BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — From the depths of Brazil’s Amazon to Indonesia’s rainforests, some of the world’s most isolated peoples are being squeezed by roads, miners and drug traffickers — a crisis unfolding far from public view or effective state protection.
A new report by Survival International, a London-based Indigenous rights organization, attempts one of the broadest tallies yet, identifying at least 196 uncontacted Indigenous groups in 10 countries, primarily in the South American nations sharing the Amazon rainforest. Released Sunday, the report estimates that nearly 65% face threats from logging, about 40% from mining and around 20% from agribusiness.
“These are what I would call silent genocides — there are no TV crews, no journalists. But they are happening, and they’re happening now,” said Fiona Watson, Survival’s research and advocacy director, who has worked on Indigenous rights for more than three decades.
The issue often receives little priority from governments, which critics say see uncontacted peoples as politically marginal because they don’t vote and their territories are often coveted for logging, mining and oil extraction. Public debate is also shaped by stereotypes — some romanticize them as “lost tribes,” while others view them as barriers to development.
Survival’s research concludes that half of these groups “could be wiped out within 10 years if governments and companies do not act.”
Who the uncontacted peoples are
Uncontacted peoples are not “lost tribes” frozen in time, Watson said. They are contemporary societies that deliberately avoid outsiders after generations of violence, slavery and disease.
“They don’t need anything from us,” Watson said. “They’re happy in the forest. They have incredible knowledge and they help keep these very valuable forests standing — essential to all humanity in the fight against climate change.”
Survival’s research shows that more than 95% of the world’s uncontacted peoples live in the Amazon, with smaller populations in South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific. These communities live by hunting, fishing and small-scale cultivation, maintaining languages and traditions that predate modern nation-states.
Why contact can be deadly
Groups living in voluntary isolation have “minimal to no contact with those outside of their own group,” said Dr. Subhra Bhattacharjee, director general of the Forest Stewardship Council and an Indigenous rights expert based in Bonn, Germany. “A simple cold that you and I recover from in a week … they could die of that cold.”
Beyond disease, contact can destroy livelihoods and belief systems. International law requires free, prior and informed consent — known as FPIC — before any activity on Indigenous lands.
“But when you have groups living in voluntary isolation, who you cannot get close to without risking their lives, you cannot get FPIC,” Bhattacharjee said. “No FPIC means no consent.”
Her organization follows a strict policy: “No contact, no-go zones,” she said, arguing that if consent cannot be obtained safely, contact should not occur at all.
The Associated Press reported last year on loggers killed by bow and arrow after entering Mashco Piro territory in Peru’s Amazon, with Indigenous leaders warning that such clashes are inevitable when frontier zones go unpoliced.
How the threats have evolved
Watson, who has worked across the Amazon for 35 years, said early threats stemmed from colonization and state-backed infrastructure. During Brazil’s military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985, highways were bulldozed through the rainforest “without due regard” for the people living there.
“The roads acted as a magnet for settlers,” she said, describing how loggers and cattle ranchers followed, bringing gunmen and disease that wiped out entire communities.
A railway line now planned in Brazil could potentially affect three uncontacted peoples, she said, but the rise of organized crime poses an even greater risk.
Across Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, drug traffickers and illegal gold miners have moved deep into Indigenous territories. “Any chance encounter runs the risk of transmitting the flu, which can easily wipe out an uncontacted people within a year of contact,” she said. “And bows and arrows are no match for guns.”
Evangelical missionary incursions have also caused outbreaks. Watson recalled how, under former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, an evangelical pastor was placed in charge of the government’s unit for uncontacted peoples and gained access to their coordinates. “Their mission was to force contact — to ‘save souls,’” she said. “That is incredibly dangerous.”
Ways to protect uncontacted peoples
Protecting uncontacted peoples, experts say, will require both stronger laws and a shift in how the world views them — not as relics of the past, but as citizens of the planet whose survival affects everyone’s future.
Advocates have several recommendations.
First, governments must formally recognize and enforce Indigenous territories, making them off-limits to extractive industries.
Mapping is crucial, Bhattacharjee said, because identifying the approximate territories of uncontacted peoples allows governments to protect those areas from loggers or miners. But, she added, it must be done with extreme caution and from a distance to avoid contact that could endanger the groups’ health or autonomy.
Second, corporations and consumers must help stop the flow of money driving destruction. Survival’s report calls for companies to trace their supply chains to ensure that commodities such as gold, timber and soy are not sourced from Indigenous lands.
“Public opinion and pressure are essential,” Watson said. “It’s largely through citizens and the media that so much has already been achieved to recognize uncontacted peoples and their rights.”
Finally, advocates say the world must recognize why their protection matters. Beyond human rights, these communities play an outsized role in stabilizing the global climate.
“With the world under pressure from climate change, we will sink or swim together,” Bhattacharjee said.
Governments’ uneven response
International treaties such as the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 and the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples affirm the right to self-determination and to remain uncontacted if they choose. But enforcement varies widely.
In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has sought to rebuild protections weakened under Bolsonaro, boosting budgets and patrols.
And in Ecuador, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled this year that the government failed to protect the Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples who live in voluntary isolation in Yasuni National Park.
Watson warned that political forces tied to agribusiness and evangelical blocs are now working to roll back earlier gains.
“Achievements of the last 20 or 30 years are in danger of being dismantled,” she said.
What the new report calls for
Survival International’s report urges a global no-contact policy: legal recognition of uncontacted territories, suspension of mining, oil and agribusiness projects in or near those lands and prosecution of crimes against Indigenous groups.
Watson said logging remains the biggest single threat, but mining is close behind. She pointed to the uncontacted Hongana Manyawa on Indonesia’s Halmahera Island, where nickel for electric-vehicle batteries is being mined.
“People think electric cars are a green alternative,” she said, “but mining companies are operating on the land of uncontacted peoples and posing enormous threats.”
In South America, illegal gold miners in the Yanomami territory of Brazil and Venezuela continue to use mercury to extract gold — contamination that has poisoned rivers and fish.
“The impact is devastating — socially and physically,” Watson said.
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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Members of an Indigenous tribe who live deep in Peru’s Amazon rainforest and avoid contact with outsiders have been reported entering a neighboring village in what activists consider an alarming sign that the group is under stress from development.
The sightings of members of Mashco Piro tribe come as a logging company is building a bridge that could give outsiders easier access to the tribe’s territory, a move that could raise the risk of disease and conflict, according to Survival International, which advocates for Indigenous rights.
The Mashco Piro are among the world’s largest uncontacted groups, living without regular interaction with outside society to protect their culture and health. Even a simple cold can be deadly to the group because it lacks immunity to common diseases.
Loggers who encroached on the tribe’s lands have previously been killed.
Enrique Añez, president of the nearby Yine community, another Indigenous group, said in a statement Tuesday that Mashco Piro members had been seen around the Yine village of Nueva Oceania.
“It is very worrying; they are in danger,” Añez said.
Añez said heavy machinery near Nueva Oceania is cutting paths through the jungle and across rivers into Mashco Piro territory. The village sits at a key access point to the Mashco Piro’s territory, making it one of the few places where members of the tribe have occasionally been seen.
Increased risk for logging workers and Indigenous peoples
Survival International last year released photos showing dozens of Mashco Piro close to active logging zones. The group warns that contact with outsiders could spread disease or lead to violent conflict — risks that have previously wiped out other isolated groups in the Amazon.
Last year, two loggers were killed in bow-and-arrow attacks after entering Mashco Piro territory.
“Exactly one year after the encounters and the deaths, nothing has changed in terms of land protection and the Yine are now reporting to have seen both the Mashco Piro and the loggers exactly in the same space almost at the same time,” said Teresa Mayo, a researcher at Survival International. “The clash could be imminent.”
Mayo said the logging company near the Indigenous group has restarted operations as normal.
“They still have the license of the government, and that is how they back their activities even if they know they are putting both Mashco Piro and their workers’ lives at risk,” she said.
The Forest Stewardship Council — an international body that certifies sustainable wood products — has suspended its approval of the logging company, Maderera Canales Tahuamanu, until November. However, Survival International said the bridge and heavy machinery footprints are evidence that logging is still taking place.
The company’s concessions, or licensed logging areas, border the Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve and overlap recognized Mashco Piro land proposed by Indigenous organizations for new protections.
The Associated Press reached out to Maderera Canales Tahuamanu but did not receive an immediate response.
Peru’s Culture Ministry — tasked with promoting cultural identity and overseeing Indigenous rights — told AP it is reviewing Survival International’s report.
When questioned on what measures the government is taking to protect groups like the Mashco Piro it noted it has created eight reserves for Indigenous peoples in isolation, has five more pending, and operates 19 control posts with 59 protection agents. It said more than 440 patrols have been carried out this year and that its budget for protecting isolated communities more than doubled in 2025.
Encroachment fuels more encounters with isolated group
The Tahuamanu River is a key transport route in this part of the Amazon. A permanent bridge will allow year-round truck access, which environmentalists say could accelerate logging and deforestation deeper inside the forest.
Rights advocates say logging is pushing the Mashco Piro toward nearby villages, making encounters more likely.
César Ipenza, a Peruvian environmental lawyer following the issue, told AP “these Indigenous peoples are exposed and vulnerable to any type of contact or disease, yet extractive activities continue despite all the evidence of the problems they cause in the territory.”
He noted that the Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve — created by the Peruvian government in 2002 to protect the lands of uncontacted and recently contacted Indigenous peoples — has not prevented conflict because “they do not necessarily know its boundaries.”
Madre de Dios is a remote southeastern Amazon region bordering Brazil and Bolivia. It is one of Peru’s most biodiverse areas, but it has also been a hot spot for illegal gold mining, logging and other extractive industries that bring outsiders into contact with isolated tribes.
“The growing presence of forestry operations will almost certainly lead to renewed contact with isolated Indigenous peoples, creating a violent situation that endangers them as well as the workers in the area,” Ipenza said.
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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Indigenous women in Cali hold a protest commodificationof their traditional natural products. Majority of the indigenous organizations participants in the COP have been vocal about their opposition to biodiversitycredits, which they think is a false solution to halt biodiversity loss. Credit:Stella Paul/IPS COP16 Logo, installed at the conference venue atCali, Colombia. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS
by Stella Paul (cali, columbia)
Inter Press Service
CALI, Columbia, Oct 26 (IPS) – At the end of the first week at the 16th Conference of Parties on Biodiversity (COP16), finance emerges as the biggest issue but also shrouded in controversies.
On Saturday, as the COP moved closer to its most crucial phase of negotiations, resource mobilization—listed under Target 19 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF)—took centerstage, with most parties demanding faster action, greater transparency and the adoption of true solutions to halt biodiversity loss.
Biodiversity finance: Expectation vs Reality
On Thursday, October 24, the government of China formally announced that the Kunming Biodiversity Fund—first announced by Chinese president Xi Jinping in 2021—was now fully in operation. The fund promises to contribute USD 220 million over the next 10 years, which would be spent especially to help developing countries in implementation of the KMGBF and achieve its targets, said Huang Runqiu, Minister of Environment and Ecology, China, at a press conference. It wasn’t clear, however, how much of the promised amount had been deposited.
This has been the only news of resource mobilization for global biodiversity conservation received at COP16, as no other donors came forth with any further announcements of new financial pledges or contributions to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), which was expected to receive USD 400 billion in contribution by now but has only received a paltry USD 250 million. In addition, there were no announcements of the countries reducing their current spending on harmful subsidies that amount to USD 500 billion and cause biodiversity degradation and biodiversity loss.
In absence of new contributions and lack of any concrete progress on reduction of harmful subsidies, the new mechanisms like biodiversity credits to mobilize resources for implementation of the Global Biodiversity Fund is fast gaining traction.
From October 21–24, the COP16 witnessed a flurry of activities centered primarily around biodiversity credits and the building of new pathways to mobilize finance through this means. Experts from both the UN and the private sector were heard at various forums discussing the needs of developing tools and methodologies that would help mobilize new finance through biodiversity credits while also ensuring transparency.
COP16 logo, installed at the conference venue in Cali, Colombia. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS
Inclusiveness and the Questions
According to a 2023 report by the World Economic Forum, the demand for biodiversity credits could rise to USD 180 billion annually by 2050. The report said that if major companies stepped into the market, the annual demand for biodiversity credits could go to as high as USD 7 billion per year by 2030.
Experts from the UN and a variety of technical people with various backgrounds said that since biodiversity credits are still in their infancy, there will undoubtedly be a lot of scrutiny and criticism. The Biodiversity Credit Alliance is a group that provides guidance for the establishment of a biodiversity credit market. The urgent need, they said, was to develop infrastructure and policies that would help answer those questions and tackle the scrutiny. The first and foremost of them was to help build digital tools and infrastructure that could be used to share and store biodiversity data in a credible and transparent manner.
Nathalie Whitaker, co-founder of Toha Network in New Zealand, a group of nature-based business investors, said that her organization is building digital tools, especially for helping local communities to participate in biodiversity credit programs and access the benefits.
“Once the communities have these tools, they can instantly see what data is being used to pay for the biodiversity credits or even decide the value of the natural sources in their territory. So, they can see what resources are being discussed, what is being valued, how it’s being done and how the whole discussion is moving forward,” Whitaker said.
Fabian Shimdt-Pramov, another speaker at the event, said that the quality of the tools would decide the course and results of a biodiversity credits project.
Shimdt-Pramov, chief business development officer at Biometric Earth, a German company that uses artificial intelligence to build biodiversity analytics tools from different sources such as remote sensing, wildlife cameras, acoustic monitoring, etc.
“If methodology is not correct, if the data is not correct, the system doesn’t work,” he said, emphasizing on the requirement of high-level technological expertise that is needed to get a biodiversity credit project off the ground.
However, when questioned on the cost of buying such high-end technologies and tools, especially by Indigenous communities living in remote areas without any internet connectivity, both speakers appeared to be at a loss for words.
“I have seen in the Amazon a community selling five mahogany trees on the internet, so I am guessing it’s not a big challenge,” Shmidt-Pramov said in a dismissive voice. Whitaker acknowledged that lack of access to digital technology in Indigenous Peoples communities was an issue but had no solutions to propose.
Terence Hay-Edie of Nature ID, UNDP, however, stressed the need to empower the communities with the knowledge and skills that would help them access the tools and be part of a biodiversity credit.
As an example, he cites restoration of river-based biodiversity as a biodiversity credit project where a river is considered to have the same rights as a human being. According to him, if values of credits are counted and traded for restoration of biodiversity around a river, it will require recognition of all these rights that a river has, which is only possible when the community living along the river has full knowledge of what is at stake, what is restored, what value of the restored biodiversity is to be determined and how the pricing of that value will be decided.
“A river can be a legal entity and have a legal ID. Now, can we build some tools and put them in the hands of the community that is doing the restoration to know the details of it? That’s what we are looking at,” Hay-Edie said.
A False Solution?
However, Indigenous peoples organizations at the COP16 were overwhelmingly opposing biodiversity credits, which they called “commodifying nature.”
What are biodiversity credits? It’s basically regenerating biodiversity where it is destroyed and earning money from that. But it doesn’t work that way, according to Souparna Lahiri, senior climate change campaigner at Global Forest Coalition.
“If we talk of a forest, the ecosystem is not just about trees but about every life that thrives in and around it—the rivers, the animals, plants, bees, insects, flowers and all the organisms. Once destroyed, it’s lost forever. And when you regenerate it elsewhere, you can never guarantee that it will be an exact replica of what has been lost. This is why the very concept of biodiversity credit is a destructive idea,” says Lahiri.
Valentina Figuera, also of the Global Forest Coalition, said that while trading carbon credits could work as a tool in carbon change mitigation, it would not be the same in biodiversity.
“In climate change, you can measure the total carbon generated by a forest, for example. But in biodiversity, how do you measure it? What is the mechanism? How do you even value life that thrives there? So, this concept is a straight import from climate change and forcefully imposed in biodiversity, which is nothing but a false solution, so that businesses that cause biodiversity loss can conduct their business as usual.
The Dilemma of Participation
COP16, dubbed the “People’s Cop” by Colombia, the host country, has drawn several hundred representatives of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC), especially from across Latin America, including Colombia, Brazil, Panama, Venezuela and Peru. While the Latin American IPLC organizations appeared united in their opposition to biodiversity credits, African organizations seemed to be willing to consider it.
Mmboneni Esther Mathobo of the South African NGO International Institute of Environment said that her organization was in support of biodiversity credits, which could, she said, not only help the community earn money but also motivate them further to preserve biodiversity.
“We are influencing and making sure that our rights are safeguarded and protected in this newly emerging market of bringing biodiversity credits,” said Mathobo.
Currently, Namibia is implementing its first biodiversity carbon credits project in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Known as the Wildlife Credits Scheme, the project is known as a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) that rewards communities for protecting wildlife and biodiversity. Mathobo said that the project in Namibia made her realize that there was a great opportunity for local communities to conserve and restore biodiversity and earn from it.
“We faced many challenges to earn carbon credits because that system was established and created behind our heads. And now we wake up, but we find ourselves sitting with a lot of problems in that market where our communities are not even benefiting. But we believe that with the engagement of the biodiversity alliance, UNDP, we are going to be the ones making sure that whatever happens in the biodiversity credit market, it benefits all our regions and all our communities, as well as safeguarding and protecting our rights,” she said.
“To each their own, if Latin American indigenous communities feel they don’t want to trade natural resources, that’s their right. But in Africa, we have the potential to earn biodiversity credits and we need the money, so we are supporting it,” Mahobo commented when reminded of the opposition of Latin American countries to biodiversity credits.
Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
Inter Press Service
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 22 (IPS) – New institutional economics (NIE) has received another so-called Nobel prize, ostensibly for again claiming that good institutions and democratic governance ensure growth, development, equity and democracy.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson (AJR) are well known for their influential cliometric work. AJR have elaborated earlier laureate Douglass North‘s claim that property rights have been crucial to growth and development.
But the trio ignore North’s more nuanced later arguments. For AJR, ‘good institutions’ were transplanted by Anglophone European (‘Anglo’) settler colonialism. While perhaps methodologically novel, their approach to economic history is reductionist, skewed and misleading.
NIE caricatures
AJR fetishises property rights as crucial for economic inclusion, growth and democracy. They ignore and even negate the very different economic analyses of John Stuart Mill, Dadabhai Naoroji, John Hobson and John Maynard Keynes, among other liberals.
Historians and anthropologists are very aware of various claims and rights to economic assets, such as cultivable land, e.g., usufruct. Even property rights are far more varied and complex.
The legal creation of ‘intellectual property rights’ confers monopoly rights by denying other claims. However, NIE’s Anglo-American notion of property rights ignores the history of ideas, sociology of knowledge, and economic history.
More subtle understandings of property, imperialism and globalisation in history are conflated. AJR barely differentiates among various types of capital accumulation via trade, credit, resource extraction and various modes of production, including slavery, serfdom, peonage, indenture and wage labour.
John Locke, Wikipedia’s ‘father of liberalism‘, also drafted the constitutions of the two Carolinas, both American slave states. AJR’s treatment of culture, creed and ethnicity is reminiscent of Samuel Huntington’s contrived clashing civilisations. Most sociologists and anthropologists would cringe.
Colonial and postcolonial subjects remain passive, incapable of making their own histories. Postcolonial states are treated similarly and regarded as incapable of successfully deploying investment, technology, industrial and developmental policies.
Thorstein Veblen and Karl Polanyi, among others, have long debated institutions in political economy. But instead of advancing institutional economics, NIE’s methodological opportunism and simplifications set it back.
Another NIE Nobel
For AJR, property rights generated and distributed wealth in Anglo-settler colonies, including the US and Britain’s dominions. Their advantage was allegedly due to ‘inclusive’ economic and political institutions due to Anglo property rights.
Variations in economic performance are attributed to successful transplantation and settler political domination of colonies. More land was available in the thinly populated temperate zone, especially after indigenous populations shrank due to genocide, ethnic cleansing and displacement.
These were far less densely populated for millennia due to poorer ‘carrying capacity’. Land abundance enabled widespread ownership, deemed necessary for economic and political inclusion. Thus, Anglo-settler colonies ‘succeeded’ in instituting such property rights in land-abundant temperate environments.
Such colonial settlement was far less feasible in the tropics, which had long supported much denser indigenous populations. Tropical disease also deterred new settlers from temperate areas. Thus, settler life expectancy became both cause and effect of institutional transplantation.
The difference between the ‘good institutions‘ of the ‘West’ – including Anglo-settler colonies – and the ‘bad institutions’ of the ‘Rest’ is central to AJR’s analysis. White settlers’ lower life expectancy and higher morbidity in the tropics are then blamed on the inability to establish good institutions.
Anglo-settler privilege
However, correct interpretation of statistical findings is crucial. Sanjay Reddy offers a very different understanding of AJR’s econometric analysis.
The greater success of Anglo settlers could also be due to colonial ethnic bias in their favour rather than better institutions. Unsurprisingly, imperial racist Winston Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoplescelebrates such Anglophone Europeans.
AJR’s evidence, criticised as misleading on other counts, does not necessarily support the idea that institutional quality (equated with property rights enforcement) really matters for growth, development and equality.
Reddy notes that international economic circumstances favouring Anglos have shaped growth and development. British Imperial Preference favoured such settlers over tropical colonies subjected to extractivist exploitation. Settler colonies also received most British investments abroad.
For Reddy, enforcing Anglo-American private property rights has been neither necessary nor sufficient to sustain economic growth. For instance, East Asian economies have pragmatically used alternative institutional arrangements to incentivise catching up.
He notes that “the authors’ inverted approach to concepts” has confused “the property rights-entrenching economies that they favor as ‘inclusive’, by way of contrast to resource-centered ‘extractive’ economies.”
Property vs popular rights
AJR’s claim that property rights ensure an ‘inclusive’ economy is also far from self-evident. Reddy notes that a Rawlsian property-owning democracy with widespread ownership contrasts sharply with a plutocratic oligarchy.
Nor does AJR persuasively explain how property rights ensured political inclusion. Protected by the law, colonial settlers often violently defended their acquired land against ‘hostile’ indigenes, denying indigenous land rights and claiming their property.
‘Inclusive’ political concessions in the British Empire were mainly limited to the settler-colonial dominions. In other colonies, self-governance and popular franchises were only grudgingly conceded under pressure.
Prior exclusion of indigenous rights and claims enabled such inclusion, especially when surviving ‘natives’ were no longer deemed threatening. Traditional autochthonous rights were circumscribed, if not eliminated, by settler colonists.
Entrenching property rights has also consolidated injustice and inefficiency. Many such rights proponents oppose democracy and other inclusive and participatory political institutions that have often helped mitigate conflicts.
The Nobel committee is supporting NIE’s legitimisation of property/wealth inequality and unequal development. Rewarding AJR also seeks to re-legitimise the neoliberal project at a time when it is being rejected more widely than ever before.
Balta, Peru – On an overcast afternoon in April, Nolasco Torres and Freddy Capitan navigate their canoe along a jungle-veiled ravine. Along the route, they scrutinise the creeping understory for footprints and broken branches – telltale signs of the imminent return of isolated tribes in this cutoff region.
After rounding a bend, they steer their boat towards Nueva Vida, a tiny Indigenous hamlet hidden within Peru’s eastern Amazon, some 100 kilometres (62 miles) from the Brazil border.
“When this ravine dries, they’ll make contact here,” Torres says. “Summer is coming. We have to make sure our communities are prepared.”
Torres, 47, and Capitan, 33, are Indigenous Huni Kuin fathers and community leaders. They are also friends and neighbours of Nueva Vida’s 30 villagers. But they are not here to pay a social call.
Wearing khaki vests stitched with the letters “PIACI” (Indigenous Peoples in Isolation and Initial Contact), they are among 50 government-contracted, predominantly Indigenous protection agents working for Peru’s Ministry of Culture. Their work has brought them to the Curanjillo Ravine, an epicentre of recent contact.
Protection agents meet distressed villagers in Nueva Vida. The presence of isolated tribes here has caused residents to flee their homes [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]
It was here, last August, during the annual droughts, when more than two dozen isolated Mastanahua suddenly appeared at the edge of Nueva Vida, naked and clutching bows and arrows. Alarmed villagers stood back as the group approached their homes, grabbing machetes, buckets and food before retreating along the dried-out ravine, back into the forest.
The tense interaction ended without violence. However, in recent years, a series of explosive encounters between isolated tribes and villagers in this remote region has generated an undercurrent of panic. As the annual dry season nears, remote streams will soon recede, setting tribes out in search of resources closer to larger, more populated rivers where contact with villages is increasing.
“We’re begging the state to intervene,” said Nueva Vida’s leader, Rafael Montes, 30, in April. “We sleep in fear at night. Our only defence is our shotguns.”
Torres and Capitan grimace at this allusion to violence. The state’s emergency protocols around these incidents instruct villagers to withdraw, remain calm and make a distress call to protection agents. However, these villages tend to lack secure refuge and means to contact assistance, which makes following the instructions almost impossible.
In June, two months after Torres and Capitan’s April meeting with villagers in Nueva Vida, a group of approximately 30 Mastanahua reappeared along the dry ravine and made a similar incursion into the village. This time, Montes and his entire community fled.
Today, Nueva Vida stands abandoned. Its homes, crops and small primary school are slowly being reclaimed by the jungle.
Protection agents Fredy Capitan, left),and Nolasco Torres arrive in Nueva Vida, where sightings of isolated tribes have caused villagers to flee [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]
‘In tremendous crisis’
In the heavily forested province of Purus, in the eastern Amazon rainforest, contact with some of the planet’s most isolated tribes is accelerating. The encounters are transforming the region into a troubling flashpoint of encounters with the Mastanahua and Mashco Piro tribes, which have rejected contact with the outside world for generations.
The situation is creating a powder keg, raising the spectre of deadly confrontation and driving the evacuation of entire villages. It has also prompted questions about the Peruvian state’s commitment to safeguarding the lives of some of Earth’s last isolated tribes amid increased invasion of their territory.
The factors driving the tribes into contact are multifaceted. Experts say extractive industries, criminal economies and climate change are pushing them closer to villages, where they are exposed to various risks, including armed confrontation and contagion.
“The region is in tremendous crisis,” said Beatriz Huertas, an anthropologist who works closely with Indigenous peoples and Amazon organisations. “Illegal logging and drug trafficking is happening in their territory, and the state is not fulfilling its role to guarantee their sovereignty.”
While Peruvian law acknowledges the territorial rights of isolated peoples, it also allows for natural resource exploitation – even within protected areas – if deemed to be a “public necessity.” This allows logging and fossil fuel explorations to operate inside Indigenous reserves, and, in the absence of state protection, drug smugglers move through these areas.
Huni Kuin men and boys ride upriver on a communal hunt [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]
Disrupted habitat
Peru is home to the second-largest population of isolated tribes on the planet after Brazil. Approximately 7,500 people from about 25 ethnic groups live in isolation or are in the early stages of contact with settled society.
Often erroneously characterised as “lost” tribes, living lives “frozen in the distant past”, isolated peoples have interacted with outside populations for generations, Huertas explained. As a result, Indigenous people “faced illness, violence and death”, she added. But following enslavement and the decimation of their populations, including during the rubber boom from the 1890s to the 1920s when Peruvian rubber was in high demand, many groups fled to remote headwaters, where their relatives remain today. “These are peoples who isolate themselves as a survival strategy,” she said.
The greater Purus region, which extends eastward into neighbouring Brazil, is considered to be home to the largest concentration of isolated tribes on Earth. The Alto Purus National Park – an area more than half the size of Costa Rica – along with two protected reserves, serves as a migratory corridor for the Mashco Piro, the largest-known isolated tribe in the world, numbering more than 750 people, and about 300 Mastanahua, who share ethnolinguistic ties with the Huni Kuin and other settled tribes in Purus.
During the Amazon summer, the Mashco Piro and Mastanahua trek hundreds of kilometres along Purus’s dry streams to larger riverbanks in search of resources, including protein-rich turtle eggs.
But as climate change contributes to higher temperatures and extreme droughts, vital habitats and food sources are disrupted. In Purus, earlier and more protracted dry seasons are altering the ecosystems that isolated tribes depend upon for survival.
The lowland forests of Purus are thought to be home to the largest concentration of isolated tribes on Earth [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]
‘We are like watchmen’
Travelling upstream from Nueva Vida, Torres and Capitan enter another canopied ravine. Water levels are beginning to recede. They wade through the shin-deep water sifting for arrowheads or trails suspiciously blocked by branches. They also listen: Isolated peoples can be masterful imitators of wild game and monkeys.
“We are like watchmen,” said Torres. “We find fire pits, charred animal bones and palm huts they put up along beaches. It’s our job to report the evidence to authorities.”
Increased contact by isolated tribes in remote Amazon regions like Purus has led Peru’s government to recruit local Indigenous villagers like Torres and Capitan to work as protection agents.
Their innate knowledge of the forests, along with an ability to communicate government protocols in their native languages, has made protection agents’ work a vital tool for the state – both to monitor their territories and keep villagers alert should they encounter evidence of isolated tribes nearby.
Patrolling the wilderness for days on end, protection agents trek through dense forests, tread remote streams and regularly camp along desolate beaches, searching for traces of their proximity. With little more than GPS navigators and weather-worn cellphones damaged by the unforgiving elements, they compile their findings in field reports for Peru’s Ministry of Culture, which implements policy on isolated tribes. Their fieldwork provides the state with invaluable intel about what little is known about these reclusive hunter-gatherers, from territorial migrations to population sizes.
Increasingly, their briefings note the indicators of outside invasion by illicit actors. Purus’s forests have become an emerging drug smuggling corridor. Last year, nearly 230,000 acres of coca, cocaine’s raw ingredient, were cultivated in Peru. Of that, more than 43,000 acres (17,400 hectares) were grown in protected areas home to isolated tribes, according to Peru’s National Commission for Development and Life without Drugs (DEVIDA).
Fredy Capitan, an Indigenous protection agent for Peru’s government, surveys a village where isolated tribes are making increased contact [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]
Authorities from Peru’s National Service of Natural Protected Areas (SERNANP) confirmed the presence of traffickers moving cocaine paste through Purus’s rivers and forests. Remote jungle airstrips thought to be used for the cocaine trade have also been registered adjacent to and inside of the Mashco Piro Indigenous Reserve, a two million-acre (800,000-hectare) protected area inhabited by the Mashco Piro tribe within the Alto Purus National Park.
Despite the immense size of this territory, invasion by drug traffickers, as well as hunters and loggers, is pushing isolated tribes away from remote tributaries and towards more populated areas, typically near rivers, where there are crops like plantain and cassava. This puts them in dangerous proximity to armed villagers who are increasingly on edge.
As intermediaries between the state and local communities, it is Torres and Capitan’s work to calm rattled nerves and ensure that proper protocol is followed. Beyond monthly patrols searching for the presence of isolated tribes along forested trails, rivers and ravines, they also brief villagers on their findings and inform them of government “action plans”, which include a strict no-contact policy meant to defuse violence in the event of sightings.
“We make sure villagers stay calm and leave the area immediately. Then, we put out an alert to the Culture Ministry and wait for instructions,” Capitan explains.
But the protocols devised in Lima do not often reflect the immediacy of actual threats in Purus’s forests, according to Torres and Capitan. “Government ministers can only comprehend our territory from studies and books,” says Capitan. “They don’t understand our reality on the ground.”
Both men decried a shortage of personnel, poor communication and a lack of dependable boats to usher villagers to safety in the event of raids. And absent more robust state measures to protect isolated tribes’ territories and stem their arrival near villages, the region has turned into a tinderbox.
The lowland forests of Purus are thought to be home to the largest concentration of isolated tribes on Earth [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]
A family killed
Torres and Capitan hack through the jungle and arrive at a wooden cabin enveloped by forest. Its door and walls have been lacerated by machetes.
Not far from Nueva Vida, the Cetico Outpost, named after a nearby ravine, served as a government base camp for protection agents for more than a decade. Today, it is home to a colony of shrieking bats, and the floors are littered with tattered maps and logbooks.
As isolated tribes emerge in this region, the abandoned outpost serves as a grim testament to their volatile relationship, not only with villagers, but also with groups who, until recently, lived in isolation like them.
The Cetico Outpost was abandoned by Peru’s government in 2020 after a deadly raid by isolated tribes in the Amazon region of Purus [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]
“[The] Mashco Piro hacked through the door and took anything they could find,” says Capitan. “No one was here at the time. But after the killings, the government abandoned it.”
In November 2020, following the raid on this outpost, three dismembered corpses of a local Indigenous family living close by were found slashed by machetes and pocked by arrows. The victims were a family of Mastanahua tribespeople who had been lured out of isolation by Christian missionaries in the early 2000s.
Slowly adapting to sedentary life, the family lived alone in a jungle encampment a short trek from the government outpost. Despite cultural and linguistic barriers with their Huni Kuin neighbours, they would make regular visits to nearby communities, including Torres’s.
“My wife would cook them meals. They loved rice and sweet drinks,” Torres says, adding that initial contact tribes did not have previous experience with these foods.
However, following the family’s absence in his community for more than a week, and alerts by neighbours, Torres and fellow protection agents went to investigate. When he was trekking to the family’s home, Torres saw hundreds of large footprints, he recalls.
“We knew they were Mashco Piro footprints. The Mastanahua’s are the size of our own,” says Torres. “As we got closer, we saw vultures.”
When he arrived at the family’s encampment, Torres says he saw the family’s decomposing corpses beside the remnants of their burned home.
The motive for the killings – whether owing to a longstanding tribal feud with the Mastanahua, territorial invasion or other perceived threats – remains unclear, Torres said, but the protection agents suspected the Mashco Piro.
What is evident is that external pressures are driving the Mashco Piro – who inhabit a wide swath of territory beyond Purus – to increased aggression. In late August, two loggers operating within the tribe’s territory were killed by arrows in the southern region of Madre de Dios. Another two remain missing.
In the wake of the family killing in Purus, weeks would pass before a commission led by the National Prosecutor’s Office and Peru’s National Police was sent in to investigate and remove the bodies. The Ministry of Culture, which coordinated the evacuation of nearby villagers, confirmed arrows characteristic of those used by the Mascho Piro at the site of the murders. Official findings from the state’s investigation were not made available.
Following the killings, the Culture Ministry abandoned the Cetico Outpost, and fearful Huni Kuin villagers in the nearby community of Santa Rey fled. Four years later, their village remains empty, its 10 families displaced upriver.
Following a deadly raid by an isolated tribe in 2020, villagers in the Huni Kuin community of Santa Rey fled. It remains abandoned today [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]
‘We could be killed at any moment’
The sun sinks below the forest canopy as Torres and Capitan arrive home to their community of Balta. Straddling the Alto Purus National Park, Balta is surrounded by boundless forest. A boat journey here from Purus’s capital of Puerto Esperanza takes about 30 hours. During the dry season, however, the village of 40 is nearly cut off from the outside world.
After a meal of roasted monkey and boiled cassava, Torres and Capitan sway in hammocks, talking with their wives and children.
Capitan, a father of four and former school teacher, became a protection agent a year ago.
“For me, it was a calling. Both to help our communities and understand the reality of our uncontacted brothers,” he says. “I wanted to understand how the state can protect them.”
Fredy Capitan, left, and Nolasco Torres in their village of Balta. As government protection agents, they monitor the remote jungle for signs of isolated tribes [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]
After five years of theological studies, Torres led a Huni Kuin evangelical organisation in Purus during the late 2000s while also dedicating himself to a life of agriculture and hunting. Years of friendly relations with the slain Mastanahua family led him to take an interest in isolated tribes. He became a protection agent in 2019.
However, the $275 monthly salary is hardly enough, Torres says, to provide for his eight children and is not enough to compensate for the dangers of their job.
“We go to work knowing we could be killed at any moment,” he says. “But [isolated tribes] have a right to live. They have their culture and customs, that’s why we can’t force them into contact. It’s their decision alone to make.”
It was a decision the Huni Kuin ultimately made themselves after they were brought out of isolation by American missionaries in the 1940s and 50s and settled in Balta. The missionaries eventually left, along with hundreds of Huni Kuin who today live scattered throughout Purus.
The increased arrival of isolated tribes near Balta has caused many more to flee. But Torres and Capitan remain, in part because their livelihoods depend on it. Following the 2020 killings, the Culture Ministry moved its monitoring outpost here.
“We are the brave ones representing our Huni Kuin people,” says Torres. “But this is an emergency zone.”
Both men say that requests to authorities for better communication, including satellite phones and functioning internet, as well as a safehouse in the event of raids, have gone unheeded.
The lack of state resources for protection agents is impeding the success of their work, according to Beatriz Huertas, the anthropologist. While their intended function is “a strong concept in theory,” she said, lacking personnel and proper training, agents here are ill-equipped to manage increased contact and can only coordinate evacuations and community lockdowns. Meanwhile, the state has channelled resources to other regions where isolated groups are emerging, leaving Purus with a shortage of protection agents and neglected monitoring outposts.
Peru’s Ministry of Culture declined an interview with Al Jazeera, but in a written response stated that there were no officially reported sightings of isolated groups in 2023 or 2024, contradicting testimony from more than a dozen villagers interviewed by Al Jazeera. The ministry stated that “contingency plans” to help villagers flee in the event of raid scenarios were being implemented in five communities in the region. The state’s emergency plans include the construction of wooden escape canoes and petrol supplies.
But the boats have not arrived, and residents said the state’s plans were a stopgap fix that would do little to protect villagers or isolated groups.
There is concern that regular sightings of isolated tribes could be a prelude to more sustained contact. If that happens, many here doubt the state could safely bring them into the fold of sedentary life. “There is a harsh culture shock and political destructuring when isolated peoples integrate. The state tends to abandon them to their fate,” said Huertas.
Huni Kuin children in the remote village of Balta carry bush meat from a recent hunt. Their village is a flashpoint of recent contact with isolated tribes in Peru’s eastern Amazon [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]
‘We need action’
The following morning, Torres and Capitan gas up their boat and travel two hours downriver to the Huni Kuin village of Colombiana, where villagers said the Mastanahua have made contact twice since 2019, entering homes and taking items.
The agents gather villagers to update them on the Ministry of Culture’s contingency plans, which have been delayed for nearly a year.
Colombiana’s leader, Paco Pinedo, is distressed. With dry season approaching, and after a series of raids in Colombiana, including one on his own home in 2020, villagers are on edge, he said.
“We need action,” said Pinedo. “Every year, the situation is getting more dire. We can’t wait on the state. Our kids and elders are terrified.”
Pinedo muses aloud that perhaps life would be easier if isolated tribes would finally come out of the forest for good, living as neighbours of the Huni Kuin. But then he pivots.
“Our ancestors used to live like them,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s their right to stay in the bush.”
Ultimately, it will require true state commitment to legally defend the territorial rights of isolated tribes and an overhaul of the extractivist policies degrading their forests, according to Huertas. Stronger alliances with local Indigenous communities, she said, would also help call to attention the importance of protecting Earth’s remaining isolated peoples.
“[The state] must double down on work to monitor their territories, their food sovereignty, and environment to protect their integrity, their lives, their health and their future as peoples,” said Huertas.
Protection agents outline emergency measures to villagers in Colombiana, which has had repeated contact with an isolated tribe [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]
An igapó, a flood-prone wooded area on the Vuelta Grande of the Xingu River, with fruit on the dry ground. This is where the piracema, or fish reproduction, was supposed to take place, frustrated by the scarcity of water released by the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant on this stretch of the river in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. The fruits are lost and stop feeding the fish by falling on the ground and not in the water. Credit: Mati / VGX
by Mario Osava (belÉm, brazil)
Inter Press Service
BELÉM, Brazil, Jul 28 (IPS) – The decade-and-a-half-long battle for life in the so-called Volta Grande (Big Bend) of the Xingu river, a stretch of the river dewatered by the Belo Monte hydroelectric power plant in the Brazilian Amazon, has a possible solution, albeit a partial one.
The mega power project divided the waters of the Xingu. It has taken up most of the river and emptied the now 130-kilometre U-shaped Reduced Flow Stretch (TVR, in Portuguese), whose banks are home to two indigenous groups and a community, all affected by the depletion of fish, the basis of their livelihood.
A proposal drawn up by these villagers and scientific researchers makes it possible to recover the minimum conditions for the reproduction of fish, which have declined since the plant began operations in 2016. The goal is to mitigate the project’s negative impacts on the people living in the area.
But Norte Energía, the concessionaire of Belo Monte, estimates that this alternative would cost it a 39% reduction in its electricity generation. The dilemma pits the vital needs of the riverside population against the company’s economic feasibility.
Belo Monte, 700 kilometres southwest of Belém, is one of major power and logistics projects that abounded in Latin America in the first two decades of this century. It is the third largest hydroelectric plant in the world, with a capacity of 11,233 megawatts and an expected effective generation of only 40% on average.
Josiel Juruna, speaking at a July meeting of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science, in the city of Belém, in the Brazilian Amazon. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS
The Xingu river in the eastern Amazon region attracted energy interest because of its average flow of 7,966 cubic metres per second and the gradient that allowed Belo Monte to have its main power plant with a water fall of 87 metres.
But its flow has excessive variations, with floods 20 times higher than its low water level. With less than 1,000 cubic metres per second in low water, it lowers the plant’s average annual generation.
To prevent the flooding of the Volta Grande of the Xingu (VGX) and, within it, of the two indigenous lands of the Juruna and Arara peoples, a canal was built to connect the two points of the curve, diverting about 70% of the river’s waters and draining the life out of the curved section.
A sarobal, an island of stones and sand, prone to flooding in the Vuelta Grande of Xingu, in Brazil’s eastern Amazon. It used to be a fish breeding site, but lost that function due to the water shortage caused by the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant, which diverted 70% of the river’s water into a channel used for power generation. Credit: Mati / VGX
The power plant and the ecosystem’s disruption
In addition to taking away water, the project disrupted the environment, especially water cycles, and thus human, animal and plant life. “We have become illiterate about the river, and the fish. We no longer know how to read what is happening in the river,” said a river dweller at a hearing organised by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in August 2022.
Piracema, the upstream migration of shoals of fish during spawning, is vital to sustain livelihoods in the VGX, stresses Josiel Juruna, local coordinator of the Independent Territorial Environmental Monitoring (Mati).
Belo Monte deteriorated the quality of life of river dwellers by making piracema unviable.
That is why Mati, led by some 30 university scientists and local researchers, prioritised the monitoring and recovery of the piracema, understood as a site for procreation, apart from monitoring and measuring other ecological aspects in the stretch most affected by the hydroelectric plant.
An Independent Environmental and Territorial Monitoring team observes critical points in the low-flow section of the Xingu river, whose waters have been diverted to the canal that feeds the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant in the Brazilian Amazon. Credit: Courtesy of Juarez Pezzuti
As a result of their participatory research, launched in 2014 by the Juruna people and the non-governmental Instituto Socioambiental, in 2022 Mati presented to environmental authorities the Piracema Hydrograph, which indicates the flow necessary for the reproduction of fish in the VGX.
This is an alternative to hydrographs A and B, which govern the flow of water that Belo Monte releases to the VGX, in defined quantities for each month, to meet the conditions agreed for the operation of the hydroelectric plant. They are also called Consensus hydrographs, applied according to different pluviometric conditions.
These flows were defined in the environmental impact studies carried out by specialised companies, but paid for by Norte Energía, to obtain the license for the construction and operation of the plant.
A sample of the hydrographs that should govern the amount of water destined each month to the Vuelta Grande of the Xingu river to sustain its ecological functions. In purple and with flow figures for each month, the hydrograph proposed by indigenous people, riverside dwellers and scientific researchers to recover the lower and more productive piracemas. Credit: Mati / VGX
Piracema, key to river life
Indigenous people have always disagreed with these hydrographs because they do not ensure the necessary flow for maintaining the ecosystem, which is indispensable for the fish, the basis of their diet and the income they obtain from the sale of surplus fish.
It releases insufficient water at inappropriate times, ignoring the dynamics of the piracema, according to Juruna.
“The Belo Monte hydrograph only allows flooding in April, but the piracema requires lots of water between January and March, so that it fills the sarobal and igapós, where the female fish arrive to spawn and then the males for fertilisation,” he told IPS in Belém.
The word sarobal in Brazil defines an island of stone and sand, flooded and with vegetation of grasses and shrubs that provide food for the fish. Igapó is also a flooded area of banks and small waterways, with trees and vegetation that produce fruit and other foodstuffs.
Without water, the fish do not have access to their breeding grounds or to the fruits, which fall on the dry ground. Juruna often shows a video of a curimatá, a fish abundant in the Xingu, with dried eggs in its belly. It “couldn’t spawn” because there was no water in the piracema at the right time, he explained.
Apart from more water, the Piracema Hydrograph requires bringing forward the release of more water for the Vuelta Grande by at least three months. And maintaining the flood for a few months is also indispensable to feed the fish with the fruits falling in the water and not on the ground.
In fact, it is necessary to increase the flow of the VGX with ‘new water’ from November onwards, so that the fish start to migrate. “Without the right amount of water at the right time, there is no piracema”, the basis of river life, stresses a Mati report.
Fish killed by a fall in water flow in the Xingu river’s Vuelta Grande. Credit: Mati / VGX
Irrecoverable way of life
The Piracema Hydrograph will not restore the former way of life in the Vuelta Grande. That would require restoring past conditions, without the hydroelectric plant, admitted Juruna. His goal is to rehabilitate “the lower piracemas”, i.e. the sarobals and the floodable igapós with a little more water than what Belo Monte releases.
“The higher piracemas will no longer exist,” he lamented.
There will be no fish as before, the Juruna have already become farmers and mainly cultivate cocoa. A recovery of the piracemas will allow them to fish for their own food, but hardly for sale and income, he said.
Community life has declined among the indigenous people, who increasingly feed themselves on ‘city products’ and move more and more to Altamira, a city 50 kilometres away from the indigenous land of Paquiçamba, where the Jurunas live.
With Belo Monte, a road to the city was built and motorbikes have multiplied in the indigenous village, Juruna observed. Their way of life has been profoundly altered, but the indigenous people are resisting the death of their river and the Mati have added their traditional knowledge to scientific research.
Biologist Juarez Pezzuti, a professor at the Federal University of Pará, based in Belém, and a member of Mati, believes it necessary to dispel the idea of Belo Monte and other hydroelectric plants, especially those in the Amazon, as sources of sustainable energy.
“They emit greenhouse gases in a similar proportion to fossil-fuel thermoelectric plants,” he told IPS. In addition to flooding vegetation when the reservoir is formed, they continue to do so afterwards, because as their waters recede, the vegetation that will later be flooded is renewed.
Their downstream impacts are only now beginning to be studied. In the Amazon, they dry up the igapós, as has already been seen in the Balbina power plant near Manaus, capital of the neighbouring state of Amazonas.
It is a technology in decline, whose social, environmental and climatic costs tend to be better recognised and call into question its benefits, he concluded.
Members of the indigenous guard of the native community of Puerto Nuevo, of the Amazonian Kakataibo people, located in the central-eastern jungle of Peru. Credit: Courtesy of Marcelo Odicio
by Mariela Jara (lima)
Inter Press Service
LIMA, Jul 26 (IPS) – The invasion of lands inhabited by Amazon indigenous communities is growing in Peru, due to drug trafficking mafias that are expanding coca crops to produce and export cocaine, while deforestation and insecurity for the native populations and their advocates are increasing
“Drug trafficking is not a myth or something new in this area, and we are the ones who defend our right to live in peace in our land,” said Kakataibo indigenous leader Marcelo Odicio, from the municipality of Aguaytía, capital of the province of Padre Abad, in the Amazonian department of Ucayali.
Of the 33 million inhabitants of the South American country, around 800,000 belong to 51 Amazonian indigenous peoples. Overall, 96.4% of the indigenous population is Quechua and Aymara, six million of whom live in the Andean areas, while the Amazonian jungle peoples account for the remaining 3.6%.
The Peruvian government is constantly criticised for failing to meet the needs and demands of this population, who suffer multiple disadvantages in health, education, income generation and access to opportunities, as well as the growing impact of drug trafficking, illegal logging and mining.
A clear example of this is the situation of the Kakataibo people in two of their native communities, Puerto Nuevo and Sinchi Roca, in the border between the departments of Huánuco and Ucayali, in the central-eastern Peruvian jungle region.
For years they have been reporting and resisting the presence of invaders who cut down the forests for illegal purposes, while the government pays no heed and takes no action.
The most recent threat has led them to deploy their indigenous guard to defend themselves against new groups of outsiders who, through videos, have proclaimed their decision to occupy the territories over which the Kakataibo people have ancestral rights, which are backed by titles granted by the departmental authorities.
Six Kakataibo leaders who defended their lands and way of life were murdered in recent years. The latest was Mariano Isacama, whose body was found by the indigenous guard on Sunday 14 July after being missing for weeks.
In his interview with IPS, Odicio, president of the Native Federation of Kakataibo Communities (Fenacoka), lamented the authorities’ failure to find Isacama. The leader from the native community of Puerto Azul had been threatened by people linked to drug trafficking, suspects the federation.
Marcelo Odicio, president of the Native Federation of Kakataibo Communities, headquartered in the town of Aguaytía, in the department of Ucayal, in the Peruvian Amazon. Credit: Inforegión
During a press conference in Lima on 17 July, the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (Aidesep), that brings together 109 federations representing 2,439 native communities, deplored the government’s indifference in the situation of the disappeared and murdered leader, which brings to 35 the number of Amazonian indigenous people murdered between 2023 and 2024.
Aidesep declared the territory of the Amazonian indigenous peoples under emergency and called for self-defence and protection mechanisms against what they called “unpunished violence unleashed by drug trafficking, mining and illegal logging under the protection of authorities complicit in neglect, inaction and corruption.”
Lack of vision for the Amazon
The province of Aguaytía, where the municipality of Padre de Abad is located and where the Kakataibo live, among other indigenous peoples, will account for 4.3% of the area under coca leaf cultivation by 2023, around 4,019 hectares, according to the latest report by the government’s National Commission for Development and Life without Drugs (Devida).
It is the sixth largest production area of this crop in the country.
The report highlights that Peru reduced illicit coca crops by just over 2% between 2022 and 2023, from 95,008 to 92,784 hectares, thus halting the trend of permanent expansion over the last seven years.
These figures are called into question by Ricardo Soberón, an expert on drug policy, security and Amazonia.
Ricardo Soberón, a renowned Peruvian expert on drug policy, Amazonia and security. Credit: Walter Hupiú / IPS
“The latest World Drug Report indicates that we have gone from 22 to 23 million cocaine users, and that the golden triangle in Burma, the triple border of Argentina-Paraguay-Brazil and the Amazonian trapezoid are privileged areas for production and export,” Soberón told IPS.
The latter holds “Putumayo and Yaguas, areas that according to Devida have reduced the 2,000 hectares under cultivation. I don’t believe it,” he said.
Soberón added another element that discredits the conclusions of the Devida report: the government’s behaviour.
“There is no air interdiction in the Amazonian trapezoid, the non-lethal interdiction agreement with the United States will be operational in 2025. On the other hand, there are complaints against the anti-drug police in Loreto, the department where Putumayo and Yaguas are located, for their links with Brazilian mafias,” he explained.
He believes there was an attempt to whitewash “a government that is completely isolated”, referring to the administration led since December 2022 by interim president Dina Boluarte, with minimal levels of approval and questioned over a series of democratic setbacks.
Soberón, director of Devida in 2011-2012 and 2021-2022, has constantly warned that the government, at different levels, has not incorporated the indigenous agenda in its policies against illegalities in their ancestral areas.
This, he said, despite the growing pressure on their peoples and lands from “the largest illegal extractive economies in the world: drug trafficking, logging and gold mining,” the main causes of deforestation, loss of biodiversity and territorial dispossession.
Soberón argued that, given the magnitude of cocaine trafficking in the world, major trafficking groups need coca crop reserves, and Peruvian territory is fit for it. He deplored the minimal strategic vision among political, economic, commercial and social players in the Amazon.
Based on previous research, he says that the Cauca-Nariño bridge in southern Colombia, Putumayo in Peru, and parts of Brazil, form the Amazonian trapezoid: a fluid transit area not only for cocaine, but also for arms, supplies and gold.
Hence the great flow of cocaine in the area, for trafficking and distribution to the United States and other markets, which makes the jungle-like indigenous territories of the Peruvian Amazon attractive for coca crops and cocaine laboratories.
Soberón stresses it is possible to reconcile anti-drug policy with the protection of the Amazon, for example by promoting the citizen social pacts that he himself developed as a pilot project during his term in office.
It is a matter, he said, of turning the social players, such as the indigenous peoples, into decision-makers. But this requires a clear political will, which is not seen in the current Devida administration.
Mariano Isacama (left), a Kakataibo indigenous leader who disappeared and was murdered after allegedly receiving threats from people linked to drug traffickers. Next to him, the president of the indigenous organisation Orau, Magno López. Credit: Courtesy of Marcelo Odicio
“We will not stand idly by”
Odicio, the president of Fenacoka, knows that the increased presence of invaders in their territories is aimed at planting pasture and coca leaf, an activity that destroys their forests. They have even installed maceration ponds near the communities.
When invaders arrive, they cut down the trees, burn them, raise cattle, take possession of the land and then demand the right to title, he explained. “After the anti-forestry law, they feel strong and say they have a right to the land, when it is not the case,” he said.
He refers to the reform of the Forestry and Wildlife Act No. 29763, in force since December 2023, which further weakens the security of indigenous peoples over their land rights and opens the door to legal and illegal extractive activities.
The leader, who has a wife and two young children, knows that the role of defender exposes him. “We are the ones who pay the consequences, we are visible to criminals, we are branded as informers, but I will continue to defend our rights. Along with the indigenous guard we will ensure that the autonomy of our territory is respected,” he stressed.
In the native community of Puerto Nuevo there are 200 Kakataibo families, with 500 more in Sinchi Roca. They live from the sustainable use of their forest resources, who are at risk from illegal activities. “We just want to live in peace, but we will defend ourselves because we cannot stand idly by if they do not respect our autonomy”, he said.
Delegates say the survival of humanity is interlinked with the sustainable use of ocean and marine biodiversity resources. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
NAIROBI, May 15 (IPS) – The oceans are as fascinating as they are mysterious. Home to the largest animals to ever live on Earth and billions of the tiniest, the top 100 meters of the open oceans host the majority of sea life, such as fish, turtles, and marine mammals. But there is another world far below the surface. In the belly of the ocean, there are seamounts—underwater mountains that rise 1,000 meters or more from the seafloor.
It is within this context that negotiations on critical science, technical skills, and technology deepened on the second day of the 26th session of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical, and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Putting ocean action on the global agenda is a top priority to ensure conservation and sustainable use of marine and coastal biodiversity. Emphasizing an urgent need for further work on ecologically or biologically significant marine areas.
“The survival of humanity is interlinked with the sustainable use of ocean and marine biodiversity resources. We rely on the ocean for food, relaxation, and inspiration. But now the ocean is under threat, and that threat is being passed on to our lives on land. We have to invest time, money, and every resource possible to save our oceans and, by doing so, save ourselves. Our biggest revenue comes from fisheries, and now we have to worry about rising sea level as we are a low-lying island,” Eleala Avanitele from the Forest Peoples Program in Tuvalu told IPS.
Scientists warn that Tuvalu, the fourth-smallest country in the world, is sinking due to its vulnerability to rising sea levels, as the nation comprises nine low-lying coral atolls and islands. Across the globe, the world is in a crisis as oceans provide 50 percent of all oxygen on Earth and 50 to 80 percent of all life on Earth. This life is now at stake.
Thus far, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, also known as the Biodiversity Plan, has been front and centre during ongoing negotiations, as it is a strategic plan for the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a global agreement that covers all aspects of biological diversity and is considered a framework for governments and the whole of society.
Harrison Ajebe Nnoko Ngaaje from Ajemalebu Self Help (Ajesh) in Cameroon told IPS that his organization is a CSO registered in Cameroon, Ghana, Tanzania, and the USA to create synergies and collaboration within and beyond the continent for the restoration, protection, and sustainable management of key biodiversity areas.
“Conservation and sustainable use of marine and coastal biodiversity is very critical to Cameroon due to its vast and unique ecosystem and biodiversity. Limbe Beach, for instance, has shiny black sandy beaches made of lava sand from the Mt. Cameroon eruptions, an active volcano in the south-west region of Cameroon. We have mangroves under serious threat of degradation. Ajesh is strongly focused on marine protected area management and the conservation of marine aquatic ecosystems.”
More than half of all marine species could be in danger of extinction by 2100. Nearly 60 percent of the world’s marine ecosystems have been altered or handled unsustainably. Marine, coastal, and island biodiversity were discussed within the context of the Biodiversity Plan. Target 3 of the Plan aims to ensure and enable that by 2030 at least 30 percent of terrestrial and inland water areas, and of marine and coastal areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, are effectively conserved and managed.
The main goal of the SBSTTA discussions was to find and fix areas that need more attention under the Convention in order to help carry out the Biodiversity Plan for marine, coastal, and island biodiversity.
Despite the Conference of the Parties adopting the program of work on marine and coastal biological diversity at its fourth meeting in 1998 and the program of work on island biodiversity in 2006, the world is significantly behind schedule when it comes to the conservation and sustainable use of marine and coastal biodiversity. Nevertheless, CBD continues to prioritize and facilitate cooperation and collaboration with relevant global and regional organizations and initiatives with regard to marine and coastal biodiversity.
“It is very important that civil society, youths, and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) are part of the SBSTTA process, observing and being allowed the opportunity to make remarks. Parties make decisions but these actors also implement and are at the forefront of facing the consequences of biodiversity loss,” Ngaaje says.
Onyango Adhiambo, a youth delegate from academia and research under the International University Network on Cultural and Biological Diversity, supported Ngaaje’s remarks.
“Young people will need to understand the science, technical skills, and technology at play in saving our planet, for soon we will need to step in and step up. The future, which is now at stake, belongs to us, and when called upon to intervene on what the parties agree to, we must do so efficiently, effectively, and sustainably to save natural resources for future generations,” Adhiambo said.
Highlights from the session included a recognition of the importance of science for decision-making and that there are many areas of the programmes of work on marine and coastal biodiversity and on island biodiversity that have not been fully implemented and for which enhanced capacity-building and development, in particular for least developed countries and small island developing states, are needed.
The 2022 Biodiversity Plan says that we can get back on track by creating “ecologically representative, well-connected, and fairly governed systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, recognizing indigenous and traditional territories, where applicable, and integrating them into larger landscapes, seascapes, and the ocean, while ensuring that any sustainable use, where appropriate in such areas, is fully consistent with conservation outcomes, recognizing and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, including over their traditional territories.”
Equally important is the agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, which was adopted on June 19, 2023.
Collaboration in ocean conservation beyond national boundaries was strongly encouraged on issues such as marine genetic resources, including the fair and equitable sharing of benefits; measures such as area-based management tools, including marine protected areas; environmental impact assessments; and capacity-building and the transfer of marine technology.
An area of illegal mining activity was raided by the Brazilian Federal Police in the eastern Amazon on Jan. 17, where their precarious installations and housing, as well as their equipment, were destroyed. The fight against illegal mining, especially in indigenous territories, intensified after a new tragedy of deaths of Yanomami indigenous people caused by encroaching garimpeiros or informal miners became headline news. CREDIT: Federal Police
by Mario Osava (rio de janeiro)
Inter Press Service
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 29 2024 (IPS) – Artisanal mining, or “garimpo” as it is known in Brazil, has returned to the headlines as a factor in the deaths of Yanomami indigenous people, whose territory in the extreme north of Brazil suffers constant encroachment by miners, which has intensified in recent years.
In the first few days of the year, Yanomami spokespersons denounced new invasions of their land and the suspension of health services, in addition to the violence committed by miners or “garimpeiros”, which coincided with the fact that the military withdrew from areas they were protecting.
Furthermore, the media published new photos of extremely malnourished children. In response, the government promised to establish permanent posts of health care and protection in the indigenous territory.
“But what they are involved in there is not garimpo but illegal and inhumane mining practices,” said Gilson Camboim, president of the Peixoto River Valley Garimpeiros Cooperative (Coogavepe), which defends the activity as environmentally and socially sustainable when properly carried out.
“Garimpo is mining recognized by the Brazilian constitution, with its own legislation, which pays taxes, is practiced with an environmental license and respects the laws, employs many workers, strengthens the economy and distributes income,” he told IPS by telephone from the headquarters of his cooperative in Peixoto de Azevedo, a town of 33,000 people in the northern state of Mato Grosso.
Coogavepe was founded in 2008 with 23 members. Today it has 7,000 members and seeks to promote legal garimpo and environmental practices, such as the restoration of areas degraded by mining.
But it is difficult to salvage the reputation of this legal part of an activity whose damage is demonstrated by photos of emaciated children and families decimated by hunger and malaria, because the encroachment of miners pollutes rivers, kills fish and introduces diseases to which indigenous people are vulnerable because they have not developed immune defenses.
Garimpeiros and indigenous deaths
The humanitarian tragedy among the Yanomami people became big news in January 2023 when Sumaúma, an Amazonian online media outlet, denounced the deaths of 570 children under five years of age, due to malnutrition and preventable diseases, during the far-right government of former president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who took office on Jan. 1, 2023, visited Yanomami territory and mobilized his government to care for the sick and expel illegal miners, destroying their equipment and camps. But a year later, the resumption of mining activity and a resurgence of hunger and deaths were reported.
Moreover, the entire extractivist sector has a terrible reputation due to tragedies caused by industrial mining. Two tailings dams broke in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais in 2015 and 2019, killing 289 people and muddying an 853-kilometer-long river and a 510-kilometer-long river.
Brazil is the world’s second largest producer of iron ore, following Australia. Iron ore is the main focus of industrial mining in the country.
Garimpo is mainly dedicated to gold, and accounts for 86 percent of its production. Garimpeiros also produce cassiterite (the mineral from which tin ore is extracted) and precious stones, such as emeralds and diamonds. Its major expansion, many decades ago, was along rivers in the Amazon jungle, to the detriment of indigenous peoples and tropical forests.
Indigenous people protest in the state of Roraima in northern Brazil against the invasion of Yanomami territory by garimpeiros or artisanal miners, who often practice illegally. CREDIT: Alberto César Araújo / Amazônia Real
Threat to the environment and health
Currently, 97.7 percent of the area occupied in Brazil by artisanal mining is in the Amazon rainforest, where it reaches 101,100 hectares, according to MapBiomas, a project launched by non-governmental organizations, universities and technology companies to monitor Brazilian biomes using satellite images and other data sources.
The production of gold uses mercury, which has contaminated many Amazonian rivers and a large part of their riverside population, including indigenous groups, such as the Munduruku people, who live in the basin of the Tapajós River, one of the great tributaries of the Amazon with an extension of 2,700 kilometers.
Garimpo dumps about 150 tons of mercury in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest every year, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) estimates. The fear is that the tragedy of Minamata, the Japanese city where mercury dumped by a chemical industry in the mid-20th century killed about 900 people and caused neurological damage in tens of thousands, may be repeated here.
Brazil produced 94.6 tons of gold in 2022, according to the National Mining Agency. But the way it is extracted varies greatly, based mainly on informal mining, of which illegal mining makes up an unknown percentage.
Three prices govern this production, according to Armin Mathis, a professor at the Núcleo de Altos Estudos Amazónicos of the Federal University of Pará, who lives in Belém, the capital of this Amazonian state, with 1.3 million inhabitants.
The price of gold in Brazil; the price of diesel, which represents a third of the cost of gold mining; and the cost of labor are the three elements that determine whether the garimpo business is profitable, the German-born PhD in political science, who has been studying this activity since he arrived in Brazil in 1987, explained to IPS from Belém.
This mining was in fact artisanal, but it began to use machines, especially the backhoe, in the 1980s, which is why diesel increased its costs. And unemployment and periods of economic recession, in the 1980s and in 2015-2016, made garimpo more attractive.
In those periods and the following years, invasions of Yanomami territory, which also extends through the state of Amazonas in southwestern Venezuela, became more massive and aggressive. But the consequences for the native people living in vast areas of the rainforest only become news on some occasions, like now.
Small airplanes seized by police and environmental authorities were at the service of illegal miners in Roraima, an Amazonian state in the extreme north of Brazil. This is where most of the Yanomami Indians live, currently the main victims of illegal, mechanized mining. CREDIT: Federal Police
From artisanal to mechanization
Mechanization has restructured the activity. Machines are expensive and require financiers. Entrepreneurs have emerged to manage the now more complex operations, as well as others who only own and rent out the equipment.
In addition, the owners of small airplanes that supply the mining areas and facilitate the trade of the extracted gold became more powerful. The hierarchy of the business has expanded.
“We must differentiate between garimpo and the garimpeiros. This is not a rhetorical distinction. The garimpeiro, who works directly in the extraction of gold, is more a victim than a perpetrator of illegal, predatory and criminal mining. The person responsible lives far away and gets rich by exploiting workers in slavery-like labor relations,” observed Mauricio Torres, a geographer and professor at the Federal University of Pará.
“The garimpeiro, depicted as a criminal by the media, pays for the damage,” he told IPS by telephone from Belém.
The workers recognize that they are exploited, but feel that they are a partner of the garimpo owner, as they earn a percentage of the gold obtained. They work hard because the more they work, the more they earn.
A large part of the garimpeiros along the Tapajós River, where this kind of mining has been practiced since the middle of the last century, are actually landless peasant farmers who supplement their income in the garimpo business, when agriculture or fishing does not provide what they need to support their families, Torres explained.
Therefore, agrarian reform and other government initiatives that offer sufficient income to this population could reduce the pressure of the garimpo on the environment in the Amazon rainforest, which affects the region’s indigenous and traditional peoples, he said.
The situation of the garimpeiros also differs according to the areas where they work in the Amazon jungle, Mathis pointed out. In the Tapajós River, where the activity has been taking place for a longer period of time and is already legal in large part, coexistence is better with the indigenous Munduruku people, some of whom also became garimpeiros.
In Roraima, a state in the extreme north on the border with Venezuela and Guyana, where a large part of the territory is made up of indigenous reserves, illegal mining is widespread and includes the more or less violent invasion of Yanomami lands.
On the other hand, as the local economy depends on gold, the population’s support for garimpo, even illegal and more invasive practices, is broader than elsewhere. There, former president Bolsonaro, a supporter of garimpo, won 76 percent of the votes in the 2022 runoff election in which he was defeated by Lula.
Another component that aggravates the violence surrounding garimpo and, therefore, the crackdown on the activity, is the expansion of drug trafficking in the Amazon rainforest. The informality of the mining industry has facilitated its relationship with organized crime, whether in the drug trade or money laundering, said Mathis from Belém.
Lacandona, the great Mayan jungle that extends through the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico, is home to natural wealth and indigenous peoples’ settlements that are once again threatened by the probable reactivation of abandoned oil wells. Image: Ceiba
by Emilio Godoy (mexico city)
Inter Press Service
MEXICO CITY, Jan 19 (IPS) – The Lacandona jungle in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas is home to 769 species of butterflies, 573 species of trees, 464 species of birds, 114 species of mammals, 119 species of amphibians and reptiles, and several abandoned oil wells.
The oil wells have been a source of concern for the communities of the great Mayan jungle and environmental organizations since the 1970s, when oil prospecting began in the area and gradually left at least five wells inactive, whether plugged or not.
Now, Mexico’s policy of increasing oil production, promoted by the federal government, is reviving the threat of reactivating oil industry activity in the jungle ecosystem of some 500,000 hectares located in the east of the state, which has lost 70 percent of its forest in recent decades due to deforestation.
A resident of the Benemérito de las Américas municipality, some 1,100 kilometers south of Mexico City, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told IPS that a Mexican oil services company has contacted some members of the ejidos – communities on formerly public land granted to farm individually or cooperatively – trying to buy land around the inactive wells.
“They say they are offering work. We are concerned that they are trying to restart oil exploration, because it is a natural area that could be damaged and already has problems,” he said.
Adjacent to Benemérito de las Américas, which has 23,603 inhabitants according to the latest records, the area where the inactive wells are located is within the 18,348 square kilometers of the protected Lacandona Jungle Region.
It is one of the seven reserves of the ecosystem that the Mexican government decreed in 2016 and where oil activity in its subsoil is banned.
Between 1903 and 2014, the state-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) drilled five wells in the Lacandona jungle, inhabited by some 200,000 people, according to the autonomous governmental National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH), in charge of allocating hydrocarbon lots and approving oil and gas exploration plans. At least two of these deposits are now closed, according to the CNH.
The Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, in the Lacandona jungle in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, faces the threat of oil exploration, which would add to phenomena such as deforestation, drought and forest fires that have occurred in recent years. Image: Semarnat
The Lacantun well is located between a small group of houses and the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve (RBMA), the most megadiverse in the country, part of Lacandona and near the border with Guatemala. The CNH estimates the well’s proven oil reserves at 15.42 million barrels and gas reserves at 2.62 million cubic feet.
Chole, Tzeltal, Tzotzil and Lacandon Indians inhabit the jungle.
Other inactive deposits in the Benemérito de las Américas area are Cantil-101 and Bonampak-1, whose reserves are unknown.
In the rural areas of the municipality, the local population grows corn, beans and coffee and manages ecotourism sites. But violence has driven people out of Chiapas communities, as has been the case for weeks in the southern mountainous areas of the state due to border disputes and illegal business between criminal groups.
In addition, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), an indigenous organization that staged an uprising on Jan. 1, 1994 against the marginalization and poverty suffered by the native communities, is still present in the region.
Chiapas, where oil was discovered at the beginning of the 20th century, is among the five main territories in terms of production of crude oil and gas in this Latin American country, with 10 hydrocarbon blocks in the northern strip of the state.
In November, Mexico extracted 1.64 million barrels of oil and 4.9 billion cubic feet of gas daily. The country currently ranks 20th in the world in terms of proven oil reserves and 41st in gas.
Historically, local communities have suffered water, soil and air pollution from Pemex operations.
As of November, there were 6,933 operational wells in the country, while Pemex has sealed 122 of the wells drilled since 2019, although none in Chiapas, according to a public information request filed by IPS.
Since taking office in December 2018, leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has strengthened Pemex and the also state-owned Federal Electricity Commission by promoting the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels, to the detriment of renewable energy.
The state of Chiapas is home to hydroelectric power plants, mining projects, hydrocarbon exploitation blocks and a section of the Mayan Train, the most emblematic megaproject of the current Mexican government. Image: Center for Zoque Language and Culture AC
Territory under siege
The RBMA is one of Mexico’s 225 natural protected areas (NPAs) and its 331,000 hectares are home to 20 percent of the country’s plant species, 30 percent of its birds, 27 percent of its mammals and 17 percent of its freshwater fish.
Like all of the Lacandona rainforest, the RBMA faces deforestation, the expansion of cattle ranching, wildlife trafficking, drought, and forest fires.
Fermín Ledesma, an academic at the public Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, said possible oil exploration could aggravate existing social and environmental conflicts in the state, in addition to growing criminal violence and the historical absence of the State.
“The situation is always complex, due to legal loopholes that do not delimit the jungle, the natural protected areas are not delimited, it has been a historical mess. The search for oil has always been there,” he told IPS from Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of Chiapas.
The researcher said “it is a very complex area, with a 50-year agrarian conflict between indigenous peoples, often generated by the government itself, which created an overlapping of plans and lands.”
Ledesma pointed to a contradiction between the idea of PNAs that are depopulated in order to protect them and the historical presence of native peoples.
From 2001 to 2022, Chiapas lost 748,000 hectares of tree cover, equivalent to a 15 percent decrease since 2000, one of the largest sites of deforestation in Mexico, according to the international monitoring platform Global Forest Watch. In 2022 alone, 26,800 hectares of natural forest disappeared.
In addition, this state, one of the most impoverished in the country, has suffered from the presence of mining, the construction of three hydroelectric plants and, now, the Mayan Train, the Mexican government’s most emblematic megaproject inaugurated on Dec. 15, one of the seven sections of which runs through the north of the state.
But there are also stories of local resistance against oil production. In 2017, Zoque indigenous people prevented the auction of two blocks on some 84,000 hectares in nine municipalities that sought to obtain 437.8 million barrels of crude oil equivalent.
The anonymous source expressed hope for a repeat of that victory and highlighted the argument of conducting an indigenous consultation prior to the projects, free of pressure and with the fullest possible information. “With that we can stop the wells, as occurred in 2017. We are not going to let them move forward,” he said.
Ledesma the researcher questioned the argument of local development driven by natural resource extraction and territorial degradation as a pretext.
“They say it’s the only way to do it, but that’s not true. It leaves a trail of environmental damage, damage to human health, present and future damage. It is much easier for the population to accept compensation or give up the land, because they see it is degraded. A narrative is created that they live in an impoverished area and therefore they have to relocate. This has happened in other areas,” he said.
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Jan 18 (IPS) – Guatemala’s new president, Bernardo Arévalo, was expected to be sworn in on 14 January at 2pm –the 14th at 14:00, as people repeated in anticipation for months. It was a momentous event – but it wasn’t guaranteed to happen.
One year earlier, Arévalo – co-founder of the progressive Movimiento Semilla (Seed Movement), a political party born out of widespread 2015 anti-corruption protests – was largely unknown, freshly selected as his party’s presidential candidate. He wasn’t on the radar of opinion polls. A long chain of unlikely events later, he’s become the first Guatemalan president in living memory who doesn’t belong to the self-serving elites who Guatemalans call ‘the corrupt pact’, which he has credibly promised to dismantle.
The fear this caused among corrupt elite that has long ruled Guatemala was reflected in a series of attempts to try to stop Arévalo’s inauguration. The huge and sustained citizen mobilisation that came in response can largely be credited with keeping alive the spark of democracy in Guatemala.
Last-minute delays
All the Guatemalan Congress needed to do on the morning of 14 February was certify its newly elected members so the body could swear in the new president. But this routine administrative procedure was dragged on for many hours. The Indigenous movement, at the forefront of the months-long protests that had successfully kept at bay successive attempts to reverse the election results, called on Indigenous communities throughout Guatemala to remain on the alert.
In the late afternoon the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, surrounded by members of numerous foreign delegations, read a declaration calling on Congress to hand over power, ‘as required by the Constitution’, to the president-elect. This signalled that the world was watching.
As tensions mounted, Semilla reached an agreement for one of its representatives to be elected as president of Congress. This allowed the certification process to resume, and Arévalo was finally sworn in shortly after midnight. Night-long celebrations followed.
A coup attempt in stages
Arévalo’s election was unexpected. He only made it into the 20 August runoff because several other contenders not to the elite’s liking had been disqualified ahead of the first round. His candidacy wasn’t blocked because he scored so poorly in the polls. People’s expectations were extremely low, and first place went to invalid votes.
But once Arévalo entered the runoff, his rise was unstoppable. Death threats soon poured in, and an assassination plot involving state and non-state forces came to light days before the runoff.
As soon as the first-round results were announced, nine parties submitted complaints about supposed ‘irregularities’ that had gone undetected by all international observers. Their supporters converged outside the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) calling for a rerun.
The Constitutional Court instead ordered a recount and instructed the TSE to suspend official certification until complaints were resolved. Following the recount, the TSE eventually endorsed the results two weeks later.
But meanwhile, Attorney General Consuelo Porras Argueta, an official under US sanctions for corruption, launched an investigation into Semilla for alleged irregularities in its registration process and had its offices raided. She also ordered two raids on TSE offices, and when the TSE officially announced Arévalo as one of the runoff contenders, she ordered Semilla’s suspension. The Constitutional Court however blocked this order and the runoff ran its course. Arévalo took 58 per cent of the vote, compared to 37.2 per cent for the pro-establishment candidate.
Efforts to stop Arévalo’s inauguration began immediately, with yet another attempt by the Public Prosecutor to have Semilla suspended. The Constitutional Court continued to receive and reject legal challenges until the day of the inauguration.
For 100 days, two different visions of Guatemala wrestled with each other: people eager for change protested nonstop while corrupt forces linked to organised crime strove to preserve their privileges at any cost.
Democracy on life support
Guatemala has long been classified as a ‘hybrid regime‘ with a mix of democratic and authoritarian traits. Under outgoing president Alejandro Giammattei, civic freedoms steadily deteriorated. State institutions grew even weaker, ransacked by predatory elites and coopted by organised crime.
One of the last acts of Giammattei’s predecessor and ally, Jimmy Morales, was to end the work of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). Charged with supporting and strengthening state institutions to investigate and prosecute serious crimes, CICIG helped file over 120 cases in the Guatemalan justice system and its joint investigations with the Attorney General’s Office led to over 400 convictions.
Under Giammattei, the Attorney General’s Office dismantled all anti-corruption efforts and criminalised those in the legal profession who’d worked alongside CICIG. Impunity flourished. Transparency International’s 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index found evidence of strong influence by organised crime over politics and politicians, with some crime bosses seeking and securing office.
It’s no wonder that Guatemalans’ trust in state institutions hit rock bottom. According to the latest Latinobarómetro report, in 2021 satisfaction with the performance of democracy stood at a meagre 25 per cent.
Challenges ahead
Arévalo came to the presidency on a credible anti-corruption platform. But dismantling dense webs of complicity, rooting out entrenched corruption and rebuilding state institutions are no easy tasks.
Among the many challenges is a highly fragmented Congress in which 16 parties are represented, with Semilla on only 23 out of 160 seats. A large majority of Congress remains on the payroll of the interests Arévalo has promised to take on, along with most of the justice system. The 14 January events made clear that the ‘corrupt pact’ will do anything it can to stop Arévalo.
Arévalo’s to-do list is long, ranging from reducing political spending and improving social services to reversing laws that criminalise protest and establishing an effective protection mechanism for human rights defenders. At the top is forcing the resignation of Attorney General Consuelo Porras, the highest official presiding over a judicial network set up to ensure the impunity of the ‘corrupt pact’.
Arévalo can’t remove the Attorney General unilaterally, and so will have to negotiate her departure. This will be a key early test of the hope invested in him to keep democracy alive. Many more are sure to come.
The ancient village of Kbaal Romeas has been flooded. Credit: Kris Janssens / IPS
by Kris Janssens (ratanakiri province, cambodia)
Inter Press Service
RATANAKIRI PROVINCE, Cambodia, Jan 18 (IPS) – “What on earth are you going to do in Tropeang Krohom?” The driver of the minivan turns his head and gives me a puzzled look. Few passengers want to be dropped off in a settlement between two provincial towns.
Tropeang Krohom or ‘Red Pond’ is located at a junction of the main road. The name refers to the typical blood-red earth in this province of Ratanakiri.
From this point, a motorcyclist will take me to his village. It is a ride of more than two hours, along bumpy and unpaved roads, with large trails of dust behind passing trucks. The leaves of the grayish-green trees are covered with a thick layer of the same red sand.
Stretched out valleys
Everyone is en route to somewhere. Some are packed lightly, others carry cartloads of vegetables, cassava or sugar cane stalks, to be transported from the field to the market. A street vendor travels from one village to another on his motorbike, loaded with small items for sale such as soap, candy, or soft drinks.
About 1 percent of the total population of 17 million inhabitants live in this area. This province mainly consists of villages, each populated by 60-something families, spread across vast valleys. I go to Kbaal Romeas (literally ‘head of the rhinoceros’) next to Srepok, a tributary of the Mekong.
Cambodia’s northeast is home to more than 20 ethnic groups or Indigenous People. They each have their own story and particular customs, from death cults to love huts, and they have specific languages, although nowadays rarely used.
Young people prefer switching to Khmer, the language of the largest Cambodian ethnicity, which is slowly wiping out the others.
In this province, the clash between tradition and development became painfully clear in 2017, when a huge dam was built at the confluence of the Srepok and the Sesan rivers in Ratanakiri’s west. The power plant turned an inhabited area of ??34,000 hectares into a huge water reservoir. Thousands of residents had to be relocated to a place with newly built houses and expansion options. But about 50 ‘Pounong’ families refuse to leave.
At first, they used small boats to row over the flooded village road. Later, the typical shaded areas under the stilt houses slowly filled with water.
Tompoun children want to show me the ghost forest, but they are still afraid. Credit: Kris Janssens / IPS
Stubborn resistance
Today, the villagers live a little further away, still within rowing distance of the old spot. Ironically, this area close to a hydroelectric power station is not connected to the grid. People here don’t want to pay for electricity from that ‘doomed’ dam anyway. A Cambodian NGO supporting the stubborn resistance is providing solar panels to power night lights and to charge mobile phones.
“I have been to the new village a few times to visit a sick relative, but I will never live there,” says Poo, 64. He shows me his rice field, which has just been harvested. “This land is my identity,” he adds. I know a few Cambodian words for “tradition” or “origin,” but this man uses them all in one sentence.
According to many ethnic traditions, bodies are not cremated as in the Buddhist culture, but buried. This also goes for Pounong people, who believe that the spirits of the deceased are still wandering around the burial site. This is the main reason why the community doesn’t want to leave.
The cemetery of Kbaal Romeas is completely flooded and can no longer be visited. To find out more about this death cult, I travel to other villages in northeastern Cambodia, closer to Laos and Vietnam. The current borders between the three countries of former Indochina were established by the French in the 1950s, but these minority groups have been living here much longer.
In the Tompoun village of Katai, about 20 kilometers in a straight line to the Vietnamese border, I ask a young woman to take me to the ‘prey khmaoch’ or ghost forest. She refuses. Once bodies are ritually buried, they are left to nature. Living souls shouldn’t interfere any more, she says.
Five children are willing to guide me if I promise we will stay together as a group. I see two boys holding hands, one of them whispers he’s quite afraid. Once in the forest, the only sounds we hear come from the dry leaves under our feet and from cawing crows high up in the trees.
Suddenly, the first grave appears in front of us. It is a wooden construction with decorations and a stone stating the date of death and a picture of a woman with a typical pipe in her mouth. Other small wooden graves, scattered around the trees, are in an advanced stage of decay. This place is macabre and peaceful at the same time.
Water buffalo
The burial tradition also exists in the Charai community. Leejapheuy, 68, sits on a bench in the sand under a canvas, in the middle of his village, Loom. A retired soldier who has lived in this village all his life, he has that confident attitude of someone who’s seen it all.
It turns out he is the sculptor who makes the wooden animistic guards, protecting the spirits. In the death forest, I see a statue of a man holding a gun and a sculpted elephant. As the story goes, a water buffalo is to be slaughtered for every burial, but more and more families are abandoning this practice because the animal can easily cost a few hundred dollars.
The journey continues along winding dirt roads and narrow bridges, crisscrossing the rough landscape, which turns into one big mud puddle during the rainy season.
Along the way, we see workers on cassava plantations. 12-year-old Seth comes from Kandal province, more than 500 kilometers south, next to the capital city Phnom Penh. He says he is only here for the harvest and will return to school in his hometown afterward. “This is also a reason why traditional cultures disappear,” says Mana, 37, my motorcyclist. Seasonal laborers and temporary residents do not follow the ancient customs.
The landscape changes and we pass miles of rubber plantations, recognizable by the black bowl on every tree trunk. “Ten years ago these roads were much narrower,” Mana recalls. “But these rubber companies have signed large land concessions and want to be able to drive their big trucks deep into the forest.”
Original inhabitants retreating
Around noon we arrive in Ta Veng, another village with elementary wooden houses on sandy soil. A few neighbors are crouched on the ground around a fire bowl with glowing charcoal. The lunch consists of home-harvested vegetables with sifted rice. Dogs come running towards us, barking at the top of their lungs. Pigs roam freely. Barefoot children shout from afar that visitors have arrived.
We are welcomed by Makara, who has married into this Prouw community. He limps a bit (“an anomaly from my childhood”), but that doesn’t stop him from showing us around the village. He finds traditional culture interesting, but he thinks there is also an important practical aspect.
“Monks in the Buddhist pagoda carry out cremations for free,” says Makara, “while funerals do cost a bit.” He also notices that more and more Khmer immigrants buy land and plantations in this area. “The original inhabitants are moving deeper into the forest.”
Love hut
On the way back we pass several Kreung villages. This community is known for its ‘love huts’, small private houses where daughters of marriageable age receive boyfriends. The tradition arose because it is difficult to ‘date’ in a remote village.
“In my time, I had three lovers in a hut like that before I met my current husband,” says Semapohean, 60, laughing. “And yes, the boys were allowed to sleep over. One or two nights before I’d send them away.” Here, it was girls who got to choose their favorite candidates. The custom is notable in a country where marriages are not necessarily arranged, but often require family approval.
But today the love huts no longer exist. “Every now and then we build one to show to tourists, but nowadays people use their phones to meet each other”. In addition, families now live in larger houses, where the children have a separate room and therefore sufficient privacy. Semapohean doesn’t seem to mind that much.
Sookanjerai, 52, is more pessimistic. “This new generation is too lazy to continue the tradition,” he says. Young people do not necessarily want to leave the area, but they lose interest in the specific customs. Sookanjerai has little hope for the future “In a few years from now everyone will have become Khmer and our ethnicities will be gone.”
Indigenous Peoples from Alianza Ceibo fight to counter environmental degradation and protect more than 2 million hectares of primary rainforest in four provinces and 70 communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Credit: Alianza Ceibo
Opinion by Marcos Athias Neto (new york)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK, Dec 07 (IPS) – The triple planetary crisis of climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and pollution is a threat to the well-being and survival of millions of people around the world. Corruption, in its many forms, worsens these multiple crises.
From illegal logging and wildlife trafficking to bribery in environmental permits, to lax enforcement of regulations, corruption inflicts severe damage on our already affected fragile ecosystems.
In the forestry sector alone, close to 420 million hectares of forest have been lost between 1990 and 2020 as a result of deforestation enabled by corruption.
Climate change interventions are currently worth US$546 billion and, although difficult to measure accurately, Transparency International estimates suggest anywhere between 1.4 and 35 per cent of climate action funds have been lost to corruption, and only in 2021, over 350 land and environmental defenders were murdered.
UNDP has been recognizing and championing Indigenous Forest Defenders like Nemonte Nenquimo, the Indigenous Waorani activist from Ecuador, co-founder of the Alianza Ceibo— UNDP Equator Prize winner of 2014, named among the 100 most influential people of 2020 by the Time Magazine. There are 275 Equator Prize winners many of whom are defending land rights.
Anti-corruption is a development financing issue.
Corruption siphons off funds from urgently needed climate financing and the green energy transition. Effective, transparent, and inclusive governance mechanisms and institutions are prerequisites for combating corruption and will help not only ensure that financing achieves its maximum impact, but also contributes to the trust required for the releasing of additional funds.
If we can tackle corruption, we can improve our efforts to successfully protect our environment. However, we must act now, and we must work together. Anti-corruption tools, including those powered by digital advancements, have the potential to help countries reach their climate goals.
Resources lost in illicit financial flows and to corruption each year can be used in targeted investments in governance, social protection, green economy, and digitalization. This is the ‘SDG Push’ scenario which would prevent as many as 169 million people from being driven into extreme poverty by 2030.
Governance mechanisms must be in place
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is working to promote the investment of over $1 trillion of public expenditure and private capital in the SDGs. A portion of these investments are likely to be directed towards climate finance.
In Sri Lanka and Uganda, UNDP is using data and digital monitoring tools to tackle illegal environmental practices and promote integrity and transparency in environmental resource management.
UNDP has also recently launched its Energy Governance Framework for a Just Energy Transition to contribute to achieving more inclusive and accountable energy transitions. In Eswatini, UNDP is supporting inclusive national dialogues to identify mini-grid delivery models and clarify priority interventions for an inclusive and integrated approach to off-grid electrification.
A mini-grid delivery model, determined by the national government with active multi-stakeholder engagement, is the cornerstone of a country’s over-arching mini-grid regulatory framework. It defines who finances, builds, owns and who operates and maintains the mini-grids.
Technology must be promoted
To ensure that crucial financial resources are used for their intended purposes and are not manipulated by corruption, we must ensure that transparency mechanisms exist. With appropriate safeguards in place, technology can be a game-changer for addressing corruption. Big data analytics, mobile applications and e-governance systems are valuable tools in the prevention, detection and investigation of corruption.
In Ukraine, a new e-platform supported by UNDP is increasing transparency in procurement. UNDP in partnership with the EU and the National Agency on Corruption Prevention has also developed a new basic online course to train anti-corruption officers.
Partnerships against corruption must galvanize global efforts
UNDP and the Oversight and Anti-Corruption Authority of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Nazaha) are jointly launching a new global initiative for measuring corruption at the 10th Session of the Conference of the States Parties to UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), hosted by the United States in Atlanta from 11 – 15 December 2023.
The objective of this new partnership is to strengthen international cooperation to fight corruption and enable countries to track and monitor progress on tackling corruption. This new initiative will develop evidenced-based indicators to evaluate progress and efforts of countries to end multiple forms of corruption.
It will identify policy recommendations and reforms to enable countries to achieve national anti-corruption objectives, as well as address the SDG16 targets for reducing corruption and illicit financial flows.
UNDP remains committed to being united against corruption and to advance the spirit and letter of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption by driving new efforts to measure corruption, with our partners from the UN and beyond.
The Anti-corruption Day is commemorated on 9 December, along with the 20th Anniversary of UNCAC.
Marcos Athias Neto is UN Assistant Secretary General and Director of UNDP’s Bureau for Policy and Programme Support.
Opinion by Bibbi Abruzzini, Nina Sangma (new delhi, india)
Inter Press Service
NEW DELHI, India, Dec 06 (IPS) – We, a global coalition of over 50 civil society and human rights organizations from over 30 countries have co-developed the “Civil Society Manifesto for Ethical AI”, a groundbreaking initiative aiming to steer AI policies towards safeguarding rights and deconolonising AI discourse. We question, and we are not the only ones: whose voices, ideas and values matter in AI ?
“If Silicon Valley was a country it would probably be the richest in the world. So how genuinely committed is Big Tech and AI to funding and fostering human rights over profits? The barebones truth is that if democracy was profitable, human rights lawyers and defenders including techtivists from civil society organizations wouldn’t be sitting around multistakeholder engagement tables demanding accountability from Big Tech and AI. How invested are they in real social impact centred on rights despite glaring evidence to the contrary?,” asks Nina Sangma, of the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact, a regional organization founded in 1992 by Indigenous Peoples’ movements with over 40 members across 14 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
We are currently at a critical juncture where most countries lack a comprehensive AI policy or regulatory framework. The sudden reliance on AI and other digital technologies has introduced new – and often “invisible” – vulnerabilities, and we have just seen the tip of the iceberg, literally melting from the effects of climate change.
Some things we have already seen though: AI is still a product of historical data representing inequities and inequalities. A study analyzing 100+ AI-generated images using Midjourney’s diffusion models revealed consistent biases, including depicting older men for specialized jobs, binary gender representations, featuring urban settings regardless of location, and generating images predominantly reinforcing “ageism, sexism and classism”, with a bias toward a Western perspective.
Data sources continue to be “toxic”. AI tools learn from vast amounts of training data, often consisting of billions of inputs scraped from the internet. This data risks to perpetuate harmful stereotypes and often contains toxic content like pornography, misogyny, violence, and bigotry. Furthermore, researchers found bias in up to 38.6% of ‘facts’ used by AI.
Despite increased awareness, the discourse surrounding AI, like the technology itself, has predominantly been shaped by “Western, whiteness, and wealth”. The discrimination that we see today is the result of a cocktail of “things gone wrong” – ranging from discriminatory hiring practices based on gender and race, to the prevalence of algorithms biases.
“Biases are not a coincidence. Artificial intelligence is a machine that draws conclusions from data based on statistical models, therefore, the first thing it eliminates is variations. And in the social sphere that means not giving visibility to the margins,” declares Judith Membrives i Llorens, head of digital policies at Lafede.cat – Organitzacions per la Justícia Global.
“AI development isn’t the sole concern here. The real issue stems from keeping citizens in the dark, restricting civic freedoms and the prevalence of polarisation and prejudice on several dimensions of our societies. This results in unequal access, prevalent discrimination, and a lack of transparency in technological processes and beyond. Despite acknowledging the potential and power of these technologies, it is clear that many are still excluded and left at the margins due to systemic flaws. Without addressing this, the global development of AI and other emerging technologies won’t be inclusive. Failure to act now and to create spaces of discussion for new visions to emerge, will mean these technologies continue to reflect and exacerbate these disparities,” says Mavalow Christelle Kalhoule, civil society leader in Burkina Faso and across the Sahel region, and Chair of the global civil society network Forus.
The Civil Society Manifesto for Ethical AI asks, what are the potential pitfalls of using current AI systems to inform future decisions, particularly in terms of reinforcing prevailing disparities?
Today, as EU policymakers are expected to close a political agreement for the AI Act, we ask, do international standards for regulating machine learning include the voice of the people? With the Manifesto we explore, challenge, disrupt, and reimagine the underlying assumptions within this discourse but also to broaden the discussion to incorporate communities beyond the traditional “experts.” Nothing about us, without us.
“We want Artificial Intelligence, but created by and for everyone, not only for a few,” adds Judith Membrives i Llorens.
From the “Internet of Cows” to the impact of AI on workers’ rights and on civic space, developed by over 50 civil society organisations, the Manifesto includes 17 case studies on their experiences, visions and stories around AI. With each story, we want to weave a different path to build new visions on AI systems that expand rather than restrict freedoms worldwide.
“The current development of AI is by no means an inevitable path. It is shaped by Big Tech companies because we let them. It is time for the civil society to stand up for their data rights,” says Camilla Lohenoja, of SASK, the workers’ rights organisation of the trade unions of Finland.
“Focusing on ethical and transparent technology also means giving equal attention to the fairness and inclusivity of its design and decision-making processes. The integrity of AI is shaped as much by its development as by its application,” says Hanna Pishchyk of the youth group Digital Grassroots.
Ultimately, the Manifesto aims to trigger a global – and not just sectorial and Western-dominated dialogue – on AI development and application.
Civil society is here not just as a mere token in multistakeholder spaces, we bring forward what others often dismiss, and we actively participate worldwide in shaping a technological future that embraces inclusivity, accountability, and ethical advancements.
Bibbi Abruzzini, Forus and Nina Sangma, Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP)
Research team in the Arctic. Professor Tjernström is standing on the left.
Opinion by Jan Lundius (stockholm, sweden)
Inter Press Service
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Dec 04 (IPS) – This year’s UN Climate Change Conference is taking place in Dubai from 30 November to 12 December. The so-called COP summits are organised every year and constitute a means for the global community to agree on ways to address the climate crisis, such as limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, supporting vulnerable communities to adapt to the effects of climate change, and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
More than 70,000 delegates are attending the COP28 in Dubai. Main delegates are the 47 representatives of the member states (called Parties), which constitute the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Business leaders, young people, climate scientists, Indigenous Peoples, journalists, and various other experts and stakeholders are also among the participants. Officially, COP 28 stands for the 28th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC.
UNFCCC was established in 1992 to combat “dangerous human interference with the climate system”, in part by limiting the greenhouse gas emissions that compromise Earth’s entire ecosystem, a prerequisite for human existence. Among other items on its agenda COP 28 will address progress made in accordance with the Paris Agreement of 2015, when 195 Parties of the UNFCCC agreed to keep the rise of global temperature to well below 2 °C (3.6 °F), compared to pre-industrial levels, and preferably limit the increase to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F).
To gain a scientific perspective of the meaning and influence of COP28, IPS asked Professor Tjernström about his views on climate change and what he assumes might be done to amend it. Michael Tjernström is since 2001 professor of Meteorology at Stockholm University. He has spent several periods at institutions such as CIRES, The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and The Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), all in Boulder, Colorado, USA. Professor Tjernström’s main research interests concern climate change in the Arctic. He has participated in several scientific expeditions to Arctic areas and is since 2011 a member of the International Arctic Science Committee.
Michael Tjernström
IPS: Professor Tjernström, can the outcomes of COP28 drastically affect current climate changes?
Michael Tjernström: The COPs are a necessary and essential factor when it comes to addressing climate change. A COP summit might be likened to a regular check-up visit to the dentist. It can be painful, but is necessary for good dental hygiene. The dentist might find that your teeth are in a very bad state and to save them, urgent measures have to be taken – caries has to be amended, maybe a bad tooth has to be extracted, dental bridges inserted, etc . The point is that the dentist is an expert and you have to trust him. However, the decision to save your teeth is all yours. In a similar fashion the COPs intend to amend already present damages to the climate, determine their causes and try to prevent a negative development. But it is up to the members to act.
IPS: How do you perceive the UN’s role in this endeavour?
Michael Tjernström: There is absolutely no other global organization other than the UN which would be able to organize and be in charge of such a process. No other national, international, political or private, organisation would be able to establish a global consensus and general awareness, as well as maintaining the perseverance, stamina, objectivity and legal strength to do so. An endurance against all odds, but nevertheless made possible through the UN’s established rules, combined with its global and local outreach. Of course, there are cracks and concerns, but the administrative structure and operations of the UN are firmly based on the commitment of its member states.
People, who in general are prone to criticize the UN system are often only perceiving the actions of the Security Council and how its commitment is crippled by the veto power of its five permanent members. However, this does not apply to the UNFCCC and its scientific support organisation, ICCP. As a scientist and propagator for awareness about climate change, I perceive the lack of understanding the great importance of the UN as a marketing problem. People are not aware of what this global organisation stands for, and even less so – its support of the global scientific community.
IPS: Will you attend the COP summit in Dubai?
Michael Tjernström: No, most scientists have through their research already made their fair contribution to efforts to combat climate change. The current state of research, results and warnings are comprehensively explained and diffused through the ICCP reports and scientists have thus no need to attend the COPs. Whether or not politicians listen to science or not is not determined by my presence at a COP.
COP summits are more politically than scientifically motivated. However, they are based on the factual basis provided by ICCP reports. The COPs mainly attract other stakeholders than scientists, such as government representatives, spokespersons for environmentalist pressure groups and lobbyists representing the interests of fossil fuel-based industries, as well as oil and coal producing companies. Many such lobbyists try to find a place among decision makers, while environmentalists might be looking for political scapegoats.
People and organisations are trying to highlight their own, often specific interests, some of them being based on doubtful assumptions and moral priorities. Environmentalists have often demanded that certain interest groups be excluded from COP summits, like those lobbying for the use of fossil fuels, interests of oil producers, as well as industrialists who, for the sake of their own profit, try to minimize the threat from global warming.
Nevertheless, it is important that influential stakeholders are present . The global outreach demands this. Everyone has to be allowed to have their voice and concerns heard, as well as being provided with an opportunity to be informed about scientific achievements, new environmentally friendly technologies, and the threats of global warming.
Industrialization based on non-polluting and zero emissions of greenhouse gases, as well as new eco-friendly technology, are essential for change and improvement. Environmentalism’s contributions are also important. Like most revolutionary movements radical environmentalists highlight political and capitalist motivational reasons and misconduct, while they demand change and sacrifice. Historically did socialists and suffragettes contribute to emancipation and justice. However, some revolutionaries have turned into fanatics, and some have concentrated on relatively minor but easily targeted issues while ignoring an overall picture. For example, opponents to air travel are maybe not fully aware of the fact that it actually contributes to only three percent of global greenhouse emissions, while private cars and other fossil-fuel based transportation means account for much more of carbon dioxide emissions . It might be stated that it would be more beneficial for the environment to limit the use of your car, than avoid travelling by air. Veganism may be considered as beneficial when it comes to emission of greenhouse gases, though methane emissions from ruminating animals constitutes less than five percent of greenhouse gas emissions. If we could stop throwing away a third of all the food we produce, this would be much more efficient and would also have other benefits. However, every effort to limit greenhouse emissions is worthy of attention, though decisive and comprehensive political actions are particularly crucial for achieving zero greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible. It is not enough to limit them; they must be eliminated.
IPS: But can COPs really have the impact you could wish for?
Michael Tjernström: In several respects, development is moving in the wrong direction, especially when it comes to acquiring knowledge. Many confide in badly informed, or even deceitful, social media and populist politicians. In certain circles a negative attitude to research and science is thriving. Science might by such groups be perceived as an essentially separate activity, practiced by an intellectual elite devoting itself to mutual admiration.
The COPs make participants aware of the fatal threat of global warming. But more than that, it also makes the general public aware and therefore participants can be held accountable for their actions, or lack thereof, and are through legally binding agreements forced to take social and economic measures to amend the ongoing destruction of natural resources, and the atmosphere.
IPS: What exactly is ICCP and what is its connection with the COPs
Michael Tjernström: Generally speaking, people are not knowledgeable, most don’t know what ICCP is. The task of ICCP, i.e. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is to advance scientific knowledge about climate change caused by human activities and it does so by examining all relevant scientific literature on the subject. This comprehensive review and dissemination of scientific insights and research results include natural, economic and social impacts and risks. ICCP also covers possible responsive options. IPCC does not conduct its own original research, its mandate is to survey the research situation, while aiming at being objective and comprehensive, and only openly published results that have already been reviewed by experts can be used. Thousands of scientists and other experts then volunteer to review the findings and publications of ICCP, before its key findings are compiled into a Synthesis Report intended for policymakers and the general public. Experts have described the work of ICCP as the biggest peer review of the global scientific community. COP28 will discuss the 6th ICCP Synthesis Report, issued in March 2023.
Most climate-related risks assessed in the Fifth Synthesis Report, issued in 2014, are in the Sixth Report deemed to be higher than earlier predicted and projected long-term impacts are worse than they were assumed to be in 2014. The Sixth Synthesis Report highlights that climatic and non-climatic risks will increasingly interact, creating compound and cascading risks, which will be extremely difficult to manage. The confidence of the conclusions has also been gradually increasing across the reports.
The development of climatological research is quite fast, the lag in actual efforts to halt global warming is mainly to be found in decisive decision-making. The original ICCP reports contain tens of thousands of pages that few decision-makers can assimilate. The summary for policy makers is reviewed and edited by several stakeholders. Efforts may thus be made to mitigate alarming findings and adapt them to political concerns. However, changes and adaptions are carefully wetted in order to secure that none of them contradict actual and fact-based research results, predictions and warnings.
IPS: Do you perceive yourself as a pessimist, or as an optimist?
Michael Tjernström: I am both hopeful and worried. As a researcher I cannot allow myself to fall victim to paralyzing dystopias. As a scientist I contribute to the measurement of climatological processes, while taking the pulse of the current situation, but also looking for trends and measures to mitigate, and perhaps even hinder, a worrisome development. Accordingly, a scientist has to be a kind of optimist even in the face of despair. Furthermore, I consider that my role as a researcher has to involve the popularization and dissemination of research results. A role I appreciate and feel comfortable with.
It is reasonable that we in the West, who so far have contributed by far the most to the ongoing climatological damage, also take our responsibility when it comes to mitigation and adaptation. We have the technological, historical and scientific prerequisites to make amends for all the damage we have caused and should therefore also go into the breach for the realisation of necessary improvements, while contributing to the economic means to do so.
But the picture is complicated. China is making great progress in climate research, but is at the same time contributing to the world’s largest emissions of greenhouse gases in total, and is number two in the world in per capita emissions, yet is still claiming they should still be treated as a developing country and indeed has a large poor population in the face of a rapidly growing middle class. Africa is lagging behind in its industrial development and consequently have limited emissions, but must nevertheless already now end its dependence on fossil fuels.
We in the West live well and safely and could without any major problems dismiss a lot of the gratuitous comfort we currently are enjoying. The drama is undeniable, even when the Paris Agreement was signed it was by some researchers pointed out that the 1.5 target was unattainable in reality. There is much talk about tipping points, when much of the existing ecological balance suddenly collapses, and that this might happen at a two degree rise in global temperature. But contributing factors are manifold and I don’t believe it will be happening in the near future. There is no really compelling evidence for most of these suggested tipping points. The most important thing is to immediately stop the burning of fossil fuels. In spite of all, I assume that much can and will be done to stop the worrisome development.
IPS interchange with Professor Tjernström was quite extensive and informative. In a following article we will return to Professor Tjernström describing his own research and thoughts about current, and future climatological changes.
For more than a month, protests against Central America’s largest open-pit copper mine have held Panama in a state of siege. Roadblocks have caused gas and propane shortages. Many supermarket shelves have run bare. Restaurants and hotels have sat empty.
But on Tuesday, protesters in Panama got the news they were waiting for.
The country’s Supreme Court of Justice ruled that Panama’s new mining contract with the Canadian company First Quantum was unconstitutional.
Protesters danced in the streets in front of the Supreme Court. They waved the red, white and blue Panamanian flag and sang the national anthem.
The ruling, a big blow for investors and the country’s long-term credit rating, is, for the moment, a source of relief for Panama, which has been shaken by the country’s largest protest movement to plague the country in decades.
The news of the Supreme Court ruling came early on Tuesday – the day of the anniversary of Panama’s Independence from Spain.
“Today, we are celebrating two independences,” 58-year-old restaurant worker Nestor Gonzalez told Al Jazeera. “Independence from Spain and independence from the mine. And no one is going to forget it.”
People turned out to celebrate. The bistro where Gonzalez works, in the western province of Chiriqui, was packed with patrons by noon – something the restaurant had not seen since mid-October.
“We are so happy,” said Gonzalez, “because, we had been locked up in the province of Chiriqui for 35 days, without gas, without propane and with little food. I had to go look for firewood in the mountains because I had no propane to cook with. So thank God that the justices took a stand and issued this ruling.”
The mine, known as Cobre Panama, has been in production since 2019, and extracting 300,000 tonnes of copper a year. It represents roughly five percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and 75 percent of Panamanian exports. The mining sector contributes roughly seven percent of Panama’s GDP with Cobre Panama as the country’s most important mine.
But protesters said Cobre Panama was a disaster for the country’s environment and a handout to a foreign corporation.
“I’m protesting because they are stealing our country. They are just handing it over,” said Ramon Rodriguez, a protester in a yellow raincoat in a march in late October, after protests ignited against the mine. “The sovereignty of our country is in danger. That’s why I’m here.”
This question of sovereignty is particularly important for Panamanians, who fought throughout the 20th century to rid the country of the United States-controlled Panama Canal Zone. This was an area almost half the size of the US state of Rhode Island that sliced through the middle of Panama.
“This contract is bad. It never should have been made. Never. So you have to fight,” said Miriam Caballero, a middle-aged woman in a grey sweatshirt who watched the October protest pass.
Protesters said Cobre Panama was a disaster for the country’s environment and a handout to the Canadian firm that had the mining contract [Michael Fox/Al Jazeera]
Impact on foreign investment
This was not the first contract with the mine. In 2021, the Supreme Court declared the previous contract unconstitutional for not adequately benefitting the public good. The government of President Laurentino Cortizo renegotiated the contract with improved benefits for the state. This was fast-tracked through Congress on October 20. Cortizo signed it into law hours later.
The president and his cabinet had applauded the new contract, saying it would bring windfall profits for the state.
“The contract ensures a minimum payment to the state of $375m dollars a year, for the next 20 years,” Commerce Minister Federico Alfaro told Panama news outlet Telemetro. “If you can compare this with what the state was receiving before, which was $35m a year, it’s a substantial improvement to the past.”
Cortizo promised to use the funds to shore up the country’s Social Security Fund and increase pensions for more than 120,000 retirees.
After the protests spiralled out of control, he announced a moratorium on all new mining projects and promised to hold a referendum over the fate of Cobre Panama. The idea didn’t gain traction. The protesters wouldn’t budge.
Members of Panama’s business sector have blamed Cortizo for mishandling the crisis and refusing to use a heavy hand to end the roadblocks and stop the protests. Last week, they said it had cost the country $1.7bn.
Cortizo, whose approval rating was already down to 24 percent in June, responded to this week’s court ruling, stating, “All Panamanians need to respect and abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court.”
Analysts say the protests and the ruling will have an impact for foreign companies looking to do business in Panama.
“I believe this court ruling is sending a very clear message to foreign investors,” Jorge Cuellar, assistant professor of Latin American studies at Dartmouth College, told Al Jazeera. “If this is the kind of foreign investment that politicians and capitalists are innovating in 2023, then Panamanians want no part of it.”
But this stance will likely come at a price.
In early November, after more than a week of protests, rating agency Moody’s downgraded Panama’s debt to the lowest investment-grade rating. It cited financial issues and noted the political turmoil. JP Morgan analysts said, at the time, that if the mining contract were revoked, it would substantially increase Panama’s risk of losing its investment-grade rating.
First Quantum also has much to lose. Its shares have lost 60 percent of their value over the last month and a half. More than 40 percent of the company’s production comes from the Panamanian mine.
Over the weekend, the company notified Panama that it planned to take the country to arbitration under the Free Trade Agreement between the two countries.
But in a statement released after the ruling, First Quantum said, “The Company wishes to express that it respects Panamanian laws and will review the content of the judgement to understand its foundations.”
Protesters said the country’s sovereignty was at stake [Michael Fox/Al Jazeera]
‘Jobs at risk’
The announcement is also a blow for the employees of the mine. The mine employs roughly 6,600 people – 86 percent of whom are Panamanian – and a total 40,000 direct and indirect jobs.
The Union of Panamanian Mine Workers, Utramipa, announced its members would march in several cities on Wednesday against the Supreme Court decision and in defence of their jobs.
“We are not going to allow them to put our jobs at risk, which are our means for supporting our families,” the union said in a statement.
Last week, Utramipa member Michael Camacho denounced the protests on the news outlet Panama En Directo. Operations at the mine were suspended last week due to protests at its port and the highway in and out of the facility.
“What about us, the workers? We are also Panamanians. We have the right to go to our homes and return to our place of work,” said Camacho. “But at this moment, we are being held hostage by the protesters, by the anti-social, the terrorists – which is what we should call them – and the people that stop us from passing.”
For the majority of Panamanians, the Supreme Court ruling is a welcomed sign that the country is on the road to normalcy.
Protesters in some provinces have promised to stay in the streets until the Supreme Court ruling is officially published – which usually takes a few days – or until the mine is closed for good. But many roadblocks have now been cleared, highways that stood empty for weeks are now open, and gas stations are rolling back in business.
“We are in a new phase,” Harry Brown Arauz, the director of Panama’s International Center of Social and Political Studies, told Al Jazeera. “The protests, as we have seen until now, should be lifted. And the government has said that it will begin the process of closing the mine in an orderly manner. This can generate confidence in the population, which had been lost.”
Arauz says the protest movement and the ruling are a powerful sign of the strength of Panama’s democracy, which the country regained just over 30 years ago.
“This is a really important moment,” he says. “It marks a before and after for Panamanian democracy.”
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Nov 20 (IPS) – Australia had the chance to take a step forward in redressing the exclusion of its Indigenous people – and chose not to. In a referendum held in October, voters rejected a constitutional amendment to establish an institution for Indigenous people to have a say on matters that concern them.
On a 90 per cent turnout under mandatory voting, 60 per cent voted against. Supporters of the referendum were left pointing the finger at disinformation – and those who pushed it for political gain.
A history of exclusion
For a long time, Indigenous Australians – currently 3.8 per cent of the country’s population – lacked any recognition. European settlers didn’t see any need for a treaty with the people already there. Indigenous Australians only got the vote in 1962 and, following a referendum, were put on the census as late as 1972 – until then, they literally didn’t count. They remain unrecognised in the country’s constitution.
For most of the 20th century, assimilation laws saw Indigenous children forcibly taken from their families on a mass scale. It’s estimated that between 1910 and 1970 10 to 30 per cent of Indigenous children were handed to childless white couples to be raised as white. The horror of the ‘stolen generations’ only began to be acknowledged in the mid-1990s.
In 1997 the Australian Human Rights Commission issued a report with recommendations for healing and reconciliation. But a belated prime ministerial apology came only in 2008. That same year, the government issued a plan to reduce disadvantage among Indigenous people. After most of its targets expired unmet, a new approach was developed in partnership with an Indigenous coalition in 2020.
But little progress has been made in overcoming exclusion. On almost any indicator, Indigenous people remain two to three times worse off than non-Indigenous Australians. Being dramatically underrepresented in decision-making bodies, they also lack the tools to change it.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart
The road towards the referendum started more than a decade ago, when an expert panel found that constitutional recognition was the way to go. But the call for a referendum was delayed. In 2016, a Referendum Council again concluded that constitutional reform should proceed.
In 2017, the First Nations Dialogues issued the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which called for a Voice to Parliament for Indigenous people, a truth commission and a treaty. The Voice was viewed as the first step to open up a conversation and enable further progress.
Then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, of the centre-right Liberal Party, rejected the Uluru Statement. But in 2018 another committee was set up to investigate options for constitutional change – and again, it endorsed a constitutionally enshrined Voice. The Labor opposition promised to put the proposal to a referendum if it won the next election.
Political change: potential and limitations
The Liberal/National coalition lost the May 2022 election, and Labor’s incoming prime minister Anthony Albanese promised progress on long-stalled policies to address Indigenous rights.
The proposed constitutional amendment and text of the ballot question were made public in March 2023 and approved by parliament in June. The government endorsed a set of principles of representation, transparency and accountability that would be used to design the Voice. It was made clear that, as the name implied, this new body would give a voice to Indigenous people but not have decision-making authority or veto power. Any further decision on its composition, functions, powers and procedures would be in the hands of parliament.
Foreshadowing what was to come, the Liberal and National opposition parties submitted dissenting reports, and the Nationals rejected the proposal entirely. By siding with the No campaign, the opposition doomed the referendum. No referendum has ever been carried without bipartisan support.
For and against
Given the legal requirement to distribute an official pamphlet presenting the case for both sides, members of parliament who’d voted for and against the amendment bill drafted and approved a text containing their side’s arguments. This meant that disinformation was inserted into the process from the start: as an independent fact-checking initiative showed, several claims in the No pamphlet were false or misleading.
The Yes campaign focused its messaging on fairness, reconciliation and healing, seeking to sell the idea that Australia would be made better by the recognition of a space for Indigenous people to have a say in national politics.
Indigenous people overwhelmingly supported the proposal, although some opposed it – because they thought it didn’t go far enough, saw it as whitewash or hoped not to see relationships they’d painstakingly developed sidelined. The No campaign made a point of foregrounding contrarian Indigenous voices, disproportionately boosted by supportive media.
Different organisations in the No camp appealed to different groups. Advance, a conservative lobby group, went after young progressives with its ‘Not Enough’ campaign, suggesting that the Voice wasn’t what Indigenous Australians wanted and wouldn’t solve their problems. The Blak Sovereign Movement questioned the timing, arguing that a treaty should be negotiated first. Disinformation and racial abuse were rife.
Two much-repeated claims were that the Voice would divide Australians and enshrine privileges for Indigenous people. No campaigners peddled a zero-sum idea: that non-Indigenous people would lose if Indigenous people won. They falsely claimed that people would lose their farms or that Indigenous people would charge them to access beaches.
Another fear-stoking argument was that the Voice was only the beginning – after they secured this, Indigenous people would go for more, until they took everything from the rest. It could, for example, open up a conversation about land rights. That may have been a genuine fear for Australia’s powerful extractive industries, explaining why the right-wing think tanks that have consistently opposed climate action also lobbied against the Voice.
Having sowed disinformation and confusion, the No campaign told voters that, if in doubt, they should play it safe and vote no. It worked.
What next?
The result could bring even greater backlash. Emboldened, some opposition politicians have since withdrawn their previously stated support for a treaty and suggested rolling back practices they now present as inadmissible concessions to identity politics. This could be a harbinger for the opposition pinning its comeback hopes on a culture war strategy.
But while the referendum defeat has dealt a hard blow to hopes of challenging the exclusion of Indigenous Australians, it isn’t quite game over. A specific proposal has been defeated, but there’s plenty left to advocate for. Progress on the wider reconciliation agenda, including other forms of recognition and redress, could still be possible, particularly at state and local levels. The Uluru Statement from the Heart remains the compass, and civil society will keep urging politicians and the public to follow its path.
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Oct 24 (IPS) – Brazil’s Supreme Court has delivered a long-awaited ruling upholding Brazilian Indigenous peoples’ claims to their traditional land. It did so by rejecting the ‘Temporal Framework’ principle, which only allowed for the demarcation and titling of lands physically occupied by the Indigenous groups who claimed them by 5 October 1988, when the current constitution was adopted. This excluded the numerous Indigenous communities who’d been violently expelled from their ancestral lands before then, including under military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985.
The case was brought in relation to a land dispute in the state of Santa Catarina, but the ruling applies to hundreds of similar situations throughout Brazil.
This was also good news for the climate. Brazil is home to 60 per cent of the Amazon rainforest, a key climate stabiliser due to the enormous amount of carbon it stores and the water it releases into the atmosphere. Most of Brazil’s roughly 800 Indigenous territories – over 300 of which are yet to be officially demarcated – are in the Amazon. And there are no better guardians of the rainforest than Indigenous peoples: when they fend off deforestation, they protect their livelihoods and ways of life. The best-preserved areas of the Amazon are those legally recognised and protected as Indigenous lands.
But there’s been a sting in the tale: politicians backed by the powerful agribusiness lobby have passed legislation to enshrine the Temporal Framework, blatantly ignoring the court ruling.
A tug of war
The Supreme Court victory came after a long struggle. Hundreds of Indigenous mobilisations over several years called for the rejection of the Temporal Framework.
Powerful agribusiness interests presented the Temporal Framework as the proper way of regulating article 231 of the constitution in a way that provides the legal security rural producers need to continue to operate. Indigenous rights groups denounced it as a clear attempt to make theft of Indigenous lands legal. Regional and international human rights mechanisms sided with them: the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples warned that the framework contradicted universal and Inter-American human rights standards.
In their 21 September decision, nine of the Supreme Court’s 11 members ruled the Temporal Framework to be unconstitutional. With a track record of agribusiness-friendly rulings, the two judges who backed it had been appointed by former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, and one of them had also been Bolsonaro’s justice minister.
As the Supreme Court held its hearings and deliberations, political change took hold. Bolsonaro had vowed ‘not to cede one centimetre more of land’ to Indigenous peoples, and the process of land demarcation had remained stalled for years. But in April 2023, President Lula da Silva, in power since January, signed decrees recognising six new Indigenous territories and promised to approve all pending cases before the end of his term in 2026, a promise consistent with the commitment to achieve zero deforestation by 2030. The recognition of two additional reserves in September came alongside news that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon had fallen by 66 per cent in August compared to the same month in 2022.
Agribusiness fights back
But the agribusiness lobby didn’t simply accept its fate. The powerful ruralist congressional caucus introduced a bill to enshrine the Temporal Framework principle into law, which the Chamber of Deputies quickly passed on 30 May. The vote was accompanied by protests, with Indigenous groups blocking a major highway. They faced the police with their ceremonial bows and arrows and were dispersed with water cannon and teargas.
The Temporal Framework bill continued its course through Congress even after the Supreme Court’s decision. On 27 September, with 43 votes for and 21 against, the Senate approved it as a matter of ‘urgency’, rejecting the substance of the Supreme Court ruling and claiming that in issuing it the court had ‘usurped’ legislative powers.
The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil’s (APIB) assessment was that, as well as upholding the Temporal Framework, the bill sought to open the door to commodity production and infrastructure construction in Indigenous lands, among other serious violations of Indigenous rights. For these reasons, Indigenous groups called this the ‘Indigenous Genocide Bill’.
The struggle goes on
As the 20 October deadline for President Lula to either sign or veto the bill approached, a campaign led by Indigenous congresswoman Célia Xakriabá collected almost a million signatures backing her call for a total veto. Along with other civil society groups, APIB sent an urgent appeal to the UN requesting support to urge Lula to veto the bill.
On 19 October the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office said Lula should veto the bill on the basis that it’s unconstitutional. On the same day, however, senior government sources informed that there wouldn’t be a total veto, but a ‘very large’ partial one. And indeed, the next day it was announced that Lula had partially vetoed the bill. According to a government spokesperson, all the clauses that constituted attacks on Indigenous rights and went against the Constitution were vetoed, while the ones that remained would serve to improve the land demarcation process, making it more transparent.
Even if the part of the bill that wasn’t vetoed doesn’t undermine the Supreme Court ruling, the issue is far from settled. The veto now needs to be analysed at a congressional session on a date yet to be determined. And the agribusiness lobby won’t back down easily. Many politicians own land overlapping Indigenous territories, and many more received campaigns funding from farmers who occupy Indigenous lands.
While further moves by the right-leaning Congress can’t be ruled out, the Supreme Court ruling also has some problems. The most blatant concerns the acknowledgment that there must be ‘fair compensation’ for non-Indigenous people occupying Indigenous lands they acquired ‘in good faith’ before the state considered them to be Indigenous territory. Indigenous groups contend that, while there might be a very small number of such cases, in a context of increasing violence against Indigenous communities, the compensation proposal would reward and further incentivise illegal invasions.
But beneath the surface of political squabbles, deeper changes are taking place that point to a movement that is growing stronger and better equipped to defend Indigenous peoples’ rights.
The 2022 census showed a 90-per-cent increase, from 896,917 to 1.69 million, in the number of Brazilians identifying as Indigenous compared to the census 12 years before. There was no demographic boom behind these numbers – just longstanding work by the Indigenous movement to increase visibility and respect for Indigenous identities. People who’d long ignored and denied their heritage to protect themselves from racism are now reclaiming their Indigenous identities. Not even the violent anti-Indigenous stance of the Bolsonaro administration could reverse this.
Today the Brazilian Indigenous movement is stronger than ever. President Lula owes his election to positioning himself as an alternative to his anti-rights, climate-denying predecessor. He now has the opportunity to reaffirm his commitment to respecting Indigenous peoples’ rights while tackling the climate crisis.
Sara López (C) and other members of the Regional Indigenous and Popular Council of Xpujil are seen here in a photo from 2020, while campaigning against the environmental problems posed by the Mayan Train, which will run through part of southern and southeastern Mexico. The Secretariat (ministry) of National Defense has been put in charge since September of the construction and administration of the Mexican government’s flagship project. CREDIT: Cripx
by Emilio Godoy (mexico cityhttps://ipsnoticias.net/2023/09/mexico-gira-hacia-los-militares-empresarios/)
Inter Press Service
MEXICO CITYhttps://ipsnoticias.net/2023/09/mexico-gira-hacia-los-militares-empresarios/, Sep 14 (IPS) – Courage, sadness and impotence are expressed by Mayan indigenous activist Sara López when she talks about the Mayan Train (TM), the Mexican government’s biggest infrastructure project, which will cross the town where she lives and many others in the Yucatan Peninsula.
“These are things that cause damage. In the communities, both the National Guard (a civilian security force, but made up mostly of military personnel) and the army are present. People tell us they have lost the peace they used to have. There are communities that have been invaded, there has been a very strong impact,” the member of the non-governmental Regional Indigenous and Popular Council of Xpujil told IPS.
“The entire Yucatan peninsula is militarized,” she said from Candelaria, in the southeastern state of Campeche. Agriculture and livestock are the main activities in the municipality of some 47,000 inhabitants, which will be the site of a TM station.
The megaproject consists of seven sections along some 1,500 kilometers and will also cross the states of Quintana Roo and Yucatan, which share the peninsula with Campeche together with the states of Chiapas and Tabasco.
The railway will run through 41 municipalities and 181 towns, with 20 stations and 14 stops.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who begins his sixth and final year in office on Dec. 1, has transferred the administration of ports, airports and rail transport to the Secretariat (ministry) of National Defense (Sedena).
This is despite the fact that there are no records of their performance in the management of these key areas in the recent history of the country, in which their experience has been limited to the production and sale of supplies.
Aleida Azamar, a researcher at the public Autonomous Metropolitan University, argued that uniformed personnel are not prepared for these tasks.
“The military are not trained for many functions. The government is concerned about economic growth and development, and to preserve that model it has put the military in charge. They think it will be achieved through infrastructure and extractive projects,” Azamar, who is coordinating a new book on the military and natural resources in Mexico, told IPS.
“In their view, the fastest way to finish them is with the army, because it is more difficult for the public to put up opposition when they see someone with a gun. It is not the most adequate solution.”
López Obrador announced on Sept. 4 the transfer of control of the Mayan Train from the state-owned National Tourism Development Fund (Fonatur) to Sedena, in an intensification of the trend of ceding more civilian responsibilities to the military, by handing over his flagship megaproject.
The president’s argument for this strategy is that he aims to reduce corruption in public works. But actually it may be due to other reasons, such as the culture of discipline in following orders so that the works advance as quickly as possible and thus meet the deadlines set.
Sedena will be responsible for the completion of sections five, six and seven of the railroad, whose works were started by Fonatur in July 2020 and which López Obrador promised would begin to operate by Dec. 1. Other sections are being built by private companies.
The resistance to deploying the military into the TM and other civilian areas is also due to its actions since 2006, when then President Felipe Calderón launched the so-called “war against drugs” using the military, which led to extrajudicial executions, disappearances, human rights violations and impunity, according to local and international organizations.
In fact, so far this century the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the highest regional court attached to the Organization of American States, has condemned Mexico on at least five occasions for military crimes such as forced disappearance, sexual violence and arbitrary detention.
The government promotes the TM as a major new engine of socioeconomic development in the southeast of the country and its trains will transport thousands of tourists, and cargo such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork, the main products in the area.
The administration claims that it will create jobs, boost tourism beyond traditional attractions, and invigorate the regional economy, which has sparked highly polarized controversies between its supporters and critics.
The Mayan Train will run 1,500 kilometers, through 41 municipalities and 181 towns in the south and southeast of Mexico, with a cost overrun that already exceeds 28 billion dollars. CREDIT: Fonatur
From the barracks to business
Historically, the armed forces had been limited to producing supplies and building government facilities, such as hospitals and other infrastructure.
However, thanks to the policies of the current government, Sedena has created the corporations Tren Maya, Aerolínea del Estado Mexicano, Grupo Aeroportuario, Ferroviario, de Servicios Auxiliares y Conexos Olmeca-Maya-Mexica (Gomm) and the Felipe Ángeles International Airport, located in the state of Mexico, adjacent to the Mexican capital.
Gomm is also involved in the operation of 12 airports, and will receive more in the future.
In addition, it will operate the revived Compañía Mexicana de Aviación, the country’s oldest airline and one of the first in the region, privatized in 2005 and closed since 2010. Under the new name Aerolínea del Estado Mexicano, the government resuscitated it in January, buying the brand. The armed forces will also manage hotels along the TM route.
At the same time, the Secretariat of the Navy (Semar) manages five shipyards in various areas of the country.
To run seven airports, including Mexico City’s, out of the 19 facilities under state control, Semar created the company Casiopea.
Mexico has 118 ports and terminals, of which 71 have been given in concession in 25 administrations of the National Port System. Since 2017, Semar has been administering the ports.
This scheme requires a lot of money, provided by the public budget. The clearest case is the TM, whose cost rose threefold, from the initial projected investment of 7.2 billion dollars to the current estimate of over 28 billion dollars.
For 2024, Sedena has already requested 6.7 billion dollars for the railroad, the second highest figure for the TM since 2020, when allocated funds totaled 349 million dollars.
Military requirements for all civilian sectors under their administration have grown, as Sedena requested 14.55 billion dollars, compared to 6.27 billion in 2023, and Semar asked for 4.02 billion, compared to 2.34 billion this year – in both cases more than double.
Behind this is the fact that state-owned companies under military management are not yet profitable, so they require subsidies. The non-governmental organization México ¿Cómo Vamos? calculates that it will take 17 years to recoup the investment in the TM and 22 years in the case of the Tulum International Airport, under construction in the state of Quintana Roo.
The Navy manages the Mexico City International Airport and six other airports, although it lacks experience in running this type of air transport infrastructure. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS
Potential threats
As in the case of military involvement in security and public safety, military business management poses risks of information concealment, corruption and economic losses.
The armed forces are the institutions that most violate human rights, including cases of murder, torture and sexual violence. Between 2007 and 2020, some 70,000 people suffered physical aggression after being apprehended by the army, according to the Citizen Security Program (PSC) of the private Ibero-American University.
The number of military personnel involved in public security already exceeds the total number of municipal and state police, in a proportion of 261,644 to 251,760, according to data reported by the PSC.
López the activist and Azamar the academic warned of the risks of military management.
“Only the government knows how much they have spent, how much is going to be spent,” said López. “There is no real report on what they are doing. Since the megaproject began, there has been no real information. They have never talked to us about environmental, cultural or economic impacts. It has caused us problems, it has been chaos for us. And once it is operating, the situation is going to get worse because of tourism.”
Azamar warned of increasing reliance on the military, the potential erosion of civil rights, a distorted perception of the approach to security and public safety and the undermining of trust in civilian institutions.
“There is a problem of lack of transparency and accountability: what is spent and how. It is risky, because there is no real, disaggregated data. This creates an environment of impunity that allows secrecy to continue and does not make it possible for other information to be made public. If there are no effective oversight mechanisms, abuses could be committed. We are in a gray area, because we do not know who controls them,” she argued.
In November 2021, López Obrador classified the TM as a “priority project” by means of a presidential decree, a strategy that facilitates the fast-tracking of environmental permits and thus hides information under the broad umbrella of national security.
This despite the fact that a month later, the Supreme Court reversed the national security agreements to annul the reservation of information, due to an appeal by the autonomous governmental National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data.
Mexico’s problems will not end in the short term, as pro-military policies will condition the next administration that will take office in December 2024, regardless of where it stands on the political spectrum, although the polls point to presidential hopeful Claudia Sheinbaum of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), López Obrador’s party, as the favorite.
As climate change and rising sea levels threaten the island of Gardi Sugdub, leaders in the local Indigenous community are increasingly worried that the Panamanian government will fail to follow through on promises to help with relocation.
In a 52-page report on Monday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said “ongoing government delays” pose a serious threat to the human rights of Panama’s Indigenous Guna people.
According to the group’s findings, the government has repeatedly failed to provide housing and infrastructure to a new community site on higher ground, despite repeated assurances and plans stretching back to 2010.
“Panama should follow through on its promises and provide immediate support so the Gardi Sugdub community can relocate with dignity,” said Erica Bower, a climate displacement researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report.
“It’s not too late for the government to take this opportunity and create a blueprint that coastal communities elsewhere in Panama and globally can turn to as they confront the climate change crisis.”
Small island, big problems
Gardi Sugdub — or “Crab Island” — is part of an archipelago on Panama’s Caribbean coast expected to face “the most severe impacts” of climate change, according to the report.
At its highest point, the island is only one metre (3.2 feet) above sea level. And as the tides creep higher and higher, the island’s Guna residents are finding themselves with less and less space.
An estimated 1,300 Guna people are packed onto an island only 300 metres (984 feet) long and 125 metres (410 feet) wide. And yearly floods — lasting up to two weeks at a time — have caused significant damage to their homes and livelihoods.
“When I got home, the pier and the toilet had washed away,” one Gardi Sugdub resident, Eustacio Valdez, told Human Rights Watch, as he recalled one flood in 2008.
“The canoes were gone. There were high waves. It was flooded for a week. School was suspended.”
High schoolers from the Guna Indigenous community celebrate Panama’s Independence Day in Panama City in 2015 [File: Arnulfo Franco/AP Photo]
A difficult decision
In 2010, the Guna community on Gardi Sugdub arrived at a heavy conclusion: The only sustainable solution was to relocate to a different site.
“We are already too many in this town and we don’t fit,” Magdalena Martinez, secretary of the Neighborhood Committee on Gardi Sugdub, told Human Rights Watch. “There isn’t any more room.”
To house their growing population, Guna community members donated a site for the project on the mainland, nicknamed “Isperyala” for its abundance of loquat trees.
Around that time, Panama’s government also promised to build a “model school” and hospital for the area by 2014. But both have yet to be completed, according to Human Rights Watch.
In 2017, the Ministry of Housing likewise committed to building 300 homes for the Guna people, as well as providing services like potable water, sanitation and roads.
The project was originally slated to take 450 calendar days, according to Human Rights Watch. But then the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic slowed construction. A new completion date was set for September 2023. That too was delayed.
“The government is not complying with what it agreed to for this project. Look at that delay. That is not fair,” community member Dillion Navarro said in the report.
A measure of ‘last resort’
Meanwhile, on Gardi Sugdub, the Guna people struggle with overcrowding, a lack of educational resources for their children and unreliable access to fresh water, contributing to a high rate of gastrointestinal disease and poor sanitation.
The Human Rights Watch report noted that the conditions in Gardi Sugdub reflected hazards facing vulnerable coastal communities around the world.
“Even under the most optimistic scenarios of planetary warming, sea level rise is inevitable,” the report reads. “But planning today will mitigate some of the risks of tomorrow.”
The report adds that relocation is “a measure of last resort” for Indigenous communities, who often have strong ties to their homelands.
For the Guna, the islands provided sanctuary from centuries of colonial oppression. Starting in 1650, missionaries forced their people into settlements. Spanish colonisers confronted them with violence. And later, the Panamanian government attempted to suppress their traditional ways.
The islands also allowed the Guna to escape the mosquito-borne diseases common on the mainland.
But conditions on Gardi Sugdub are only expected to worsen due to climate change.
A health worker fumigates a house in the region of Guna Yala after 50 reported cases of Zika in 2016 [Panama Ministry of Health handout/Reuters]
A widespread crisis
Human Rights Watch has estimated that at least 38 other islands in Guna Yala — the Guna’s ancestral territory — will soon require relocation, as well, due to climbing sea levels. That includes a total of approximately 28,000 people.
And the Guna are hardly alone in facing this plight. The report noted that climate risks and other threats have prompted more than 400 planned relocations worldwide.
But, the report concludes, results have been slow to materialise for the Guna: “To date, not a single person has moved.”
It calls for “immediate support” to be given to the Guna people, as they contend with the worsening crisis.
![Protection agents Fredy Capitan (left) and Nolasco Torres arrive in Nueva Vida, where sightings of isolated tribes have caused villagers to flee [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Peru-tribes-Torres-and-Capitan-on-Patrol-2-1727542222.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C578)
![Huni Kuin men and boys ride upriver on a communal hunt [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Peru-tribes-Balta-Villagers-2-1727541111.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513)
![The lowland forests of Purus are thought to be home to the largest concentration of isolated tribes on Earth [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Peru-tribes-Purus-Drone-2-1727541553.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C433)
![Fredy Capitan, an Indigenous protection agent for Peru’s government, surveys a village where isolated tribes are making increased contact [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Peru-tribes-Freddy-Capitan-1727540797.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513)
![The lowland forests of Purus are thought to be home to the largest concentration of isolated tribes on Earth [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Peru-tribes-Purus-Drone-1727541631.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C433)
![The Cetico Outpost was abandoned by Peru’s government in 2020 after a deadly raid by isolated tribes in the Amazon region of Purus [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Peru-tribes-Puesto-Cetico-2-1727541470.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C433)
![Following a deadly raid by an isolated tribe in 2020, villagers in the Huni Kuin community of Santa Rey fled. It remains abandoned today [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Peru-tribes-Santa-Rey-Abandoned-1727541994.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C433)
![Fredy Capitan (left) and Nolasco Torres in their village of Balta. As government protection agents, they monitor the remote jungle for signs of isolated tribes [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Peru-tribes-Agents-Torres-and-Capitan-1727541340.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C406)
![Huni Kuin children in the remote village of Balta carry bush meat from a recent hunt. Their village is a flashpoint of recent contact with isolated tribes in Peru’s eastern Amazon [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Peru-tribes-Balta-Villagers-1-1727541195.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C604)
![Protection agents outline emergency measures to villagers in Colombiana, which has had repeated contact with an isolated tribe [Neil Giardino/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Peru-tribes-Colombiana-Meeting-1727540851.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C578)
