Brazil Hands Over Amazon Rainforest To Extractive Industries

The fact that the Amazon rainforest is considered a crucial climate regulator seems not to have dawned on the Brazilian government. Rather, it is has 40 hydroelectric dams in the loop for 2022, which will endanger around one fifth of the most biologically diverse region in the world.

The impacts of the megaprojects will go way beyond trying to lift Brazil out of its current economic recession. The most affected will be the riverside and indigenous communities. According to scientists, this industrial push will produce floods over tens of thousands of hectares of land.

Open up indigenous territory to pay the bills

After facing enormous political instability in 2016, the new government of Michel Temer had clearly set their policy lines. This means giving into the rural lobby, who have repeatedly pulled their strings to gain easier access to the Amazon in order to transport their products.

The development is underway and is already showing its dark side. Homicide rates and murders related to land demarcation are on the rise. The environment secretary of Altamira — where a dam and a mine are planned — was shot 14 times in front of his home. According to indigenous organisations, more than 900 indigenous protestors have been killed in the last 13 years, 147 only in 2015.

“You cannot deny land to indigenous people that are ancestrally attached to it and expect them to continue to exist as a culture”, said Amazon Watch Program Director Christian Poirier.

If the ecosystems are altered, so are the lives of those who depend on them.

Which price will Brazil pay to revive its economy? An in-depth analysis of what to expect for 2017 in this article.