This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l.
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If we lose the Amazon, our world will lose its future

By:   []

Date: 2021-09

One bill, which gives amnesty to landgrabbers in Indigenous territories, was approved by the lower house of the Brazilian legislature in early August, after being supported by 296 lawmakers to 136. There is no question the bill will be approved by the Senate, the upper house, and then signed into law by President Jair Bolsonaro, who campaigned on this very platform.

Another bill, which is still to be voted on by the lower house, cancels Indigenous peoples’ right to be consulted over what happens in their territories, as well as their right to remain isolated.

And today, the Supreme Court will hear a landmark case on the demarcation of Indigenous territory. The lawsuit argues that Indigenous peoples are entitled only to the lands they occupied on 5 October 1988, when Brazil’s constitution was promulgated. It tries to erase the history of dispossession, destitution and oppression from before that date.

All of these attacks on Indigenous peoples’ rights contravene Brazil’s constitution, as well as the United Nations’ Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Indigenous peoples in Brazil talk about the laws that cancel their rights and land titles as “the legalization of their extermination” and as a “civilized massacre”. If they lose their rights to their land and the right to be consulted about what happens to their land, the portents will be grim for the Amazon. The consequences would, of course, be global.

More deforestation will push the Amazon beyond the tipping point, turning it from a rainforest into a savanna or grassland. The Amazon will go from a vital carbon sink that helps us slow down climate change to a dangerous carbon source that will accelerate the heating of the planet. This is already happening in some parts of the forest.

If the deforestation of the Amazon continues, we will see more extreme temperatures and forest fires like the ones currently ablaze in Canada, Siberia and the western US. There will be more floods, like those seen in Turkey, China and Germany, and more droughts leading to food and water shortages as in Madagascar and Ethiopia. There will be an increase in unpredictable severe weather events, more species will suffer extinction; inequality will grow as will polarization and conflict. There will be more people displaced by climate change throughout the world. It will all be unavoidable. We will also be faced with another genocide of Indigenous peoples.
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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/if-we-lose-the-amazon-our-world-will-lose-its-future/
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