© Denisa Šterbová / Greenpeace
The Amazon rainforest is facing its greatest threat yet. This vast haven for biodiversity and carbon storage, homeland to hundreds of Indigenous Peoples, is being decimated as loggers, ranchers and land grabbers linked to big business move in to exploit the territory. Fires and deforestation have spiked under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, whose government has actively undermined environmental and Indigenous rights protections.
In response to this, we have just launched a House of Commons petition calling on Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister to reject a free trade deal with Brazil and to speak out against the Brazilian government’s attacks on the environment and human rights.
We are not your typical group of collaborators: a doctor, an Indigenous rights advocate, a sustainable farming advocate, a trade unionist, and climate and justice movement advocates and activists. But this is an issue that impacts all of us – and it impacts you, too.
This is about human rights: the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon have been guardians and caretakers of the forest for millennia. Now they are once again sounding the alarm. They are facing high levels of violence (and COVID-19) as landgrabbers encroach on their territories. The Brazilian government has blocked the designation of additional Indigenous lands and gutted Indigenous rights protections.
This is about the food system: The proposed Canada-Mercosur free trade deal with Brazil would boost the environmental destruction of industrial agriculture, benefiting the big agribusinesses whose beef, soy and other commodities are driving ecosystem destruction in the first place. It would take us further from the sustainable and equitable food system we need for our own health and security.
This is about climate: The Amazon rainforest regulates our global climate. It distributes rain across South America and influences weather patterns around the globe. It absorbs billions of tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and stores it in hundreds of billions of trees.
This is about health: Scientists have documented a clear link between tropical forest loss and pandemics. As biodiversity declines, viruses can thrive – and make the leap to humans. Our health is intimately linked to the health of forests.
This is about survival: Scientists warn that the Amazon is approaching a tipping point beyond which the rainforest cannot sustain itself. If that happens, there would be a massive die-off of plant and animal species. It would threaten the cultural (and actual) survival of Indigenous Peoples and other local communities. And it will be that much more difficult to prevent runaway climate change.
Please join us in calling on the government to act.
Signed,
Sophie Bédard and Ruby Swartz, Fridays for Future Toronto
Marie-Josée Béliveau, Alternatives and Women for Climate Collective
Dr. Warren Bell, Family physician and Past Founding President of Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE)
Dave Bleakney, 2nd National Vice-President of Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW)
Ronald Cameron, Plateforme altermondialiste
Catherine Caron, Centre Justice et Foi and Relations magazine
Ana Collins, Indigenous Rights Advisor at Amnesty International Canada
Reykia Fick, Greenpeace Canada
Gabriel Leblanc, small farmer at La Ferme de la Dérive and board member of Union paysanne
Gustavo Monteiro, Collective Brasil-Montreal
Marie-Josee Renaud, Coordinator at Union paysanne
Claude Vaillancourt, President of Association québécoise pour la taxation des transactions financières et pour l’action citoyenne (ATTAC-Québec)
This joint op-ed was originally published in The Hill Times
Fires are threatening the largest rainforest on Earth, clearing land for cattle to feed the international demand for cheap beef. Tell the Canadian government to not be complicit in Amazon destruction!
Discussion
A change of direction is drastically needed!!