Brazil’s president has slashed forest and indigenous protections in his first 100 days. As a major importer of soya and beef, the EU should check his power.
A team of Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) academics is marking the international day of action for rivers by hanging out the dirty laundry of a very dirty company.
ELISA HORNETT and RITA MENDONCA report on a life-affirming canoe expedition along Brazil’s Xingu River to visit communities who say their land and livelihoods have been violated by the building of a hydroelectric plant
Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva - Brazil’s former president - has been imprisoned for corruption. International legal experts have condemned Lula’s incarceration as unlawful and unconstitutional. LUCIA ORTIZ from Friends of the Earth Brazil argues the corruption claims are trumped up as part of a right wing attack on human rights and grassroots movements
Some honey producers have a bad reputation for welfare standards - but many beekeepers are doing things very differently. The Barro Vermelho community in Brazil is using beekeeping to help regenerate the natural world, increase bee populations, and simultaneously create a better life for people. Eusebio De Carvalho told his story to The Lush Times writer KATIE DANCEY-DOWNS
A shipment of 27,000 live bull calves from Brazil to Turkey in squalid conditions on a single cargo ship took place in December. The Ecologist reported the story, which shocked our readers. Now 100,000 bulls are destined for the same fate. Activists in Brazil are desperate to stop these live exports. ANA LUISA NAGHATTINI reports
Massacres like that reported to have taken place recently in the Amazon are sadly neither new nor uncommon. For uncontacted tribal peoples, the colonial era continues, as bandits and extractive industries, abetted by a corrupt government, inflict violence and plunder on them. LEWIS EVANS puts this brutality into context, and examines potential solutions.
Impunity reigns in the Amazon, write Joe Sandler Clarke & Sam Cowie, and the indigenous peoples of the forest are the big losers as they suffer repeated killings and land grabs. Big cuts to Funai, the agency meant to protect Brazil's indigenous tribes, have encouraged land barons to expand their land holdings into indigenous territories and murder any who resist.
On the one side, the Guarani people and the entire panoply of international and Brazilian law asserting the rights of indigenous peoples to their lives, lands, and way of life. Against them, the entrenched economic and political power of farmers, ranchers, loggers and others exploiting the wealth of the Guarani's soils, forests and waters. Right now the power of money is winning every time. Only with international pressure can the Guarani emerge victorious.
Attacks on Amazon Indians and on their land rights are threatening vital areas of rainforest, writes Jan Rocha. Meanwhile FUNAI, the agency responsible for safeguarding indigenous tribes is being forced to withdraw from key conflict zones due to underfunding, while Indians' attempts to assert their rights are met with state violence.
Brazil's extreme right wing government is preparing to open up the rainforest territories of dozens of uncontacted indigenous tribes to 'free for all' development by defunding the protection they currently receive, according to information received by Survival International, which warns: 'The reality is these cuts could sanction genocide.'
A unique and pristine coral reef in the mouth of the Amazon is threatened by oil drilling planned by oil giants Total and BP, say the scientists who recently explored it. But the oil companies are determined to press ahead despite the risks, writes Lawrence Carter, and Brazil's environment ministry is set to give its approval.
Land grabbing has been going on since the mists of time, writes Nikita Sud, and took off like never before under European colonialism. But now 'developing' countries are also getting in on the act - notably China, an economic superpower in its own right, as it ruthlessly, and often corruptly, expands its global land holdings at the expense of nature and small scale farmers.
Brazil's indigenous peoples rose up against the government's plans to suppress the rights they had fought so hard to win over decades, writes Christian Poirier. Their victory shows the way to defend our achievements and rights: collective struggle, organized response, strong mobilization and ceaseless pressure.
