Mining in the Amazon has terrible effects on the livelihoods and health of Indigenous peoples and frontline communities as well as the overall balance of the Amazon’s biological diversity. Yet, mining giants with well-known track records of devastation and rights violations are eyeing Indigenous and traditional communities’ lands and other protected areas in the Amazon.
Despite committing to withdraw from all mining interests in Indigenous lands, multinational companies continue to bulldoze through communities and their territories to complete their mining projects. Banks and asset managers are once again behind this extractive surge by financing these company’s projects.
"The very agents of wanton destruction of the Amazon are now controlling the legislative and executive branches of the federal government and working day and night to increase deforestation and degradation via bills and acts that are being tolerated by the judiciary."
Colombia's next president will face many pressing challenges, not the least of which is implementation of the FARC peace accord, but he or she must also take decisive action on Colombia's role in combatting climate change.
Despite the urgent imperative to keep at least two thirds of all fossil fuels in the ground in order to avoid catastrophic climate change, governments and companies continue to recklessly expand fossil fuel exploration and drilling across the globe.
Quito, Ecuador – Representatives of six indigenous nationalities traveled from their Amazonian communities to Quito this morning to reject plans by the new government of Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno to auction off oil blocks that overlap their titled rainforest territories.
Over ten years, I have been privileged to play a role in most of the organization's major campaign initiatives. While the moments of exhilaration, frustration, learning, anger, and beauty could fill a book, I want to share ten snapshots of key experiences that represent what serving with Amazon Watch has meant to me.
"This development model impacts communities. The mine displaces people, and the impact is direct. It's this industry that makes children lack nutrition."
"The very agents of wanton destruction of the Amazon are now controlling the legislative and executive branches of the federal government and working day and night to increase deforestation and degradation via bills and acts that are being tolerated by the judiciary."
"I am but drop of water in the ocean, but together with many others we can shape the force of its waters and make change. This is what motivates my commitment to continue fighting, so that human rights, social-environmental justice, and that life be affirmed for present and future generations!"
"At the end of the day resistance is an ethical struggle. It is a struggle we must take up. Resistance is a principle of justice, especially when we see that the people are suffering."
While the threats to the Amazon and indigenous peoples seem daunting at times – with reports of increased deforestation due to industrial activity and lawlessness resulting in attacks against earth defenders – we cannot lose sight of hope and victories on the horizon.
"The Brazilian government has finally realized it's not acceptable to make decisions that affect the Amazon and its people without a broad and transparent public debate," but the battle is far from over.
The Brazilian government has revoked a controversial decree that would have opened up a vast reserve in the Amazon to commercial mining. One opposition senator said at the time that it was the "biggest attack on the Amazon in the last 50 years."
"Our analysis shows that local stewardship of the forest can be very effective in curtailing forest degradation in the Peruvian Amazon," said the study's lead author, Judith Schleicher.
"This latest report of a massacre in Javari Valley is yet another tragic sign of the deadly effects of the regressive policies promoted by President Michel Temer."
Six farmers have been shot dead by a criminal gang who wanted to seize their farms to muscle in on the lucrative palm oil trade, according to indigenous Amazon leaders in Peru.
"If the investigation confirms the reports, it will be yet another genocidal massacre resulting directly from the Brazilian government's failure to protect isolated tribes – something that is guaranteed in the Constitution."
Despite its biological and economic importance, illegal logging in the Gurupi Biological Reserve and in the Awá, Caru, Alto Turiaçu and Araribóia indigenous territories is common, and indigenous groups say that government enforcement is dangerously lax.
The race is on to protect the area through establishing it as a national park. Proponents of the initiative say doing to would help maintain its rich biodiversity and ensure it retains viable habitat for jaguars and other wildlife.
A tremendous national and international public outcry from all walks of society forced Temer to roll back his original decree to allow mining in a large, pristine area of the Amazon rainforest.
A Brazilian court has blocked an attempt by the president, Michel Temer, to open up swaths of the Amazon forest to mining companies after an outcry by environmental campaigners and climate activists.
"The suspension of President Temer's unilateral decree with its severe threats to vast Amazonian forest offers a welcome and temporary reprieve," said Christian Poirier, the program director for Amazon Watch.
The degradation of the Amazon will affect the entire world. The clearing of the Amazon for mining will lead to the emissions of thousands of tons of greenhouse gases, furthering global warming and causing the irreversible loss of biodiversity, and water resources, as well as damage to local and indigenous communities.
Indigenous leaders from the area around Peru's largest oil field have threatened to block the government from accessing their territories and halt oil production unless an indigenous rights law is applied within twenty days.
"The abolition of Renca will wreak havoc on the forest and indigenous communities in the interests of the small group of economically powerful groups who are keeping Temer in power," said Christian Poirier of Amazon Watch.
It is critical that conflict between armed groups is not simply replaced by conflict between communities and mega projects over the protection of their livelihoods and environment.
Development projects in the Amazon Basin – including dams, roads, and oil and gas operations – are encroaching on forests that are the last refuges of thousands of indigenous people who continue to shun contact with the outside world, according to a study that estimates the tribes' locations.
In July, ten U'wa families packed up their belongings and returned to the hamlet known as Río Negro in the municipality of La Salina. Amazon Watch is proudly supporting the return with funds for everyday necessities like soup pots, mosquito nets, and farming tools.
In a major victory for indigenous peoples, Brazil's Supreme Court ruled unanimously this week in favor of indigenous land rights in two separate lawsuits, setting an important legal precedent.
In unanimous rulings on two disputed indigenous land-titling cases, the Court dismissed a legal opinion issued by the Attorney General and endorsed by President Michel Temer, which argued for the rejection of land claims by indigenous peoples unless they inhabited their traditional territories at the time Brazil's 1988 Constitution was ratified.
