Indigenous territories, long a bulwark against deforestation in the Amazon, are increasingly threatened in Brazil, according to an analysis 36 years of satellite imagery. Data shows that illicit mining operations on indigenous lands and other officially protected areas have reached an all-time high in recent years under the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro, underscoring fears that his policies and its rhetoric undermines both human rights and environmental protection in the world’s largest rainforest. These operations strip the land of vegetation and pollute the waterways with mercury.

The analysis, published at the end of August, comes as scientists and environmentalists warn of the deteriorating situation in Brazil; Indigenous groups have frequently found themselves in violent clashes with miners since Bolsonaro came to power in 2019 – and they demand more protection for their lands. Although indigenous territories are legally protected, Bolsonaro has openly called for mining and other developments.

“It is certainly the worst it has been for indigenous peoples since the constitution was signed in 1988,” says Glenn Shepard, anthropologist at the Emílio Goeldi Museum in Belém. Before that, Brazil was ruled by a military dictatorship.

Researchers from MapBiomas, a consortium of academic, business and non-governmental organizations that has conducted geospatial studies across Brazil, developed algorithms which they used in conjunction with Google Earth Engine to perform the analysis. After training the algorithms on images of mining operations – of desolate landscapes where forests have been converted into a collection of sand dunes pockmarked by mining ponds – the team performed their analysis on a freely available archive of images. captured by the US Landsat program, then analyzed. trends in indigenous lands and other officially protected areas where mining is not permitted.

Over the past decade, illegal mining incursions – mostly small-scale gold mining operations – have quintupled on indigenous lands and tripled in other protected areas in Brazil such as parks, data shows ( see “Mining incursions”). The findings largely agree with reports from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in São José dos Campos, which has been monitoring the country’s forests and issuing warnings about mining incursions for several years.

“We kind of knew this was happening, but seeing numbers like this is scary even for us,” says Cesar Diniz, a geologist at geospatial analysis firm Solved in Belém, Brazil, who led the analysis for MapBiomas.

Clashes on several fronts

In addition to sheltering their people, indigenous territories play a role in protecting the biodiversity of the Amazon and the huge reservoir of carbon that is locked in its trees and soils. Numerous studies have shown that indigenous lands, along with other conservation areas, are effective buffers against tropical deforestation in the Amazon.^1,2, which is responsible for around 8% of global carbon emissions.

Earlier this month, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) approved a motion, brought forward by indigenous groups, calling on governments to protect 80% of the Amazon basin by 2025. Indigenous representatives say they plan to fight for implementation across the Amazon, but the proposal faces a particularly tough sell in Brazil under Bolsonaro, whose business-friendly conservative government has cut back on enforcement of existing environmental laws and halted efforts to demarcate new indigenous territories.

Indigenous groups have also taken their cases to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands. On August 9, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), which represents indigenous groups from across the country, filed a complaint the court accusing the Bolsonaro administration of violating human rights and, they claim, paving the way for genocide by undermining indigenous rights, reducing environmental protections and inciting incursions and violence through calls for mining and land development. The APIB has also made it clear that it is not only the rights of indigenous peoples at stake, making a direct link between the protection of their territories and that of the globe.

“Defending the traditional territories of Amazonian communities is the best way to save the forest,” says Luiz Eloy Terena, anthropologist and lawyer from the village of Ipegue who coordinates legal affairs for APIB. “What is needed is a commitment by the state to demarcate and protect indigenous lands, which are the last barrier against deforestation and forest degradation.

Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly on September 21, Bolsonaro said he was determined to protect the Amazon and stressed that 600,000 indigenous peoples live “in freedom” on reserves totaling 1.1 million square kilometers of land, equivalent to 14% of Brazilian territory. . In the past, Bolsonaro has publicly stated that indigenous peoples have too much land given their sparse population, and sometimes called for their “integration”. The Bolsonaro administration did not respond to Naturerequests for comment regarding illegal mining in the Amazon, its indigenous and environmental policies, or charges filed with the International Criminal Court.

Existential threat

Brazil was recognized as a leader in sustainable development during the 2000s. Former President Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva and his Workers’ Party implemented policies that helped curb deforestation in the Amazon furthermore by 80% between 2004 and 2012.

But the party was dogged by corruption charges that would later lead Lula to jail, and his environmental agenda eventually faltered. In 2012, Brazil’s increasingly conservative Congress weakened a once-vaunted forest protection law. With each successive government, funding for the country’s main environmental enforcement agency, the Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), declined: IBAMA had 1,500 enforcement officers. in 2012, against only 600 today, explains Suely Araújo, political scientist. in Brasilia who spent nearly three decades working in the Brazilian Congress and led IBAMA from 2016 to 2018.

The rate of deforestation in the Amazon, which includes land converted for mining, agriculture and other development, started to rise again after 2012 and climbed 44% in Bolsonaro’s first two years in office, according to the INPE (see “Razing the tropical forest”). Many expect a further increase when the figures for 2021 are released later this year.

But the biggest threats are yet to come, says Araújo. The current government is now pushing legislation through Congress – as well as arguments in a case pending before Brazil’s Supreme Court – that would make it harder to create new indigenous lands and may even allow the government to repossess existing lands. Another legislation that was brought forward by Bolsonaro supporters in Congress would open indigenous lands for industrial development, grant amnesty to people who have illegally invaded public lands, and gut regulations governing large infrastructure projects such as mines. , roads and dams.

“It’s painful,” says Araújo, who has decided to forgo his retirement and join the Brazilian Climate Observatory, a coalition of activist and academic groups fighting to preserve the country’s social and environmental protections. “It has become my mission.”

For indigenous tribes, the increasing damage to their lands and the rainforest poses an existential threat. More than 6,000 indigenous people descended on Brasilia, the country’s capital, in August and September to protest against Bolsonaro’s policies on land demarcation and the environment. They also traveled to Marseille, France for the IUCN World Conservation Congress earlier this month to promote their motion to protect the Amazon Basin.

“We will not give up,” said José Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, member of the Wakueni Kurripaco people of Venezuela and elected leader of the Congress of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin. “Science supports us and the world is waking up. “