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How the front line of Brazil’s land rights campaign bleeds into Britain’s climate pledge

Pará state is the epicentre of deforestation and land conflict in the Brazilian Amazon, a biome that also acts as the world’s natural defence against the human actions that are heating up our planet. It is experiencing a deeply worrying moment, and one which should alarm a British government which has committed to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

In May we saw the highest rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon since current recording methods began, and in January 2019 there was a reported 54 per cent increase in deforestation in the compared with January 2018.

As a land rights lawyer I support landless communities in their struggle for social and environmental justice in the Amazon.

My family moved to Pará state when I was nine as landless migrants. During my lifetime, the climate here has changed dramatically, in part due to the burning and deforestation of the forest. Today this is totally out of control. Since the paving of the Brasília-Belém highway in 1974, around 70 per cent of Pará’s forests have been removed, mainly for monocultures of soya and cattle ranching.

Environmental crimes – devastating areas equivalent to several European countries – have left a trail of extreme violence towards human rights defenders and rural workers who struggle for land rights in the region. The organisation I work for – CPT (Pastoral Land Commission) – has registered more than 900 murders in Pará alone in the last five decades. Behind this lies a model of economic development imposed by the state which prioritises logging, cattle ranching, mining and, more recently, production of grains like soya.

I accompany legal cases to try to bring the perpetrators of these crimes to justice. One such case is that of José Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espirito Santo, a couple who lived in a nearby municipality, Nova Ipixuna. We helped the farmers there – coordinated by José Claudio and Maria – to create a 22,000 hectare forested settlement in the south-east of Pará, with an abundance of native species such as Brazil nut, açaí, cupuaçu, andiroba, and copaiba, all of which protect the soil and water sources.

There was a lot of pressure from loggers who lived in the municipality who wanted to acquire the valuable wood in this area. There was also growing pressure from ranchers who were trying to expand their operations into the area.

The couple became role models for others who sought to protect the integrity of the forest, but over time, death threats arrived and steadily increased.

For years we supported them in alerting the authorities to the threats, and to the environmental crimes in the forest. But the state did little in response. In 2011, José Claudio and Maria were murdered.

We secured the convictions of two of the people who carried out the crime and one of those who ordered the killings. However, even though the men responsible were eventually condemned to 43 and 60 years jail respectively, they are still free.

Brazil has a legal system where you can be tried in absentia for a crime and arrested afterwards to complete your sentence. This puts those defending the environment and human rights in a very vulnerable position in the Amazon, because not only does the state fail to provide the necessary protection needed to be able to carry out their work safely, when they suffer violence, those responsible can effectively go unpunished.

I have also been supporting families that survived the Pau D’Arco massacre, where 10 landless rural workers were killed by the police. It has been a long struggle for justice, and for a third time, the families are facing eviction, due to a failure of the government to provide adequate funding which would guarantee this community a secure place to call home.

Currently, 2,000 families from 12 communities are facing eviction orders, and it is likely this situation will worsen, potentially affecting 160 communities that do not have land rights in the region.

This must all seem very detached from the grand commitments of Theresa May, but the lesson must be that the fight against climate change has a dangerous and brutal front line. A front line where there is more at stake than a prime minister’s legacy from her time in Downing Street.

That’s why during my trip to Europe this month, I am working with CAFOD to ask the UK government to do more to protect human rights defenders who challenge large-scale investment projects, and demonstrate that it is serious about meeting commitments on business and human rights, as part of its new climate pledge.

We are also calling for individuals to take action, addressing lifestyle choices such as choosing to not eat meat exported from conflict lands in the Amazon.

Britain’s target for net zero greenhouse gas emissions is a statement of intent, but there is far more to this debate. To help stop the destruction of Brazil’s precious lands, forests, and rivers, and protect the people that call the Amazon home, the UK’s climate change strategy must be joined-up with the UK’s foreign investment strategy.

José Batista Gonçalves Afonso is a land rights lawyer at CPT (Pastoral Land Commission) Marabá in Brazil.