This is the focus of this short film from Survival International which shows the predicament of Brazil’s isolated Zo’é tribe
After a devastating first contact in the 1980s, the Zo’é have bounced back. Today there are only about 250 left and the Brazilian government has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect them from disease, but do the Zo’é now live in a bubble, separate from the rest of society? Can this be considered as neglect?
Survival International researcher Fiona Watson travels to meet these amazing people.
Peruvian Indians have been forced to set up a guard post to protect an uncontacted Indians’reserve, after the authorities ignored their repeated pleas for action.
The Isconahua reserve on the Peru-Brazil border was set up with the support of Peru’s Amazon Indian organization,AIDESEP, to protect uncontacted Isconahua Indians living in its forests.
But the reserve has been invaded by illegal loggers, and numerous appeals to the authorities have gone unanswered.
Now local indigenous organizations ORAU and FECONAU have united to create a guard post to protect the reserve themselves. Illegal logging is rampant in Peru and poses a serious threat to the survival of the country’s estimated 15 uncontacted groups. Aerial flights over the Amazon have documented illegal logging camps that are forcing the Indians to flee into unknown territories.
Survival has collected nearly 100,000 signatures asking President Alan García to put a stop to the logging and safeguard tribal lands.
This week, ORAU released a statement urging the government’s Indian Affairs Department INDEPA to join their efforts to protect the reserves.
Survival’s Director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘That local indigenous organizations have to protect isolated Indians’ reserves is a devastating criticism of the government’s inaction. Standing by and ignoring the problem seems to be the government’s preferred tactic.’
Marc J. Dourojeanni is the leading Amazon expert in the world and has been at the forefront of academic and field reasearch in the Amazon for decades. He’s published several Books, some 360 scientific papers and has written extensively for newspapers, magazines and websites. His work expands from academic research projects to environmental reports and actively does teaching on a number of governmental and non governmental agencies. He has been Vice-President and Deputy Chairman of the World Commission on National Parks and Protected Areas (WCPA) and has been a member of several IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) commissions and working groups. It is fair to say he should be considered environmental ‘royalty’… Find out more about him here.
Recently we caught up with him and asked 7 key questions about the Amazon, its main threats and what we can all do to help protect it.
Peru’s Northern Amazon: Blighted By The Toxic Legacy of Oil Contamination
The Achuar indigenous people live on the remote headwaters of the Amazon Rainforest on the Pastaza, Morona and Corrientes rivers, on both sides of the Peru-Ecuador border. On the Corrientes river in Peru, the Achuar have suffered devastating environmental and health impacts from 35 years of oil drilling in Block 1-AB.
Years of oil production in Peru’s northern Amazon has left indigenous people suffering malnutrition, sickness and social disruption. Since 1971, Los-Angles-based Occidental Petroleum, using practices outlawed in the U.S., pumped an average of 850,000 barrels a day of salty formation water and other toxic waste waters into local rivers with appalling consequences for local communities despite many legal efforts and court battles which has seen the powerful Oxy continue its destruction of this incredible nature paradise.
Dengue, mining, the interoceanic highway and global warming
By Augusto Mulanovich
Translated by Miguel Pretel
In 1992 I stood for the first time in Puerto Maldonado, capital of the Madre de Dios region in Peru. There, I found a city where the inhabitants dedicate their lives to collecting chestnuts, artisan fishing, selective extraction of woods, agriculture, cattle farming, gold extraction and a very small percentage dedicated themselves to eco-tourism. At that time, the effects of the eco-disaster at Huaypetue were still to be felt, the price of gold was less attractive and the mercury contamination levels weren’t as high as the dangerous levels of today.
Today, all carnivorous fish, those for human consumption such as large catfish (bagres, zungaro, mota, doncella), and some others with great potential for the sport fishing industry like the ‘toothy’ “chambira,” are contaminated with dangerous concentrations of mercury higher than those recommended by the World Health Organization.
The license to begin construction on the disastrous Belo Monte Dam in the Brazilian Amazon could be issued as early as the week of November 15. Please take a stand for the thousands of people whose communities will be sacrificed for the profit of mining, construction, and energy companies. Let the Brazilian Embassies and Consulates around the world know that you are in solidarity with the Brazilian people fighting to save their communities and cultures from destruction. Here’s what you can do:
The Success is from the Reserva Ecologica De Guapi Assu (REGUA), Brazil, a small nature reserve not farm from Rio de Janeiro. A report suggests that as many as 60’000 trees have been planted to help pump CO2 from the atmosphere.
Ecuador Signs Historic Deal To Keep Oil in the Soil and CO2 out of the Atmosphere
Ecuador have signed and agreement with the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) that will open an international trust fund to receive donations supporting the government’s proposal to keep some 900 million barrels of oil in the ground. The heavy crude is found in three oil reserves beneath the fragile Yasuni National Park – the Ishpingo, Tambococha, and Tiputini (ITT).
‘Brazil’s Amazon basin, some 360 million hectares cleaved by the world’s largest river, the Amazon, holds the planet’s greatest biodiversity reserve. This unique, complex, exceptional ecosystem is a colossal Patrimony of Humanity. Should it be internationalized?’
You’ve probably seen this on the internet somewhere before, or maybe you’ve received one of those chain e-mails with a version of this speech. It is because, this speech was delivered some time ago, and like some many historic speeches, still resonates today. Recently I received this again in an e-mail after probably making its way
around the world a few times since I last received it. As increasingly happens with such important and surprising messages, it has also been passed around and repeated on various blogs, accompanied by the implicit digital sign, “pass it on,” it’s for everyone. So, I think is worth yet another post and another round of promotion hoping that still reaches as many eyes as possible, even if not just to remind you every once in a while that this was once said. I believe it highlights the complexity of humanity’s current dilema in simplistic socio-economical terms and exposes the fragile state of the few remaining vital ecosystems in the planet.
{The Speech}
During a debate in a US university, a young US ecologist asked Cristóvão Buarque about his ideas on internationalizing the Amazonia.
The young man said he hoped Buarque, then the Workers Party governor of Brasilia and later Brazil’s minister of education, would respond as a humanist rather than as a Brazilian. What he got was a response that was extraordinarily both Brazilian and humanist and which highlighted in very simple terms the complexity of humanity’s struggle with its home, planet Earth. Read the full story
Fermín Beltrán has worked in Architecture for many years gaining a wide range of real-world design and construction experience. He is fascinated by finding alternatives methods of creating modern architecture in ways that are sustainable, elegant, comfortable and functional.
He has vast experience designing and constructing a wide array of buildings ranging from state-of-the-art music halls to social housing and even small holdings in South America. He is currently completing a Masters in Advanced Sustainability at the University of Dundee in Scotland
, some 360 scientific papers and has written extensively for newspapers, magazines and websites. His work expands from academic research projects to environmental reports and actively does teaching on a number of governmental and non governmental agencies. He has been Vice-President and Deputy Chairman of the 
