Amazon, the forest that beats in us
Indigenous, riverines, young climate activists from Europe and scientists gathered in the heart of the forest, in Rio Iriri Extractive Reserve (Para state), in an unprecedented articulation for the Amazon and the planet
By: Isabel Harari, journalist, ISA
Photos: Lilo Clareto/ISA
Video: Azul Serra/ISA
Yakawilu Juruna had to take a different path to get to the Rio Iriri Extractive Reserve (Para state), the location chosen to host the “Amazon Center of the World” meeting, between November the 11th and 20th. The 18-year-old young woman, known as Anita, lives in the Mïratu Village, Paquiçamba Indigenous Land, less than 10 km from Belo Monte Dam.
With the definite river dam in 2015, it is no longer possible to travel by boat to Altamira city — the meeting point to go to the Resex (Extractive Reserve) — without passing by a transposition system controlled by Norte Energia and face the banzeiro, a strong wind that makes the navigation harder. Anita, who is Juruna, or Yudjá, a boat people known as “the owners of the Xingu river”, travelled by car on a dirt road.
Anuna de Wever took a different path too. The 18-year-old belgian girl crossed the Atlantic on a six-week trip to the Amazon. Climate activist and part of the movement “Fridays For Future”, Anuna decided to trade a few-hour plane trip, that would emit a brutal amount of carbon into the atmosphere, for more than 40 days in the ocean.
Both met at the heart of the forest, in Resex Rio Iriri, part of the Terra do Meio Protected Area Mosaic. Around 70 people, among indigenous, riverines, young brazilian and european activist and scientists, also faced boat, car and bus trips and joined Anita and Anuna to think of sustainable solutions for the future of the Amazon and the planet.
“The Amazon is the center of the world. In a moment of climate emergency, there is no way for us to control the global overheating without the forest. We are doing a small movement here, which is to gather people that wouldn’t meet in another way. This is the power of this meeting. What is common here is to save the Amazon, in order to save ourselves”, summed up the journalist and writer Eliane Brum, one of the meeting’s organizer.
During two days, Manelito polo’s classroom, the event’s place, was taken by conversations in English, Portuguese, Yanomami, Kayapó, Russian and French. There, representatives of the Juruna, Xiapaya, Kayapó, Xikrin and Yanomami peoples, riverines from the Xingu and Tapajós rivers, quilombolas from Pará and Amapá states, young activists of Fridays For Future, Extinction Rebellion, Engajamundo and Pussy Riot movements, scientists such as Antonio Nobre, Eduardo Neves and the anthropologist Manuela Carneiro da Cunha gathered themselves.
“These are other worlds, there is the sea in between, but it is the same universe. It’s important to meet, to create this union. The time for the youth has come, that’s why they are here. Let’s build the path of a new time. And starting here, to think, how we are going to save our earth”, summed up shaman Davi Kopenawa, at the opening of the event.
“I am very happy to know that there are people from across the world concerned about our forest and our cause”, told Denilson Machado da Silva, from Resex Riozinho do Anfrísio. Another young riverine, Herlan Barbosa, from Resex Rio Xingu, complemented: “I realized we are not alone”.
At the front line
Dozens of trucks loaded with wood travel, in broad daylight, on the road between Altamira and Maribel port, by the Iriri river, where the participants boarded to the Resex. Part of the way went by a branch road that crosses Cachoeira Seca do Iriri Indigenous Land (IL), the champion of deforestation in 2019. There, almost 7 thousand hectares were deforested between January and October, 70% more than the total rate of deforestation in 2018.
The IL, however, is not an isolated case. The ILs and Conservation Units (CU) that form the Xingu Corridor of Social Environmental Diversity, a group of Protected Areas in the Xingu river basin, are threatened.
The Xingu concentrated the most deforested Indigenous Lands in 2019 and the Conservation Unit champion in destruction, the APA Triunfo do Xingu, which had 44 thousand hectares deforested this year. Land grabbing, illegal mining, wood theft, big infrastructure projects and the advancement of farming put at risk the territory, the indigenous peoples and traditional populations who live there.
In the last ten years, 1,2 million hectares were deforested in the Xingu river basin. From the destruction of 40% of the Xingu springs, in the headwaters of the river, in Mato Grosso, to the river dam for the construction of Belo Monte dam, next to its mouth, in Pará, the pressure on the forest, the rivers and its tributaries put at risk one of the most diverse regions in the world.
“We don’t know how our future will be, but we won’t back off. We are inhabitants of our land, our forest. We won’t keep our heads down, we will not stop fighting. We will keep resisting. The fight doesn’t end here, this fight is forever”, declared chief Mobo Odo Arara, from Cachoeira Seca village, same name of the IL.
In the same region Belo Monte Dam was built. With 25 judicial actions filed by the Federal Prosecutors Office in Pará, besides hundreds of others filed by the Public Defender’s Office, the power plant is an infrastructure project marked by a disastrous number of socialenvironmental impacts, such as the lack of sanitation infrastructure, education, healthcare, increase in violence, relocation of traditional communities in urban peripheries and increase in the pressure on Indigenous Lands and Conservation Units.
“The river is sad, dry, starving. The fish are having trouble to get food. The Xingu river is very sad”, said Anita Juruna. Face to face with the dam, Anuna de Wever, of Fridays For Future, declared: “it looks like a prison”.
The young indigenous girl remembered another project that threatens her territory, the canadian mining company Belo Sun, that intends to be the largest open pit mining company in the country, despite countless illegalities in the process and the infeasibility of its installation. Emotional, she stated that “there’s no way to back off in the fight. We need to join forces to stop the end of the river, the end of the river will be our end”.
Forest, people and biodiversity
The Protected Areas in the Xingu river basin have established themselves as a barrier to devastation and form a kind of firewall for the forest and peoples of the Amazon. There 26 million hectares with 21 Indigenous Lands and nine contiguous Conservation Units, connected by the Xingu river and its tributaries, with an unique social biodiversity.
“There is forest where there are indigenous and riverines. We are the experts of the forest, we protect it”, explained Doto Takak Ire, leader of the Kayapó Menkrãgnoti people.
Denilson, young riverine researcher, reiterated Doto’s speech and, in front of the participants, asked: “We know that where there is forest is where the traditional peoples live. How would the Amazon and the world be today without traditional peoples?”
One answer is right: without the indigenous and traditional peoples, the lunch table wouldn’t be so abundant. Everyday a great variety of fruits and vegetables locally produced fed the participants. Chestnut, cocoa, cará, sweet potato, rice and pineapple are some of the examples of plants domesticated 6 thousand years ago, at least. The only products brought from the city were salt, onions, garlic and tomatoes. The rest was produced by the region’s population.
Without the people, this diversity would not exist. “It is the legacy of life forms and sophisticated knowledge of these populations. The forest is a result of the millennial management of the forest peoples”, comments Eduardo Góes Neves, archaeologist from the University of São Paulo.
In the Amazon there are around 16 thousand tree species, of these, 227 are known as “hiperdominants”, that form almost half of the individuals in the forest. The amazonian açaí and other four palm species are part of this group that has a large representation in the cycles of carbon, water and nutrients.
“Looking at the Amazon’s map it’s ease to notice that where there are traditional populations there is forest. The forest only exists because there are traditional knowledge and biodiversity there. It is urgent to create a different future that conserves and expands forests, promoting economic alternatives not only for the the peoples of the forest, but for the people in general, considering hundreds of products and services that they may generate for the world. Each forest area cleared are hundreds of missed opportunities”, alerted Marcelo Salazar, of Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), one of the event’s organizers.
Heart of the world
During his presentation, Antonio Nobre, Earth scientist and researcher at the National Space Research Institute (INPE), shows the participants an Earth’s animated map with the carbon variation extracted from the atmosphere by different ecosystems in the planet — a representation called “gross primary production”. Going from the equatorial region, where there is the greatest energy concentration, there is this forest pulsation.
Over the Amazon there is an extraordinary condensation of water vapor transpired by the trees. This condensation is caused by a very fine dust resulting from the reaction between organic gases emitted by the trees and the air oxygen, leading to the formation of abundant rainfall. Steam condensation leaves behind a void in the air, reducing atmospheric pressure on the forests, thus sucking in moist air from contiguous areas over the blue ocean. Thus, explains Nobre, are born the flying rivers, which import renewed fresh water for the continent in the evaporation of the ocean.
“Life in the forest attracts water, which controls carbon and regulates the weather. The concentration of life in the equatorial region is fundamental for the weather, which is the planet’s engine. The Amazon is the heart of the world. It’s not an allegory, it is real, the Amazon is the heart of the world”, he states.
Without the forest, the rainfall regime can be radically altered. Beyond the impacts on Protected Areas, the agricultural production will be severely affected.
Nobre quoted Davi Kopenawa: “don’t white men know that if the forest is gone, the rains are gone and, without the rain, there is nothing to eat or drink?”, a question completely substantiated by the white men science, and he adds: “Scientists are not being heard, the indigenous are not being heard. Scientists for 30 years, the indigenous by 500 years. And then these young people from the movement initiated by Greta Thunberg come in a good moment to use scientific and indigenous knowledge as a wake up vector, for humanity to wake up in a very effective way”.
To the participants, Anuna reiterated her compromise to learn and fight side by side with the indigenous and riverines. “We came here to show our respect to these peoples, learn from them. It is very important to overcome barriers, walls and cross oceans. It is necessary that we all come together. We are fighting for our future, but it is already their present”, she declared.
Planting the future
About 500 thousand people marched in Madrid, Spain, location chosen to host the climate conference, COP 25. Most of all young people, the protesters asked for effective and urgent measures to control the climate crisis before the planet reaches a point of no-return. On the signs and speeches, the words were “climate justice now”.
“We are not talking whether this generation can change the world. This generation has to change the world. We need action now, we have few time, five, ten years until the system collapses. I hope to fight with you”, assured Robin Ellis-Cockroft, of the Extinction Rebellion Youth movement.
Robin was one of the first kids to take a bunch of native seeds to restores a degraded area in one of the farms on the limit between the municipalities of Altamira and Brasil Novo. Together, the participants helped to prepare the seed “muvuca”, a mix of 34 native species that in a few years will become a forest. [learn more about muvuca]
What before was an area destined to cattle, in Abelha Cacau site, will now form a forest so diverse as the meeting’s attendants. All the summit’s emissions were neutralized with this plantation. It is estimated that in 20 years, 214 tons of carbon by hectare will be removed out of the atmosphere.
Socorro Costa e Silva, leader of Quilombo de Barcarena, in Pará, also participated in the plantation and is firm in her message when questioned about how to guarantee the future o the Amazon: “Live with the people of the forest and you will learn what you need and what to do immediately”.
Altamira Center of the World
Between the 17th and 19th the group that was in the forest joined hundreds of people in Altamira. More than 300 people, among indigenous, riverines, family farmers, quilombolas, social movements, climate activists and scientists gathered got together at the Univesidade Federal do Pará (UFPA) to firm their compromise in defense of the Amazon.
Chief Raoni Metuktire, historical leader of people Kayapó, asked for peace. “I am here to defend the Amazon and ask everyone to be calm, may peace come to us. I come to ask the non-indigenous to respect our forest, because the forest is our life. I don’t want violence”.
“In the face of an ongoing catastrophe, we, social movements and the organized society, indigenous, riverine and quilombolas, scientists and climate activists from Brazil and the world overcame walls and barriers to come together and unite our voices around a common objective: save the forest and fight against the extinction of life on the planet”, says the manifesto read by nine indigenous, riverine, quilombola women and representatives of social movements.
