As the world turns its eyes to Brazil for next year’s critical COP30 climate summit, the future of the Amazon and its peoples stand at a dangerous crossroads. The burgeoning power of Brazilian agribusiness and demands of global commodity traders such as Cargill are pressuring the Lula administration to drive a mega-railway through COP30’s host state, Pará.
Known as Ferrogrão, this 933 km railway would slice through the Amazon, gravely violating the rights of local communities and devastating forests. Tailored to serve the export of soy and corn production that comes largely at the expense of the Amazon and Cerrado, the project would lock in ever-growing expansion of monocultures and carve a new track of destruction across the already deeply impacted and vulnerable Tapajós and Xingu River basins.
Yet while its powerful proponents attempt to ram the project forward, popular resistance is mounting. From the forging of an unprecedented alliance to resist the project to the railway’s growing notoriety, its viability is wavering. Next week’s massive Indigenous “Free Land Camp” mobilization in Brasilia will further center the fight against Ferrogrão as a symbol of Brazil’s intensifying struggle for social and environmental justice.
A Popular Tribunal judges Ferrogrão
Last month, Amazon Watch joined more than 200 representatives of Indigenous peoples, traditional communities, NGOs, and social movements gathered for a strategy meeting on the banks of the Tapajós in Santarém. Together we created the powerful coalition needed to counter the advancement of the mega-railway, which is still in its planning phase and currently suspended by a provisional Supreme Court injunction.
A key strategy of the Santarém gathering was to target Ferrogrão’s image to shape public opinion and place pressure on key decision makers. To achieve this, the Alliance Against Ferrogrão held a Popular Tribunal to symbolically judge the project’s manifold environmental and human rights violations and rule against its industrial and political backers.
The Tribunal’s verdict ruled that Ferrogrão must be canceled for several reasons, including its flagrant disregard of the Indigenous and traditional community right to free and prior consultation. Studies demonstrate that the railway would impact at least 16 indigenous lands, yet not a single community has been consulted. The Tribunal also ruled that Ferrogrão’s faulty environmental studies gravely underestimate its regional and global socio-environmental risks, particularly in regards to climate change. Studies show that the railway would drive deforestation of over 2,000 square kilometers of and impact almost 50,000 square kilometers of protected areas, adding at least 75 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Cargill in the defendant’s seat
The symbolic trial also singled out the enabling role of major commodity traders such as Cargill, which have introduced and promoted the project, aiming to reduce grain export costs. Just before the symbolic trial, Indigenous representatives and members of other local communities threatened by Ferrogrão staged a protest in front of one of Cargill’s soy ports in Santarém, denouncing how the company’s practices are aggravating pressure on their territories, driving land grabbing and speculation, illegal logging and mining, deforestation, illegal burning, pollution of water, and threats to human rights and the wellbeing of Earth Defenders.
On the back foot due to the mounting negative press on the project, the president of Cargill’s Brazilian operations reacted to the Alliances’ actions in Santarém claiming that “Ferrogrão makes sense and it will happen.” In doing so he blatantly contradicted his company’s late 2023 commitment to eliminate deforestation and land conversion in its Brazilian, Argentinian, and Uruguayan supply chains by 2025. Such a statement is consistent with the company’s serial disregard of its previous commitments, and Cargill’s dismal record track has motivated several organizations – Amazon Watch among them – to launch the “Promises to Keep” report, detailing the steps it must take to turn words into practice.
With adversaries lining up to defend this disastrous mega-project and dismiss its opponents, the lines couldn’t be more clearly drawn. Maintaining our momentum, the Alliance against Ferrogrão ensured that legendary Chief Raoni of the Kayapó people had the Popular Tribunal’s verdict in hand when he recently met with President Lula and French President Macron and demanded that Ferrogrão not be built, dealing another public relations blow to the project.
Given the urgency and high stakes of this campaign, Amazon Watch is committed to continue to work within this accelerating anti-Ferrogrão alliance, growing and strengthening it. To keep pace with its powerful backers, we are preparing a series of actions to maintain the project’s paralyzation and hold Cargill and other major commodity traders accountable for their reckless efforts to advance the railway.
By helping to make this campaign a focal point of next week’s national Indigenous mobilization in Brazil’s capital, we aim to collaborate with the protection of the Amazon and Cerrado from ongoing destruction, further support forest communities, and continue to defend the future of our planet from the shortsighted interests of multibillion-dollar transnational industry and their political henchmen. To achieve these critical goals, we must stop Ferrogrão in its tracks.
