APIB and Rede Cerrado Create Agenda in Europe Alerting about the Situation in the Cerrado
WBO Press Release
April 2 2024
Indigenous Peoples, together with traditional peoples and communities in Brazil, carried out the campaign in Europe “Cerrado: Connection of Peoples, Cultures and Biomes.” The campaign participants traveled to Amsterdam, Paris and Brussels between March 10 and 22 in meetings with national authorities and European Institutions with the aim of making the Cerrado visible as a key biome in Brazil. According to Rede Cerrado, this biome is not "a huge void for free agricultural expansion. We are the second largest biodiversity in Latin America, cradle of waters supplying 8 of the 12 main river basins in Brazil, housing more than 83 Indigenous ethnicities, more than 100 Quilombola communities and around 24 traditional communities whose subsistence is linked to their territories”.
The invisibility of the Cerrado has political, legal, and global governance repercussions. Within the scope of environmental protection by the European Union, the recently adopted European Union Regulation on Deforestation (EUDR), drawn up in a traditional forest concept, does not consider the Cerrado as a biome to be protected, nor does it contemplate complementarity between the different biomes for their preservation. The EUDR, applied to any export of commodities to the European bloc, provides for a stricter value chain control scheme, including the obligation to install and maintain a tracking system for products passing through this chain. This stricter environmental control system will not be applied to exports of products from the Cerrado.
At the same time, family farmers and peasants in the Cerrado suffer regulatory barriers, both internally and externally, to comply with EUDR rules, which impedes access to the Brazilian and European markets. According to Samuel Caetano, from Rede Cerrado and president of the CNPCT, “the Cerrado is seen from different points of view and logics. While we traditional peoples and communities consider the Biome as a space for harmonious coexistence, exchanges, sharing, interactions and survival. The logic of capital understands it in the dynamics of immediate profit, unsustainable exploitation”.
The fact that the EUDR does not cover the Cerrado highlights the weak level of the regulation itself. In this sense, it is crucial to draw attention to the dynamics between biomes and the advancement of unsustainable agribusiness practices and highlight the need to understand the Cerrado as a protective cordon for the Amazon, which, in turn, needs to include a more constructive approach to protection and conservation.
As the main spokesperson for the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), Dinamam Tuxá, executive coordinator of the organization, considers “positive regulation and an advance in the adoption of traceability systems in the commodity production chain, being an additional protection mechanism of our biomes and our territorial rights.” However, he explains that “if regulation is not applied in equal measure to all biomes (Cerrado, Caatinga, Pantanal, Pampas and Coastal Biome), we will have an effect contrary to that expected by the European Union, as the EUDR will contribute to pressuring for even greater deforestation in non-forest biomes, also increasing the violence experienced in indigenous territories that are not in the Amazon or the Atlantic Forest.”
The conclusion of the Mercosur-European Union Free Trade Agreement, the topic on the agenda of Macron's visit to Brazil this week, has been questioned for not having sufficiently strong environmental protection clauses, in view of the increase in commodity trade from Brazil to the European bloc. During the Bolsonaro government, several parliaments in European Union member countries imposed vetoes on the adoption of the agreement. Regarding the Lula government, the European bloc proposed additional environmental clauses to Mercosur countries, which have been met with resistance from the countries of this bloc. There is also mass rejection by social, environmental and indigenous movements due to the obsolete structure of the Agreement, based on unequal exchanges of low value-added commodities on the part of Mercosur against high value-added products on the part of the EU, which reaffirms a colonial relationship between the blocks. On the other hand, there is aversion on the part of small European farmers towards the increase in agricultural products from Mercosur, forcing unfair competition.
An international perspective on this problem becomes extremely relevant when one party seeks to implement a transition to green industry, in the case of the EU, and the other struggles between ensuring sustainable measures of socioeconomic development and renewing industrialization processes for the real needs of the world, in the case of Mercosur. In this sense, the concept of climate justice is central, but it is also global. In addition to the unfair competition felt by European farmers, it is important to analyze who are the actors who benefit from the persistent quasi-colonial relationship between Europe and Latin America. It is critical to recognize that climate impacts are neither created nor distributed equally.
Groups that promote simplistic solutions to complex problems fail to recognize climate change as a fundamental necessity for a genuine transition toward new economic models and trade agreements. The absence of clear recognition of disparities and responsibilities in climate change leaves room for nationalist claims against international institutions. The most affected groups share more similarities than differences, regardless of their location, and are the most affected by such failures.
The EU's geopolitical landscape has changed significantly compared to the first year of the Bolsonaro government. The debates heating up the electoral campaign for the European Parliament in June of this year are dominated by the bloc's militarization, competitiveness, and economic deregulation in the context of the advance of the extreme right in the EU and member countries. In this context, the agreement with Mercosur gains renewed importance for Europeans. The so-called agricultural populism with demonstrations by small farmers in Brussels is yet another element in this complex formula. Ursula Von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, seeking re-election, leaves the European Green Deal in the background, focusing on defense and competitiveness.
While deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon region recorded a decrease of 22 percent in July 2023, reaching levels not achieved since 2018, degradation of the Cerrado grew by 16.5 percent in the same period. Since 31 million hectares of the Cerrado can still be legally deforested, this represents 56 percent of France's area. The region is on the agricultural frontier of the soybean and meat industries. In addition to understanding the Cerrado as a biome, it is essential for the delegation to make its people and communities visible, especially the unique relationship between these populations and the biome.
It is in this context that the campaign in Europe about the Cerrado becomes relevant. Meetings in these countries are organized by Fern, APIB and Rede Cerrado. The WBO supported this campaign from Brussels.
