Canada Must Stand Against Brazil’s Illegal Undercutting of the Amazon’s Indigenous Peoples

Water falls by Conscious Design is licensed under Unsplash.

There are few countries in the world with more influence over human carbon emissions and reductions than Brazil. Home to the Amazon Rainforest, which produces 20% of the world’s oxygen and stores 76 billion tonnes of carbon, Brazil’s environmental decisions have the capacity to influence global progress on climate change. Since the 1970s, the country has hindered global progress on climate change by opening the Amazon to industry and eroding protections of Indigenous lands. However, the election of President Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 marked a turn for the worse.

Since the mid-twentieth century, when the environmental movement first took hold, Brazil has relied almost entirely on its native groups to protect essential lands like the Amazon. While environmental advocacy has played a crucial role in successes to date, 35% of the Amazon forest falls under Indigenous land claims and it has been Indigenous groups who have led the charge in conservation. Among the most impactful of these is the Kayapo tribe, whose legal territory covers over 2.8 million hectares in the Xingu Indigenous Park. Culturally, the Kayapo are an egalitarian warrior tribe and have been in constant conflict with interlopers since their first contact with Western society in the 1950s and 1960s. In the past, this took the form of border patrols, raids on encroaching settlements, hostage-taking, and other vigilante actions to negotiate their territorial rights with the Brazilian government. By 1988, these efforts had paid off. The Kayapo were granted full legal recognition of their territories, giving them the right to continue to defend their land, with the state’s legal authority behind them. Of all the organizations currently advocating for conservation of the Amazon, including Amazon Watch and the Amazon Conservation Team who support Indigenous peoples as part of their work, none have been as effective in their strategy as the Kayapo, who managed to prevent all attempts at industry invasion in 2020. 

However, the success of the Kayapo may soon come to an end.

Bolsonaro has long expressed open hostility to Brazil’s Indigenous people and has an environment minister who views climate change as a “secondary” problem. Until now, the Kayapo have been mostly alone in their defense of the forest, patrolling on their own and relying on NGOs such as the International Conservation Fund of Canada for funding and assistance in building guard posts and sustainable economies. Still, they have had the legal authority to remove illegal loggers, miners, and hunters from their land without fear of state retribution.

A  bill introduced in 2020 aims to change that. In brazen violation of Brazil’s laws surrounding Indigenous land rights and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Bill 191 aims to revoke the veto power of Indigenous groups in the question of industrial activities within the Amazon. Mining, logging, and agricultural projects which, until now, have been subject to the interests and defense of the Kayapo and groups like them will have no legal barriers against their entry into increasingly vulnerable territory. Most of the mining requests fall within Kayapo territory, and the passing of this bill would undoubtedly mean the desecration of millions of acres of pristine forest.

Already, progress is being undone. “Loggers understand Bolsonaro’s statements as authorization to act,” said the head of Brazil’s Indigenous rights unit. Following Bolsonaro’s election, Brazil saw a 23% decrease in its Ministry of Environment budget and a 38% decline in fines issued for deforestation infractions—the lowest number in over twenty years. With the lack of government support, it should come as no surprise that annual deforestation rates doubled over  Bolsonaro’s first eight months in office compared to the same period in 2018. As a result of this deregulation, violent crime in the area has increased, with as many as forty murders and assassinations being reported in connection to logging and industrial activity. Human Rights Watch describes the region as one of  “violence and impunity,” while researcher and leader of The Kayapo Project, Dr. Barbara Zimmerman, has described the situation in the Amazon as one in which “... assassination [is] a popular method of resolving frontier disputes.” Without the legal authority to defend territory, the Amazon’s last line of defense—its indigenous inhabitants—will crumble.

Once Indigenous groups and their territories are bulldozed, there will be no foreseeable return for the Amazon. The forest may be large, but so are its ecosystems, and without enough physical space, plant and animal species will be unable to reproduce at sustainable rates. Further,  shrinking forest geography will lead to droughts, erratic weather, and unpredictable agricultural conditions throughout Brazil and, by extension, the rest of the world.

In recognition of these global risks and legal violations, countries with economic influence over Brazil have a responsibility to future generations and their own economic interests to respond. While the work of NGOs and Indigenous peoples has been paramount in previous successes, Bolsonaro's attempts to undercut success and violate international agreements to pursue short-term political gain requires an international response. In response to Brazil’s violation of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, countries interested in maintaining a livable planet and standing against militant violence against Indigenous peoples should impose sanctions or implement restrictive tariffs on Brazil’s Amazon-derived products until it meets the conditions of its own agreements.

Since 2019, Canada has been in the process of negotiating a free trade agreement with Mercosur countries, including Brazil. The federal government has come under fire for a lack of environmental protection clauses with Brazil, with some calling for a complete halt to negotiations, following the lead of France and Germany. On the table is a rapid growth of Brazilian beef exports to Canada from 30 million pounds annually to 1.2 billion pounds annually. “The [Canadian] government cannot be opening the market to precisely the products that are driving the devastating Amazon fires and ongoing deforestation and destruction that we see, and claim to be responsible about climate change,” says Reykia Fick, a campaign manager with Greenpeace Canada.

A spokesperson for International Trade Minister, Mary Ng, said that “Canada is firmly committed to the principle that trade liberalization and environmental protection should be mutually supportive,” but environmental advocates say that Canadian support for Brazilian livestock industries is unacceptable considering 63% of all deforested land in the Amazon is used for cattle operations. Further, negotiations have made no mention of clauses mandating Brazil to respect the legal rights of its Indigenous peoples.

No negotiations have occurred since June 2019, with the Canadian government promising an environmental assessment report on a potential deal “soon,” said a spokesperson. Canada, now, has a unique opportunity to leverage its status as one of Brazil’s primary four agricultural trade partners to pressure the Bolsonaro government into reducing development licenses in the Amazon. Without dramatic changes in environmental policy, the large and interconnected Amazonian biosphere is at severe risk of tipping from jungle to savannah, destroying one of the world’s most important carbon sinks and jeopardizing global efforts to mitigate the climate crisis. 

As activists say, there is no economy on a dead planet. And there is no hope of reviving a dying planet without the Amazon.