Today, Explained - Amazon Crime

Episode Date: August 7, 2019

What started as a push to increase mining in the rainforest led to a murder. Ernesto Londoño, Brazil bureau chief for The New York Times, explains how President Jair Bolsonaro is speeding the destruction of the Amazon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Your daily routine is very much yours. Is there anyone you can think of who's like dying to be a part of your daily routine? The Quip electric toothbrush is dying to be a part of your daily routine. Find out more at getquip.com slash explained where it starts just $25 and your first set of refills is free. That is G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash explained. I'm Ernesto Londoño, the Brazil Bureau Chief for The New York Times. Periodically, we get reports here about tension that soon made us think that what we were hearing was no ordinary incident. A lawmaker and then some local officials started publishing these frantic voice messages recorded by indigenous people who were reporting a life and death situation. They were saying that in recent days there had been a massive invasion of miners that went into a protected indigenous territory in northern Brazil. They said the men were armed, they said that some were wearing

military uniforms, and they said that some were wearing military uniforms. And they said that at least one of the indigenous chiefs of the village, Emira Wayapi, had been stabbed to death and that his body had been thrown in a river. The sense of urgency in some of these messages was unmistakable. The indigenous people were essentially warning that there was going to be a bloodbath unless the state intervened. And they pleaded with their local representatives, with their federal lawmakers to send help and send help quickly. They asked for an army intervention. They asked for the police. They essentially said, you know, unless the state steps in, we might get slaughtered here.

There might be a bloodbath. And that really spoke to the concern that we're hearing across Brazil from indigenous communities in a new era where people who want access into the Amazon, we're talking about loggers, miners, farmers, etc., are acting without much reservation. Whereas in the past, some of these land incursions would be somewhat discreet and people would sort of negotiate access into protected areas, people now are starting to act with a sense of impunity, with a sense that it's safe in this era to start building facts on the ground. What was the reaction in Brazil to the murder of this indigenous leader? It varied. I think for indigenous activists and people who feel very strongly that Brazil has a duty to preserve the Amazon, to enforce environmental laws, as a clear sign that lines are being crossed and that people out in the field in very remote areas are getting away with murder in this new era.

And I'm referring to the era of the presidency of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. Finally, we will put our beloved Brazil above all else. This government will be one of constitution, democracy and freedom. There are people who, much like the president, believe that there's too much land in the control of indigenous communities and that that land should be turning profits and that the state for too long has made it too hard for people to go in and develop these communities. The indigenous debate has been shaped in the Bolsonaro era

as a debate over development. The president campaigned on a promise to stop the process to set aside more land for indigenous people, essentially saying that over the years, there had been too much land set aside for indigenous people. On the other hand, indigenous communities are saying, you know, if what the president is saying becomes policy, and if this becomes policy over a course of years, what we will be enduring is a slow rolling genocide. Do we have any idea how Bolsonaro feels about these indigenous communities? Has he made

that clear beyond industry? Oh, absolutely. He has made incredibly racist and offensive remarks about indigenous people throughout his career as a politician. He once said it was a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hadn't been as effective as the Americans who exterminated the Indians. This was back during the late 90s. He's compared indigenous people living in remote communities to animals in a zoo and essentially said that, you know, that that model is a throwback to a different era and that those people should essentially be inserted into modern society. You know, he is somebody who has been a very, you know, an outlier when it comes to discussing these issues. But you mentioned that this particular indigenous community was a protected community living on what I presume is protected land.

Isn't thus this murder a violation of Brazilian law and any mining or logging or extraction that happens on this land illegal? So I think it's useful to revisit a little bit of the history of how indigenous territories in Brazil came to be. After the end of the era of military rule in the 1980s, Brazil gets a new constitution. And one of the really unique features of this charter is it gave indigenous people very progressive and very generous protections. One of the things the Constitution did was create a process for the state to set aside very large territories that would be protected indigenous communities. It would be large areas of the country where indigenous communities would be the sole owners and where anybody who wanted to come in needed to get special permission to do so. And, you know, today we're talking about 13% of one of the largest countries in the world. Brazil is a continent-sized nation. So this essentially left indigenous communities in control of a huge, huge swath of the country. And in some of these territories, you know, there may only be a few hundred indigenous people living in very, very extensive terrain.

So what's happened in recent years is other Brazilians see this as land that is going to waste. And some of this land could be very profitable because it contains things like oil and gold and other minerals. So it's become very attractive for outsiders to come into these areas and make a profit. Bolsonaro has said that is too much land for so few people and says he wants to assimilate them by allowing large-scale farming and commercial mining on reservations.

This has happened a number of ways. Some people sort of come in quietly, chop down a few trees, or set up transient mining camps that then disappear a few months later and don't really get caught by anybody. Others have come in and made overtures to the indigenous communities and kind of made them complicit in the exploitation of this territory and have sort of co-opted either entire tribes or part of tribes. And then others come in and simply threaten indigenous communities and tell them,

you know, we're doing it, you're either with us or you're without us, and you are outgunned and you are outnumbered. I would say in the Bolsonaro era, we're seeing people act ever more boldly as they stride into these territories. Because, you know, what they're hearing from their president and what they're hearing in many cases from politicians on the ground is that it's time to sort of challenge the necessity of these vast territories in the hands of indigenous people. And the state is less equipped and less willing than ever to step in and enforce its own laws. Has there been any effort to change these laws or is the Bolsonaro administration basically saying, have at it, we're not going to enforce anything? I think there's been numerous efforts to challenge environmental regulations and laws and kind of chip away at a protection system that was built to be very robust. You would need a constitutional amendment to truly do away with a system of indigenous protections. But the strategy seems

to me to be to create facts on the ground. You know, once you have industries that have essentially moved in and settled indigenous communities, it's going to be hard to get rid of them. It's going to be hard to evict them because they will be able to say, look, you know, we have families, you know, we have mouths to feed and we've been here for years. So the approach seems to be instead of directly challenging the law and going sort of through formal channels, to just sort of create this new reality that will make the law obsolete. Where does that leave these communities right now?

I think it gives them some pretty dismal choices. Last year I traveled to one of the areas where there's been a massive invasion of gold miners up in the north in the state of Pará. And I was there initially to chronicle what was built to me as a revolt by indigenous leaders against miners in an effort to sort of drive them away. And, you know, there were certainly some of that. And there were certainly some indigenous leaders who were very angry and very distraught by what was happening to their land, by the pollution that this mining was bringing to their rivers and their ancestral homes. But then I found out that much of the tribe wanted the money and kind of the new technology

that the miners were bringing in. They like the food, they like the soda, they like the alcohol, and they like the paycheck. So, you know, I think oftentimes these land conflicts are kind of billed as a black and white David versus Goliath story when, you know, when actually when you go out in the field and you talk to these people, you understand that there are shades of gray and that it's far more complicated. There are some areas, though, where indigenous communities have been reduced to such small numbers that you do face the real possibility that some of these individual communities will cease to exist. These are

communities that have endured centuries of challenges, abuses, enslavement, and they find themselves now in this moment in history when in theory they have sort of the law on their side with a real existential threat and with the possibility that they may be the last of their generation. How about the Amazon? Are there shades of gray in how much of the Amazon is currently being raised, extracted, exploited for industry? up rice and deforestation in the Amazon, including in protected areas. During the first six months of the year, there was a 39% increase in deforestation in Brazil's part of the Amazon compared to the same period last year. We're talking about roughly 1,330 miles of forest cover that has been lost. Experts who study satellite imagery say that the loss is happening at a rate of roughly a football field each minute. The message that is being sent from the presidential palace when it comes to

the importance of respecting environmental laws is don't bother. And I think people out in the countryside who are eager to make money during a time of, you know, when the economy remains pretty shaky are hearing that message loud and clear and are, for the most part, able to cross these lines without many consequences. We're going to take you on a trip to the Amazon after the break. Are you an afternoon brusher? There are afternoon brushers here at Vox. I don't want to blow up their spot, their routines. There were afternoon brushers at my prior workplace. I keep a brush on hand here at Vox, but I've actually never used it. It's just here.

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from Quip, but you might not even need it in the afternoon because the Quip might just be that good for you. It's got these timed sonic vibrations. They offer an effective clean that's gentle on your sensitive gums in just two minutes, just twice a day. Think about it. Tell me about the first time you visited the Amazon. So when I first walked into the forest 54 years ago, my first reaction was, hey, what's the big deal? I mean, you go there thinking that things are going to be leaping out at you from all different places and corners. And in fact, all you see is a lot of green.

And then after a while, you realize you've never seen so many shades of green in your life. That you're literally looking at hundreds and hundreds of different kinds of trees. And then you begin to hear things. Then you realize there are always all kinds of things making noises in the background. You just can't see them. It's sort of like an enormous symphony of organisms calling all day long and all day night. Some might be birds, some might be insects,

others might be frogs, others might be monkeys. You'll have a bird which gives an enormous, loud wolf whistle of a call. And it's called the screaming peahot. All the males hang out and basically have a competition as to who sings more effectively, and it's ear splitting. You'll have toucans, all kinds of birds called ant birds, macaws, parrots, and then my favorite one is called a motmot. It's a gorgeous bird and it only will call at dawn and at dusk. You can almost set your watch by it. So if you hear the motmot in the morning go, udu, you know it's 530.

And then after a while your eye gets accustomed. You see that this is an environment where life is built on life over long periods of time. So it's not surprising that, you know, it is the single greatest repository of biological diversity on the entire planet. Dr. Tom Lovejoy, Professor of Environmental Science Policy at George Mason University. I think protect the Amazon at this point is just like a hackneyed bumper sticker. But why is it so important to protect the Amazon? There are two or three reasons. One is this enormous biological richness.

There are individual species which have already revolutionized modern medicine by revealing some previously unappreciated piece of how biology works. So, for example, hundreds of millions of people take ACE inhibitors to control their blood pressure. And that was all figured out because of the way the venom of one of the snakes in the Amazon actually works. It works by causing its victims' blood pressure to go to zero. It's just this incredible biological library, which has scarcely had a few pages turned. But it's also a huge repository of just carbon. And as we worry about climate change, keeping that carbon in the forest and not in the atmosphere is a really critical thing to do. And then the Amazon actually makes half of its own rainfall.

Some of it is feeding agriculture in central Brazil, and some of that moisture goes as far south as northern Argentina. So it's actually an integral part of the climatic system and climatic processes in South America. So the Amazon's importance is science-based. There's a lot of research that can be done there. It's environmentally based. There's a lot of carbon there. You want to keep it there. But then beyond that, it's just sort of a miracle unto itself.

Well, it is. It's quite extraordinary. So the deforestation that's happening now, how does that compare to what's happened over the last few decades? So I went to the Amazon in June of 1965, and it was 3% deforested, 3 million people in the entire Amazon. In the late 80s, early 90s, Brazil hosted the Earth Summit in Rio

to show how much it cared about the environment. The largest UN meeting ever held. The aim is to seek common action to protect the planet. No wonder it's called the Earth Summit. The spirit of Rio must lead us to think constantly of the future. Let's face it, there has been some criticism of the United States, but I must tell you, we come to Rio proud of what we have accomplished and committed to extending the record on American leadership on the environment.

Brazil actually became sort of an environment brand with all the good things they did over time. But what we're seeing at the moment is sort of very short-term thinking, looking at the forest as an obstacle as opposed to a set of opportunities. And it's going to come back and bite them with its impacts on agriculture in central Brazil. When do things get really bad? Is there some kind of tipping point? So here's the really interesting story.

As soon as we knew about that hydrological cycle, that question was there, how much deforestation would cause it to unravel. And maybe 10 years or so ago, my colleague, Carlos Nobre, got somebody to model that. And the answer was, well, maybe 40, 50 percent deforestation, a number that seems so off in the future, it almost seemed not worth worrying about. But what has happened over time is other things have been putting pressure on the forest. One is climate change, and the other is excessive use of fire, which dries out the forest. And the tipping point is therefore probably between 20 and 25%.

20 and 25% deforestation. What's the deforestation level right now? Today, it's about 17 percent official deforestation, probably another close to 3 percent of forest degradation. So we're pretty close to that. And the sign is the first flickers, we believe, the unprecedented droughts of 2005, 2010, and 2015, 2016. So we're close to the edge, no question about it, which means the current push at deforestation is actually not in anybody's interest, including those in central Brazil. I wonder, you know, I just saw this news story recently about Ethiopia, where apparently they set this world record where they planted 350 million trees in a day.

You're a tree person. Do you believe that? Did that really happen? I believe it, and I hope they all were done, planted well. Yeah. That's actually the real sensible thing to pursue here, which is do some reforestation. I think, in fact, some of Brazil's commitments to the Paris Climate Agreement involve reforestation, and some of that was in the Amazon. So that's the way forward. I mean, the great irony, of course, is that Brazil was a great environmental leader of a nation starting in 1992.

It became part of their national brand. And we have this momentary aberration, very short-term thinking, science averse. And it's all adding up, you know, in a very dangerous kind of way. And do you think this is just an aberration? Do you think Brazil will sort of resume its bygone, environmentally-minded past? You know, when you actually look at public opinion polls, most of the Brazilian people actually want to protect the Amazon, even though it's far, far away from where they live.

And most of the media understand the importance of the Amazon. So I think if we can get beyond this short-sighted approach to the Amazon that's currently at hand, a lot of that can be drawn on going into the future. Dr. Tom Lovejoy was wearing a bow tie when he joined me in the studio. People actually call him the godfather of biodiversity. He told me to simply call him Tom. I refused and called him Dr. Lovejoy. You can call me Sean. This is Today Explained. Here's the great story.

So this is like back in 1990, something like that. And I had some Hollywood people go to my camp. Okay. On the outside hammock is Mimi Rogers, Tom Cruise's first wife. The next one is Tom and the next one is me. Tom Cruise? Yeah, and it's sort of half-light in the morning. Uh-huh. And Tom says, hey, Indy, because that's what he called me.

He said, hey, Indy, what time is it? Why'd he call you Indy? Indiana Jones. Sorry. What time is it? He said, it's 5.30. I said, how did you know? I said, the mop-mop just called.

He loved that. Thanks to the people over at the Quip Electric Toothbrush Company for supporting the show today. If you want to spice up your daily routine a little bit, try introducing a little Quip to the action. G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash explained is where you can purchase a Quip. It's starting at just $25.

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