Brazilians Go All Out to Defend Their Rights Against Counterrevolutionary Offensive
Action
by the Brazilian community in Ottawa to demand that the October 2
elections in Brazil be peaceful and that their results be respected
People from the Brazilian community and friends and allies gathered on Parliament Hill on the afternoon of September 10 to express their support for Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva to be elected next president of Brazil and express their concern about the calls of President Jair Bolsonaro to reject the results of the elections à la Donald Trump if they do not suit him and Lula wins.
This violence is already wielded against the people, as reflected in
the political assassination in 2018 of Marielle Franco, who at the time
was city councillor for Rio de Janeiro. It is reflected as well in an
atmosphere of death threats against political opponents of Bolsonaro,
in the presence
of paramilitaries, police and the military itself in the countryside as
well as in the fact that open season has been declared on Indigenous
land defenders. The latter are being targetted for death by the
Bolsonaro government and are attacked and killed for defending their
river and the still-standing forest.
The calls put forward by the demonstrators were for the protection of the Amazon rainforest in defence of Indigenous rights and the reestablishment of public sectors which were privatized under Bolsonaro.
In 2021, 40 per cent of all native forest loss in the world occurred in Brazil. Under Bolsonaro, the Brazilian Amazon has lost an area of forest larger than Belgium. It is the highest deforestation rate ever recorded.
For
its part, Lula's government, from 2003 to 2010, adopted policies that
slowed the rate of tropical forest loss. Deforestation declined by 82
per cent, from 27,772 to 4,571 square kilometres between 2004 and 2012,
when Lula's successor and ally Dilma Rousseff was in power. The 2012
figure was the lowest rate recorded since satellite monitoring began in
1988.
From August 2021 to July 2022, on the other hand, 10,781 square kilometres of rainforest were cut down, an area the size of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. The current deforestation rate is pushing the Amazon to what scientists call a "point of no return," beyond which the rainforest won't be able to recover on its own and will turn into a dry savanna, in the process emitting more planet-warming greenhouse gases than it absorbs.[1] This scenario is already happening in heavily deforested parts of the Brazilian Amazon.[2] Brazil holds 60 per cent of the Amazon, and 21 per cent of the Brazilian portion is already gone, an area three times greater than the United Kingdom.[3]
The main drivers of this deforestation are oligarchic livestock ranchers, loggers, illegal miners and land grabbers, who have acted largely with impunity and with the aid of the Bolsonaro government which is still supporting bills in Congress which weaken environmental licensing, open Indigenous lands to mining, oil exploration and agribusiness, allow greater unregulated use of pesticides, and legalize land grabbing in the Amazon.
The Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), a group representing 300 Indigenous communities within Brazil, has requested that the International Criminal Court (ICC) try Bolsonaro for crimes against humanity, genocide and ecocide. They are in action to defend their hereditary rights and consider the legalization of environmental destruction as dangerous not only for Brazil, but for the entire planet.
Fires burning in the Amazon, Sepember 2022.
In the remaining months of his current term, Bolsonaro is doing his best to strip away Indigenous rights enshrined in Brazil's 1988 constitution, in league with agribusiness and mining interests. New bills seek to erase the process for defining and protecting Indigenous lands, legalize already operating illegal mining and open the door for new mining, power plants and massive agriculture projects. They allow these to proceed without the consent of affected communities in violation of protections mandated by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
One of Lula's strategies from 2003 to 2008 was the creation of new
protected areas and Indigenous lands. His administration approved a
total of 268,000 square kilometres of protected
areas and 88 Indigenous territories. Today, part of Lula's political
program is to eject
illegal miners from the Amazon and fight the criminal networks wreaking
destruction in the rainforest, to rebuild IBAMA, the federal
environmental protection agency, to create a new ministry for
Indigenous peoples, as well as to make the climate crisis an absolute
priority.
Another matter of concern, one which directly involves Quebec and Canada, is the privatization of many public enterprises under Bolsonaro, including the public water utility CESAE, which supplies 30 municipalities with a population of 13 million people in the State of Rio de Janeiro. This is being challenged, not only by Brazilian labour unions and human rights groups as being in violation of national laws, but also by the Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio de Janeiro itself, which voted to stop the auction. This decision was overruled by decree and ordered to continue by the Interim governor, a Bolsonaro ally. The two main investors in this privatization are the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and Alberta's pension fund investor AIMCo. The CPPIB also plans to take advantage of Bolsonaro’s sell-off of Brazil’s largest publicly-controlled energy utility Electrobras, which Lula has promised to cancel or reverse.
Quebec's Caisse de Dépôt et de Placement (CDPQ) has major investments in Brazil. It has invested in Terna Group, specialized in energy transportation, as well as in Telefonica, a Spanish telecommunications multinational. In 2019, the CDPQ invested in Transportadora Associada de Gas (TAG), the biggest gas transportation company in Brazil. In this, it is in partnership with ENGIE, a major independent producer of electricity in Brazil. The CDPQ, through its real estate subsidiary Ivanhoé Cambridge, has invested in infrastructure in Brazil such as the 2016 Olympics and the 2014 Soccer World Cup. The CDPQ has an office in Sao Paulo as well as in Mexico.
Notes
1. See "When will the Amazon hit a tipping point?," Nature, February 25, 2020.
2. "Brazil's Amazon is now a carbon source, unprecedented study reveals," Mongabay, July 14, 2021.
This article was published in
Volume 52 Number 22 - October 1, 2022
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmld2022/Articles/D520222.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca