Guardians of the lungs

Earlier in July 2021, a study from the New York University reported that indigenous Peruvians, using satellite data, can curb illegal logging processes. Logging - legal or illegal - has been accelerating deforestation in Amazonia. In the study, with the use of smartphones, the experiment witnessed a 52% drop in illegal deforestation in 2018 and a 21% in 2019 in villages that were randomly assigned equipment and training.

But how? 

Once a month, couriers navigated the Amazon River and its tributaries to deliver USB drives containing satellite photos and GPS information to remote villages.

The monitors rendered this information onto specialized smartphone apps used to guide patrols to the sites.

So, if we were to only protect the Amazon rainforest – Earth’s lungs – from logging, then we will be going to be needing too many smartphones. Environmental abuses in Amazonia stretch far beyond a handful of logging projects. 

Both are dying

“End the role of humanity as nature’s conqueror, and instead become nature’s custodian." Before getting into who uttered those words, let it simmer for a while. 

The colonization of Amazonia is ongoing. It is almost timeless. It’s still relevant, valid. Because it is colonization, it is also a genocide of the land, as well as the people (capitalism has coerced us into believing these two are separate - but, they're not). 

Corporate overlords have naturalized with exploitation, and the people are held accountable for climate change and shamed for using plastic straws.  

Zara, Starbucks, Vans, Walmart, and JBS grabbing land in the Amazon not only inherently and inevitably means grazing flora, but also destroying animal habitats – which also destroys food chains – and, finally, annihilating the land and those connected to the land itself: the indigenous peoples. 

The Amazon case alone can be taken into account. Here, we do the numbers: 80% of the planet’s biodiversity is on indigenous land, 22% of the world’s remaining land surfaces include indigenous land, and 5% of the global population are indigenous people. The Amazon alone enjoys 400 tribes. The lungs of the Earth and the people are intertwined. 

Both are dying. 

The Amazon rainforest has experienced, in 2021, the highest annual deforestation rate in 15 years. According to the National Public Radio (NPR), there is a 22% increase in deforestation from the previous year. 

In parallel, 2020 witnessed a 67% increase in murders of indigenous activists and territory defenders, where 202 indigenous activists were killed. This essentially meant that an indigenous rights defender was murdered every two days last year.

In 2021, in Colombia and Peru, 16 indigenous activists were murdered in the first quarter of the year, which has increased substantially throughout. 

"The dramatic increase in murders in the context of the pandemic has put indigenous defenders and their communities at risk while putting the world's largest rainforest and the biodiversity we protect at risk," said José Gregorio Díaz Mirabal, General Coordinator of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA).

Beneath the ‘meager reports’ of murdered leaders, there is a much deeper reality. Many corporations are built on the blood and bones of the locals. The prize? Coca, gold, and oil. 

Behind the façade of the flashy marketing of the Glasgow COP26 summit, there are corporates – and they do not wish to listen.  

Coca mines, sex trafficking

Here, we paint a picture: Among Amazonian tribes, coca leaves have been used for 5,000 years to alleviate hunger and cure cold and fatigue. The coca leaf’s traditional use does not, largely, have negative consequences. 

When producing medicine, coca is squashed and made into coca paste. When made into a drug – which can only be done in laboratories – cocaine is transported through North America to Western Europe - both home to the world’s main consumers of cocaine. 

Amazon’s coca cultivation, which is largely illegal, connects to prostitution, murder, human trafficking, and mafias. 

"I once visited a mining region where we counted 11 brothels within 1.5 km and then we were informed that in each one of them there were eight to 10 young girls, most of them minors," said Catholic University of Costa Rica Professor Ariana Díaz Acuña during a digital meeting, according to Al Dia. 

With the pandemic and the facilitating factor of the Amazon River, trafficking, prostitution, and mafia activity were on the rise. 

However, large companies do not operate on the ground all by themselves. Coca mines are largely run by paramilitaries. According to a study by Justicia Y Paz, multinational companies form relationships with paramilitaries to do the dirty work: secure, protect, and punish. MNCs have displaced wholesale communities for coca mines, funding violence and corruption as their mechanism to assert control over the territories they’re occupying.

Among the companies are Banacol, Uniban, and Chiquita Brands, which have had their hands in deforested areas used for coca cultivation. Coca producers annex hectares of land to do subsistence farming, particularly for bananas and other crops, which are sold by the aforementioned companies.

Colombia's President has called out Western leaders for criticizing South America's policies on the environment while also doing cocaine themselves. 

“In order to produce one hectare of coca, almost two hectares of the tropical jungle are destroyed in Colombia,” Colombia’s President Iván Duque told the Financial Times in an interview at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow this year. “You meet cocaine users in other countries who are very avid and very talkative when speaking in favor of the environment. But they don’t realize that when they consume [cocaine] they’re doing great damage to the environment.”

It's ore or gore

Brazil’s Amazon has been experiencing an unprecedented gold rush. Not only were 25% of 174 tons of gold in 2019 and 2020 illegally mined but it's also been noted that this rush only happened when Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro assumed office. His administration is notoriously known for trying to legalize mining on indigenous land, while the President looks to support illegal prospectors.

Take this as an example. 

In 2020, the Brazilian government disclosed the revenue of Gana Gold – one of Brazil’s biggest gold producers – $200 million. In the first 8 months of 2021, the income exceeded the predictions set by regulators by 32 times. 

Gana Gold is located in a federally protected area in Itaituba in Para state, Brazil. The illegally mined gold cost the government $2 billion in revenue, according to researchers at Minas Gerais Federal University (UFMG) and the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF).

In response, the MPF attempted to file lawsuits that suspend businesses and financial institutions suspected of buying illegal gold. However, they were unable to reach Gana Gold since the lawsuit does not cover industrial miners, which is the title the company takes cover under.

Canada, the UK, and Switzerland are the main shoppers of Gana Gold. 

“When it got its operating license quickly without having to go through the process of requesting a mining concession, the company produced no detailed analysis of incurrent environmental damage, nor did it promote the necessary public debate on those impacts, which is mandatory,” said Professor Luiz Jardim Wanderley from the Geography Department at Fluminense Federal University (UFF). 

In the backdrop, there is a lot of mercury that surfaces in the atmosphere because of the mines. Wherever there are gold mines, there is mercury in the biosphere, known to cause neurological disorders and harm fetuses. 

Illegal processes nonetheless proceeded, with blood. 

As the gold rush surged, locals were met with the aggressive swarms of gold miners looking for a killing – figuratively and literally. Since May, prospectors have been attacking Yanomami and Munduruku communities in the Brazilian Amazon, in Roraima and Para respectively. 

This ignited a strong reaction from Brazilian legislators this year, especially those allied with Bolsonaro, prompting them to make laws that legalize gold mines on indigenous land. 

Riding on speedboats in the Uraricoera River, miners used their automatic weapons on indigenous peoples, killing 2 children as they drowned in the river – a 1-year-old and a 5-year-old. In another event, miners rammed a boat that had 8 children on it. Even the police who rushed to tame the incidents were met with violence by the miners.

Big California oil

Oil is the main driver for deforestation in the Amazon, and there is no region in the world that consumes more oil from the Amazon rainforest than the state of California, USA. About 50% of all the oil drilled from the Amazon goes to California, according to a remarkable study done by amazonwatch.org and STAND.earth, while 90% of Amazonian oil comes from Ecuador.

Companies actively bandwagon with banks and investors to reap the riches. Some of the companies are: American Airlines, COSTCO, Amazon.com, Pepsi, and Kroger. These giants benefit from and use the oil drilled in the forest. 

The oil industry, which, “thanks” to Texaco, has been booming in the Amazon rainforest since the 1970s, has deforested 1 million hectares of rainforest since 1990 in the Ecuadorian Amazon alone. 

In 2021, Ecuador’s elected President Guillermo Lasso plans to meet oil demands by promising to double oil production from the rainforest. 

Retailers which have been selling Ecuadorian oil are Arco, Chevron, Shell, Valero, and Phillips 66. However, if any significant differences were to be made, it would be through the governments: the largest share of Amazonian oil isn’t branded. 

Protecting the environment is to protect the indigenous 

To uproot a people from their land is to uproot their very identity. Colonialism goes hand in hand with corporate exploitation in the 21st century, and there is no venture or profit without changing the social infrastructure of the Amazon. 

The indigenous Amazonians defend the rainforest, know it by heart, and fall beneath its will. Leaving the indigenous to a state of lawlessness will only exacerbate the likelihood of corporates annexing and exploiting these regions for profit. Many regions of the forest are still standing to this day because of the locals' determination to protect them. 

The proof? Deforestation on indigenous lands has been reported to be 2-3 times lower than other lands. 

So who quoted it? 

“End the role of humanity as nature’s conqueror, and instead become nature’s custodian" - a quote by the one and only Boris Johnson, the UK's right-wing Prime Minister.

World leaders have been 'exhausting' efforts to protect the environment - if the world could leave Amazon to the Amazonians, we could enjoy our planet for a little longer.