Community | May 29, 2011 | 28 comments

Amazon defenders and environmentalists murdered

source: http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/pages/dynamic/article.page.php?page_id=8334§ion=news...

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JanforGore
A prominent anti-logging activist was murdered along with his wife in Brazil on Tuesday, just hours before the country's Chamber of Deputies overwhelmingly voted to let farmers destroy more of the Amazon.

The 410-63 vote defangs the 75-year-old Código Florestal (Forest Code), which has long required that farmers who own a piece of the Amazon preserve 80% of the land they own and farm only on the remainder. The new bill exempts small-scale farmers from the Forest Code and opens environmentally sensitive patches of land – such as hilltops, slopes, and watersides – to cultivation. It also grants amnesty to small-scale farmers who violated the law before July, 2008.

The bill has not yet passed to the Senate, and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has vowed to veto it if the amnesty provision remains, but that hasn’t stopped farmers from preemptively chopping and burning forested portions of their property, leading to a sixfold surge in deforestation, with the greatest increase coming in Mato Grosso.

Death of an Activist

Also on Tuesday, anti-logging activist José Claudio Ribeiro "Ze Claudio" da Silva was gunned down along with his wife, Maria do Espírito Santo da Silva, in rural Para inside the Praialta-Piranheira, a nature reserve where they had spent the last two decades as rubber-tappers.

Environmental Fallout

First passed in 1934 and strengthened intermittently thereafter, the Forest Code is considered one of the world’s most progressive forest policies. Supporters of the Forest Code say it has played a major role in the rapid deceleration of deforestation rates in the Amazon over the last decade.

Before surging this past year, deforestation rates had fallen dramatically in Brazil. From a ten-year high of 2.7 million hectares in 2004, the rate dropped to 0.70 million hectares by 2009.

In a letter in the July 16, 2010, issue of Science, six Brazilian scientists wrote that the new rules “will benefit sectors that depend on expanding frontiers by clear-cutting forests and savannas and will reduce mandatory restoration of native vegetation illegally cleared since 1965.”

The scientists warn that CO2 emissions “may increase substantially”, and as many as 100,000 species might be put at risk of extinction if the proposal becomes law. “Under the new Forest Act,” the scientists said, “Brazil risks suffering its worst environmental setback in half a century, with critical and irreversible consequences beyond its borders.”
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    Community,   News and Politics,   Politics,   Green,   16 more
  2. tags:
    Environment,  Climate Change,  Activism,  Murder,  12 more
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28 comments // Amazon defenders and environmentalists murdered

  • VoyagerFilms
  • JanforGore
    • +1
      JanforGore  

    • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogRAW2iRNjM&feature=related

      There is big money behind eliminating those voices speaking truth and defending those who cannot defend themselves. And Brazil is not the only country this is happening in. Corporate landgrabbing and raids by ranchers and illegal loggers is now going on in other countries in South America such as Paraguay and Argentina and now in Africa as well. And based on these current murders, it doesn't look like anything has changed and this new law will only make it worse.

    • 12 months ago
  • Roldan
    • +2
      Roldan  

    • Killing people and the forest, two things at which modern man excels. Sadly.

      --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      [current background noise: Tell Me About the Forest (You Once Called Home)
      from Into The Labyrinth by Dead Can Dance]
      ⊕ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KKaA-7KuJ8 ⊕

    • 12 months ago
  • squarethecircle
    • +1
      squarethecircle  

    • How enraged we should all be. These decisions made by reptilian brained people not interested in anything to do with humanity or planet, must be stopped now.

    • 12 months ago
  • Wyley_Wombat
    • +1
      Wyley_Wombat  

    • The earth is much like a large petri dish with a colony of bacteria (that's the human race BTW) growing in it. Bacteria, being fairly mindless, will grow and reproduce until there is no culture material left on which to live; after that they will die. One would like to think that the human race is a bit more intelligent but I have yet to be convinced of this.

    • 12 months ago
  • figgdimension
  • JanforGore
    • +1
      JanforGore  
    • figgdimension:

      Yes, it is very sad. But for me it is also a way to empower me to do what I can to stand up to the forces that would do this in any way I can. And I don't want to be preachy, but those profiting from this environmental destruction and these crimes will remain strong as long as we continue to buy their products and condone their stripping of our environment. The death of Sister Dorothy Stang, Mr. and Mrs.De Silva and the deaths of others who have stood up for this Amazon, the lungs of our planet cannot go unavenged. I fully believe there are other ways that are mightier than the sword and we have to begin using them. Gandhi showed us how. We need to channel his lessons to us in a new satyagraha for the Earth.

    • 12 months ago
  • RMattnerTours
  • Prijedor
  • Vierotchka
    • +3
      Vierotchka  

    • Defenders of the Amazon and local environmentalists fighting for the rights of the indigenous people to their forest and against deforestation have been taken out sporadically for decades by minions working for the illegal timber industries and the agricultural mega corporations. It is a tragic story that keeps repeating.

    • 12 months ago
  • ampersand
    • +6
      ampersand  
    • Vierotchka:

      Quite true.

      In support of Kenny's observation, one indelible lesson any reasonably conscious person learned during the Bush Administration in the US, was that the only human rights that can be truly said to exist, are the ones you can fully defend yourself.

      Eight years of GW Bush (and his continuing toxic aftermath) effectively changed my perception of the practical limits of Ghandian non-violence.
      I still believe that it is the best method to effect durable change in MOST all situations, but not in ALL situations.
      It just doesn't work with fascist regimes like Nazi Germany, or more currently, Burma, for example, or Sudan, and in other places on this battered globe.

      It's difficult to work to redress the damage and destruction caused by these highly organized and entrenched systems if one is dead. I'd say our individual right to exist, as well as the right of the earth itself to exist, is worth defending.

    • 12 months ago
  • gump
  • UtopianSky
    • +2
      UtopianSky  

    • Quote:
      "The new bill exempts small-scale farmers from the Forest Code and opens environmentally sensitive patches of land – such as hilltops, slopes, and watersides – to cultivation. It also grants amnesty to small-scale farmers who violated the law before July, 2008."

      If he was going to speak out against these new modifications to the Forrest Code, it sounds like he could have been killed by a small independent farmer.

    • 12 months ago
  • idealist
    • +3
      idealist  

    • wow.. and there's no proof to connect the murders to profits of deforesting i bet.... doesn't any logging company know that trees are good?!

    • 12 months ago
  • kennymotown
  • Joeydee44
    • +3
      Joeydee44  
    • kennymotown:

      Eco-terrorists? Interesting. But they have the support of big corporations and, subsequently, big government. I was listening to Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush" yesterday and there's a line that goes, "Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970's." Well, here we are 40 years later and shit like this probably blows Neil's mind. But I don't think Mother Nature gets mad, she gets even. And we all sit around lamenting about tornadoes and hurricanes and melting ice caps while the puppetmasters wheel and deal and get richer and richer. I think it will ultimately be our downfall as a species when we go beyond the point of no return. I just don't know how we go about changing the tide under the current structure of society. I think we're going to have to learn our lesson the hard way. Hopefully we survive it.

    • 12 months ago
  • kennymotown
  • gump
  • gump
  • kennymotown
  • remanns
  • SoCalFramer
    • +5
      SoCalFramer  

    • Destroying the earth is all for profit that benefits a few for a short time. Eventually we will all pay the price, we need the earth the earth does not need us.

    • 12 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • remanns
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
    • +5
      JanforGore  

    • This is incredibly sad and outrageous! People who stand up to preserve the forest and the way of life for those who live there are considered criminals, while illegal loggers and big ag companies get to now destroy more of the Amazon at the expense of our planet and those people who live there. There is simply no f**&*& justice in this world. And the Mato Grosso area is exactly where much of the land is being deforested to grow GM soy.
      http://current.com/technology/93234118_brazil-amazon-deforestation-rising-sharpl... Makes me wonder who fired the shots that killed these good people.

    • 12 months ago
  • Fordymo
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