How an Amazonian Leader Stood up to Carbon Marketeering on Her Munduruku Lands and Resources
She said that they were tired of outsiders’ constant encroaching on their ancestral lands, making empty promises, gouging the earth, creating conflict and deceiving the people. To make their case clear, she waved a burduna (a wooden hunting club) close to the Company director’s neck to show that the Munduruku Nation would always defend “the world” (see video clip on this blog).
Other leaders, both women and men, also made known their outrage at the idea that the forest, which is life itself bonded together with them, should ever be up for negotiation.
A small group of the leaders, however, went on to sign a 30-year contract which would grant Dublin based Celestial Green Ventures (CGV) rights over carbon credits and other “biodiverse benefits” on 2.3 million hectares of the Munduruku reservation, in exchange for a lot of money which would buy lots of stuff. The people, however, got their orders: They would no longer be able to plant cassava or sugar cane; they could not fish or continue to sustain themselves in their customary way; they would have nothing to do, really, but take and spend the lots of money. The Company would take care of their land and needs by giving them a yearly sum of $4million.
The people were suspicious. They did not like anything about it because they and their forest were totally inseparable living partners in mutual care and sustenance and celebration. Conflict arose because most of the communities were not informed about this odd deal, and hardly anyone had even the faintest idea about “carbon credits”, much less, what was entailed in unregulated carbon trading.
The Company, however, assured them that other indigenous peoples had already come on board with their venture. In fact, Celestial Green Ventures’ website was boasting of a total of 17 projects in Amazonia which gave them rights to 20 million hectares of carbon storage with billions of tons of carbon credits to be traded over a 30-year period. This total would soon be doubled, they claimed, thus making CGV the world’s leader in the carbon market and that it had investors lined up from several countries between Panama to China.
Many Brazilian and International organizations were made aware of the situation and administrative proceedings by the Federal Public Ministry led to the annulment of the contract. Other projects by CGV later became annulled, but unfortunately others have continued with lack of transparency and accountability, according to recent actions in December 2017, taken by the Federal Prosecutors’ Office of Amazonas. That is another story.
The carbon market mechanism, as a response to global warming, is rife with corruption and has done nothing to halt the ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions which threaten the well-being of all living species. The Munduruku communities, among other severely threatened ancient forest peoples, relate to the rarest eco-system on Earth, in a way that does not barter with offsets, emission allowances, and carbon credits -- all of which aim at commodifying Nature itself -- so that pollution, waste and degradation can continue “business as usual” within a flawed market response to the greatest ethical challenge to our common home and our responsibility to all who bequeath it from us.