Returning to Rio to Protect and Empower Environmental Advocates

The Chico Mendes story is one that deserves to be told, and retold. A Brazilian rubber tapper, Mendes became a union leader and grassroots activist in the 1980s. He originated the notion of  “extractive reserves” to protect the forests upon which the rubber tappers and their communities rely.  He was at the forefront of efforts to defend the forests against logging and cattle.  In 1988, Mendes was gunned down outside of his home by cattle ranchers who wanted to silence him.  The murder of Chico Mendes attracted worldwide attention and condemnation – which was a factor in Brazil’s decision to host the first “Earth Summit” in 1992.

I was with the NRDC delegation at the Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, where we launched an unprecedented report on the fundamental link between human rights and environmental protection.  In Defending the Earth: Abuses of Human Rights and the Environment, we – and Human Rights Watch - presented examples of the intimidation and suppression of environmental activists around the world.  One of most compelling case studies involved Brazil and the assassination of Chico Mendes.  We wrote then that:

Rural Brazil is disfigured by systematic human rights abuses.  The big landlords maintain their economic and social power by coercion, resorting to violence if necessary, with the confidence that the chance of retribution is almost non-existent.  The continuation of the big landlord system helps to promote the mass destruction of the environment that has rightly drawn world attention.  In Brazil, there will be no safeguarding of the environment until the rule of law is brought to the backlands. 

Almost two decades later, as we prepare to return to Rio for the next Earth Summit in June 2012, advocating for the environment still can be very dangerous in Brazil. On May 24, Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva—a community leader and vocal critic of illegal logging— was murdered along with his wife, Maria do Espiritu Santo, in the Amazon state of Para.  Three days later, Adelino Ramos, the president of the Amazon small farmers association, was shot dead.  Like da Silva, Ramos had received death threats from loggers.  This week there was a report of the murder of yet another activist - Obede Loyla Souza . Since the assassination of  Chico Mendes, the watchdog group Catholic Land Pastoral (CPT) estimates that over 1,150 individuals have been killed in disputes over rainforest protection. Fewer than 100 of those cases ever made it to court.  

The 1992 Earth Summit recognized the critical role of citizen activists in environmental protection with the adoption of Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration. It states: “Environmental issues are best handled with participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level.”  It affirms citizens’ rights to environmental information, participation in decision-making, and access to courts and other processes to secure environmental justice.  But obviously such rights mean little if those who seek to exercise them fear for their safety and wellbeing. 

High on the agenda for next year’s “Rio+20” Earth Summit will be strengthening governance.  Almost all of the attention so far has been on the international level, including proposals for the creation of a world environmental organization or other structures to improve coordination of the hundreds of existing environmental treaties and institutions.  Yet elaborate international arrangements to address climate change, deforestation, depletion of fisheries, etc. can be effective without firm foundations in individual countries.  As one diplomat pointed out to me, 95 percent of the work to address international environmental problems must be accomplished at the national level and below.  Thus, we are eager to see national governments come to Rio with actions to establish, strengthen, and improve the implementation of the Principle 10 rights.

Mendes’s legacy lives on - most concretely in the almost one million hectare Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve - and will loom over the 2012 Earth Summit.   Brazil will be in the international spotlight once more.  The government has set ambitious goals of slowing deforestation and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 36 percent by 2020.  However, these objectives will likely never be achieved if Brazil’s own citizens— particularly those who live in the forests and rely on them for their subsistence— cannot stand up to protect their environment. Those responsible for the most recent deaths of Brazilian environmental advocates should be brought to justice quickly; and measures taken to reform and strengthen safeguards, protections, and rights for environmental advocates. The world cannot afford to wait another 20 years for Brazil - and many other nations - to finally do right by Mendes and to address this systemic problem.

                                       Coauthored with Katherine Manchester

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