ACTION ALERT
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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
Brazil Communities Stand Up to Loggers
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Support Brazilian Rainforest Protectors
http://act.greenpeace.org/ams/e?a=xingu&s=amz
September 19, 2002
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org
Forest communities in Pará state, the eastern part of the
Brazilian Amazon, have embarked on a massive rainforest
conservation protest with support from Greenpeace and others.
Efforts by Indigenous communities to reclaim their forest heritage
from corporate and governmental marauders, and defend their right
to protect and sustainably manage their future and their forests,
must be supported by international conservationists if global
rainforest sustainability is to be achieved. In the first such
peaceful protest in 20 years, Amazon forest dwellers are risking
life and limb as they strive to save their forests and way of life
from an onslaught of illegal predatory logging.
The global rainforest crisis is as much about human rights
violations as it is about ecology. The same gross abuses carried
out through hundreds of years of colonialism continue to be waged
against indigenous peoples today.
How much longer will many international conservation organizations
endorse continued industrial large scale “certified” logging of
primary forests as a desirable forest conservation strategy and
outcome, while ignoring the plights of those most effected by
predatory logging? The solution to the global rainforest crisis
lays in empowering rainforest inhabitants to benefit from
protected areas and benign, ecologically based forest conservation
management on their traditional lands. Global rainforest
sustainability will not be achieved without emphasizing indigenous
human rights. Commercial log production in remaining primary
forests against the will of their traditional inhabitants must not
be tolerated.
Greenpeace is providing action updates from Greenpeace campaigners
deep in the Amazon assisting these brave local peoples in civil
disobedience against logging induced ecocide and genocide at:
http://production.greenpeace.org/features/details?features_id=2869
9&lang=en
They ask that you send a letter at
http://act.greenpeace.org/ams/e?a=xingu&s=amz
to the federal and state authorities demanding the urgent creation
of the extractive reserve and an investigation on all the logging
companies that are logging illegally in the region. Please do so.
g.b.
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Title: Communities stand up to loggers, stand up for forest
Brazilian rainforest blockade makes plea for new extractive
reserve
Source: Copyright 2002 Greenpeace - http://www.greenpeace.org/
Date: September 19, 2002
BRAZIL/Porto de Moz - With the name of Chico Mendes on their lips,
people representing almost 600 Amazon forest dwellers joined by
Greenpeace and other organisations blocked the bright green waters
of Brazil’s Jaraucu river in the first such community protest in
nearly 20 years.
This peaceful protest of boats and banners is part of an ongoing
quest to save their forests and way of life. The forest
communities want the government to grant them an extractive
reserve, the kind of sanctuary that Brazilian rubber tapper and
community activist Chico Mendes died for in 1988. Without this
protection, they fear loggers and farmers will continue to destroy
their rainforest home in Pará state, the eastern part of the
Brazilian Amazon.
The Jaraucu river is the main transport route for illegal timber
around the town of Porto de Moz, a region well known for land
squatting and illegal logging. Farmers and loggers invade forest
areas, open illegal roads and threaten the traditional local
people, who depend on the forests for survival. Serious forest
exploitation shifted to the Porto de Moz area in 1990, after the
forests east of Pará state were logged to destruction. Overall,
the Brazilian Amazon has lost 15 percent of its forest cover in
the last 30 years.
For three years, these forest communities have sought to create
the Verde Para Sempre (Forever Green) extractive reserve. With an
area of 1.3 million hectares, almost half the area of Belgium, the
reserve would stop forest destruction and promote the forests’
sustainable use.
But they face serious challenges. In this area of about 125
communities and 15 thousand inhabitants, loggers, farmers and
politicians are fighting the extractive reserve because it does
not conform to their economic vision. Some even resort to violence
to stop the process, the type of conflict that led to Mendes’ 1988
murder at the hands of farmers.
Claudio Wilson Barbosa, one of the community leaders
participating in the protest, said “loggers and farmers are
invading our traditional land and destroying our forest and
the future of our kids. They need to get out and return the
forest to the real owners, the people of Verde Para Sempre."
National and international logging companies are also
implicated. Five years of Greepeace research has yielded a map
showing the illegal activities in this disputed area around
Porto de Moz. Companies including Curuatinga, DLH Nordisk,
Eidai, Marajó Island Business, Madenorte, Porbrás and Rancho
da Cabocla are directly or indirectly involved in operations
here.
The customers of these companies should stop buying timber
from the region until the reserve is created. And these
companies must return the forests to the people of Porto de
Moz.
Marcelo Marquesini, Greenpeace Amazon Campaigner, is also at
the protest on the Jaraucu river to support the communities’
fight to protect their land from the invasion by loggers. “We
believe that extractive reserves are one of the ways to ensure
the sustainable use of forests resources, and the traditional
communities are the first ones interested in protecting their
forest land and environment, which they depend on to survive,"
said Marquesini.
"The Brazilian government now holds the responsibility to
create the Verde Para Sempre Extractive Reserve, which would
stop forest destruction in Porto de Moz.”
You can help.Send a letter to the federal and state
authorities demanding the urgent creation of the extractive
reserve and an investigation on all the logging companies that
are logging illegally in the region.
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