On August 8 and 9, 2023, the Brazilian city of Belém hosted the Amazon Summit, an uncommon gathering that brought together the presidents of Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana and Surinam to discuss the region’s questions. A key agenda item, among others, was the main motive for the meeting: the urgent challenge of combating deforestation.
The Summit resulted in the Belém Declaration, where the presidents suggest two lines of action. The first is promoting “sustainable development”; the second is the “full protection” or “preservation” of the Amazon region, with the target of “zero deforestation” by 2030. In one of the sentences in the Declaration the presidents state that they intend to “fight deforestation” and, at the same time, “eradicate and halt the advance of illegal natural resource extraction activities” [emphasis added].
Following this line of reasoning, the Declaration seems to suggest that there would be no problems if corporations or other actors involved in extractivism in mining, oil, timber and agribusiness, or the large scale hydro-electric power plants, highways, railways and ports that the extractivist model needs, conducted their activities legally, with up-to-date licenses.
But the reality of the Amazon region demonstrates the exact opposite. The abovementioned sectors connected with the model of industrial extractivism are notorious drivers of deforestation. When conducted illegally they only tend to increase their destructive and violent impacts. The Belém Declaration, fails to even mention these causes, let alone analyze their serious impacts on the territories of indigenous peoples, riverine populations, and traditional and peasant communities.
The stark reality is that in the name of “sustainable development” the governments of the Amazon region continue to provide incentives to extractivism. Owing to this, they do not admit committing themselves to structural measures that break with the extractivist model, like ceasing oil extraction in the Amazon region, as proposed by one of the presidents who took part in the meeting. For this reason, the very concept of “sustainable development” has become an underlying, indirect cause of deforestation. It means that when the presidents call for more “sustainable development” in the Belém Declaration, in practice they are also calling for more deforestation.
At present, it is hard to find a destructive sector in the Amazon region that does not term itself “sustainable”: “sustainable” forest management, “sustainable” soy beans, “sustainable” palm oil, “sustainable” mining, everything has become “sustainable”. The sectors also use other artifices, such as “quality seals” issued by voluntary “sustainability” certifiers.
In the days leading up to the Summit, thousands of people, including many indigenous people, gathered in Belém for an event called “Amazon Dialogues”, an initiative of the Brazilian government itself, claiming to intend to encourage civil society participation in the Summit. However, the content of the proposals and reflections handed in, in the form of letters, was not included in the final declaration.
At the same time, what was notable about these “Dialogues” was the strong presence of major conservationist NGOs that make a habit of using such spaces to emphasize concepts and new narratives. In Belém, they talked a lot about the “bioeconomy” and the idea of promoting a “living forest”, in a reference to the Amazon forest itself.
“Living forest” is an expression that sounds nice, but also sounds weird. After all, which forest would not be alive? It reminds one of another term these same NGOs have propagated: forest standing. “Forest standing? I’ve never seen a forest lying down,” said a community leader once, upon hearing the term.
The “forest standing” symbolizes well the vision that the promoters of the bioeconomy – large scale transnationals responsible for the destruction of the Amazon region, as well as the big conservationist NGOs – have of the forest: an opportunity for new business deals, like the sale of carbon credits that benefit polluting companies, now “carbon neutral”, at the same time they re-christen their “old” extractive business activities as part of the “green economy”, producing “biofuels” and expanding mining for the “green transition” of the economy.
The promoters of the bioeconomy seek to ally with governments and major organizations of indigenous peoples and traditional populations. They make invitations to closed-door events with few participants. For example, in January 2023, the governor of Pará state, Helder Barbalho, attended the World Economic Forum in Davos to present his state’s “Bioeconomy Plan” to the elites of global capital – a plan formulated by conservationist NGO TNC, by the way. (1) In June, the “Pan-Amazon Bioeconomy Conference” took place in Rio de Janeiro, with the participation of billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Earth Fund, the World Bank, WWF and also the regional Amazon indigenous organization COICA, among others. (2) In August, the “Amazon and New Economies International Conference” was held. It was supported, among others, by the Pará state government and by Vale, (3) one of the world’s largest mining corporations, responsible for two of the most serious environmental crimes in Brazil’s history, in Brumadinho and Mariana, Minas Gerais state.
Despite not using the word “bioeconomy”, the Belém Declaration summarizes perfectly the idea that its promoters seek to impose: more “sustainable development” with more “conservation” and always with a view to new business opportunities.
The Belém Declaration also talks about “Guarantee[ing] the rights of indigenous peoples, local and traditional communities, including the right to the territories and lands inhabited by such peoples, [with] full and effective possession”. But events surrounding the Summit soon questioned the validity of this promise.
On the eve of the Summit, in Tomé-Açu municipality, 200km from Belém, four Tembé indigenous people were shot during two confrontations with security guards of a company called Brasil Biofuels (BBF). The Tembé are fighting for the Brazilian government to demarcate their territory seized by BBF. This is a company that with all sorts of state support has and is expanding a monoculture plantation with the aim of producing dendê palm oil and biofuel for the bioeconomy (see the article in this bulletin).
One of the participants of the “Amazon Dialogues”, leader Alessandra Munduruku, from a people that has fought for years to have its territory demarcated, vented: “We must put an end to this violence urgently. What we need is the demarcation of indigenous territories. Enough talk of bioeconomy, of sustainability, when there is violence in the here and now.” (4)
The Tropical Forestry Action Plan (TFAP) released by the World Bank and FAO in 1986 was similar to the Belém Declaration of 2023, proposing actions to promote “development” with the “protection” of the forest. It is worth remembering that TFAP failed. It resulted in more destruction of forests and more problems for communities that depend on the forest and were unjustly blamed for deforestation. Forty years after the World Bank’s failed plan, history repeats itself, thus signaling that for the indigenous peoples and traditional populations of the Amazon region there is no option but to continue strengthening more and more their coordination, their integration and their resistance struggles.
(1) WRM Bulletin, REDD and the Green Economy exacerbate oppression and deforestation in Pará, Brazil, July 2023.
(2) Conferência Pan-Amazônica pela Bioeconomia reúne líderes e especialistas para debater formas de impulsar a bioeconomia na Amazônia, June 2019.
(3) Conferência Internacional Amazônia e Novas Economias; Pará e mineração valorizam bioeconomia para promover desenvolvimento sustentável da Amazônia
(4) Na véspera da Cúpula da Amazônia, duas mulheres e um homem do povo Tembé são baleados no Pará.
On August 20, 2023, the Ecuadorian people went to the polls for early elections to choose a president and representatives to the National Assembly. Additionally, there were two popular referenda on the ballot: in Quito, a referendum to stop mining in the Andean Chocó region; and nationally, a referendum to leave oil underground in the ITT block within the Yasuní National Park. Almost 60 percent of voters in Ecuador said Yes to leaving oil in Yasuní. This meant that within one year of this decision, the oil wells would have to be shut down, the infrastructure removed, and a process of repairing the affected area begun.
The Yasuní National Park is one of the most biodiverse areas of the world and home to Indigenous Peoples, including the Tagaeri and Taromenane Peoples who are in voluntary isolation. There is also oil underground in Yasuní, and three oil blocks within its territory: Block 16, which is in decline, and which changed hands from REPSOL to the Ecuadorian state company; Block 31, which has very little crude; and ITT, or Block 43, which the state company, PetroEcuador, has been operating. In 2016, extraction began from its fields, which had proven reserves of almost 900 million barrels of oil. This oil is very heavy. To extract it requires a lot of energy, and the process generates high amounts of toxic waste waters and other contaminants.
Due to this reality, and to the struggle of many organizations and collectives, the Yasuní victory was, without a doubt, very moving and long-awaited. But like any success, it brings challenges.
In Block 43 in Yasuní, also known as Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT), an oil enclave has been built which must now be dismantled and removed from the site. But what does its removal involve? How can a sacrificed territory be recovered? What are the actions that will bring justice, in light of the abuses committed against nature and the peoples in Yasuní?
As background information, it is worth remembering that on August 22, 2013, various collectives that came together and named themselves Yasunidos presented a request for a popular referendum to the National Electoral Council of Ecuador. The referendum asked the following question: "Do you agree that the Ecuadorian government should keep the crude oil in ITT, known as Block 43, underground indefinitely?" This popular referendum sought to protect the life and territory of the Tagaeri and Taromenane indigenous peoples and the other communities within Yasuní National Park.
Ten years later, on August 20, 2023, and after overcoming all kinds of obstruction on the part of the State, the Yasuní referendum took place. Simultaneously, a regional referendum held in the district of Quito sought to ban mining activities in another mega-diverse area of the country, the Andean Chocó. In this public referendum, almost 69 percent of Quito residents voted Yes to life over mining.
There was broad debate on the public referendum. The choice between maintaining extractivism or stopping it became central during the electoral process. Despite the fact that most of the presidential candidates openly opposed keeping the oil in the ground, and the major media outlets showed a clear bias toward convincing people to vote against it, there was a positive response to the referendum—which received the support of 59 percent of the national electorate. None of the candidates received as much support.
According to the Constitutional Court ruling 6-22-CP/23, the Yes vote in the Yasuní referendum means that the State is obligated to carry out a gradual and orderly withdrawal of all activities related to oil extraction, and within a timeframe of no more than one year after the official results were made public. Furthermore, the State cannot take any action to initiate new contractual relationships to continue exploiting Block 43.
The Yasuní referendum leaves us with several lessons:
- Battles are long, hard, and at different scales. But it is possible to build ecological and social awareness. And we can prevail against the backwards forces that impose a cult of capitalism and extractivism—the spearhead of accumulation and dispossession.
- The way we fight for the future is by caring for life and nature, which is neither alien nor distant. Nature is the forest and its people, rivers and communities, the diverse beings and relationships in our territories. Nature is not an adversary; it is an ally. Current and projected disasters are not natural; they are created by global and local actions and inactions.
- These transitions—which are now inevitable—must involve not only curbing the expansion of extractive frontiers, but also recovering and restoring sacrificed territories. This is not just a battle for the future. It is a battle to rebuild what has been damaged, and to recover nature's regenerative capacity, the self-determination of peoples over their territories, and autonomy in the resolution of problems and conflicts.
There have been several attempts to violate the popular mandate, as well as assertions about the impossibility of applying it. The former Minister of Energy from Guillermo Lasso's administration said that "never in the history of the world has such an important oil field that produces almost 60,000 barrels a day been shut down." However, Petroecuador has already presented a timeline for closure, and it plans to start the shutdown on August 31, 2024. This gives us time to prepare for this process and to monitor it in the territory.
2024 will be a year of a lot of activity in Yasuní. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has a pending visit related to the case of Peoples in Voluntary Isolation, before it can issue its sentence on the lack of state protection. The peoples living in Yasuní are calling out the state's lack of compliance with economic, social and cultural rights, and its dependence on the oil industry.
There is also pressure from powerful groups with ties to the oil industry that are reluctant to lose a source of income. Figures related to the costs of decommissioning the block are tossed around—without any explanation—and many people are talking about new cases of corruption. There is no information on what the industry recognizes as the "assets and liabilities" that will have to be withdrawn.
2024 will be a year of much reflection; and there will also be proposals coming from defenders of life and nature, surely with the collaboration and help of nature herself. These are moments to rethink how to build utopia, and how to rebuild autonomy and sovereignty. This is a time to bring justice to areas affected by oil activity, with the solidarity of the whole country. And most of all, it is a time to reconsider, from the ground up, the true costs and impacts of these oil operations—from exploitation, to withdrawal, to holistic reparation.
When we talk about oil operations, we know that there is a series of studies and procedures that companies have to present in order to obtain their license. One of these studies is the abandonment plan; what we didn't know until now was that "abandonment" does not mean merely bringing down platforms or abandoning wells.
A true repair of the Yasuní-ITT should involve removing everything, so that it looks like it used to—before these activities that never should have happened. This infrastructure must be dismantled and removed, the ecosystems must be rehabilitated, and the autonomy of peoples and nature must be restored, repaired and recovered.
Esperanza Martínez
Acción Ecológica
The eastern portion of the Brazilian Amazon has the highest rates of deforestation and forest degradation in the country. Yet, in this vast territory there are still large areas in a good state of protection, which—as scientific studies from various parts of the world have corroborated—usually correspond with the territories of Indigenous Peoples and/or local communities. (1) One of these areas is the Alto Turiaçu indigenous territory where the Ka'apor People live, which spans 530,524 hectares throughout six municipalities in the northwestern part of Maranhão state. It is home to a population of approximately 2,600 people in 20 communities. This is the largest indigenous territory of the Eastern Amazon, and also the largest portion of preserved rainforest in the region.
The care of the forest, which academia and other social sectors call conservation, is based on—among other things—values and deep relationships with the territory; these include cultural, customary, spiritual and political values. Their traditional knowledge and practices have allowed them to simultaneously make use of and care for, the territory. These concepts and knowledge are not static; on the contrary, they evolve along with their cultures and adapt and respond to emerging needs. This is how the Ka'apor created, for example, monitoring and community-driven surveillance strategies.
The Ka'apor have faced many external threats. Over the years, invasions of their territory have increased, and even public officials have been implicated in assaults, the leasing of land, and the use of fake documents to misappropriate indigenous territory. Faced with this situation, a significant number of village leaders came together in 2012 and started to devise their own surveillance activities. They established small communities at the entrances of roads used by loggers, which they later called protection areas, or ka'a usak ha in their language. This was one of the successful experiences to neutralize aggression and invasion of their territory.
In September 2013, the Ka'apor created the first protected area in the municipality of Centro Novo do Maranhão, where, in December of the same year, they decided to bring back an organizational system called Tuxa Ta Pame, or Ka'apor Management Council. "It is a form of ancestral and collective organization of the people, which harkens back to and references the ancient Tuxa; these warriors left their mark on history for fighting and for giving their lives, for being masters of knowledge and culture, and for being strategists in the defense of their people and culture," members of the Council explained in an interview with WRM. In this system there are no bosses, chiefs, caciques or others in power; decisions are not made by a leader, but rather by the community, in groups and collectives. "Everyone is important and has a leading role in the defense [of the territory]. When there is an action of self-defense, the whole group goes. No one claims to direct others, but everyone who feels threatened shows up to the confrontation," they noted.
They also established the Jupihu Katu Ha, which is a Ka'apor agreement around coexistence. It was created with the intention to support unity and exercise collective and responsible governance. The Tuxa Ta Pame is based on consensual, horizontal and participatory decisions.
It is necessary to highlight the relevance of these decisions in terms of autonomy and sovereignty. In having their own inclusive forms of government and organization—far removed from models such as representative democracy—the Ka'apor make space for the voices and direct participation of different sections of this indigenous group. One example of this is the Ka'apor self-defense guard, which is made up of families, women, elders, children, and even domesticated animals. Everyone has a responsibility and a task to carry out. In other words, everyone imagines, lives in, enjoys, appropriates and defends the territory.
Over time, and with the increase in attacks and threats, the Ka'apor have expanded their actions of territorial defense. They have implemented new forms of protection with community-driven surveillance and carried out a participatory process to map the Ka'apor biocultural ecosystems. They have even adopted and implemented a syntropic agroforestry system, an agricultural and productive system created a few decades ago that imitates the rainforest and its organization—in particular by reducing external inputs, and the accumulation and disposal of energy. This has all gone hand in hand with actions of solidarity related to education and health.
However, as community-driven surveillance has increased, so have assaults and murders—acts in which loggers, landowners, hunters, traders and local politicians have been involved. In the last ten years, more than 50 community members have been assaulted, two communities have been invaded, and there have been almost 15 murders.
Despite all of this, the forest the Ka´apor are taking care of is still largely intact. Recently, outsiders unfamiliar with the territory have arrived, allegedly to teach the Ka'apor how to do what they have done for centuries—protect their territory. They are advocating a REDD project. This raises the question of who actually needs to learn about having a relationship with the forest and caring for it? Have these outsiders really come with the intention of caring for the forest?
In early 2023, the company Wildlife Works and the NGO Forest Trends, both from the United States, arrived in the Ka’apor territory with a proposal to implement a REDD project (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) that would generate and sell carbon credits. They arrived being introduced by indigenous people from the state of Pará,.
The Ka'apor Ta Hury Association of the Gurupi River is another organization in the territory. The association has a chief with whom the company and the NGO have established closer communication. This association, which does not represent all of the Ka’apor, says they are in agreement with the project. They say the project could improve their quality of life and provide resources to complement forest protection activities. Up to now, a memorandum of understanding has been signed. Tuxa Ta Pame denounces this document, because neither the company nor the NGO listened to them in the process that led to its signing.
As happens in many other territories around the world where the best-protected forests are found and fought over for carbon credit projects, indigenous peoples and communities are suffering the impacts. The mere arrival of a project announcement creates internal disputes and divisions.
The Ka'apor who oppose the REDD project proposal do so because it commodifies their way of life and increases internal conflicts. They know this firsthand, as they already suffered a similar experience with a dry timber commercialization project that took place on their territory from 2006 to 2013. In that case, they felt deceived by those who involved them in the project—which included the state itself, the federal government, and even the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI, by its Portuguese acronym). The commercialization project left conflict in its wake, as well as death and suffering, an experience which the Ka'apor do not wish to repeat. (2) Unfortunately, the current presence of outsiders and their proposed project is already causing conflict and deepened divisions among the Ka'apor.
Due to the tenor of the situation, a complaint has already been filed with the Federal Public Ministry (MPF, by its Portuguese acronym), an entity that has stated that any process that involves prior consultation must include dialogue with both groups, and that consensus must reflect a good outcome for both of them. (3)
When Beto Borges, a representative of Forest Trends, was asked about what the NGO's position would be if the Ka'apor did not reach consensus, he said that the project would not proceed—which demonstrates the importance of consensus in a decision of this magnitude. However, the response from the Wildlife Works representative, Lider Sucre, differs considerably, as he does not give relevance to consent. Instead, he emphasizes the decision of the collective: "There will never be complete unanimity. In a community process there are always different points of view. At the end of the process, we will abide by the decision of the collective, whether it is for or against". (4) However, this immediately raises the question: What does this corporate officer understand by the ‘decision of the collective’? After all, part of the collective has already decided to reject the project.
In keeping with the modus operandi of organizations like theirs, Forest Trends and Wildlife Works have begun to disseminate biased information about REDD; meanwhile, there is very important information that they are not sharing. For example, they have not shared information with the Ka'apor about the irregularities, complaints and impacts of other REDD projects where Wildlife Works is involved, in Kenya, the DR Congo and Cambodia. (5)
In November 2023, The Guardian newspaper published a report (6) based on research carried out by the Kenya Human Rights Commission and the NGO SOMO (7), which documents allegations against Wildlife Works staff in the Kasigau project in Kenya. Senior company staff were accused of sexual abuse and harassment committed over more than a decade. Men associated with the company used their position to demand sex in exchange for promotions and better treatment. The investigation by a Kenyan law firm found evidence of "deeply inappropriate and harmful behavior" by two individuals.
The president of Wildlife Works himself, Mike Korchinsky, apologized for the pain this has caused and reported that three people had been suspended—stressing that this was not a generalized problem. It is worth noting that it this is a very common reaction to downplay the significance or extent of the abuse of this kind of project (8) and insist that they reported incidents are isolated cases.. However, the repetition of these events over time suggests that they are actually systemic in nature.
The fundamental problem behind these serious situations is that REDD projects are encouraged and promoted as an exclusively positive intervention for communities and territories, without mentioning the history of negative impacts. That is, essential information -complete, truthful and impartial- is hidden from people who are faced with making a decision about a project in their territory.
Once they identified the threat, Tuxa Ta Pame determined that it was necessary to seek more information that would allow them to comprehensively understand what the REDD mechanism is about, how it works, what it is based on, and what the implications for the population and territory would be.
After Tuxa Ta Pame began its own research process, external actors arrived to provide a simplistic and biased explanation about REDD and the generation of carbon credits to finance the project, which they claim would begin to provide benefits to people upon their mere signing of attendance sheets at meetings. However, members of the Ka'apor have been investigating, seeking other points of view, and most of all, learning about the experience of other communities that have a defined position on the matter. This is how they have reached their own conclusions.
The Tuxa Ta Pame council and the communities organized through it understand REDD to be "a camouflaged capitalist mechanism to keep the world polluted and threaten the autonomy of territories. Because it transfers responsibility from public to private power. Because it creates division and monetizes natural goods. We always defend the territory, because we believe it is our life. We never need to receive money in order to live and protect the forest". (9)
Based on that understanding of REDD, they decided to bring the topic into educational and training processes that take place in three training hubs which provide direction for five Ka'apor cultural and community education centers. The topic has become part of school and training activities, and they created bilingual primers about it. By the end of 2023, they had been carrying out training activities for seven months. This led to the initiative to create a Ka'apor autonomous community protocol which is currently under construction.
So, what is required for the forest to continue to exist?
It is necessary to guarantee conditions for the Ka'apor to remain in their territory in a safe and decent manner; this implies, among other things, respecting their own forms of political organization, decision-making and management of their territory and livelihoods. It must be stressed, once again, that REDD-type projects—which often cause conflict and impacts even before they get approved or implemented—are generally established in territories with a good state of protection, as in the case in Alto Turiaçu. It is the Ka'apor who have guaranteed these conditions, based on their knowledge, practices, relationship with and defense of the territory—without the need for outside projects or market mechanisms that limit or control what "should" be done, according to the people promoting these projects and mechanisms.
This article was prepared by the WRM Secretariat, based on interviews with members of the Ka'apor Tuxa Ta Pame Management Council.
(1) Porter-Bolland L. et al, 2012. Land use, cover change, deforestation, protected areas, community forestry, tenure rights, tropical forests. Forest ecology and management. Vol 268:6-17
(2) Video: Intercept Brasil, Empresa americana alimenta conflito indígena para lucrar com reparação ambiental, 2023.
(3) Article: Intercept Brasil, Empresa americana alimenta conflito indígena para lucrar com reparação ambiental, 2023.
(4) Idem 3
(5) REDD-Minus: the rethoric and reality of the Mai-N´dombe REDD+ Programme, 2020; Fortress conservation in Wildlife Alliance’s Southern Cardamom REDD+ Project: Evictions, violence, and burning people’s homes. “We’re proud of our work. The forest, the wildlife, you come to feel they’re yours”. 2021.
(6) The Guardian, Allegations of extensive sexual abuse at Kenyan offsetting project used by Shell and Netflix, November 2023.
(7) SOMO, Offsetting human rights. Sexual abuse and harassment at the Kasigau Corridor REDD+ Project in Kenya, November 2023.
(8) WRM, 15 Years of REDD: A mechanism Rotten at the Core, April 2022. .
(9) Interview with members of the Tuxa Ta Pame Ka'apor Management Council.