Amazon tribe hits back at green 'colonialism'

Guardian Unlimited ^ | October 14 2007 | Juliette Jowit

[Lorianne]

It's one of the most fashionable ideas to save the planet from global warming: buying up tropical rainforest to save it from destruction. Gordon Brown has even appointed the millionaire founder of one such charity, Johan Eliasch, as his special adviser on deforestation.

But like all big ideas it is controversial, and this week a leading Amazonian campaigner will visit Britain to protest that this latest trend is linked to a health and social crisis among indigenous people, including sickness, depression, suicide, obesity and drug addiction.

Davi Kopenawa, a shaman of the Yanomami tribe, will help launch a report that, says Survival International, the charity behind it, claims separation from the land is directly linked to the 'physical and mental breakdown' of indigenous communities, whose lifestyle and culture is already under threat from mining, logging and resettlement away from traditional lands.

In a statement issued through the group, Kopenawa said: 'You napepe (whites) talk about what you call development and tell us to become the same as you. But we know that this brings only disease and death. Now you want to buy pieces of rainforest, or to plant biofuels. These are useless. The forest cannot be bought; it is our life and we have always protected it. Without the forest, there is only sickness.'

Survival International, which announced Kopenawa's visit, said that destruction of the rainforest had been blamed for the release of 18-25 per cent of human carbon dioxide emissions, the biggest greenhouse gas blamed for climate change.

Charities such as Cool Earth, the organisation set up by Eliasch and former Labour minister Frank Field, could buy a tiny fraction of the rainforest, but their popularity 'diverts attention' from the more urgent need to return rainforest to indigenous people, claims Stephen Corry, Survival International's director.

[Nathan Zachary]

Start with one pile of BS, and it doesn’t take long before the whole herd starts laying it down in the same spot. Soon it becomes a hill.

[steelyourfaith]

bttt

[Chickensoup]

The green colonialism reminds me of 19th century England. The farmers were turned out of their land. It all belonged to manor houses. The lower classes were not permitted to hunt on the lands and they didn't have enough land to rent/own to raise their own food. Labor became very cheap. People starved slowly. Only the beneficence of the landholding classes averted calamity in each area.

[hinckley buzzard]

This doesn't sound right. As far as I know, conservation groups are not driving these small, primitive indigenous groups out of the forest. I know the Nature Conservancy does not, and they are by far the biggest and most sophisticated of the bunch. Most natives lose their homes to slash and burn activities, whic are not "green" by any definition.

[hinckley buzzard]

This doesn't sound right. As far as I know, conservation groups are not driving these small, primitive indigenous groups out of the forest. I know the Nature Conservancy does not, and they are by far the biggest and most sophisticated of the bunch. Most natives lose their homes to slash and burn activities, which are not "green" by any definition.