For years, the attention of environmental activists and global climate forums has been on what is called “the lungs of the earth”, the Amazon rainforest, home to extraordinary biodiversity and indigenous peoples. However, for decades this forest has been the victim of deforestation campaignsdue to intensive farming and other economic interests, by local governments, but also by paramilitary groups and drug traffickers.
The new Brazilian government wants to save the Amazon
After years of deforestation, violence against indigenous people and environmental activists, newly elected president Lula da Silva has set the protection of the Amazon and some indigenous peoples among the primary objectives of his political agenda, but the obstacles are many, starting with those posed during the mandate of former denier president Jair Bolsonaro.
The appointment of Marina Silva to the direction of the Ministry of the Environment and the creation of a Ministry of Indigenous Affairs, are the first acts of the Lula government to protect the forest. Lula also appointed three indigenous representatives as officials of the new Brazilian government and since the beginning of January, the new government has issued several decrees marking the resumption of plans to combat deforestation in the Amazon and the reactivation of the Fund for the Amazon, a pool of funds supplied to Brazil by Western donors. The decrees also include the revocation of measures imposed by the Bolsonaro administration, such as the decree that allowed themining in indigenous lands and protected areas. The revocation should lead to the expulsion of more than 20,000 illegal miners from the area. Furthermore, measures are in place to restore operational autonomy and representation to the FUNAIthe government organization responsible for the protection of indigenous peoples, whose functions have been weakened by personnel loyal to the outgoing president’s privatization creed.
The consequences for indigenous peoples
The significant increase in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, estimated at 17% of total land, reflects thedecades-long weakening of the legal framework, as well as the monitoring and control processes promoted by the Bolsonaro government in recent years. Between the underlying threats to environmental destruction and degradation in the Amazon there are the lack of regulation in support of sustainable development and protection of natural resources, political instability, the inability of some institutional and governmental entities to establish and enforce legislation for nature conservation, poverty and inequality .
The first wave of deforestation, known as Operation Amazonia, began in the 1970s, when the ruling military junta grasped its high profit potential, building the Trans-Amazon road and thus starting to open the Amazon of indigenous lands to economic development. The road, which cuts through the Amazon region, has been a means of encouraging poor farmers to colonize the forest. At the time, there was talk of “modern development” and “integrating the Amazon into the nation”, the same words used by former president Jair Bolsonaro’s propaganda in 2018.
Despite the slogans, those who benefited from the exploitation of the Amazon were large agro-food companies. In fact, a chain of land occupation by ranchers, deforestation and sales to large farmers (fazendeiros) was created which caused the felling of thousands of kilometers of rainforest to raise and produce food products to be exported mainly to the West. A brief u-turn occurred in the early 2000s, with the legislative initiatives promoted by the environmentalist politician Marina Silva. However, if for a short time the compromise between productivity and the protection of Brazilian forests seemed to have been reached, from 2016 a group of conservative politicians close to the interests of the agricultural industry (ruralistas) began to establish themselves as the majority party in Parliament, putting risk the integrity of the Amazon.
Land grabbing and the persecution of indigenous peoples
The agenda of Jair Bolsonaro it has openly espoused the interests of the agro-industrial and livestock sector, represented in Congress by the so-called “rural bank”, stakeholders of the land grabbers, interested in the economic exploitation of indigenous lands. By claiming to represent rural Brazilians and promoting the priorities of his evangelical party, the policies and agenda of the Bolsonaro government have openly threatened the constitutional rights and freedoms of indigenous peoples of Brazil, enshrined in Article 231 of the Brazilian Constitution. Furthermore, during Bolsonaro’s presidency, organized crime in the Amazon – which promotes illegal land grabbing, logging and mining – has grown dramatically, damaging indigenous territories as a result.
There are currently approx 700 indigenous protected areaspari al 13% of Amazon landshowever, surrounded by an incessant expansion of agricultural lands and threatened by the practices of land grabbing, a custom that endangers about one million indigenous natives of the Amazon, who risk losing their lands and the peculiarities of their way of life , rights also enshrined in the 2008 UN Declaration of Indigenous Peoples.
Under the Bolsonaro administration, the funds allocated to the Government Agency for Indigenous Affairs (FUNAI) were drastically cut and in parallel the invasions of illegal miners in the indigenous territory Yanomami – a community located in the north of the Amazon forest and covering an area the size of Portugal – and the dismantling of health systems, causing a spiral of malnutrition and disease among these populations. The indigenous issue of the Yanomami was also brought, in August 2021, to the attention of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, on charges of “crimes against humanity” for Bolsonaro, and in January 2023, the Brazilian Federal Police opened an investigation into indigenous genocide and the former president’s government’s failure to aid the Yanomami people.
Towards a new governance of the Amazon?
Meanwhile, the international community has also mobilized. There Norway and the Germania have announced the reactivation of their contribution to the most important international cooperation that collects donations, the Amazon Fund, to fight deforestation in the Amazon. Expectations seem encouraging for indigenous defenders and point to sharp declines in deforestation practices. However, theSpace Research Institute of Brazil (INPE) which monitors the phenomenon with satellite images, shows the worrying data of February 2023 with the loss of 208 thousand kilometers of forest and highlights how the phenomenon is continuous and structural.
According to Human Rights Watch, one is needed to protect the Amazon cross-border and global cooperationwhich highlights the Amazon as common good for all humanity, and leverage different ways of exchanging knowledge for its global preservation. Therefore, it will be necessary to harmonize a multilevel governance system, coordinating the international cooperation and theimplementation of national legislation. Brazil is a country where the rule of law is weak in rural areas, and the government presence is marginal against the land thefts and the violence of organized crime towards rural communities, which depend on sustainable forest use throughout the Amazon.
The current humanitarian crisis of indigenous peoples has underlined the structural problems that need to be addressed as a priority by the new government, such as theillegal miningl’invasion of indigenous territoriesthe health conditions of native peoples and deforestation. The new government will therefore have to clash with the broader extractivist-based economic system to combat uncontrolled profiteering, as the future of the Yanomami and all of indigenous Brazil depends on the implementation of policies that prioritize human security and sustainable governance.
This article was written in collaboration by Orizzonti Politici and Affari Internazionali, the journal of IAI, as part of the project on humanitarian crises in the world
Cover photo EPA/Andre Borges