Paraguay

In the past two years, tree plantation initiatives aimed at generating carbon credits have doubled. Whether as large monocultures or as nicely sounding projects with grassroots communities, tree plantations for carbon offsetting are neither a solution to the climate chaos nor beneficial to rural communities in the Global South.

The false idea that industrial plantations are a solution to the climate crisis is a golden opportunity for investment funds like Arbaro, which access scarce climate funding for expanding destructive monocultures.

Company plans 75,000 hectare expansion of Industrial Tree Plantations in Seven Countries in the Global South: Sierra Leone, Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia, Peru, Ecuador and Paraguay. Download the leafelt to know more about the company and why communities should be alert.

Indigenous Ayoreo protesting against inaction of the Government on illegal deforestation. © GAT Paraguay is currently the location of a far from ordinary regional meeting. Experts from Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru gathered on July 28 to discuss the critical situation posed by increasingly frequent sightings of indigenous peoples in isolation and its consequences.

Photo: volunteerlatinamericablog.com. The spirit came in the form of a crow; it carried me up and said to me: “Look at Eami tonight. You can see many fires burning. They are the fires lit by your people, the Ayoreo, illuminating everything.” We continued to fly and the lights went out one by one. “This is the future of your people. The forest is growing dark because the Ayoreo do not live there anymore. Everything is turning to darkness.”

The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) has issued a report on the indigenous Ayoreo people in Paraguay and the injustices they have been experiencing due to the expansion of ranching, illegal sale of land and extractive industries (1). More than a report, it is an urgent wakeup call that Director of Iniciativa Amotocodie Benno Glauser introduces as follows:

The situation of the Ayoreo people of the Chaco region of Paraguay serves as an excellent illustration of the fact that forest conservation is a human rights issue. It also very clearly demonstrates that the protection of forests should be placed in the hands of those who have the greatest stake in their preservation: the indigenous peoples who depend on them for their survival.

Unión de Nativos Ayoreo de Paraguay, Iniciativa Amotocodie, Informe IWGIA 4

The Paraguayan Federation of Wood Industries (Federación Paraguaya de Madereros - FEPAMA) is talking of “collaborating with the Agrarian Reform Project promoted by the Government, through a proposal for comprehensive rural development and generation of wealth by introducing tree plantations on idle lands.” (1)  FEPAMA alleges that “with this work special support could be provided to small and medium-sized rural landowners, to enable them to help organize the promotion of tree plantations ...

The Ayoreo Indigenous People are one of an estimated 100 uncontacted tribes around the world and the only uncontacted people in South America outside the Amazon basin. The Totobiegosode (‘people from the place of the wild pigs’) are the most isolated sub-group of the Ayoreo and live in the Chaco, a vast expanse of dense, scrubby forest stretching from Paraguay to Bolivia and Argentina.