New Brazil plan to save Amazon tribes

Radar to be used to locate groups of isolated Indians

Rio de Janeiro: The Brazilian government has said it would employ heat-seeking radar in a last-ditch attempt to save the country’s remaining groups of isolated Indians. The body-heat sensors will be mounted on a Brazilian air force jet normally used to monitor rainforest destruction and will be used to locate an estimated 39 groups of isolated indigenous people, hidden deep in the Amazon rainforest.

The authorities hope the system will help to protect them from loggers, goldminers and ranchers.

Antenor Vaz, the coordinator for isolated tribes at Brazil’s National Indian Foundation, said the system would allow authorities to locate tribes without disturbing their way of life.

“We have been using planes more and more, not just to monitor [isolated tribes] but also to find new references,” he said. But even the use of small planes brought disruption to the tribes because they flew at low altitude, he said.

Brazil’s isolated Indians hit the headlines in May when aerial photographs of a remote tribe near the border with Peru were released. Several tribesmen could be seen firing arrows at the plane.

Mr. Vaz said the sensors mounted on planes flying at high altitude meant the tribes would not even know they were being monitored.

By locating Brazil’s last isolated tribes, campaigners hope the process of land demarcation can be speeded up, helping to guarantee the protection of their ancestral lands.

Campaigners say the Amazon may be home to the largest number of uncontacted tribes in the world. The authorities have long grappled with the dilemma of how best to treat indigenous groups who have had little or no contact with outsiders.

For hundreds of years colonisers and explorers have trekked through the jungle, coming into contact with these tribes, often with catastrophic results. There are thought to have been around six million indigenous people when the Portuguese arrived in Brazil in 1500. Today there are fewer than 3,00,000. Violence and western diseases such as flu have devastated many indigenous communities.

In the 1980s thousands of gold prospectors poured into areas inhabited by Yanomami Indians, in northern Brazil, triggering genocide, human rights groups claimed. Some sources say up to 20% of the Yanomami people died in seven years. Since the late 1980s government policy towards uncontacted tribes has shifted to a “stay away” approach. A handful of sertanistas, or explorers, work in the rainforest trying to locate tribes without coming into direct contact with them.

No life in danger


Fiona Watson, Brazil campaigner for Survival International, an indigenous rights group, said there could be as many as 20 uncontacted tribes living in the Amazon rainforest. “The idea of the remote sensors means you are not going to put any lives in danger [by making contact],” she said.

She said contact between isolated tribes and government employees had proved disastrous in the past, with 50% of some tribes being wiped out by disease in the first year after contact.

Mr. Vaz said the radar’s first mission would be to confirm the existence of isolated tribes in the Amazon state of Mato Grosso, a region that loggers, ranchers and soy farmers have turned into ground zero for rainforest destruction.

“The priority will be Mato Grosso where the process of devastation is happening the quickest,” he said.

He said members of the military and representatives of the National Indian Foundation would meet soon to plan “when and where” the flyovers would take place.

‘Emergency’

In an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, the president of Brazil’s National Indian Foundation, Marcio Meira, admitted that time was running out for isolated Indians in the region. According to newspaper reports there were only two male members left of one of the region’s tribes, the Piripkura.

“The situation there is an emergency,” Mr. Meira said.

Ms. Watson said several of the region’s tribes were “facing genocide unless the Brazilian authorities take immediate action to demarcate and protect their land”.

www.thehindu.com/2008/11/24/stories/2008112455482000.htm

World turns to growing alternatives to deforestation of the rainforest

Recent photos of an “uncontacted tribe” of Amazon Indians on the border between Peru and Brazil have reminded us once again of how much we still have to learn about the world’s tropical rainforests. The people, some of whom are painted bright red and are brandishing bows and arrows at the airplane from which the photos were taken, are believed to have so far avoided contact with the “outside” world. They are no doubt unaware that high-level global talks now taking place in that outside world could have a profound effect on their lives.

That’s because of the important role forests play in global warming. We know that reducing carbon emissions is the primary way to slow climate change, but preserving forests is a key component as well. Forests are carbon sinks; that is, they absorb and store carbon. When trees are cut down, that carbon is released into the atmosphere, thus speeding up global warming.

In fact, scientists estimate that about 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation. Governments and conservationists have considered a number of ways to protect the forests in ways that will allow the people who live in them to survive and even prosper.

One of the more admirable ideas is to increase the value of renewable resources from tropical rainforests, such as fruits, nuts, rubber, and medicinal plants, and to promote activities like ecotourism. But despite efforts of companies in the developed world to create new markets for rainforest products, it’s simpler to cut down the trees for forestry and agriculture, including ranching.

In a recent article in Conservation magazine, anthropologist Ricardo Godoy of Brandeis University is quoted as saying that “tropical rainforests are worth more for their global than for their local value”.

Many believe that if we in the rich countries want to save the world’s rainforests, we’ll have to pay. It could turn out to be a comparative bargain. Some economists, including former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern, have concluded that preventing deforestation is the most cost-effective method of keeping carbon out of the atmosphere.

But how do we go about it? One idea discussed at the United Nations climate change negotiations in Bonn, Germany, in June is referred to as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD. The initiative, introduced by the governments of Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica at UN climate change talks in Montreal in 2005 and included in subsequent discussions, is expected to be a major part of the agreement that will replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2013.

Two main strategies are being considered under REDD, both of which involve carbon credits and carbon trading. One would allow industrialized nations to meet Kyoto emissions-reduction targets by providing grants to developing countries if they reduce rates of deforestation. The other would allow countries that avoid deforestation to earn carbon credits that they could sell on the global carbon market.

Regardless of the method or methods, a lot of work still needs to be done to make sure the plans succeed in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a way that benefits the people who live in the tropical rainforests.

The issue is complicated and the potential pitfalls are many. For example, the market-driven system of selling carbon credits may not benefit those people who live in the forests and make their living off the products of the intact ecosystem because it would only pay those who are currently logging to stop.

We also have to face up to the fact that when providing grants to countries that reduce deforestation, it can be difficult to ensure that the money benefits the people and not corrupt governments.

In some areas, indigenous people have already lost land and rights because governments have turned over forest “reserves” to companies charged with protecting them.

Let’s hope that the UN discussions lead to some viable solutions––solutions that preserve biodiversity and include all the inhabitants of the rainforest, including the uncontacted tribes. It’s unlikely that money will solve everything, but it may be a start to addressing the problems of poverty, economic change, and global warming.

http://www.straight.com/article-150101/growing-alternatives-rainforest