Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Tuesday he will offer to reduce the pace of deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rain forest by 80 percent by 2020 when he attends December's global climate talks in Copenhagen.

Lula said his pledge will come during high-stakes talks in the Danish capital that aim to push 192 nations towards a climate deal to succeed the landmark Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

"We're in the process of preparing our proposal for Copenhagen," Lula said on his weekly radio program, Coffee with the President.  "I foresee that by 2020 we will be able to reduce deforestation by 80 percent; in other words, we will emit some 4.8 billion fewer tons of carbon dioxide gas."

Brazil's rain forest, the largest on Earth, is shrinking at the rate of some 12,000 square kilometers (or 7456.454 miles) per year because of deforestation.

Lula said he will also demand in Copenhagen that industrialized countries pay their fair share of the costs of reducing greenhouse gases. Proposals offered by developed countries should not only cover "initiatives to reduce their emissions, but all the other harm they already have inflicted on the planet," the Brazilian leader said.

"We have to draw a line between rich countries, which have a had an industrial policy in place for more than 150 years, and the poor ones which only now are beginning to develop," he said.

"With respect to global warming, the responsibility of the rich countries is much greater than that of emerging countries," said Lula.

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

These boots are made for ... trampling the rainforest? A lot of eco-minded folks these days generally know where their food comes from. They'd never walk into a supermarket and plunk an anonymous ribeye into their cart. They understand the tremendous greenhouse-gas footprint of beef; if they consume it at all, they do so sparingly, buying directly from nearby farmers who manage their land well.

But what about shoes? What about dog chew toys--and car interiors? Leather furniture? Food is only one part of our material culture that comes from agriculture. And these other agricultural products, too, emerge from processes that are hidden from view for a reason: if we knew where the stuff came from, if we understood its impact on the Earth, we'd reject it.

That's the point of an excellent new Greenpeace report on cattle production in the Brazilian Amazon.

Titled "Slaughtering the Amazon," the report is really about the perils of using state policy to prop up global, corporate-dominated trade. Three clear themes emerge:

• The expansion of cattle production in Brazil drives Amazon deforestation--and deforestation in turn drives climate change. "The cattle sector in the Brazilian Amazon is the largest driver of deforestation in the world, responsible for one in every eight hectares destroyed," the report states. " Moreover, "globally, tropical forest destruction is responsible for around 20% of global GHG emissions."

• The Brazilian government and the World Bank actively support the expansion of the nation's cattle sector. Brazil already boasts the globe's largest cattle herd and the highest share of beef exports, and is tied with China as the number-one leather exporter. As part of its policy of promoting export-led growth, the government hopes to see its share of the global beef-produtcs market double within the next decade, Greenpeace reports. And it's backing that goal with cash:

In July 2008, Brazil's president lula announced the 2008/2009 Agricultural and livestock plan, which made available $41 billion in credit lines to boost agricultural and livestock production. 85% of this credit was designated for corporate agriculture.

Moreover, the government invested $2.65 billion between 2007 and 2009 in three gigantic beef processors that Greenpeace has found to buy cattle from illegal operations on deforested rainforest land.

Meanwhile, the World Bank's International Financial Corporation gave a $90 million loan to one of those processors, Bertin, to expand a slaughterhouse "in one of the most high-risk regions of the Amazon," Greenpeace states.

Both the World Bank and the Brazilian government deplore deforestation and trumpet measures to stop it. The official line is that the nation can dramatically expand cattle production without mowing down another inch of rainforest. The Greenpeace report exposes that ideal as a fantasy. Indeed, before doling out the $90 million loan, a World Bank auditor declared that the project "poses a grave risk to the environment and to the Bank's reputation," Greenpeace reports. Evidently, the ideology that "developing nations" like Brazil must gear their economies to export-led growth trumped those concerns.

• The real beneficiaries of such policies are not Brazilians. Indeed, labor conditions on Amazonian cattle farms are harrowing--and often tantamount to slavery, Greenpeace shows. Rather, it's the companies that buy the products cheap and sell them dear. Greenpeace demonstrates that rainforest leather ends up in the high-end luxury cars of automakers Honda, Toyota, and BMW; in the shoes of Clark's (of which I own a pair), Timberland, and Nike; in the high-fashion products of Prada and other Italian design houses; and in the furniture of Ikea.

There is a role for consumer choice in stopping this process. But we also need new ideas at Washington-based institutions like the World Bank and the IMF. The idea of of constructing a global economy based on large-scale, corporate-led trade is looking increasingly discredited. Building economies that work for people in places like Brazil would decrease pressure on the rainforest--and slow the pace of global warming.

Related Links:

Climate Denial Crock of the Week: The big mist take

City preps and countries posture ahead of Copenhagen talks

The U.S. Chamber needs to get its story straight

This fall, Northwest-based global businesses Nike and Starbucks led a group of consumer brands to publicly champion muscular, science-based climate and energy policies. These companies are on the field, playing hardball politics in support of serious efforts to address climate change and jumpstart a clean energy economy.

At a moment when the biggest climate and energy bill ever is moving in Congress, the EPA is finalizing its ruling on greenhouse gases, and Obama just announced major strides on tailpipe standards for auto emissions, where are all the other Northwest companies on climate policy? Amazon? Microsoft? Boeing?

Mostly, as far as we can tell, they seem to be on the sidelines, sitting out the contest. Doing so, however, may contradict their own corporate positions on climate policy. And in politics, silence can be taken as support for the status quo.

A quick survey:

Boeing: It may not be surprising that the aerospace giant has been somewhat understated when it comes to comprehensive climate policy. After all, Boeing's customers live and die by fuel prices. Still, we are hoping for bolder public leadership from Cascadia's premier manufacturer. Fossil-fuel dependent companies such as Duke Energy, ConocoPhillips, and BP are all active participants in the US Climate Action Partnership, which advocates the form of national cap and trade reflected in Representative Henry Waxman's massive and groundbreaking bill. But Boeing has been less assertive in politics than it has in its engineering: After all, Boeing's 787 is the global leader in fuel-efficient commercial aviation and the company has sunk serious money into biofuels research. In the long term, sales of Boeing's high-efficiency jets will fare better in an energy economy that moves off the fossil-fuel roller coaster.

Costco looks to be greening its business with experiments in solar and wind energy at store locations.

Amazon and Microsoft, similarly, have greened their business practices. Microsoft, for its part, has invested heavily -- and for some time -- in sustainability measures ranging from a mega composting program on campus, to the Connector shuttles which takes thousands of cars off the road everyday, to data-center power efficiency, to improved power management in Windows -- measures which could have global impacts. (Here's the Microsoft blog on sustainability.)

Additionally, Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer recently sent an email to the entire staff of the company recognizing the importance of climate change and outlining three initiatives that the company intended to take to continue to green its own operations and product line -- with climate change specifically in mind. A Microsoft representative told me that as recently as May 18th, the company had a representative at the White House Smart Grid Standards industry roundtable, and that next week, someone from Microsoft would be in Copenhagen participating in climate talks and speaking at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development summit.

What Microsoft hasn't done yet is stand up for climate policy at the state or national level.

Google has. It's been a strong public voice for aggressive climate policy (and has matched its words with billions of dollars of investments in energy efficiency, solar, and geothermal resources). Here's a video of Dan Reicher, Google's director of climate change and energy initiatives, testifying in Congress recently on the need for strong policy.

Climate Counts gave Amazon and Microsoft 5 and 38 points, respectively (out of 100 possible) on its "Climate Report Card." But, both companies received zero of ten points on "support for public policy that addresses climate change." (Google only got 55 points total. Costco and Boeing weren't graded.)

Standing on the sidelines of the debate in the state legislatures and in Congress can be as damaging as standing in the way. Groups that corporations affiliate with -- like the Chamber of Commerce -- are quick to use a company's silence as a sign of agreement.

Take Microsoft, for example. In Washington, Microsoft is on the executive committee of the Association of Washington Business, which led efforts to defeat Governor Gregoire's climate legislation earlier this year.  Additionally, Microsoft is a member of the US Chamber of Commerce, which has publicly campaigned against the Obama administration's efforts for climate protection and clean energy policy. Because of this stance, a few leading Chamber members, including Oregon's Nike, have publicly broken with the Chamber, causing a big national stir. Redmond has been silent.

Corporate citizenship matters to employees and supporting communities. In an April ABC/Washington Post survey, 77 percent of Americans supported federal regulations on greenhouse gases. Other research shows that employees prefer working for companies that demonstrate values that match their own, chief among them, the environment and climate protection.

In this context, Nike and Starbucks are looking not only like heroes but also like more appealing employers. As founding members of BICEP (Businesses for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy), they're leading Sun Microsytems, Levi Strauss, Timberland, and a host of other national companies to be outspoken in their support of climate policy.

Short of joining BICEP, Microsoft -- and others in the region -- could establish as corporate policy that they will not permit business associations to which they belong to represent them, implicitly or explicitly, in any climate policy that runs counter to their corporate policies -- namely, supporting the role of government in:

Sound too good to be true? It isn't. These three bullets are copied verbatim from Microsoft's corporate climate policy.

Boeing's reads about the same.

We applaud the sentiment -- and all the work that's already been underway. Now, if they'd just weigh in when it comes to state and federal climate policy -- instead of keeping mum -- and stop letting business associations (mis)speak for them, they'd go a long way toward real climate progress.

Thanks to Alan Durning for co-writing this post, which originally appeared at Sightline's Daily Score blog.

Related Links:

Fourteen Democratic senators stick up for coal

House passes landmark health-care bill with one GOP vote

Is the U.S. Chamber changing its tune on climate, or just its tone?

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Related Links:

Gucci Group commits to saving Indonesia’s rainforests

Report: Forest conservation can be as reliable as other ways of reducing pollution

Brazil’s Lula vows to slow rate of Amazon deforestation

PARIS—Drought is killing off trees in Brazil’s fragile Amazon rain forest and depleting the region’s carbon reservoirs—an ecological double-whammy with devastating implications, according to a study published Thursday.

The Amazon’s lush vegetation in a typical year absorbs nearly two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, one of the chief culprits causing climate change.

But a 30-year study published by the journal Science found that the world’s largest tropical rain forest is surprisingly sensitive to drought, and that the resulting loss of vegetation will have a greater-than-anticipated effect in causing a sharp spike in greenhouse gases.

The Amazon tree canopy which absorbs massive amounts of greenhouse gases often succumbs to the effects of dryness, thereby accelerating global warming by not absorbing CO2, scientists said.

Drought also accelerates the depletion of the region’s carbon sinks, natural reservoirs that accumulate and store the chemical compound for an indefinite period.

Researchers said the total impact of the drought was an additional five billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—more than the combined annual emissions of Europe and Japan.

The research from more than 40 institutions around the world was gathered during the particularly harsh 2005 drought, which had a severe impact on the flora of the Amazon.

The drought that year dramatically reversed decades of carbon absorption, the researchers said.

“For years, the Amazon forest has been helping to slow down climate change. But relying on this subsidy from nature is extremely dangerous,” said Professor Oliver Phillips of Britain’s University of Leeds, the lead author of the study.

“If the Earth’s carbon sinks slow or go into reverse, as our results show is possible, carbon dioxide levels will rise even faster. Deeper cuts in emissions will be required to stabilize our climate.”

Visually, most of the Amazon showed little effects of the drought. “But our records prove tree death rates accelerated,” Phillips said.

“Because the region is so vast, even small ecological effects can scale-up to a large impact on the planet’s carbon cycle.”

Scientists say the Amazon accounts for more than half of the world’s rainforest, covering an area 25 times the size of the United Kingdom.

The study, which involved 68 scientists from 13 countries, found that various species of tropical palm trees are particularly vulnerable to drought, which suggests the risk to biodiversity caused by climate change.

The findings are especially sobering because climatologists predict the creation of a potentially devastating cycle in which the Amazon’s hotter and more intense future dry seasons in turn lead to more greenhouse gas emissions and even more drought.

Related Links:

Disappearing slave history

Gucci Group commits to saving Indonesia’s rainforests

New interactive map shows devastating effects of global temperature rise

Related Links:

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

Global boiling declares war on Thanksgiving

Climate Citizen: Michael Pollan on agriculture and health care

Related Links:

Environmental education in Guinea Bissau

City preps and countries posture ahead of Copenhagen talks

How industry pressures and competing national agendas dim prospects for a climate treaty

The 100 individuals or companies most responsible for Amazon deforestation since 2005 were listed Monday by Brazilian Environment Minister Carlos Minc, and Brazil's own land-reform agency took the top spot. The Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform was said to be culpable for the deforestation of 850 square miles of Amazon rainforest in the last three years. Everyone on the list, most of whom are Brazilian farmers and ranchers, will face criminal charges, according to Minc. Satellite data show that Amazon deforestation is up sharply after a few years of decline: At least 300 square miles was destroyed in August 2008, compared to about 90 square miles in August 2007. Rising food prices have incentivized soy farmers and cattle ranchers to clear forested land, and with elections coming up, officials say mayors in the Amazon region are going easy on illegal loggers in hopes of gaining votes. It all makes for an uphill battle for Minc's ambitious goal to end net Amazon deforestation entirely by 2015.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Related Links:

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Environmental education in Guinea Bissau

Make the kids pay: The economic effects of climate change on future generations

Related Links:

Environmental education in Guinea Bissau

Brazil offer to reduce deforestation by 80%

Senate should consider deforestation as part of climate bill

Brazil's president has unveiled plans to protect a large area of the Amazon rainforest, after weeks of mutterings that the country has insufficient protections in place. The proposal by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva would create three protected reserves for a total area the size of Vermont; the plan still has to be approved by Brazil's Congress. Amazon deforestation is on the rise, and while welcoming Silva's proposal, critics are still wary of the president's view that "environmental protection and development [of the Amazon] are not incompatible."

sources:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Carlos Minc was sworn in as Brazil's environment minister on Tuesday. Minc succeeds Marina Silva, who quit after six years of uphill battling to protect the Amazon rainforest from development. Greens are cautiously optimistic about Minc, who was a founder of Brazil's Green Party, a former environment secretary in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and one of 500 winners of a 1989 United Nations prize for environmental activism. Brazil announced Wednesday that it would set up an international donation fund for Amazon preservation, as President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (no relation to Marina Silva) attempted to downplay international concerns that the country plays too loose with rainforest protection. Said the president on Monday, "The world needs to understand that the Amazon has an owner, and that is the Brazilian people."

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

Fair, Ambitious & Binding: Essentials for a Successful Climate Deal

Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva resigned Tuesday after six years in office, leading a Greenpeace campaigner to lament that "Brazil is losing the only voice in the government that spoke out for the environment." Silva's policies prioritized environmental protection, particularly for the Amazon; while her policies landed her a spot as one of Grist's fave green politicians, they made her unpopular with developers, her government peers, and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. While the environment minister declined to give an official reason for her departure, Greenpeace's Sergio Leitao postulates that "the pressure on her for taking the measures she took against deforestation has become unbearable."

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

Fair, Ambitious & Binding: Essentials for a Successful Climate Deal

Chevron is throwing a hissy fit over the Goldman Environmental Prize awarded to two Ecuadorian activists who want the oil company to clean up pollution in the Amazon rain forest. Texaco, which was acquired by Chevron in 2001, dumped 18.5 billion gallons of petrochemical waste in the Amazon between 1972 and 1992. Lawyer Pablo Fajardo and community organizer Luis Yanza won the Goldman Prize for spearheading a lawsuit against Chevron, saying it should be responsible for cleanup. But Chevron claims that a $40 million cleanup by Texaco in 1992 was sufficient. Chevron says through spokesfolks that the Goldman Foundation was "misled," that Fajardo and Yanza are "nothing but con men," and that "the only thing green they are interested in is money." The Goldman Foundation says its awards are thoroughly researched and fact-checked, and it continues to commend Yanza and Fajardo for taking on Big Oil.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Photo: iStockphoto

Hard up for ways to preserve the Amazon rainforest, the Brazilian government has announced it's opening a condom factory that will use rubber harvested sustainably from the imperiled rainforest -- no tree-chopping required. The latex will come from the Chico Mendes reserve, named for a well-known Amazon activist gunned down by ranching interests. Conservationists hope that providing locals economic incentive to leave the forest intact will help slow deforestation. The Brazilian government is also touting the program as a buy-local initiative; the new factory aims to displace about 100 million of the roughly 500 million condoms the country imports annually and distributes for free as part of its initiative to fight HIV/AIDS.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Brazilian troops and police seized about 500 truckloads of illegal hardwood timber from the Amazon rainforest over the weekend, following riots and protests by sawmill workers and others that had forced out environmental inspectors earlier in the week. After the inspectors were driven out, they came back days later with over 450 troops to confiscate illegal timber that the government has said will be sold to raise money for rainforest protection. The seizure is part of the Brazilian government's plans, unveiled last month, to step up environmental enforcement in the Amazon, including inspections of companies operating in the area. The Amazon rainforest has experienced massive deforestation in recent years due mainly to illegal logging, soy cultivation, and cattle ranching. About 2,700 square miles of Amazon rainforest were destroyed in Brazil last year between August and December. "We don't want a confrontation with the people," said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. "We're fighting criminals, and these people unfortunately manipulate the local residents."

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Following Brazil's recent announcement of a dramatic rise in Amazon deforestation in the country in the last months of 2007, the country this week announced new plans to try to slow the destruction. Plans include tapping the army to conduct inspections of known problem areas and keep deforested land from being cultivated or used for pasture, fining meat processors and soy buyers that purchase products originating from deforested areas, and denying credit to landowners who don't maintain preservation areas. Brazil's environment minister, Marina Silva, attributed the spike in deforestation to rising prices for corn, soy, and meat on the international market. An estimated 2,700 square miles of Amazon rainforest was destroyed in Brazil last year between August and December, with over half of it happening in November and December alone. If the country's new plan doesn't work, Silva said, Brazil "will have an environmental loss and an economic loss."

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Amazon land settlement said to increase deforestation

The Brazilian government is looking into accusations that sketchy sustainable-development deals may have led to increased logging in the Amazon rainforest. After an eight-month investigation, Greenpeace has reported that Brazil's national land-reform agency housed thousands of poor families in rainforest areas valuable to the timber industry, then looked the other way when settlers sold logging rights to major companies. Under the settlement scheme, families are permitted to log 80 percent of their land under a strict forest-management plan -- but the plans are now dictated by Big Timber, which doesn't tend to be keen on following sustainability guidelines or paying market value. The news comes on the heels of Brazil's announcement last week that as of July 2006, the overall Amazon deforestation rate had fallen to its lowest point in at least seven years. We're smiling on one side of our mouth and frowning on the other.

Related Links:

Environmental education in Guinea Bissau

City preps and countries posture ahead of Copenhagen talks

How industry pressures and competing national agendas dim prospects for a climate treaty

Julio Cusurichi Palacios.

Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize.

The Peruvian Amazon is one of the most remote places in the world. In its wildest corners, in the Madre de Dios region along the Brazilian border, some indigenous communities continue to live far from modern society. But their solitude is eroding: Loggers are pushing deeper into the forest, searching for increasingly rare stands of big-leaf mahogany, and oil development is on the rise.

Julio Cusurichi Palacios, an indigenous leader in the region, has allied himself with these "uncontacted" groups. For many years, he fought for the establishment of a forest reserve in the Madre de Dios -- but when he succeeded, he found that his battle had just begun. He's now training local people to guard the boundaries of the reserve, where they monitor and document the illegal logging that still occurs.

Cusurichi and his allies have also turned their attention to the United States, the main market for Peruvian mahogany. They've sued three U.S. timber importers and several government agencies, charging that the timber imports violate the Endangered Species Act and international law.

Cusurichi, 36, was awarded one of six 2007 Goldman Environmental Prizes at a ceremony in San Francisco on April 23. He spoke to Grist through a translator.

What are the most serious threats to the Peruvian Amazon?

The illegal logging and also the oil concessions, which overlap with the indigenous territories. The loggers come in, without any permission, and work in the territories of our indigenous brothers, who aren't in contact with external society. This has caused confrontations and even deaths. When there are confrontations with these isolated indigenous groups, we never know how many of the indigenous peoples have been killed -- we only hear about the loggers, because they're the ones that come back.

With fellow indigenous leaders in the field.

Photo: Tom Dusenbery

These indigenous peoples are also very vulnerable to any type of disease, so when thousands of loggers come into their territory, they can bring diseases that these tribes have never seen before.

The loggers are going in and looking for mahogany, and they cut down lots of other trees to get to the mahogany. They make roads, and the animals in there flee. So these illegal loggers are hurting not just the indigenous peoples but the animals in the jungle as well. The oil activity in our area also doesn't comply with the laws. Our government gives oil concessions right on top of our territories. The companies are contaminating the environment, contaminating our rivers with oil spills, and this causes serious [health] problems for our indigenous people. People come in and give them some medicines, but that's not enough -- the water is contaminated, the jungle is contaminated, there are no fish left, the helicopters fly overhead, and the oil pipelines pass through our land.

What was the community like where you grew up? Was it extremely isolated?

No, no, my community has been in contact with the outside world for a long time, because we were exploited by the rubber tappers. My grandparents were moved from the late 1800s and early 1900s. They were never able to return to the area where they came from, so my parents were born in this area, in the Amazonian province of Madre de Dios.

When and why did you decide to speak out on behalf of indigenous communities?

When I was very young, 10 or 11 years old, I began to understand how we were marginalized, how the way we were treated was not normal. Even as a youth I was working and organizing and making proposals with my people. Later I became a leader of my community, El Pilar, and then I became part of a regional organization, FENAMAD [Federation of Natives of the Madre de Dios River and its Tributaries]. There I got to know a different reality. I met different indigenous people in the area, and I realized that we were all confronting the same problems. Then I became really dedicated to this struggle to defend our rights. It became clear that we needed to find a way to get our problems resolved, to work with our government. But the truth is that they never seem to want to resolve our problems. They seem to want us to just disappear.

How has this reserve changed life for those who live within it?

Using today's technology to protect ancient forests.

Photo: Tom Dusenbery

In the year 2002, after a long struggle, the reserve was created. In some ways we thought this was going to be a resolution, but the reserve was just created on paper. In reality thousands of loggers continued to go into the reserve. So we had to continue the struggle, to try and help the communities near the reserve, so they can make sure that none of the loggers are allowed into this territory. We're constructing guard posts along all the entrances to the reserve, and working with the communities so that they can be vigilant.

Many of the leaders of these communities have been threatened. The loggers have written with graffiti on their homes, saying that they're going to cut their necks, that they're going to burn their villages to the ground. So there are threats, serious threats, to these communities.

What gives you and the people you work with the courage to continue?

These are our communities. We stand with our indigenous brothers and sisters, and we have to continue the struggle. We now know there are friends in other countries who can help us with our struggle -- people who care about human rights, and protecting the jungle so that it can provide for us -- and it helps us to have the solidarity of these other groups in other places.

What challenges remain?

We need to find a way to do sustainable activities in the forest. If we don't actually do sustainable activities we're going to have serious problems. The oil is going to run out, the trees will be gone, the gold will be gone. We could harvest Brazil nuts, we could have well-managed, sustainable logging, or we could have fish farming. We need an overall plan of management for the entire river basin, so that we can promote this kind of sustainable development and help future generations of our society.

What does this prize mean to you?

For me, it is a grand significance. I certainly didn't expect it, but it's great that there is some recognition of our work. It helps me understand and recognize that I've been doing the right thing. It means that I'm not going to be intimidated by economic interests or threats, and that I will be able to continue with my head held high until the last day of my life.

Related Links:

Peru slum goes cutting edge as ‘fog catcher’

Brazil’s Lula vows to slow rate of Amazon deforestation

Time magazine names me one of the ‘Heroes of the Environment 2009’