Indigenous peoples, custodians of natural resources and victims of repression, fighting for their fundamental rights

The Jagalingou Aboriginal tribe in Australia, the indigenous communities of the Philippines and the Brazilian and Colombian Amazon.A article by DW told how these groups are fighting to preserve their territories.All over the world, indigenous peoples must fight for their fundamental rights.The defense of their rights coincides with better protection of the environment and climate.However, although they are considered custodians of natural resources, indigenous tribes often face repression, discrimination and mass racism. And they pay with their lives.

Between 2012 and 2021, human rights groups and organizations documented the deaths of more than 1,700 environmental and land defenders in approximately 60 countries.According to data published by the environmental and human rights organization Global Witness, more than 35% of those killed were indigenous.

At the heart of conflicts are often large mining projects, agricultural logging, reservoir dams and oil, gas and coal extraction.

The Jagalingou struggle against the construction of a coal mine

“Our people have lived on this continent for over 60,000 years,” he said DW Adrian Burragubba, the main cultural custodian of the Jagalingou, an Australian Aboriginal tribe who for years fought against the construction of the Carmichael coal mine, wanted by the Indian company Adani in the state of Queensland.In the end they lost:in 2021 the coal mine started production.Over its expected 60-year life, the mine could emit nearly 2% of the total amount of carbon dioxide still available to humans to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

According to some reports, mining activity could cause the water level of underground springs to drop.For the indigenous people, the springs are sacred and are essential for the survival of the local ecosystem.Furthermore, there are fears that additional maritime traffic near the Great Barrier Reef, off the coast of Australia, could inflict further damage on the delicate ecosystem, already suffering from the consequences of global warming.

If their lands are not returned, the Jagalingou will continue their fight for human rights, frequenting their sacred places near the mining area to celebrate their rituals.Religious practices are a fundamental right, explains Barragubba:“No one can stop us.”

The price of gold:the struggle of indigenous Philippine communities to safeguard the environment from extractive activities

In the north-east of the Philippines, the indigenous communities of the Didipio River are fighting for the right to live on their lands contaminated by mining activities.In the area, in fact, the Australian mining company OceanaGold owns a gold and copper mine.The license, which expired in 2019, was renewed in 2021 for another 25 years.In the first half of 2023, the Didipio mine produced 65,241 ounces of gold and 6,911 tonnes of copper.Toxic chemicals such as arsenic and mercury are often used during the extraction process.A 2019 United Nations report established a correlation between the death of trees near the mine and water allegedly contaminated by mining activity.

“The problem with heavy metals is that when you drink water contaminated by them you don't immediately realize how dangerous it is.There is a process of accumulation of poisoning for decades and when we realize the consequences it is too late", explains a DW Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights to drinking water and sanitation.In the long term, there could be very serious repercussions on the health of the millions of people who live further downstream, within the entire river basin

The indigenous communities living along the Didipio river are fighting to protect the land, the forest, the river and drinking water.Over the past two years, there have been repeated protests by local indigenous groups, in some cases brutally repressed by the police and army.Several United Nations experts have called on the Philippine government not to discriminate against indigenous communities in favor of economic interests.

The guardians of the Amazon rainforest

THE'Amazon it is one of the richest biodiversity regions in the world.It spans nine countries and is inhabited by approximately 1.5 million indigenous people and over 380 ethnic groups.They are considered the guardians of the forest which, in recent decades, has been drastically reduced due to legal and illegal deforestation, drug trafficking, infrastructure projects, agriculture and corruption.

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Very often, indigenous people always end up under the crossfire of drug cartels, the military, security personnel of private companies, militias and guerrillas.Most of the killings of indigenous environmental activists occur in Colombia and Brazil.

Brazil, journalist Dom Phillips and activist Bruno Pereira killed while investigating illegal exploitation of the Amazon

In the Amazon, in the Yavarí valley, they were killed last year the journalist of Guardian, Dom Phillips, and the Brazilian expert from the body for the protection of indigenous peoples, Bruno Pereira.They were investigating the exploitation of the forest and the growing threats facing indigenous populations.The Yavarí valley – one of the most isolated places on the planet, a reserve of 85 thousand square kilometers covered by the Amazon forest, without roads, where you can move by navigating the river and within which approximately 23 indigenous groups live who have no external contacts – is a coveted territory for fishing, hunting, tree felling and illegal mining, and is an area affected by drug trafficking networks on the border between Brazil, Peru and Colombia.

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The destruction of the Amazon forces indigenous tribes to move and resettle in other territories with repercussions also on the care of the forest.“Indigenous groups play a vital role in forest conservation and restoration,” explains a DW Mercedes Bustamante, member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.“Deforestation rates in indigenous territories are the lowest in Brazil and also in other parts of South America.And they also have the knowledge, the traditional one, on how to manage and preserve the forests."

On July 6th the Brazilian government he announced that in the first six months of the year, 2,649 square kilometers of Amazon forest were destroyed, 33.6% less than in the same period of 2022.President Lula, in office since January 1, has pledged to end deforestation by 2030.Earlier this year, Lula decreed six new indigenous reserves, banning mining and limiting commercial agriculture.In Colombia, where according to official data last year deforestation decreased by 26%, the new president Gustavo Petro is linking peace processes with armed groups to the environmental issue.

When the Colombian government signed a peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016, other armed groups - including dissident rebel factions that had rejected the agreement - took advantage of the FARC's absence to level hundreds of hectares at a time.Recently, a dissident rebel faction, made up of former FARC fighters, ordered local farmers to stop cutting trees as a "gesture of peace", in the hope of reaching an agreement with Petro's government.

Last June, the Municipality of Guajara-Mirim, encouraged by the indigenous Warì community that has inhabited the western Brazilian Amazon for centuries, passed a law which defines the Komi Memem River and its tributaries as living entities with rights ranging from maintaining their natural flow to protecting the surrounding forest.The Komi Memem, a tributary of a larger, unprotected river, is now the first of hundreds of rivers in the Brazilian Amazon to have a law giving it personhood status.

“Water is life for us.We cannot allow water to die.It's as if he were a person for us,” he explains Associated Press, Francisco Oro Waram, teacher and leader of the indigenous community, promoter of the law in the city council.

This is not the first case of this type.In 2018, the Supreme Court of Colombia, deciding on a lawsuit brought by a group of young environmentalists, had recognized similar rights to the Amazon River ecosystem to be considered, in the opinion of the highest Colombian court, "as an entity, subject of rights and beneficiary of protection, conservation, maintenance and restoration”.

This sentence arrived a few months before the long-awaited meeting in Belém, Brazil, where after 14 years, the South American countries that host the Amazon rainforest have reunited again with the declared objective of "protecting the bio-region and addressing organized crime", and to build an "Amazon bloc" which, in three years, in 2025, will present itself compactly at the United Nations Climate Conference which will be held in Belém.«We will reconcile environmental protection with sustainable economic development», he said at the beginning Brazilian President Lula.

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It was a highly anticipated summit considering that in 45 years the South American countries that are part of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization have met just three times.And, instead, writes Claudia Fanti on The Manifesto, the two days of meetings ended with a vague statement, no obligation regarding deforestation and extraction and failure to listen to the appeals of indigenous people and civil society.

The 600 indigenous representatives who came to Belém to discuss their model of the Amazon were excluded from the official program and forced to meet on their own within the framework of the Assembly of Peoples for the Land.Among their goals:“Stop illegal deforestation by 2025;the elimination of the legal one by 2027;the regeneration of degraded areas;the recognition of all the territories of indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, traditional communities, ensuring the legal and physical security of the collective property of the original peoples;the decisive start of a "fair, popular and inclusive" energy transition, renouncing the need to open new fronts for the exploitation of fossil fuels throughout the region".

The Belém Declaration, with its 113 principles and commitments, however, does not set any concrete objectives:"zero deforestation", promised by Lula for Brazil by 2030, is defined as an "ideal" to be achieved no one knows when, while on fossil fuels we do not go beyond the invitation to start a dialogue on their sustainability.

Colombian President Petro's appeal for decarbonization also went unheeded, denouncing - alongside the denialism typical of a right that is an enemy of science - the existence among progressive forces of "another type of denialism:the rhetoric of transition”, which governments frequently resort to to justify the continuity of investments in oil and gas.

Preview image via Impacter.com