Brazil

We urge you to express solidarity with MST (Movement of Landless Rural Workers) and send an urgent message to the state government in order to prevent that 200 families will be evicted from a land occupation in a eucalyptus plantation area of the transnational pulp and paper company Suzano.

Brazil and Indonesia share a particular similarity: at some point its rulers decided to build a new capital city. While rulers in Brazil built Brasilia some 60 years ago, construction of the new Indonesian capital is currently underway. Both projects reinforce a colonial State, in spite of their promoters claiming the opposite. Both stories however, also show the role of social struggles as a way to revert a history of colonialism. (Available also in Bahasa Indonesia)

In line with certain aspects of a recent WRM study, we show how four REDD projects in the municipality of Portel, in the state of Pará in the Brazilian Amazon, contribute to perpetuating certain fantasies inherent to the idea of carbon trading through the REDD mechanism.

Most of the causes of deforestation that were identified in a UN-led global analysis from 1999 continue to exist. Yet, the “solutions” proposed since then have become new underlying causes of deforestation. In this scenario, projects that destroy the forest and “green” projects depend on each other in order to be viable.

The news portal Metrópoles travelled 5,700 km to denounce how the palm oil production chain affects quilombola communities and Indigenous Peoples in the state of Pará, Brazil—namely through expropriation of traditional communities, environmental impacts, and a labor history analogous to slavery.

Support and sign the request made by quilombola communities in the Far South of Bahia, Brazil, for the immediate halt to destructive and illegal road works by Suzano Papel e Celulose in their territories. Suzano, Brazil’s largest eucalyptus plantation owner and one of the world’s largest paper and pulp corporations, continues with its violent and destructive actions in the territories of quilombola, peasant and indigenous communities.

Amid the flurry of news about investments in carbon markets, a new WRM study has taken a closer look at a REDD initiative underway in the municipality of Portel, in the state of Pará in the Brazilian Amazon. The case illustrates what is known as "carbon colonialism".

The network that brings together movements, organizations and communities in the fight against tree plantations met in the Far South of the State of Bahia. This September 21st, it once again denounced the impacts of this violent and unjust model, which is based on large-scale plantations mostly for pulp export.

Documentary film produced by​ NUPOMAR, Núcleo de Pesquisa, Mídias e Arte, with the purpose of recording and valuing the social memory of the Pataxó Indigenous Peoples of Aldeia Barra Velha (in the municipality of Porto Seguro-Bahia), Brazil.

The quilombola communities of Sapê do Norte, Brazil, are living a violent process with the expansion of large-scale eucalyptus monoculture. After many hardships, they started a process to take back their water and land. And the struggle to take back what is theirs continues. WRM talked to two quilombola activists to reflect on this difficult but fertile process of resistance.

The discourse of the 'energy transition' is usually used to justify the expansion of the mineral extractive frontier. However, in addition to local pollution and impacts on forests and people, the extraction and processing of minerals require large quantities of water, with long-lasting and far-reaching effects on territories.

We, members of the Manchineri, Apurinã, Katukina Noke Kuí, Jamamadí, Jaminawa, Sharanawa, Huni Kuim, Shanenawa, Ashaninka, Madiha, Kuntanawa, Jaminawa-Arara, Jaminawa do Igarapé Preto, Marubo, Arara, Apolima-Arara, Kanoé Rondonia, Oro Wari Rondonia, Bororo, Nukini and Nawa peoples, farmers, extractive rural workers, and representatives of the organizations Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI), World Rainforest Movement (WRM), Friends of the Earth Brazil, Sempre Viva Feminist Organization (SOF), World March of Women (WMW), Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST-RO) and Small Farmers’ Movement