions against Pluspetrol in March 2012 over contamination at block 1AB, Peru's biggest crude oil field in the adjacent Corrientes river basin. The ministry says further environmental checks will be carried out on the upper Marañón, Tigre and Corrientes river basins where Pluspetrol also operates.

"Serious attention to the environmental disaster in the northern Peruvian Amazon is long overdue. The Peruvian health ministry registered unacceptable levels of lead and cadmium in the blood of Achuar children almost seven years ago," Andrew Miller, lead Peru campaigner for Amazon Watch told the Guardian.

"Yet only following years of community-based environmental monitoring, pressure from indigenous federations, and the recent visit of Peruvian members of congress has the political will been created for the government to take appropriate action.”

The Peruvian government plans to auction a further 29 new oil and gas concessions this year.

A spokesman for Pluspetrol said the company was "evaluating the situation" but refused to comment further.