março, 31 2023

Deforestation caused by agribusiness in the Cerrado has catastrophic consequences for the peoples and traditional communities that depend on the biome to survive. The economic and political power behind the voracious expansion of farms and enterprises leaves no chance for the local population to react. In this unfair fight, which is often invisible to the rest of society, the weaker side is always that of the communities of quilombolas, geraizeiros, vazanteiros, babassu breakers, riverside dwellers, artisanal fishermen and "pastures’ bottom and closure" groups, among others, in addition to the more than 80 indigenous peoples who live in the most biodiverse savannah on the planet.

In order to help change this reality, several organisations that operate in the Cerrado came together to create the "Tamo de Olho" ("We're  Watching", in Portuguese) Initiative, which seeks to systematically identify the most emblematic cases of deforestation and violations of the rights of peoples and traditional communities in the biome. The main goal is to support communities in actions of legal and political incidence with the public bodies of the Justice System and the Executive and Legislative powers.

The initiative, launched in 2021, has the participation of WWF-Brazil, the Society, Population and Nature Institute (ISPN), the Cerrado Network, the Cerrados Institute and the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam), in addition to the collaboration of the Observatory of MATOPIBA and from the University of Brasília (UnB).

Although it covers the entire Cerrado, the works are concentrated especially in the states of MATOPIBA (acronym for Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia States), a region that is considered the main frontier of agricultural expansion in Brazil and one of the great fronts of destruction of ecosystems in the world. These four states together were responsible for more than 70% of the deforested area in the biome in 2022.

One of the most threatened biomes on the planet, the Cerrado has already had more than half of its original area deforested. According to lawyer Marcelo Elvira, Public Policy analyst at WWF-Brazil and one of the coordinators of Tamo de Olho, in addition to the brutal impacts on biodiversity and the global climate balance, deforestation in the Cerrado also severely affects local traditional peoples and communities, jeopardising their food security and threatening the water resources on which they, and society as a whole, depend.

"A large part of the conflicts in the Cerrado originate from the land grabbing of remnants of protected native areas, where traditional communities live", says Elvira. According to him, the owners make the declaration of ownership of their properties and, when indicating the legal reserve, they include areas of communities that have not yet achieved recognition. "Many hire armed security guards, preventing the communities from using those areas," he explains.

Violence and destruction

Dilvanilce Chagas, a resident of one of the Geraizeiras communities in the Cerrado, São Marcelo, in the municipality of Formosa do Rio Preto, Bahia State, says that she grew up witnessing the violence of conflicts with the Cana Brava farm.

“I myself have seen animals killed several times or crops devastated by the 'correntão'. It's sad. Just like these animals, which are becoming extinct, nature is being devastated”, says Dilvanilce. She says that, last year, her brother's house and that of other families were razed, in an area of conflict with the farm. “They were left with nothing but the clothes on their backs,” she recalls.

“Geraizeiras families cannot be expelled from their territories. They are caretakers of nature, fauna and flora. These communities live collectively, from pequi, buriti, mangaba, fruits of the Cerrado. Our marshes need us because that's where our water comes from”, says Dilvanilce.

Jamilton Santos, known as Carreirinha, also lives in a traditional community in Bahia, in the Gado Bravo pasture's closure area. He says that, before the arrival of agribusiness in the region, which is located in Correntina, in western Bahia, communities harvested everything they planted.

“With the arrival of agribusiness, 30 years ago, with the model implemented, we have been suffering these environmental impacts, with the issue of the water sources drying up”, says Carreirinha. In more than two centuries of existence, according to him, the community has kept the biome intact. “We have our own model for living and caring for the Cerrado. We are resisting. But many traditional communities did not resist and today have turned into villages whose territories have been taken over by agribusiness”, he warns.

Cases like those of Dilvanilce and Jamilton illustrate the drama experienced by Cerrado communities, especially in MATOPIBA. Facing deforestation and its impacts on traditional communities, however, is a challenging task, considering the extent of the biome, which does not have deforestation control prioritised by the federal and state governments, in addition to the huge rates of deforestation and the myriad of conflicts spread throughout the territory.

Establishing priorities

The Tamo de Olho Initiative began to be conceived in 2020, with the aim of devising strategies for identifying priority cases for legal and political incidence. According to Elvira, although the development of this strategy was initially based on a legal perspective, it soon became clear that the deforestation alerts provided by satellite monitoring systems could make a valuable contribution to identifying priority cases for action.

"The Initiative is organised around five stages. The starting point is the identification of concrete cases, then we generate data from deforestation maps. The next step is to qualify these data. From there, we establish a strategy for political and legal incidence. Finally, we develop a communication strategy", explains Elvira.

As the volume of deforestation alerts is very high in the Cerrado, it was necessary to build a tool capable of scaling up advocacy efforts. With partners from organisations operating in the biome, it was possible to create criteria for mapping and ranking cases for legal and political incidence.

Profusion of data

“The number of deforestation alerts in the Cerrado is enormous and the biome is comparable in size to that of Western Europe. It was necessary to develop criteria to select, among thousands of cases, those in which the incidence would be feasible”, says Yuri Salmona, director of Instituto Cerrados, one of those responsible for the deforestation monitoring platform that is being integrated into Tamo de Olho.

Salmona points out that this work will be done “from above and below”, that is, from satellites - with deforestation data generated by Inpe (National Institute for Space Research) and qualified by MapBiomas - and from the work group that will involve the Cerrado Network and will operate in the territory, in partnership with a huge set of grassroots organisations.

“We will cross-reference information about deforestation - considering its extent and whether it affects traditional communities and protected areas, for instance - and the reports, obtained from grassroots organisations, about critical conflict situations. With that, we developed criteria to act”, says Salmona. According to him, the platform was created to be easily used in analyses that can be customised.

“The data will all be processed in the cloud. Our platform will use a huge mass of public data that already exists, making the intersection between them easier”, he points out. The parameters used in the platform include, for example, the location of protected areas, quilombola and indigenous lands, agro-industry clusters and conflict regions. Thus, based on satellite image banks and information on the incidence of regional groups that work directly in conflict areas, Tamo de Olho's partners are able to obtain objective criteria for selecting the cases to be prioritised.

Federal Prosecution Service

According to the lawyer Guilherme Eidt, from ISPN, one of the objectives is that this mapping be the gateway for the work of the Federal Prosecution Office in the states of MATOPIBA. Tamo de Olho has been articulating a joint action with the agency through the Brazilian Association of Members of the Prosecution Service for the Environment (Abrampa). The goal is to create a flow for the systematic identification of cases of litigation, in order to reduce the response time of prosecutors in the field.

"The Prosecution Office is a key actor, as it has the obligation to refer when it receives an alert. But it would not be rational to flood prosecutors with cases without them being able to deal with them. That is why it was so important to rank the most emblematic cases. We also established conversations with the Ministry of Justice, the Federal Police's station for combating environmental crimes and Ibama, for example", explains Eidt.

When the government is unable to respond, litigation becomes a fundamental tool, Eidt points out. Support for these actions, however, is carried out with maximum respect for local actors, who already support grassroots organisations that operate directly in the territory.

"We do not file lawsuits against anyone. We are careful to establish a political relationship with local actors to strategically contribute with litigation actions, taking part in the process as amicus curiae, for example. This is what happened in the case of Estrondo Farm, in western Bahia", says Eidt. Amicus curiae is a modality where an interested third party contributes to the legal process with subsidies and basis for court decisions.

Emblematic case

The case of the Estrondo farm megacomplex, to which the lawyer refers, is part of one of the main incidence actions of Tamo de Olho in the Cerrado of Bahia. A study carried out by Imaterra, in partnership with UFBA (Federal University of Bahia), with the support of WWF-Brazil and ISPN, showed that deforestation authorisations have been issued by the environmental agency of Bahia even if the applicants do not comply with the legal requirements.

The analysis of a sample of sixteen administrative procedures from Inema (Institute for the Environment and Water Resources of Bahia), which contain Authorisations for the Suppression of Native Vegetation, showed that all processes had irregularities that violated the law. Between September 2007 and June 2021, the state government granted 5,126 authorisations for the suppression of vegetation in all biomes in the state, totaling an area of 992,587 hectares.

Irregularities include the issuance of authorisations for plant suppression (deforestation) for properties that do not comply with current environmental legislation, in addition to non-compliance with legal provisions related to transparency and access to public information and documents. Besides conflicts with traditional communities, the analysis revealed the use of techniques to capture fauna that can be fatal, and the existence of legal opinions signed by civil servants without technical qualification, among other flaws.

“In the case of the Estrondo farm, champion of deforestation in the region, an organisation had already filed a lawsuit asking for the suspension of deforestation. "We qualified as amicus curiae, in an appeal, but it lost its purpose because the deforestation has already been consummated. We guide local actors to file a public civil action asking for compensation for damages, motivating them with technical and legal support - always reinforcing the protagonism of local organisations”.

The analysis carried out by the Tamo de Olho team showed that the expansion of agribusiness in western Bahia took place, in large part, in territories considered as traditional, but which were not yet guaranteed by the State, generating serious social conflicts in the region.

"Many of these lands are vacant and some agribusiness enterprises are associated with land grabbing", says the document. But the problem is not limited to western Bahia. Eidt mentions cases in which Tamo de Olho has already supported litigation actions also in Piauí and Tocantins States. "In Tocantins, we noticed that the political pressure is very great. We have heard reports from people who have oversight duties in the State, but whose activities are limited by economic power, senators, deputies and local managers, who prevent the processes from continuing", adds Eidt.

Capillarity in the territory

In the Tamo de Olho Initiative, WWF-Brazil and ISPN act strongly in legal and political advocacy, while partners such as Ipam and Cerrados Institute contribute with support in obtaining georeferenced data - and Imaterra acts especially in the qualification of these data. Meanwhile, the Cerrado Network leads another fundamental part of the project: organising, through a working group, the information brought from the partner organisations that work directly in the territory.

“Our job is to talk to the communities that are in the field. The network is made up of more than 60 affiliated organisations and around 300 other community-based organisations, and our main contribution to Tamo de Olho is this great capillarity”, says Kátia Favilla, executive secretary of the Cerrado Network. According to her, before joining Tamo de Olho, the Cerrado Network already had activities and political advocacy aimed at defending the peoples and traditional communities of the Cerrado. This advocacy activity, however, was more focused on Congress and the Executive, and not on the judicialization of cases.

“But, in recent years, with the previous administration in the Federal government, the conflicts have worsened and things have been getting more and more serious, at a level never seen before. There was a real threat that, with such an acceleration of deforestation, the Cerrado would simply cease to exist. Therefore, we decided that it was necessary to interfere in the Judiciary”, explains Kátia.

According to her, when a deforestation spot is identified, this may indicate a tendency that there will be others in the same region. Judicializing these cases is a way of trying to prevent further deforestation and criminalise the perpetrators. Tamo de Olho, according to her, was the way to add this dimension of strategic litigation to the Cerrado Network.

“What we idealised was this panorama in which we could not only have an objective view, based on satellite data, but that this data could interact with those related to people at the front end, experiencing the situations. It is a widening of the gaze, which allows one to see how the citizen's life is reflected in macro data”, she says.

Tamo de Olho also contributes to the Cerrado Network by bringing more information to communities, including guidance on their rights, so that it is possible to stop attacks by mining companies and large agribusiness enterprises on traditional populations. “We are working on building protocols of consultation processes made by the communities. We seek to empower these communities, reinforce their identity and value the protection of the territory so that they can resist.”