Tag: The Leadership Brief

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Achieving growth while cutting emissions in a company’s value chain is an ambitious target. Mars Inc. CEO Poul Weihrauch thinks he has the right strategy and he wants to help other business leaders replicate it.

A little over a year into his role, annual revenue at the company has risen to $50 billion from $45 billion. While decoupling growth from environmental impact, Mars says it has grown 60% since 2015 and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 8% across its value chain. It’s all part of the confectionary, pet food and pet care company’s plan to halve its emissions by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050. Its other environmental initiatives include investing in efforts to restore coral reefs as part of its sustainability plan. 

A lot of these efforts are possible because of the Mars family’s values, which have been consistent since the early years of the company, Weihrauch says. The family still owns all shares in Mars. “The family wants to feel proud about what they own,” he says. “They want to leave a great legacy behind.” Weihrauch acknowledges that dealing with shareholders of a public company would be very different, given the regular turnover of shares. “If I’m a publicly listed CEO, the people I present to at the annual general meeting [each] year are just not the same.”

Weihrauch sat down for a rare interview with TIME in London on Nov. 28, en route to COP28. He discussed how the company is thinking about impact, working with the Mars family and why the company, often described as secretive, is now sharing more about itself.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

You’re just over a year and into your role. You’ve acquired six companies in that time. Is the business where you would like it to be right now?

I’m privileged in the sense that I took over a well-running company from my predecessor Grant Reid. So we’ve been incredibly focused on continuing the work Mars has been [doing] the last couple of years, which is really the work of responsibly growing the company. Our owners have a compass for the company, which has four elements to it. Two traditional ones: a growth target and a financial profile. Then we have two non-financial objectives. One is positive societal impact, where we look at greenhouse gas, and plastic—which are the two big topics for us—and our reputation. We define this as responsible growth. So, we need to grow at the same time as solving problems for society. And then we need to develop our people as well, which is very, very close to our heart at Mars. So really, the job has been about continuing that.

That’s a very ambitious target—trying to grow while having real environmental and social impact. How does that work in reality?

It’s a lot of hard work. If you think about the issues we need to solve, we have a planetary crisis. In the food industry, the biggest impact we have is greenhouse gases. So we have many teams that work around making sure we don’t have deforestation, making sure that we lower the greenhouse gases in what we procure, making sure we work with our suppliers—we have formed an alliance of supply leadership for climate action. So we need great people. And then we need capital. We have committed to invest $1 billion over the next three years in solving these issues. For example, packaging—we have 12,000 products that we are reformulating to have higher recyclability of plastic in; our percentage is now 59%. We would love it to be higher—we’ll get there. But you actually need to reformulate each product at a time. So you can only imagine how many people are working on changing 12,000 products around the world. So how does it look? A lot of hard work, great people, and capital behind our commitments.

There’s also an incentive piece for your people. Could you expand on that?

Yes. I mentioned the compass that has four quadrants. The way it works at Mars is [that] top management—really about 350 people—are compensated on this compass. If I take the example of myself, 40% of my long-term incentive is on non-financial metrics. And I think it’s really important—and fantastic to have shareholders that actually asked me as many questions about our financial performance as they do about our other important metrics, such as climate or plastic or reputation. So I think what it means is when I talk to associates, they know we’re serious about it. And I don’t think you’ll find many other companies that put such a big percentage of compensation on non-financial metrics. I think it’s testimony to the kind of shareholders we have, that want to run a business that has a target to responsibly grow the company. I mean, it’s not it’s not very good data, when we actually use our 1.7 planets in one year, is it? And business has a very important responsibility in solving that. I firmly believe that my generation of CEOs have to fix this issue.

And the people you attract know this coming in and therefore are more aligned with the mission?

My experience with when you recruit people, particularly people younger than I am, is actually the first question they ask you at the interview is, why should I work for you? When I graduated in 1992, you didn’t dare to ask that question. You said, “Can I have a job, please? And what’s the salary?” Today, it is, “Why should I work for you? And what does Mars do for the planet?” So I would argue you get the best people by aligning what we need to do as a company and attracting the next generation because they are asking different questions, and they’re voting with their feet. If we as a company don’t do what we say we do, we lose the best people. So part of us being a very attractive employer and attracting the best in our industry is having an alignment between our growth target and our impact on the planet.

How does the responsible growth effort translate to your supplier relationships and also with the companies that you acquire?

If I start with the companies we acquire, for instance, earlier this year, we bought a Canadian company called Champion Petfoods in an auction. And the way it works is we literally take the negative externality—the environmental footprint of Champion—and we put a cost to it. And we put this in the business case. Our teams need not just to bid the highest price, but in our business case, they get the cost of what it takes to solve the environmental footprint of this company. So our teams need to work extra hard to make it happen. And I look at it this way, when they come into our fold, we help solve the environmental problems of more companies. 

With suppliers it means that we have very close collaboration with packaging suppliers, whether it’s with protein suppliers or cocoa. We praise ourselves at Mars for having a principle of mutuality. It’s a wonderful principle that Forrest Mars Sr. [son of Mars Inc. founder Frank C. Mars] laid down in 1947. And he said that the sole purpose of Mars was to create value for everybody we engage with—consumers, suppliers, governments, even competitors—he wrote that we [should] solve problems with them. Beautiful principle—long before stakeholder capitalism was written about. Typically, we have relationships with suppliers for 20 years. Yes, we discuss prices and have tough conversations. But we also tell them, we want to work with him for the next 20 years. Because that’s the way you do good business and you solve these problems together, not by being transactional in your way of thinking, but to really work long-term, solving. We like to think at Mars we work in generations and not in quarters.

There’s the environmental impact, but also the broader societal impact that companies have. As a candy company, there are some who might raise the issue of the obesity crisis and the role that companies like yours might have in that. How would you respond to those critics?

If you look at our portfolio, it is a very broad portfolio. We’re the world’s biggest chewing gum company—98% of our chewing gums are sugar-free. We are also a chocolate company, and everybody that buys a Snickers knows it’s not a salad. And to give a data point on it, if you’re a heavy user of Snickers in the United States—[it’s the] biggest chocolate bar in the United States—you buy five times per year. If you’re a heavy user of M&Ms, you buy eight times per year. So we maybe have a perception that we sit and eat this all the time. Actually, we don’t. What we promote is a responsible diet. And that a treat is part of a responsible diet, on the occasions where we need a little bit of a smile during the day, or a little bit of enjoyment after a sports match. We don’t promote it. In 2007 we were the first confectionery company to stop advertising to children. And at that time, our age limit was 12. We have since revised it to 13, because of neuroscience. This is when a child can distinguish between a commercial message and information. And online, we make sure that when we place ads we adhere to these rules, we have 99.5% compliance. It’s not perfect, but it’s at least in a good place.

Were those age restrictions something that came internally from Mars?

We were the first that voluntarily did it. We actually went to politicians, and said we will implement this policy tomorrow, because it’s the right moral thing to do. And quite a few in the industry have followed, which is pleasing to see—that we can make an impact.

You’re attending COP28. What are your priorities there?

COP is a good opportunity to meet a lot of partners at the same time. So my priority is to engage in a couple of conversations with governments, with NGOs, about some of the issues, we need to solve, principally around greenhouse gas. What this is about is we need to grow business responsibly. And we need to get more companies to engage in that conversation. And secondly, we need to be known for action, not just making declarations. What we have done at Mars is we have decoupled [growth from environmental impact], so we need to invest in capabilities and drive a change. So those are the conversations we will have at COP—getting more companies to engage in, “what are you really doing?” instead of “what are you talking about?”

You’ve been with Mars for 23 years now, so, you must have seen a lot of change at the company. Mars has often been described as secretive. Has that changed?

The company has changed a lot—23 years is a long time. Back then we were principally a chocolate, pet food and food company. Today we are a chewing gum company—we bought Wrigley in 2008. We are also the world’s biggest company in veterinary, we have 2,500 veterinary clinics. And we have gone into diagnostics as well. So the portfolio transformation at Mars Inc. is unbelievable. I think when I joined [revenue] was $13 or $14 billion. And today we have crossed $50 billion as a corporation. So the change is unbelievable, the geographical spread is unbelievable. And yes, we are more open today than we were back then. We know we need to engage more with the world, we know that the young generation that wants to join us, they expect we are more public, they expect we share more. And that’s a good thing. So I would say we have evolved over those years and, and started telling a little bit about our story, because we think it’s a good story to tell.

There aren’t very many companies of the size of Mars that are still completely privately owned by the founding family. Can you tell me about how your relationship with the family works?

We have a supervisory board with six family members, and we have some advisors, and the family is very active with us. I look at it as a massive advantage. If we have something we want to discuss, I can take my phone and I can call the shareholder. We have had the same owners since 1911 and we hope to have the same owners the next 100 years as well. I truly believe one of the very important reasons why we have engaged in a different way of growing is because the family wants to feel proud about what they own. They want to leave a great legacy behind, like we all do in our job. And their legacy is that the way they contribute to society is the way Mars grows responsibly—by helping solve issues around sustainability and by continuing to develop great people in our business. [The owners leave] more than 90% of our earnings in the company. They don’t take it out, they invest it in Mars. If [we] were publicly listed, [shareholders] would take a higher dividend to share buybacks—they don’t. They like what we do, they’re proud of what they own and what they have inherited, and want to give it to the next generation and contribute that way. So it’s a very close relationship with a lot of mutual respect, and a little bit of disagreement from time to time, like you have with all shareholders. It’s certainly the way it should be. 

Pet food and candy are not necessarily what people would assume go together. It’s a diverse portfolio that you have. Are there other sectors that you’re eyeing, or that you could see Mars getting into beyond your core businesses?

We have a great diverse portfolio. We are in pet food and we are in veterinary, which is health care. And we are in diagnostics as well, which is both equipment and health care. We are in better-for-you snacking and Mars snacking. We will strengthen in these areas. We will continue to invest in new markets. And who knows maybe one day we’ll look at something else. 

A year ago this week, artificial intelligence vaulted into public consciousness with the release of OpenAI’s instantly viral consumer-facing, conversational interface. AI became one of the biggest stories of 2023. And businesses everywhere (including OpenAI itself, as reflected in its leadership pandemonium earlier this month) are struggling to navigate the potential benefits and risks of the extraordinary technology.

Few have a better window into how all this is unfolding than Lan Guan, Chief AI Officer of Accenture, the consulting juggernaut with more than 700,000 employees, most of the globe’s biggest companies as clients and its own recently announced $3 billion investment in AI. She’s also a member of Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI, a prominent center focused on ensuring AI benefits humanity–and a very early adopter, having built a robot to teach kids English in rural China when she was just 16.

I spoke to Guan at the annual workplace summit hosted by TIME’s partner, Charter, in New York. An edited and condensed version of that conversation follows:

It’s been a wild couple of weeks for OpenAI and the industry. What does it mean for companies and the uptake of this technology?

It’s important to decouple the technology from these developments—because what we can say definitively, is that the value proposition of generative AI is not in question. Since ChatGPT’s launch, we’ve seen this particular space go from largely a few sets of democratized solutions, to being embedded across the entire value chain. All major platforms used by companies have, or are beginning to have, GAI capabilities. Across our own client base, we’ve seen things happening in matter of months versus years. The momentum is strong and will continue.

How are you using generative AI personally?

I do research a lot during my free time! I used to go to Google Scholar to find an archive paper for something that I’m working on. I have found that over the last couple months I have been relying on ChatGPT a lot. At work, I was actually preparing a course I’m teaching within Accenture on generative AI. So I asked it, what are the most popular machine learning algorithms before Generative AI?

Did you like the answer?

I was very satisfied with the answer. So I passed my test! At the office, we use a lot of generative AI; for example, to summarize meeting notes. We also build a lot of in-house applications. Over the last 10 months, we have built 300 internal applications using generative AI. Think about customer proposals; easily, dozens of pages. Now, we can have AI do the first draft. We have AI learning what we have developed before, and how we responded before, to write the first draft.

What are you seeing with your customers? What is that level of adaptation relative to what you’re describing inside Accenture?

A lot of it is about knowledge management. Think about the modern enterprise workplace as a lot of knowledge. This is actually underutilized—all kinds of documents, all kinds of images, all kinds of recordings. Like the recording that we’re doing here [of this interview]—this can be analyzed by AI years later to find what you and I talked about, and what were the trends at that point in time. So that’s just one example—using the immense power of generative AI to actually parse a lot of knowledge from unstructured documents within every enterprise to actually make use of that. For example, that’s something that we have seen very commonly used by insurers globally to help claim agents. They can use generative AI to answer whether a particular claim is meeting the policy requirements in this local market. 

A lot of us woke up at the end of November last year with the ChatGPT release, tried it ourselves and realized, you know, we’re in this new world. How much of what you’re describing is a post-ChatGPT phenomenon? Could that insurance example have been done two years ago? Or is that a phenomenon of recent months?

The ability existed before but was not easily accessible by people in the workplace. ChatGPT and this new class of AI completely changed the game. The example of insurance agents is regular now because of the ease of the use of the technology. AI is actually making sense to the general public and becoming more pervasive within modern enterprise.

There’s enormous agreement in the C-suites that we’ve got to move quickly here, but we also know that many CEOs and other leaders feel stuck. How do we get unstuck? What does that look like?

We need to figure out a way to articulate the value of investment into generative AI so that the business case is much more compelling. There is a lot of uncertainty and fear. But while generative is a new class of AI, it’s building upon decades of investment. This is not a black box. I think that kind of conversation needs to happen more to instill confidence into the C-suite conversation. We’re getting there.

The formal title of this session is “Hype vs. Reality.” Are we in a hype phase? Or is this really a grab-it-or-die kind of moment for businesses?

I don’t think this is hype. This is the defining moment across many industries. We have a lot of work to make sure this technology is democratized and not limited to a small group.

Your title is Chief AI Officer. Should that be a more widespread role?

I believe every organization needs to have a Chief AI Officer or someone in that capacity to define the overall AI strategy within the organization.

In one sense, Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon has got it easy. The international boom of South Korean “K-culture” exports like pop groups BTS and Blackpink, and even dystopian hits like Squid Game and Parasite, have done more to market his beguiling city of 10 million than any Madison Avenue publicity campaign could.

But that doesn’t mean Oh is sitting back. The 62-year-old former lawyer and lawmaker says he is determined to transform Seoul into a top tourist destination as well as an Asian hub for international firms. To that end, he recently returned from a goodwill tour of North America, where he threw the first pitch at a Toronto Blue Jays game, before attending New York City Climate Week, including a meeting of the C40 Climate Leadership Group—a global network of progressive city leaders—on the sidelines of the U.N. Climate Ambition Summit.

Oh made his name as a lawyer by establishing the “right to sunlight” for the first time in South Korean history, meaning that developers and city planners were forced to leave adequate room between buildings. As Mayor, he has championed green policies such as encouraging residents to drink tap rather than bottled water, boosting recycling targets, and reducing wastage.

Oh spoke to TIME in Seoul City Hall, where he discussed bonding with New York Mayor Eric Adams over a whisky, why South Korea needs nuclear weapons, and a potential run for the nation’s top job.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

You’ve just returned from the U.S. How was that trip?

The visit was very fruitful. First and foremost, we had the C40 Steering Committee meeting, where I met with the Mayor of London and other mayors of major cities around the world to discuss climate action. I also met with the Mayor of New York, Eric Adams, and we signed an MOU [memorandum of understanding] on friendly cooperation.

I had a drink with Mayor Adams in the evening and we really came together in solidarity and unity, because he is referred to as the “Republican Democrat” mayor, and I am a member of a conservative party but also referred to as maybe the “Democratic” politician within it. And we are both very committed to taking care of vulnerable groups in our society. When we said goodbye, we said that we will become brothers and became very close.

Seoul is the center of the K-culture phenomenon and plans to attract 30 million foreign tourists to the city by 2027. What soft power benefits does the K-culture buzz bring?

Our exact strategy is “3377,” which means we want to attract 30 million inbound tourists to Seoul annually, and for each to spend 3 million Korean won [$2,300]. And we want them to stay in Seoul for seven days, with a revisit rate to be 70%—so that’s 3377. Of course, the tourism industry has very favorable effects in terms of job creation and economic development. But even more importantly, Seoul has become the subject of interest and curiosity of people around the world. We hope that this K-culture popularity can lead more people to come to Seoul and raise the overall national brand of South Korea.

Seoul was listed in the top 10 global financial cities in March. How are you striving to make it a business-friendly place?

To make a city business-friendly people talk about lowering the tax rate or revitalizing the startup ecosystem. But that’s obvious. To become a truly business-friendly city we need to make a city that is very attractive, where people want to live, make money, and enjoy themselves. So I focus on three elements: technology, talent, and tolerance. Seoul is already well known to be a smart city and has 54 universities, so we have abundant talent. The third element, tolerance, is about having the mindset of being open and welcoming to foreigners.

October marked the one-year anniversary of the Itaewon disaster, when 159 people died in a crush while celebrating Halloween. What steps have you taken to ensure that such a tragedy can never happen again?

First and foremost is how we handle events or occasions where there is no host or organizer. Regarding hardware, we installed more CCTVs along the main roads and alleyways to detect the crowd before an accident happens. Already, Seoul has 150,000 CCTV throughout the city and so we are quite a safe city; women can walk at 10 p.m. or midnight and feel safe from crime. We will incorporate AI in these so-called “people counting CCTVs and so they automatically detect the number of people in crowds and they send this information to the control tower. So I firmly believe that such an accident will not occur again.

Still, to this day no one has resigned or been held responsible for the tragedy. Do you think that’s good enough?

The investigation is ongoing in a very fair manner and criminal cases are being pursued. Criminal accountability is being placed on the head of the police agency and the head of the fire department in that region.

Some relatives of Itaewon victims told me that they’re being fined for erecting a small shrine outside City Hall. Why is it appropriate to fine grieving families for a small, non-obstructive shrine on public land?

If they had consulted with the Seoul Metropolitan government before installing the shrine, it would not have been a problem. But according to Korean law it’s illegal—that’s why we fined them. It is indeed disappointing, but there is an inevitable aspect to the situation. The Seoul city government has been consistently making sincere efforts to help and stand by the bereaved families throughout the year. We have assigned designated public officers to support them and we have maintained communication.

You recently unveiled a “Going together with a socially neglected” policy which aims to uplift the city’s less privileged and reduce inequality. What is your vision behind this and what does it mean in practical terms?

In many advanced countries, the more national wealth accumulated the wider the gap between the rich and the poor. Korea is no exception. But we can’t let the rich get even richer; everyone must get prosperous together. So it’s the government’s responsibility to take care of vulnerable groups in society.

A good example is “Seoul Learn,” which is an online educational platform. In Korea, unlike other countries, to get into a good university students have to enroll in private academic institutions. But these private academic institutions are very expensive. Seoul Learn provides students from families in the bottom 25% income bracket these popular and expensive educational content for free. We provide them with expensive educational materials and textbooks and match them with university students as mentors. Their academic levels have risen quite significantly.

Last year, most participants of Seoul Learn entered good universities and so this is a symbolic example of our going together with the socially neglected. We want to sever the bad cycle of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

People with physical disabilities are also among the socially neglected. Recently, you were quite critical of the Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination (SADD) advocacy group that protested by blocking commuter routes. Why?

Actually, I don’t believe it was a harsh response. We were quite tolerant because they deliberately and intentionally blocked subways more than 90 times over the past year and a half. Subways rely on the exact time that they’re supposed to run. At first, SADD held protests calling for mobility rights of people with disabilities. The city government listened to their demands and rolled out mobility improvement projects in response. However, SADD continued their protests, now urging for an increase in the central government budget for disabled people, which is not part of the city government’s jurisdiction.

In the meantime, our innocent citizens who commute for their livelihoods have suffered. These disruptions in public transportation have resulted in not only personal suffering but also public losses. In the best interest of our citizens, the city government had to make a difficult yet firm decision to no longer tolerate disruptions caused by their protests. That is why we have taken legal actions and we had to prohibit their subway protests.

You’re working towards the Zero Waste Seoul and striving to increase the plastic recycling rate to 80% by 2026. What’s the biggest barrier you face to achieving this goal?

It’s a very important goal but very difficult because we see a rapid increase in single-person and two-person households, which together account for more than 60% of the entire population of Seoul. Young people leave their parents’ house and resort to delivery food in plastic containers, so it’s very challenging.

You’ve been quite vocal supporting South Korea developing its own nuclear deterrent. Why is that? Presumably you believe that the current situation under the U.S. nuclear umbrella is insufficient.

We trust in the U.S. and we trust in the Biden Administration. However, the U.S. president is replaced every four years. We want to believe in the promise that the U.S. has given us and have faith in the alliances between our countries. But depending on who is president of the U.S., this can change. Every country needs to have the means to defend itself. And since North Korea has their own nukes; nukes can deter nukes.

When you say that things “can change,” it feels like you are referring to another potential term by former President Donald Trump [whose charm offensive with North Korea included canceling joint military drills with South Korea]. Is he what made you adopt this viewpoint?

It’s a very sensitive question. I won’t pinpoint exactly a certain individual but it is common knowledge that the president changes every four years and the Korean people want 100% defense of their country.

Speaking of presidents, a lot of people in Seoul want you to run for the South Korean presidency. Have you any such plans?

I am a fourth term Mayor of Seoul, but because I was elected in a by-election, I’ve only served a little over 10 years [instead of 16]. So I still have very strong aspirations to complete numerous projects for the city of Seoul. Whether or not I will run for president in the future, I don’t know.

It’s been a busy few weeks for Sônia Guajajara. When Brazil’s first ever minister of Indigenous peoples met with TIME in September, she was speaking on a panel at iconic London private members club Annabel’s alongside activist Txai Suruí, having just been in New York for Climate Week. The Indigenous Voices panel was facilitated by The Caring Family Foundation, a big backer of reforestation efforts in Brazil.

Guajajara, 49, appeared rejuvenated by the biggest win for Indigenous rights since her appointment in January by Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In September, nine of 11 justices on Brazil’s supreme court voted to block efforts to place a time restriction on Indigenous peoples’ claim to ancestral lands. “Marco temporal” (time marker) is an agribusiness-backed notion that would require groups to prove they physically occupied lands up until Oct, 5. 1988 to stake a legal claim to it.

Speaking before attendees, Guajajara described the landmark ruling as a huge victory. “The Brazilian Supreme Court decided against this thesis of the time frame ruling. A thesis that was very frightening to us,” said Guajajara. “It was an attempt to prevent the demarcation of Indigenous lands in Brazil,” she added, referring to the process by which protective boundaries are laid out in the rainforest to prevent illegal logging. 

Days after the event in London, Brazil’s Senate moved to approve the bill anyway, and on Oct. 20 the President used his veto on core aspects of the bill.

“President Lula is very much on the side of Indigenous peoples’ rights,” says Guajajara. “Now, instead of going back we can move forward.”

Read More: Lula Talks to TIME About Ukraine, Bolsonaro, and Brazil’s Fragile Democracy

It’s a stark difference to Brazil’s path under the previous administration. Within eight months of her historic appointment, Guajajara says, her ministry was able to sign and demark more land than in the past 8 years, which included right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro’s four year term. Guajajara also noted that tackling illegal cattle farming and gold mining are an essential part of the climate emergency. “It’s not enough just to protect, we have to return to the forest everything we took from it,” she told attendees. This includes the protection of the Yanomami peoples who are facing a humanitarian and health crisis which has left many, including young people, susceptible to disease. The indigenous reserve the Yanomami population live on—located between Brazil and Venezuela—has long been a target for illegal gold miners, which led to soaring malaria rates. It has also left the Yanomami culture and way of life at risk.

Guajajara’s career is defined by a number of remarkable firsts. Born to illiterate parents on Araribóia land in the Amazon, in the northeastern Brazilian state of Maranhão, Guajajara left her city to study and earned a degree in literature and nursing. Since then, she became a symbol of resistance against the oppression of Indigenous people, and in 2018, she became the first Indigenous woman in Brazil to appear on a presidential ticket. 

Guajajara spoke to TIME through a translator about the new ministry’s progress so far, and what her priorities are looking ahead. 

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

You were appointed Brazil’s first-ever minister for Indigenous peoples at the start of this year. What did this milestone mean to you and what are your priorities in this role?

Being minister is a great opportunity for the Indigenous peoples to really participate in political debate but also it’s also a window into being open to break with preconceived ideas, with prejudice, and to be able to help. In terms of priorities, first of all to secure the territories of the Indigenous people. To protect the territories as well as the environment, and to make sure that there is security for the Indigenous peoples within the territories and to manage the practices that we already have in place.

What has it meant to Indigenous communities to see increased representation at a political level?

Today we have the maximum possible representation that we could have wished for in the instances of power. And I really feel that this recognition that people speak about and believe in it. So this creates good expectations in terms of actually being able to implement all rights.

Has it been a fight for you and other Indigenous figures to be taken seriously in political spheres? Do such barriers still exist?

These sort of barriers to Indigenous participation have always historically existed and we are working on taking them down and increasing participation in different spaces. But it doesn’t mean that it’s easy, there’s still a lot of resistance and lack of understanding, particularly by the decision makers. The participation process is a struggle, it still encounters a lot of resistance. A lot of people don’t understand the importance of Indigenous peoples as an alternative as a solution to the climate crisis. We may have a ministry in Brazil, but not all countries do. We’re trying to work towards that as well—to have a role in other parts of the world—so that we can really drive home the importance of Indigenous peoples and territories as a solution for the climate crisis.

As we know, you’re connected with the Caring Foundation, what role does outreach with wider organizations play in your work?

This sort of support is very important for actions in civil society as a whole and also for the Indigenous movements. And it means that actions that are right on the front line can be supported. The villages can be supported and this is seemingly like a small amount of support, but that can make a real direct difference.

What is the new ministry doing to raise awareness and address the human cost of the climate crisis?

We’re really promoting a core amongst Indigenous women, and getting Indigenous women to organize and mobilize to really provide elements to the fight against climate change. We’re seeing a lot of sort of protagonism in this regard, but also amongst the youth. And we’re carrying on with this debate, as well, within the context of Congress, and really clarifying and informing society about the cost of the climate crisis to all of us. 

Can you tell me about the public health emergency affecting the Yanomami peoples?

The Yanomami were in a various serious state in terms of their health crisis, not just because of the lack of support, but also because of the invasion by illegal miners, the gold prospectors. This has resulted in grave damage to the waters in the territory because now they’re contaminated with mercury.

We had a public health system specifically geared towards Indigenous peoples, but there wasn’t enough of a budget in order to ensure healthcare for them. So what happened a lot of the time was that Indigenous peoples were going into the cities to seek health care, and then not being able to come back. So we’re working in order to improve the budget and make sure that it’s sufficient for this to actually work. 

We are constantly carrying out actions to promote health and assist them in any way we can. We have laws that forbid the entry of other people to Indigenous lands. There is no [legal] permission for mining and no permission for gold prospecting [but] it’s being done. 

From the use of radioisotopes to monitoring drones, what role is technology playing in the protection of the Amazon?

There’s a lot of roles that technology plays, and we are actually working in tandem with the Ministry of Communications to ensure Internet access in all the different villages. This helps with monitoring the territories, denouncing invasions, and it helps with distributing information. So information technology is very important for monitoring and protecting the territory in general. 

What is the legacy of the Bolsonaro administration, particularly as it pertains to the treatment of Indigenous peoples, and what has changed since Lula’s appointment?

The legacy of Bolsonaro was tragic. Tragic, not just for us, but for the environment and human rights. It was an administration that incited hatred, violence, attacks, and invasions in Indigenous territories. And what we’re seeing now is a change in monitoring and inspection of territories. There has been a 46% reduction in deforestation until the end of the month of July, in the Amazon in particular. So this is just during this administration, and demarcations of Indigenous lands have already moved forward in the Lula government. So in eight months, we’ve achieved the equivalent of what we could achieve perhaps in eight years. So it’s, it’s really moving forward. We’ve been trying to work out a better budget for health care and a couple of different initiatives have been restarted. We now have a national policy for territorial environmental management. And we also have a national Indigenous Council and these are spaces in which we can move forward within an Indigenous policy.

How has the threat of violence and other barriers prevented effective reporting on the human and environmental issues facing the Brazilian Amazon and its communities?

Obviously the threat of violence caused a lot of fear. So people were making less complaints and manifesting themselves a lot less. People sometimes complain but they didn’t have the courage to take it forward because of reprisals and the repression that was taking place. So the number of complaints massively dropped and now it’s really shot up but it’s not because there’s been more violence or more illegal activity—it’s been because there’s an environment now where this can be made.

[Murdered journalist] Dom Phillips and [Indigenous expert] Bruno Pereira, they had suffered threats already. But they are only a couple amongst a number of people who were forbidden from speaking out, and now people feel more at liberty to speak because that’s what democracy is. There’s a bigger environment for opposition and for other points of view, so it may seem that things have got worse because, in terms of complaints, the number has gone up but it’s really a result of just having more freedom because we have just gone through a very dangerous period.

Looking forward then what are your hopes and aims for COP this year?

We’re working on a process with COP30 [which will be hosted by Belem, Brazil in 2025] in mind, and we want to really increase Indigenous participation in decision making spaces. But we particularly want to increase the participation of women thinking specifically of the COP 28 [this year] in Dubai. Next year, we would also like to hold a women’s meeting—including women from several different parts of the world—and to hold a pre-COP debate on Sept. 5, 2024. This would be for women, by women, and in preparation of a greater call by Indigenous women to have to have a debate with women from all over the world for COP30.