set 06 2024 | Nº. 133

Editorial

Brazil became one of the few countries in the world to ban the social media platform Twitter/X this week following a legal order from Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes that was later ratified by the rest of the country’s highest judicial body. Elon Musk, the mercurial billionaire who has openly embraced far-right views in recent years, claims the move represents a grave attack on freedom of speech. He has very publicly denounced Moraes and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva alike in crude terms. The issue, however, is not about censorship. Rather, Twitter/X has been banned as a direct result of its failure to adhere to Brazilian laws. As a foreign company, Twitter/X is statutorily required to have local legal representation to operate in Brazil. Because he does not wish to comply with legal orders issued by the Brazilian Supreme Court, particularly those related to misinformation and inflammatory anti-democratic incitement on the platform, Musk has opted not to have legal representation whatsoever in Latin America’s largest nation. Having run afoul of a basic tenet of business law, his platform has been shut down. There are not many serious experts who fault Moraes from a legal standpoint.

A genuine assault on democracy is occurring not in Brazil but in neighboring Venezuela. This week, whatever chance there was of Brazil and Colombia helping to work out some type of deal between the opposition in that country and the regime of strongman Nicolás Maduro crumbled. Maduro this week issued an arrest warrant for Edmundo Gonzalez, the former diplomat who most credible analysts say defeated the incumbent in the July 28 election. Imprisoning Gonzalez would, according to Celso Amorim, Lula’s main foreign policy advisor, be “the wrong thing to do.” Amorim on Tuesday, September 3 described an “undeniable” authoritarian escalation in Venezuela, noting that arresting González would make him a political prisoner and adding that Brazil “does not tolerate” political arrests.

While the Brazilian government deals with bad news on the diplomatic front with Venezuela, it also received positive news on the economic front this week. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the Brazilian economy grew 3.3 percent compared to the same period last year. Once again, the Brazilian economy has outperformed market expectations, growing by 1.4 percent in the second trimester of 2024 as opposed to the average prediction of 0.4-1.6 percent. This pleasant surprise about the state of the economy is particularly notable given the rapid recovery from the impacts of the devastating flooding in Rio Grande do Sul, which has hindered the overall economy less than initially feared. This is an important empirical validation of the work Finance Minister Fernando Haddad has done to raise revenues and rationalize spending.

Highlights

• Climate change. Brazil is going through the most severe drought ever recorded in its history since measurements began in 1950. More than half of the country's territory (5 million square kilometers, corresponding to 58 percent) has been affected by the drought. In August, 3,978 municipalities in the country were experiencing some level of drought. This number is expected to surpass 4,500 soon, which corresponds to more than half of Brazilian cities. The situation brings environmental, social, and economic impacts of great proportions to a country whose southern region was, just a few months ago, facing the worst floods in its history.

• Organized crime. A survey published this week by the Datafolha Institute shows that 23 million people in Brazil, which corresponds to 14 percent of the population, claim to live or have lived in their places of residence with criminal gangs and militia groups in the last 12 months. The situation is more common in large cities and affects Black and mixed-race people more (36 percent) than white people (10 percent). Brazil has 88 criminal gangs, which are actively present in 20 of Brazil’s 27 states.

• Central Bank. Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco announced that on October the two houses of the Congress will vote on the nomination of Gabriel Galípolo to the presidency of the Central Bank. Before that, Lula's nominee must still undergo a hearing in the Senate's Economic Affairs Committee, which does not yet have a set date. Galípolo would replace Roberto Campos Neto, the current president of the Central Bank, who had been nominated by former President Jair Bolsonaro. In Brazil, those who occupy this position are nominated by the president and approved by the Senate to serve four-year terms. They have job security and their terms do not entirely coincide with those of the presidents of the Republic.

   

• Report of harassment. The Federal Police opened an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment made against Minister of Human Rights, Silvio Almeida. The complaints were made by the organization Me Too Brasil, which encourages victims to report sexual violence. The names of the people who filed complaints with the organization were not revealed, but several press organizations mentioned the Minister of Racial Equality Anielle Franco, as one of them. The minister herself neither confirmed nor denied the information. Silvio Almeida rejected the accusations and said he will take legal action against the perpetrators. He was heard by internal control bodies. President Lula is expected to meet with both this Friday, September 6th.

News from the WBO, Organizations and Social Movements

Brazil Unfiltered. In the new episode of the WBO Brazil Unfiltered podcast, James N. Green talks to Isabel Figueiredo, ecologist and coordinator of the Cerrado and Caatinga Program of the Institute for Society, Population and Nature. With a master’s degree in Ecology from the University of Brasília, Figueiredo has worked for eighteen years in the conservation of the Cerrado along with Indigenous peoples and other communities to promote sustainable uses of this diverse biome. Figueiredo also coordinated the PPP-ECOS (Small Grants Program in Brazil) for seventeen years, supporting community initiatives that generate socio-environmental benefits. Click here to watch and listen to the episode.

Cerrado (Savannah) Day. Brazil celebrates Cerrado Day on September 11. WBO suggests three recent articles, published on the website and in the weekly bulletin, about this important Brazilian biome: Carlos Magno, coordinator of the Sabiá Agroecological Development Center, talks about “The Brazilian Semiarid Region as a Global Example of Climate Adaptation;” Jeff Conant, Senior Manager of the International Forestry Program at Friends of the Earth U.S., talks about “How Land Speculation Drives Environmental and Human Rights Violations in the Brazilian Cerrado”; and Fabio Martins, from Rede Cerrado, talks about the dilemma between “Cerrado and Devastation”, below, in this week’s issue.

Dilma’s Impeachment.  An extensive article entitled “Transnational Activism in Times of National Crisis: Building Transnational Networks in the US Against the Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff” appears in the most recent issue of Carta Internacional, a publication of the Brazilian Association of International Relations. The authors, Teresa Cristina Schneider Marques and Carlos Schmidt Arturi, analyze “the campaign to oppose Rousseff’s 2016 impeachment in the US, based on the relational and multidimensional approach proposed by the theory of political confrontation and the sociology of transnational movements.” The authors of the article interviewed James N. Green, the president of the WBO Board of Directors; WBO Board member Sidney Chalhoub; and Juliana de Moraes Pinheiro, the coordinator of the WBO Socio-Environmental and Just Transition Program. To read the article, just click on the link.

Municipal elections. In the coming month, more than 150 million voters will go to the polls to choose mayors and council members for 5,568 Brazilian municipalities. The first round is on October 6, and the second run-off round will take place on October 27. To help local journalists and citizens engaged in civil society organizations and movements to follow the elections, the Institute for the Development of Journalism (PROJOR) has released a new edition of its Local Journalism Manual. The document brings together concepts, tools and analyses relevant to municipal public policies and can be accessed at this link.

Electronic voting machines. ARTICLE 19 has released the publication “How to Critically Cover Electronic Voting Machines without Fueling Conspiracy Theories.” In ten chapters, the publication provides an overview and contextualization of the different voting technologies used around the world. The content also presents reflections to contribute to a more in-depth debate on the topic, mainly based on the work of the press. The publication is a way to demystify a subject that became central to the failed coup attempt led by Jair Bolsonaro and his followers in 2022/2023.

Defense of democracy. The Pact for Democracy will hold a meeting on September 12 at the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Foundation in São Paulo to discuss the role of civil society in the face of the growing tension between Congress and the Supreme Court, and the Court's decision involving the X platform (formerly Twitter). All information is available at this link.

Feature Article

Cerrado or devastation

By  Fabio Martins*

September 11 is Cerrado (or Savannah) Day. Still largely unknown to the public, the biome is the second largest in the country, with an area of ​​2,036,448 km², about 23 percent of the national territory, reaching 36 percent, if the transition zones with other biomes are included. Its continuous area covers the states of Goiás, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Maranhão, Piauí, Rondônia, Paraná, São Paulo and the Federal District, with isolated patches in Amapá, Roraima and Amazonas. Composed of fields, trails, and forests, it is considered the most biodiverse savannah in the world, with approximately 5 percent of the species on the planet and more than 30 percent of the species in the country. It hosts half of all known birds, more than two-thirds of all mammals, at least 210 species of amphibians, 1,200 species of fish, 300 species of reptiles and 13,140 species of plants. Lack of knowledge about the biome is one of the problems in addressing the systematic devastation of the Cerrado.

PREDATORY EXPANSION IN THE CERRADO

Of the large Brazilian biomes, the Cerrado is where the confrontation between the accelerated advance of agricultural production and the demands for environmental protection and conservation is most present and urgent. The transformation of the Cerrado since the 1960s into the largest frontier for the expansion of Brazilian agriculture is the result of the massive introduction of technology and resources for soil fertilization and irrigation of monocultures. Approximately 50 percent of the biome is already deforested.  Although deforestation as a whole fell by 11.6 percent  in Brazil in 2023, there was a 67.7 percent increase in deforestation in the Cerrado, with 93 percent of alerts containing evidence of irregularities. Another important fact is that the legal framework for conservation of the Cerrado is very flexible. While the Forest Code protects 80 percent of native vegetation located on privately-owned lands in the Amazon against deforestation, in the Cerrado the legal reserves cover only 20 percent to 35 percent of the biome. In other words, the legislation provides for a much smaller proportion of the Cerrado for conservation, when compared to the Amazon. Legislative permissiveness is, therefore, one of the evils of the devastating package of measure regarding the Cerrado.

THE WATER IMPORTANCE OF THE CERRADO

The Cerrado is known as the “Cradle of Waters,” as it is the site of 80 percent of the country's irrigation infrastructure, consuming immense volumes of water daily. The situation is worrying, as data indicate a reduction in the volume of available water, as well as changes in rainfall patterns and shorter periods of precipitation. As for water use in electricity generation, the Cerrado is responsible for 70 percent of the volume used by the Tucuruí Hydroelectric Plant, 50 percent by Itaipu, and 100 percent by Sobradinho, benefiting more than 40 percent of the population living in the Paraná-Paraguay, Tocantins-Araguaia, São Francisco and Parnaíba basins. The Cerrado is, therefore, essential to the country's energy matrix, which highlights the importance of this biome when it comes to the relationship between deforestation and changes in water availability. Since devastation is projected over time, and its effects on the water regime are part of “long -term cycles,” it means that the impacts of the deforestation that is occurring today will be felt in a few years, just as the impacts we see today are the effect of past deforestation. And, since deforestation implies a reduction in infiltration and the recharging of aquifers, this compromises the supply of groundwater and reduces the capacity to sustain the growing consumption of water in agriculture during the driest periods. The inadequate use of water is yet another evil in the devastation of the Cerrado.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, QUILOMBOLAS, TRADITIONAL PEOPLES, AND COMMUNITIES

The Cerrado is also known as the “Sacrifice Biome,” in which both it and the peoples who inhabit it are systematically ignored. Centuries-old communities, whose ways of life have been made invisible, continue to be the target of all sorts of attacks that lead to their erasure. With approximately 12 percent of the country’s population, the biome is home to at least 83 Indigenous peoples in 216 Indigenous territories, 44 territories of quilombolas and traditional communities, in addition to seven extractive reserves and two sustainable development reserves. Data from the Pastoral Land Commission from 2023 reveal an increase in conflicts in the countryside. A “racist discourse” that characterizes the Cerrado as an “unproductive void” to be “developed” imposes a logic that justifies deforestation as a necessity. The biome’s marginalization extends to the Federal Constitution, which did not include the Cerrado as a national heritage site. As if the devastation already imposed were not enough, there are new threats, such as Law No. 14,701/2023, and Proposed Constitution Amendment PEC 48/2024, which limit the recognition land demarcation of Indigenous territories.

However, these people are like the deep roots of plants that are capable of surviving adversity. With their traditional way of life, these people insist on preserving the waters. They are also guardians of the herbs, roots, traditional litanies, and the “enchanted ones” and their mysteries. These peoples and their knowledge are a great wealth. Their denial is yet another evil in the devastation of the Cerrado.

*Fabio Martins, specialist in the Law of Traditional Peoples and Communities and legal advisor to Rede Cerrado.

Feature articles express the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or WBO.