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	We Indigenous people are fighting to save the Amazon, but the whole planet is in trouble by Ceibo Alliance, UN News, The Lancet, agencies   Oct. 2020   We Indigenous people are fighting to save the Amazon, but the whole planet is in trouble, writes Nemonte Nenquimo cofounder of the Ceibo Alliance.   Dear presidents of the nine Amazonian countries and to all world leaders that share responsibility for the plundering of our rainforest,   My name is Nemonte Nenquimo. I am a Waorani woman, a mother, and a leader of my people. The Amazon rainforest is my home. I am writing you this letter because the fires are raging still.   Because the corporations are spilling oil in our rivers. Because the miners are stealing gold (as they have been for 500 years), and leaving behind open pits and toxins. Because the land grabbers are cutting down primary forest so that the cattle can graze, plantations can be grown and the white man can eat.   Because our elders are dying from coronavirus, while you are planning your next moves to cut up our lands to stimulate an economy that has never benefited us.   Because, as Indigenous peoples, we are fighting to protect what we love – our way of life, our rivers, the animals, our forests, life on Earth – and it’s time that you listened to us.   In each of our many hundreds of different languages across the Amazon, we have a word for you – the outsider, the stranger. In my language, WaoTededo, that word is “cowori”.   And it doesn’t need to be a bad word. But you have made it so. For us, the word has come to mean (and in a terrible way, your society has come to represent): the white man that knows too little for the power that he wields, and the damage that he causes.   You are probably not used to an Indigenous woman calling you ignorant and, less so, on a platform such as this. But for Indigenous peoples it is clear: the less you know about something, the less value it has to you, and the easier it is to destroy.   And by easy, I mean: guiltlessly, remorselessly, foolishly, even righteously. And this is exactly what you are doing to us as Indigenous peoples, to our rainforest territories, and ultimately to our planet’s climate.   It took us thousands of years to get to know the Amazon rainforest. To understand her ways, her secrets, to learn how to survive and thrive with her. And for my people, the Waorani, we have only known you for 70 years (we were “contacted” in the 1950s by American evangelical missionaries), but we are fast learners, and you are not as complex as the rainforest.   When you say that the oil companies have marvellous new technologies that can sip the oil from beneath our lands like hummingbirds sip nectar from a flower, we know that you are lying because we live downriver from the spills. When you say that the Amazon is not burning, we do not need satellite images to prove you wrong; we are choking on the smoke of the fruit orchards that our ancestors planted centuries ago.   When you say that you are urgently looking for climate solutions, yet continue to build a world economy based on extraction and pollution, we know you are lying because we are the closest to the land, and the first to hear her cries.   I never had the chance to go to university, and become a doctor, or a lawyer, a politician, or a scientist. My elders are my teachers. The forest is my teacher. And I have learned enough (and I speak shoulder to shoulder with my Indigenous brothers and sisters across the world) to know that you have lost your way, and that you are in trouble (though you don’t fully understand it yet) and that your trouble is a threat to every form of life on Earth.   You forced your civilisation upon us and now look where we are: global pandemic, climate crisis, species extinction and, driving it all, widespread spiritual poverty.   In all these years of taking, taking, taking from our lands, you have not had the courage, or the curiosity, or the respect to get to know us. To understand how we see, and think, and feel, and what we know about life on this Earth.   I won’t be able to teach you in this letter, either. But what I can say is that it has to do with thousands and thousands of years of love for this forest, for this place. Love in the deepest sense, as reverence. This forest has taught us how to walk lightly, and because we have listened, learned and defended her, she has given us everything: water, clean air, nourishment, shelter, medicines, happiness, meaning. And you are taking all this away, not just from us, but from everyone on the planet, and from future generations.   It is the early morning in the Amazon, just before first light: a time that is meant for us to share our dreams, our most potent thoughts. And so I say to all of you: the Earth does not expect you to save her, she expects you to respect her. And we, as Indigenous peoples, expect the same. http://bit.ly/2GTSp5f   • Nemonte Nenquimo is cofounder of the Indigenous-led nonprofit organisation Ceibo Alliance in Ecuador, and the first female president of the Waorani organisation of Pastaza province: http://www.alianzaceibo.org/   http://www.channel4.com/news/indigenous-communities-fighting-deforestation-in-ecuadorian-amazon http://www.amazonfrontlines.org/chronicles/equator-prize-ceibo/ http://www.equatorinitiative.org/2020/06/04/alianza-ceibo/ http://grist.org/justice/deforestation-oil-spills-and-coronavirus-crises-converge-in-the-amazon/ http://www.hrw.org/video-photos/interactive/2019/09/23/defenders-rainforest-fight-protect-brazils-amazon http://indigenouspeoples-sdg.org/index.php/english/all-global-news/1558-the-best-protection-for-forests-the-people-who-live-in-them http://rfkhumanrights.org/awards/human-rights-award http://inequality.org/research/indigenous-amazon-corporate-greed/ http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/07/brazil-cattle-illegally-grazed-in-the-amazon-found-in-supply-chain-of-leading-meat-packer-jbs/ http://www.euractiv.com/section/climate-environment/news/leaked-eu-mercosur-trade-deal-lacks-teeth-on-climate-activists-say/ http://tmsnrt.rs/30ZUV0R http://tmsnrt.rs/2SVibsp   Aug. 2021   Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has hit the highest annual level in a decade, a new report has shown, despite increasing global alarm over the accelerating devastation since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019.   Between August 2020 and July 2021, the rainforest lost 10,476 square kilometers – an area nearly seven times bigger than greater London and 13 times the size of New York City, according to data released by Imazon, a Brazilian research institute that has been tracking the Amazon deforestation since 2008. The figure is 57% higher than in the previous year and is the worst since 2012.   “Deforestation is still out of control,” Carlos Souza, a researcher at Imazon said. “Brazil is going against the global climate agenda that is seeking to urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”   Souza called for the urgent resumption of government actions to stop the destruction, including the enforcement of illegal agriculture-led deforestation in the region, which has been impaired by budget cuts for the environment ministry and environmental protection agencies.   Even as he faces ongoing accusations of systematically dismantling environmental protections, Bolsonaro has deployed thousands of soldiers to combat illegal deforestation and fires.   But the policy has proved ineffective, said Marcio Astrini, the executive-secretary of the organisation Climate Observatory.   “The data shows that it didn’t work,” said Astrini. “No army operation will be able to mask or reverse the attacks of the federal government against the forest.”   Astrini said that the deforestation rates in 2021 are expected to be almost 50% higher than in 2018, before Bolsonaro took office.   In June, then-environment minister Ricardo Salles resigned amid a criminal investigation over allegations that a police investigation into illegal Amazon logging was blocked. But the ministry’s leadership “hasn’t shown any progress,” Astrini said.   “The measures that benefit the export of illegal timber – the reason why Salles had to leave office – are still in place,” he said.   The new figures were released as lawmakers held a public hearing to push for changes in Brazil’s environmental policies.   “We are going through a very tough moment in Brazilian history. There’s a lot of denialism, and many attempts to weaken our environmental policy,” senator Eliziane Gama told the hearing.   http://imazon.org.br/en/imprensa/deforestation-in-the-brazilian-amazon-region-in-2021-was-the-highest-in-10-years-according-to-imazon/ http://insideclimatenews.org/news/01092021/amazon-rainforest-biodiversity-deforestation-fires/ http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/14/amazon-rainforest-now-emitting-more-co2-than-it-absorbs http://www.theguardian.com/environment/amazon-rainforest   Nov. 2020   Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest this year reached its highest level since 2008, government data shows. The destruction comes as President Jair Bolsonaro continues to weaken environmental regulations.   Brazil's Amazon rainforest lost 11,088 square kilometers (2.7 million acres) to logging, land clearing and fires between August 2019 and July 2020, according to the country's National Institute for Space Research (INPE). That represents a 9.5% increase on the same period a year earlier. The deforestation rate is the highest in 12 years, the data released on Monday shows.   "Because of such deforestation, Brazil is probably the only major greenhouse gas emitter that managed to increase its emissions in the year the coronavirus pandemic paralyzed the global economy," said the Brazilian Climate Observatory, a coalition of environmental groups.   The Amazon rainforest plays a vital role in the world's ecology, both as a producer of oxygen and as a carbon sink that absorbs large amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.   Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro continues to pledge increased agricultural activity and more development in the region. He has weakened many forest protections and measures to counteract illegal logging that previous administrations had put in place to slow the rampant deforestation of the late 1990s and early 2000s.   Massive and numerous wildfires in the region last year caused headlines across the world. International governments and organizations called on on Brazil to do much more to protect the rainforest, the world's largest.   Aug. 2020   The Amazon rainforest provides 20% of the world's oxygen   In one year, fires in the Brazilian Amazon rose 77 per cent on Indigenous lands and 50 per cent on protected nature reserves.   Brazil's national space agency INPE has identified 6,803 fires in the Amazon region in July 2020, up from 5,318 the year before. The figure is all the more troubling given that 2019 was already a devastating year for fires in the Amazon, triggering global outcry.   That has put pressure on Brazil, which holds around 60 per cent of the Amazon basin region, to do more to protect the massive forest, seen as vital to containing the impact of climate change.   The fires are largely set to clear land illegally for farming, ranching and mining.   Activists accuse Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right climate change sceptic, of encouraging the deforestation with calls to open up the rainforest to agriculture and industry.   Fires rose 77 per cent on Indigenous lands and 50 per cent on protected nature reserves from July 2019, environmental group Greenpeace said, showing how illegal activities are increasingly encroaching on those areas.   On 30 July alone, satellites detected 1,007 fires in the Amazon, INPE said. That was the worst single day for fires in the month of July since 2005, said Greenpeace.   "More than 1,000 fires in a single day is a 15-year record and shows the government's strategy of media-spectacle operations is not working on the ground," Greenpeace spokesman Romulo Batista said in a statement.   "On paper, the fire moratorium prohibits burning, but it only works if there is also a response on the ground, with more patrols. Criminals aren't known for obeying the law."   Instead, the Bolsonaro administration has slashed the budget, staff and programs of environmental authority IBAMA.   "Everything that was working was thrown out the window," Erika Berenguer, an Amazon ecologist at Oxford and Lancaster Universities, told AFP.   Fire season in the Amazon typically runs from around June to October. But fires are just part of the deforestation picture. The rest of the year, ranchers, farmers, miners and land speculators are clearing forest and preparing to burn it.   The first six months of 2020 were the worst on record for deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, with 3,069 square kilometres cleared, according to INPE data - an area bigger than the nation of Luxembourg.   If a significant portion of those felled trees burn in 2020, the result could be catastrophic, experts warn. "I think August will be the make-or-break month," said Ms Berenguer.   Last year, the number of fires surged nearly 200 per cent year-on-year in August, to 30,900, sending a thick haze of black smoke all the way to Sao Paulo, thousands of kilometres away, and causing worldwide alarm.   Ms Berenguer said it was a matter of time before the newly deforested land went up in flames in the name of farming and ranching.   "It's an economic investment to deforest. It's expensive.. You need heavy machinery: bulldozers, tractors, people, diesel," she said. "You don't deforest to leave all those trees on the ground. You need to burn it, because you need to recover your investment."   The US space agency NASA warned last month that warmer ocean surface temperatures in the North Atlantic mean the southern Amazon is facing a major drought this year. It said that made "human-set fires used for agriculture and land clearing more prone to growing out of control and spreading.".. "Conditions are ripe," it said.   http://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/forests/beef-banks-and-brazilian-amazon/ http://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/31/europe-can-help-us-save-amazon http://www.amazonfrontlines.org/chronicles/amazon-rainforest-fires-climate-2020/ http://ipam.org.br/ http://kayapo.org/stories/   July 2019   Brazil registers huge spike in Amazon deforestation. (DW)   The Brazilian Space Agency has released data documenting a massive spike in deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Citing figures from June, the agency registered an 88.4% increase over the same month in 2018.   That figure comes on the heels of increased deforestation in May, which was up 34% compared to 2018.   The agency measures annual July to July activity, but says the first 11 months of this year's report already show a 15% rise over the previous period.   That increase translates to some 4,565 square kilometers (1,762 square miles) of lost rainforest over an 11 month period. June alone saw the loss of 920 square kilometers.   Environmentalists have long been concerned about the steady loss of one of the world's largest sources of oxygen and carbon sequestration and their fears were compounded when far-right anti-environment candidate Jair Bolsonaro became president in January.   Bolsonaro has aggressively dismantled environmental laws and protections for indigenous people living in the Amazon in order to spur economic growth.   Much of the area being clear cut is converted for agricultural planting, such as soy beans and grains, as well as for ranching and mining. The need for such clear cutting has been fueled by the world's growing lust for meat as a dietary choice.   Bolsonaro has repeatedly criticized the country's Ibama environmental agency for what he complains are excessive fines against logging. He argues that fines simply drive up prices, making illegal logging more lucrative.   His son Flavio, who is a senator, has also pushed for legislation that would relieve farmers of the obligation of maintaining 20-80% tree cover on their land.   Bloomberg news agency reports that this could lead to the clearing of up to 1.6 million square kilometers of rain forest, a space roughly the size of Iran.   Though the deforestation may provide short-term profits for Brazil and international companies it is bad news for the environment and could also threaten the passage of trade deals.   Last week, the European Union announced that after almost 20 years it had reached agreement with the Mercosur bloc - Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay - on a new free-trade deal.   http://www.clientearth.org/latest/latest-updates/news/what-s-going-on-with-the-eu-mercosur-agreement/ http://www.euractiv.com/section/climate-environment/opinion/the-eu-must-not-greenwash-the-future-destruction-of-the-amazon/ http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/11/brazil-halt-illegal-cattle-farms-fuelling-amazon-rainforest-destruction/ http://www.hrw.org/news/2019/11/15/brazils-amazon-and-its-defenders-are-under-attack-illegal-loggers http://euobserver.com/opinion/152572 http://act.wemove.eu/campaigns/no-to-mercosur   July 2019   Amazon deforestation accelerating towards unrecoverable 'tipping point'.   Scientists warn that the Amazon forest is in growing danger of degrading into a savannah, after which its capacity to absorb carbon will be severely diminished, with consequences for the rest of the planet.   'It's very important to keep repeating these concerns. There are a number of tipping points which are not far away', said Philip Fearnside, a professor at Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research. 'We can't see exactly where they are, but we know they are very close. It means we have to do things right away. Unfortunately that is not what is happening. There are people denying we even have a problem'.   In his first seven months in power, Bolsonaro, who was elected with strong support from agribusiness and mining interests, has moved rapidly to erode government agencies responsible for forest protection.   He has weakened the environment agency and effectively put it under the supervision of the agricultural ministry, which is headed by the leader of the farming lobby. His foreign minister has dismissed climate science as part of a global Marxist plot. The president and other ministers have criticised the forest monitoring agency, Ibama, for imposing fines on illegal land grabbers and loggers. The government has also moved to weaken protections for nature reserves, indigenous territories and zones of sustainable production by forest peoples and invited businesspeople to register land counter-claims within those areas.   This has emboldened those who want to invade the forest, clear it and claim it for commercial purposes, mostly in the speculative expectation it will rise in value, but also partly for cattle pastures, soya fields and mines.   Earlier this month, it was reported that thousands of gold miners illegally invaded Yanomami indigenous territory near the border with Venezuela. Elsewhere, illegal loggers have mounted at least two attacks in response to Ibama enforcement operations..   http://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/amazonian-rainforest-near-unrecoverable-tipping-point   June 2019   Head of Indian Affairs Foundation fired in Brazil. (The Lancet)   The move is the latest in a series of measures prioritising agriculture business over the health of Indigenous populations in the country. Barbara Fraser reports.   Policies proposed by the government of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, which would eliminate the country's Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (SESAI) and roll back protections for Indigenous territories, could spell disaster for the country's Indigenous people, experts warn.   The head of Brazil's governmental Indian Affairs Foundation (FUNAI) was fired on June 12, the latest in a series of moves undercutting protections for Indigenous people and their territories. Franklimberg Ribeiro de Freitas, an Army Reserve general, had headed the agency since January. Ribeiro de Freitas blamed his ouster on Agriculture Ministry officials who back Bolsonaro's proposals to open Indigenous lands to mining and large-scale agriculture.   Although FUNAI is not directly responsible for health policy, its task is to protect Indigenous peoples and territories. Budget and personnel cuts in recent years have undermined its ability to do its job, observers say.   'Since this government took office, there has been backsliding in social policies for Indigenous people, in areas like demarcation of territories, education and health', says Ysso Truka, a leader of the Truka people and a representative of Articulacao dos Povos Indigenas do Brasil, a national Indigenous organisation.   Truka has also been a member of a national forum of presidents of district-level civic health oversight councils. A restructuring of the health ministry, announced in May, eliminates that forum, although not the local councils. It also eliminates the administrative department of SESAI, a branch of the national health ministry, its responsibilities into other SESAI departments without increasing their staff.   Bolsonaro has said the restructuring is needed to eliminate corruption in government contracting. Brazil is currently mired in a huge corruption scandal involving bribes and kickbacks from construction companies.   One goal of the restructuring apparently is to eliminate SESAI and include Brazil's Indigenous people in the country's universal health-care system.   An attempt in March to shift Indigenous health care from the federal government to local governments was withdrawn after it sparked protests by Indigenous peoples in March. Truka said the country's Indigenous organisations are in favour of eliminating corruption but do not want to see SESAI dismantled.   Established two decades ago, the Indigenous health system increased access to health care and lowered indicators such as maternal and infant mortality among Indigenous people, although they still exceed those of non-Indigenous Brazilians, says Douglas Rodrigues, an epidemiologist and Indigenous health expert at the Federal University of Sao Paulo.   Eliminating SESAI and shifting responsibility to local governments would jeopardise those gains, Rodrigues says. Health care for remote Indigenous communities is expensive because it requires travel by plane or boat. Those districts are among the poorest in the country and the least able to afford those costs, he said.   Many Indigenous territories are also very large. The Xingu Indigenous Park, where Rodrigues works part time, covers an area nearly the size of Haiti and overlaps five districts, which would have to coordinate health services under the restructuring plan, Rodrigues says.   Studies link territory loss to poor health indicators, and Bolsonaro's plan to reduce the size of Indigenous territories and make it easier for mining companies and large-scale agribusinesses to operate there could further undermine Indigenous health.   FUNAI's budget and personnel cuts have also made it difficult for the agency to protect Indigenous people and their territories. These cuts leave lands open to invasion by loggers or ranchers, resulting in higher rates of violence, as well as malaria, Rodrigues says. Lifestyle changes tied to the fragmentation of Indigenous lands have raised rates of alcoholism, domestic violence, and suicide, he says.   In Atalaia do Norte, a small town on the Brazil-Peru border in the Amazon Basin, several hundred Indigenous people staged a protest on March 27 against the proposal to turn Indigenous health care over to local governments. The town lies just outside a vast, roadless area inhabited by five known Indigenous peoples, as well as smaller, semi-nomadic groups that shun contact with the outside world.   SESAI attends the health needs of the contacted groups while FUNAI is responsible for protecting the isolated groups, who lack immunity even to common diseases, from contact with outsiders.   'The Indigenous health system was built piece by piece, with much discussion over many years between experts and Indigenous leaders', said Jorge Marubo, SESAI coordinator in Atalaia. If the system is turned over to local governments, he predicted, 'many people will die' because of inadequate management. http://bit.ly/2YtnNuD Visit the related web page
	Indigenous peoples and the anti-trafficking sector's blindspot by Joanna Ewart-James Freedom United   The opportunity to highlight the intersection with trafficking for exploitation to mark the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples was obvious, considering the well-documented discrimination indigenous peoples face.   The International Labour Organisation was one of the first to recognise indigenous peoples’ rights as human rights under international law with the adoption of Convention 107, followed by Convention 169.   However, the precious little published material available and accessible on this subject suggests that the anti-trafficking sector has failed indigenous people.   Our research threw up a handful of reports on individual countries, which we have collated into this briefing to provide the start of a global overview of the experience of indigenous peoples and human trafficking.   We hope that this will mark a turnaround, exposing the long-standing need to build a better understanding of the trafficking experience of indigenous peoples, so that we are better equipped to stand in solidarity with indigenous communities defending their rights.   Indigenous peoples continue to be subjected to trafficking and forced labor today. To make matters worse, these communities are often overlooked by global anti-trafficking efforts. In this briefing we break down how some of the world’s indigenous communities are impacted by trafficking. Visit the related web page
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