Brazil: Greenpeace’s community based mapping project
The Greenpeace team in Brazil has been training local people to map
the impacts of the soya industry in the Santarém region of the forest,
the heart of soya production in the Amazon. It’s a collaborative
project with Brazilian organisations Projeto Saude e Alegria (Health
and Happiness Project) and the Rural Workers Unions of Santarém and
nearby Belterra, training people to use GPS technology to pinpoint the
damage caused by intensive agriculture, empowering them to help defend
their land and the rainforest.
The resulting map (pdf) has been
launched at an event on our ship the Arctic Sunrise which is currently
in the Amazon to demand action from the Brazilian Government to end
deforestation and help prevent climate change. Even though there’s
currently a moratorium on forest being cleared for new soya
plantations, existing areas being farmed are still damaging both the
environment and the communities who live in the region. The research
was conducted between May 2007 and June 2008 and the map shows how
this damage has spread along the highways carved through the forest.
Soya farming has affected rivers as well: herbicides used on the crops
have leeched into them while others have either been dammed by farmers
affecting water supplies for those downstream, or they’ve silted up
when wetland forest cover has been removed. So as their environment
deteriorates, the future of these local communities is at stake.
Traditional routes through the forest are blocked by expansive soya
plantations and some people have been forced to sell their land thanks
to pollution from agrochemicals. The maps even document the fact that
some communities have disappeared entirely.
Those that do remain have also been placed on the map. Many rural
communities in the region are not shown on existing maps, and thanks
to this project 121 have been formally identified. By giving people
the tools to document what’s happening to the forest and rivers around
them, this project is helping to put control back into their hands.
Not least because since agribusiness giant Cargill announced plans to
build its controversial soya processing and port facility in Santarem
– without the legally-required environmental impact assessment – local
people have fought to show the detrimental effects Cargill has had on
the region by encouraging the growth of the soya industry. Cargill
finally submitted the assessment to the authorities at the end of last
year and we’re currently awaiting the announcement of the public
hearing. And finally, this project could also provide a model for how
the money from global funding mechanisms could be spent to ensure
local people are the guardians of their own forest, which will be
essential if we are to protect forests in the Amazon and around the
world in the long term.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/forests/impacts-amazon-soya-are-shown-map-20090119
