COP27
- At the COP27 climate summit, Brazil’s president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called for wealthy nations to comply with climate agreements and stressed that the fight against climate change will be a priority under his government.
- Also at COP27, recently elected member of congress Marina Silva said Brazil’s new government will financially compensate indigenous peoples and quilombolas (descendants of escaped enslaved peoples) for their role in protecting nature.
- Late Brazilian trade union leader and environmentalist Chico Mendes’ maxim that “the standing forest is worth more than the felled forest” may become a reality, thanks to the bioeconomy.
‘Opec of the Rainforests’
- Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo have formed a conservation alliance to preserve their tropical rainforests. The three countries are home to 52% of the world’s remaining primary tropical forests, the preservation of which is vital to combating climate change.
President-elect of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, attends a meeting at COP 27 in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt. Photo: Reuters/Mohamed Abd El Ghany
Ministry of Native Peoples
- Brazil’s president-elect Lula has confirmed his government is to create a Ministry of Native Peoples. He also announced the transition team for the new ministry, which will include three indigenous representatives: newly elected congresswoman Sônia Guajajara, current member of congress Joênia Wapichana and Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa.
- Students taking Brazil’s 2022 university entrance exam were asked to write an essay on the country’s native peoples. According to Dinamam Tuxá, executive coordinator of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, the essay, entitled “The challenges of valuing Brazil’s traditional communities and peoples”, is part of “preparing the land” for increasing awareness of why a specialized ministry for the country’s native peoples is needed.
Crime in the Amazon
- A Yanomami woman has been murdered in Boa Vista, the capital of the state of Roraima. Two men cycled past the encampment where the woman was living with other Yanomami, on Avenida Venezuela in the south of the city, firing at random. The indigenous woman, mother of a baby, was shot and killed, while a man was shot in the arm. The indigenous community is from the Ajarani region, in the south of Roraima.
- Evidence of fraud has been uncovered in the granting of licenses for the expansion of the BR-319 highway under Jair Bolsonaro’s government. Minimum environmental licensing requirements were not met, while agents from Funai, Brazil’s federal agency of Indigenous affairs, lied about carrying out prior consultations with indigenous peoples affected by the project.
- Three prominent figures in Brazil’s cattle industry have appropriated public land in the Amazon to turn it into pasture.
- A group of NGOs has filed a petition with the prosecutor’s office of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, demanding an investigation into a criminal network operating in the Amazon. The network, which involves both public agents and private individuals, is accused of causing serious damage to the rainforest between 2011 and 2021.
Translated by James Young
