Tribal concern as battle to open up Amazon to mining rages
RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazilian tribal leader Cecília Awaeko Apalai is worried, with a battle raging over plans to open up swaths of Amazon forest to mining companies.
President Michel Temer this month issued a decree to abolish the Renca reserve, a 46,000 square km area protected for 33 years in the Amazon, although a court quickly blocked the move, saying this was not in his power.
But the decision has sparked outrage among environmentalists, political opponents and prompted a slew of court actions, fearing the court’s intervention may just be a temporary reprieve with the attorney general appealing.
For the government argues opening up this mineral rich area is important to boost Brazil’s weak economy as the Denmark-sized reserve contains copper, gold, and iron which has only been available to low-level state-owned mining — or illegal miners.
But Apalai, head of the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Wayana Aparai-Apiwa, said the reserve is home to about 3,700 indigenous people from the Aparai, Akurio, Tiriyo, Wayana, and Waiapi tribes — and it has never faced such a threat before.
“This indigenous land is practically untouched, virgin, without deforestation and without issues with loggers. We don’t raise cattle. We just fish and hunt. We use the land to survive,” she said.
“We fear forest destruction and river contamination because there is only one river inside this indigenous reserve. It will also have a huge impact to our culture and traditions.”
The government issued a decree last week to allow commercial mining on the land split between the northern states of Pará and Amapá, but insisted some areas of the reserve, including where indigenous people live, will remain off limits to mining.
“The objective of the measure is to attract new investments, generating wealth for the country and employment and income for society, always based on the precepts of sustainability,” the government said in a statement at the time, oposition lawmaker Senator Randolfe Rodrigues called it the “biggest attack on the Amazon in the last 50 years” and Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen was reported to have joined the campaign, accusing the government of selling off the Amazon.
The decree is being challenged in the courts with federal prosecutors in Amapa arguing it contradicts the constitution by endangering environmental preservation and violating the fundamental rights of traditional communities.
Brazil’s influential Catholic hierarchy has joined forces with bishops in other Amazonian countries to oppose the decree, arguing it will increase deforestation, biodiversity losses and negatively impacts people in the region.
Online campaign group Avaaz has gathered over 700,000 signatures so far on a public petition against the decree.