On a late April morning in Thacker Pass, where some Paiute ancestors have been buried and some massacred, where some people want to dig out the dead to dig out lithium, I woke to a strange, wet snow that fell overnight a day before temperatures in the 70s were forecast. It seemed a bad omen.
Paiute elders teach that very bad things happen when the dead are disturbed. I knew this must be true. So many industrial projects in so many places have destroyed so many burial sites. The cracked bones of the slain have been cracked again and again in the frantic search for coal. Old, spilled blood turned to soil has been mixed with new, spilled blood by those who murder for oil. Now, in Nevada, if the lithium miners have their way, those brave Paiute who died resisting American soldiers will finally be forced onto the reservation when machinery agitates the dust formed by those Paiute bodies and the wind blows that dust to coat the homes of Paiute descendants at Fort McDermitt.
Either these desecrations have caused the world to go to hell or the dead, disturbed, have brought hell to Earth.
I pondered this while pondering the surreality of the spring snow. As heavy as it was, the snow didn’t weigh the ghosts down. Fingers that once clawed with shock at bullet holes, clawed through mud made by their own blood. The ghosts climbed through the sage brush roots and volcanic rocks, to drift over the snow and confront the living with the reality of history. Moans moved with heavy clouds. Screams, sometimes, did too. Raven wings stirred the death hanging on the air. The wind blew with their last words in a language I never knew.
Though the language was strange to me, the meaning was clear enough: each generation’s missing and murdered grieve for the next. A meadowlark, landed on the tip of a nearby sagebrush, and began to sing. He sang: “While there’s still time for some, there’s no time for grief.” He told me to let them grieve.
I threw some cedar on the fire and watched my prayers rise with the smoke. I wondered what the wind will do when there are no more dying words to deliver, what the dead will do when they are confident they will not be disturbed, what the ghosts will do when their lessons are remembered. I wondered: Will Thacker Pass, at last, be still?
In this article Rebecca Wildbear talks about how civilization is wasting our planet’s scarce water sources for mining in its desperate effort to continue this devastating way of life.
Nearly a third of the world lacks safe drinking water, though I have rarely been without. In a red rock canyon in Utah, backpacking on a week-long wilderness training in my mid-twenties, it was challenging to find water. Eight of us often scouted for hours. Some days all we could find to drink was muddy water. We collected rain water and were grateful when we found a spring.
Now water is scarce, and the demand for it is growing. Globally, water use has risen at more than twice the rate of population growth and is still increasing. Ninety percent of water used by humans is used by industry and agriculture, and when groundwater is overused, lakes, streams and rivers dry up, destroying ecosystems and species, harming human health, and impacting food security. Life on Earth will not survive without water.
In the Navajo Nation in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, a third of houses lack running water, and in some towns, it is ninety percent. Peabody Energy Corporation, the largest coal producer and a Fortune 500 company, pulled so much water from the Navajo aquifer before closing its mining operation that many wells and springs have run dry. Residents now have to drive 17 miles to wait in line for an hour at a communal well, just to get their drinking water.
Worldwide, the majority of drinkable water comes from underground reservoirs called aquifers. Aquifers feed streams, lakes, and rivers, but their waters are finite. Large aquifers exist beneath deserts, but these were created eons ago in wetter times. Expert hydrologists say that like oil, once the “fossil” waters of ancient reservoirs are mined, they are gone forever.
Peabody’s Black Mesa Mine extracted, pulverized, and mixed coal with water drawn from the Navajo aquifer to form a slurry. This was sent along a 273-mile-long pipeline to the Mojave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nevada, to power Los Angeles. Every year, the mine extracted 1.4 billion gallons (4,000+ acre feet) of water from the aquifer, an estimated 45 billion gallons (130,000+ acre feet) in all.
Pumping out an aquifer draws down the water level and empties it forever. Water quality deteriorates and springs and soil dry out. Agricultural irrigation and oil and coal extraction are the biggest users of waters from aquifers in the U.S. Some predict that the Ogallala aquifer, once stretching beneath five mid-western states, may be able to replenish after six thousand years of rainfall.
Rain is the most accurate measure of available water in a region, yet over-pumping water beyond its capacity to refill is widespread in the western U.S. and around the world. The Middle East ran out of water years ago—it was the first major region in the world to do so. Studies predict that two thirds of the world’s population are at risk of water shortages by 2025. As ground water levels fall, lakes, rivers, and streams are depleted, and the land, fish, trees, and animals die, leaving a barren desert.
Mining in the Great Basin
The skyrocketing demand for lithium, one of the minerals needed for the production of electric cars, is based on the misperception that green technology helps the planet. Yet, as Argentine professor of thermodynamics and lithium mining expert Dr. Daniel Galli said at a scientific meeting, lithium mining is “really mining mountains of water.” Lithium Americas plans to pump massive amounts of water—up to 1.7 billion gallons (5,200 acre feet) annually—from an aquifer in the Quinn River Valley in Nevada’s Great Basin, the largest desert in the United States.
Thacker Pass, the site of the proposed 1.3 billion dollar open-pit lithium mine, would pump 1,200 acre feet more water per year than Peabody Energy Corporation extracted from the Navajo aquifer. Yet, the Quinn River aquifer is already over-allocated by fifty percent, and more than 10 billion gallons (30,000 acre feet) per year. Nevada is one of the driest states in the nation, and Thacker Pass is only the first of many proposed lithium mines in the state. Multiple active placer claims (7,996) have been located in 18 different hydrographic basins.
Deceit about water fuels these mines. Lithium Americas’ environmental impact assessment is grossly inaccurate, according to hydrologist Dr. Erick Powell. By classifying year-round creeks as “ephemeral” and underreporting the flow rate of 14 springs, Lithium Americas is claiming there is less water in the area than there actually is. This masks the real effects the mine would have—drying up hundreds of square miles of land, drawing down the groundwater level, sucking water from neighboring aquifers—all while claiming its operations would have no effect.
Peabody Energy Corporation’s impact assessment similarly misrepresented how their withdrawals would harm the Navajo aquifer. Peabody Energy used a flawed method to measure the withdrawals, according to former National Science Research Fellow Daniel Higgins. Now Navajo Nation wells require drilling down 2,000–3,000 feet, and the water is depressurized and slow to flow to the surface.
Thacker Pass lithium mine would pump groundwater at a disturbing rate, up to 3,250 gallons per minute. Once used, wastewater would contaminate local groundwater with dangerous heavy metals, including a “plume” of antimony that would last at least 300 years. Lithium Americas plans to dig the mine deeper than the groundwater level and keep it dry by continuously pumping water out, but when the pumping stops, groundwater would seep back in, picking up the toxins.
It hurts me to think about this. I imagine water being rapidly extracted from my own body, my bloodstream poisoned. The best tasting water rises to the surface when it is ready, after gestating as long as it likes in the dark Earth. Springs are sacred. When I feel welcome, I place my lips on the earthy surface and fill my mouth with their sweet flavor and vibrant texture.
Mining in the Atacama Desert
Thirteen thousand feet above sea level, the indigenous Atacamas people live in the Atacama Desert, the most arid desert in the world and the driest place on Earth. For millennia, they have used their scarce supply of water and sparse terrain carefully. Their laws and spirituality have always been intertwined with the health and well-being of the land and water. Living in mud-brick homes, pack animals, llama and alpaca, provide them with meat, hide, and wool.
But lithium lies beneath their ancestral land. Since 1980, mining companies have made billions in the Salar de Atacama region in Chile, where lithium mining now consumes sixty-five percent of the water. Some local communities need to have water driven in, and other villagers have been forced to abandon their settlements. There is no longer enough water to graze their animals. Beautiful lagoons hundreds of flamingos call home have gone dry. The birds have disappeared, and the ground is hard and cracked.
In addition to the Thacker Pass mine proposal, Lithium Americas has a mine in the Atacama Desert, a joint Canadian-Chilean venture named Minera Exar in the Cauchari-Olaroz basin in Jujuy, Argentina. Digging for lithium began in Jujuy in 2015, and there is already irreversible damage, according to a 2018 hydrology report. Watering holes have gone dry, and indigenous leaders are scared that soon there will be nothing left.
Even more water is needed to mine the traces of lithium found in brine than in an open-pit mine. At the Sales de Jujuy plant, the wells pump at a rate of more than two million gallons per day, even though this region receives less than four inches of rain a year. Pumping water from brine aquifers decreases the amount of fresh groundwater. Freshwater refills the spaces emptied by brine pumping and is irreversibly mixed with brine and salinized.
The Sanctity of Water
As a river guide, I live close to water. Swallowed by its wild beauty, I am restored to a healthier existence. Far from roads, cars, and cities, I watch water swirl around rocks or ripple over sand. I merge with its generous flow, floating through mountains, forest, or canyon. Rivers teach me how to listen to the currents—whether they cascade in a playful bubble, swell in a loud rush, or ebb in a gentle silence—for clues about what lies ahead.
The indigenous Atacamas peoples understand that water is sacred and have purposefully protected it for centuries. Rather than looking at how nature can be used, our culture needs to emulate the Atacamas peoples and develop the capacity to consider its obligations around water. Instead of electric cars, what we need is an ethical approach to our relationship with the land. Honoring the rights of water, species, and ecosystems is the foundation of a sustainable society. Decisions can be made based on knowledge of the land, weather patterns, and messages from nature.
For millennia, indigenous peoples have perceived water, animals, and mountains as sentient. If humans today could recognize their intelligence, perhaps they would understand that underground reservoirs have a value and purpose, beyond humans. When I enter a cave, I am walking into a living being. My eyes adjust to the dark. Pressing my hand against the wall, I steady myself on the uneven ground, hidden by varying amounts of water. Pausing, I listen to a soft dripping noise, echoing like a heartbeat as dew slides off the rocks. I can almost hear the cave breathing.
The life-giving waters of aquifers keep everything alive, but live unseen under the ground. As a soul guide, I invite people to be nourished by the visions of their dreams, a parallel world that is also seemingly invisible. Our dominant culture dismisses the value of these perceptions, just as it usurps water by disregarding natural cycles. Yet to create a sustainable world, humans need to be able to listen to nature and their dreams. The depths of our souls are inextricably linked to the ancient waters that flow underground. Dreams arise like springs from an aquifer, seeding our visionary potential, expanding our consciousness, and revealing other ways to live, radically different than empire.
Water Bearers
I set my backpack down on a high sandstone cliff overlooking a large watering hole. Ten feet below the hole, the red rock canyon drops into a much larger pool. My friend hikes down to it, filling her cookpot with water. She balances it atop her head on the way up, moving her hips to keep the pot steady. Arriving back, she pours the water into the smaller hole from which we drink and returns to the large pool to gather more.
Women in all societies have carried water throughout history. In many rural communities, they still spend much of the day gathering it. Sherri Mitchell of the Penobscot Nation calls women “the water bearers of the Universe.” The cycles in a woman’s body move in relation with the Earth’s tides, guiding them to nourish and protect the waters of Earth. We all need to become water bearers now.
Indigenous peoples, who have always been the Earth’s greatest defenders, protect eighty percent of global diversity, even though they comprise less than five percent of the world’s population. They understand water is sacred, and the world’s groundwater systems must be defended. For six years, indigenous peoples have been fighting to prevent lithium mining in the Salinas Grandes salt flats, in Jujuy, Argentina. Five hundred indigenous people camped on the land with signs: “No to lithium. Yes, to water and life in our territories.”
In February 2021, President Biden signed executive orders supporting the domestic mining of “critical” minerals like lithium, but two lawsuits, one by five Nevada-based conservation groups, have been filed against the Bureau of Land Management for approving the Thacker Pass lithium mine. Environmentalists Max Wilbert and Will Falk are organizing a protest to protect Thacker Pass. Local residents, including Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone peoples, are speaking out, fighting to protect their land and water.
We can see when a river runs dry, but most people are not aware of the invisible, slow-burning disaster happening under the ground. Some say those who oppose lithium mining should give up cell phones. If that is true, perhaps those who favor mines should give up drinking water. Protecting water needs to be at the center of any plan for a sustainable future.
The “fossil water” found in deserts should be used only in emergency, certainly not for mining. Sickened by corporate water grabbing, I support those trying to stop Thacker Pass Lithium mine and aim to join them. The aquifers there have nurtured so many for so long—eagles, pronghorn antelope, mule deer, old-growth sagebrush, hawks, falcons, sage-grouse, and Lahontan cutthroat trout. I pray these sacred wombs of the Earth can live on to nourish all of life.
This article was originally published on Mongabay. Mongabay starts publishing a series of data-driven multimedia stories on Brazil’s Indigenous people living in urban areas, including the metropolitan centers of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Brasília, showing that Indigenous people are much closer to most Brazilians than they realize. Mongabay Series: Amazon Conservation, Amazon Illegal Deforestation, Indigenous Peoples and Conservation
Featured image: Michael Oliveira Baré Tikuna lists countless incidents of apparent prejudice he faced for being Indigenous since moving to Rio de Janeiro. “We are made invisible in the university, in social movements, we are made invisible in everything,” he said. This photograph was taken in Copacabana beach, in Rio de Janeiro, on November 14, 2020. Image by Mongabay
Contrary to popular belief, Brazil’s Indigenous people aren’t confined to the Amazon Rainforest, with more than a third of them, or about 315,000 individuals, living in urban areas.
Over the past year, we dived into the census and related databases to produce unique maps and infographics showing not only how the Indigenous residents are distributed in six cities and in Brazil overall, but also showcasing their access to education, sewage and other amenities, and their ethnic diversity.
Access to higher education is a milestone: the number of Indigenous people enrolled in universities jumped from 10,000 to about 81,000 between 2010 and 2019, giving them a higher college education rate than the general population.
This data-driven reporting project received funding support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting’s data journalism and property rights grant.
RIO DE JANEIRO — During a presentation for Indigenous People’s Week, celebrated in April in Brazil, at his son’s elementary school in Rio de Janeiro, the first thing sociologist José Carlos Matos Pereira did was to show a photo of several individuals and ask the children, “What do you think, are they Indigenous?” The children immediately answered in unison: “No.” He asked why, and they responded, “They are not naked; they do not have a bow and arrow and they are not in the forest; so, they are not Indigenous.”
The episode, centering on a picture of Indigenous people from the city of Altamira in the Amazonian state of Pará, is just a snapshot of the reality faced by Indigenous people living in urban areas throughout Brazil. “This marks a perception since a child as one thinks of Indigenous people [as being] outside the city and in conditions of, shall we say, ‘natural,’” Pereira, a researcher at the Social Movements Memory Program, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), told Mongabay.
“The Indigenous hunt, fish, live in the forest, have their way of life, their rituals. But he also comes to the city … And when he comes, he brings with him a way of life.”
In fact, contrary to popular belief, Indigenous people are scattered all over Brazil and not just in the Amazon Rainforest and remote rural areas. More than a third of Brazil’s Indigenous population, or about 315,000 individuals, live in urban areas, according to the country’s latest census.
But while in rural and remote areas Indigenous people are threatened by land invasions, mining and a wide range of development projects, in the cities they constantly face invisibilization and prejudice.
Having lived in Rio de Janeiro for 20 years, Michael Oliveira Baré Tikuna can list countless incidents of apparent prejudice that he faced for being Indigenous since moving to the city. These range from the time he used to live on the streets selling his craftworks, through to his time in university. Baré was the first Indigenous person to enter the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) through the quota system.
“A black guy told me that my place wasn’t at the university, that my place was inside the forest,” said Baré, a shiatsu therapist and freelance professor of Indigenous history. “This was the thing that shocked me the most because he was reproducing in me what the white men do to him [when they say] to send him back to Africa.”
Born in Manaus, in the Amazon region, Baré’s Indigenous name in the Nheengatu language — derived from the Tupi-Guarani language — is Anaje Sucurijú Mangará Ibytyra, which means Sucurijú Hawk Mountain Heart. His name on his birth certificate is Michael Júnior Queiroz de Oliveira but he adopted the Indigenous ethnicities Baré and Tikuna from his parents after rescuing his Indigenous roots, he said.
The Tikuna people are the most numerous Indigenous ethnic group in the Brazilian Amazon. The first reference to the Tikuna people dates back to the mid-17th century, in the Solimões River region, in Amazonas state. With history marked by the violent entry of rubber tappers, fishermen and loggers, the Tikuna only achieved official recognition of most of their lands in the 1990s. They speak the Tikuna language.
The Baré people live mainly along the Xié River and the upper Negro River, to where the majority migrated compulsorily due to violence and exploitation of their extractive work by with non-Indigenous. Their first contact with non-Indigenous occurred in the early 18th century, according to documents from that century. Originally from the Arawak linguistic family, today they speak Nheengatu, which was disseminated by the Carmelites in the colonial period.
“We are made invisible in the university, in social movements, we are made invisible in everything. But I realized that this is a historic construction,” he said, one that “I struggle to deconstruct, which I ended up calling … ‘the ideological discourse of the slave colonizer,’ which is the discourse that introjected into the collective unconscious the notion … that miscegenation is not good.”
Historian Ana Paula da Silva, a PhD in social memory, highlights the importance of a revisionism movement of Indigenous history that several researchers are carrying out today, given the lack of a prominent place for Indigenous people in Brazilian history.
“They were part of our history, our culture and they were fundamental in the colonization process and this is something that should be taught in schools, disseminated in the media and, certainly, from the moment that the Brazilian society understands that Indigenous people are part of Brazil, of our history, certainly many prejudices, a lot of discrimination in relation to this population will be deconstructed,” said da Silva, a researcher at the Program of Studies of Indigenous Peoples (Pro Índio), from the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ).
The intrinsic presence of Indigenous people in Brazilian culture, from words to habits, was also highlighted by the historian, who is also a member of a network of university researchers focused on promoting the Indigenous knowledge at schools throughout Brazil. Called Saberes Indígenas(Indigenous Knowledge), the program is promoted by the Ministry of Education since 2013.
Aerial view of a building besides the Maracanã stadium over which Indigenous people are claiming their ancestral ownership rights in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. December 1, 2020. Image by Mongabay.
A diaspora of Indigenous people to the cities, da Silva said, is a consequence of their displacement in the past during the colonial period from the places where cities were built. Many of them also come to urban areas seeking better living conditions, she added.
Hidden stories like Baré’s will be framed in a series of data-driven multimedia stories that Mongabay starts publishing today, focused on the six Brazilian municipalities with the highest absolute numbers of Indigenous people living in urban areas, showing that Indigenous people are much closer to other Brazilians than they imagine.
Although some experts argue that the best way to highlight the Indigenous presence in Brazilian cities is by their proportion of the population in each city, Mongabay has decided to focus on the absolute numbers. The figures may come as a surprise to many, as the six cities with the highest number of Indigenous people include the country’s most famous metropoles, where the Indigenous presence is even more invisible.
According to the 2010 census, the latest released by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the municipalities with the highest number of Indigenous people living in urban areas are, in descending order: São Paulo, São Gabriel da Cachoeira (in Amazonas state), Salvador (in Bahia state), Rio de Janeiro, Boa Vista (in Roraima state), and Brasília, the national capital — IBGE considered data for the whole Federal District. Only two of these, São Gabriel da Cachoeira and Boa Vista, are in states that comprise part of the Brazilian Amazon.
Over the past year, we dived into the 2010 census (new data only will be available in 2022) and related databases to produce unique maps and infographics showing not only how the Indigenous residents are distributed in the urban areas of these six cities but also showcasing their access to education, sewage and other amenities, as well as their ethnic diversity. Mongabay will publish one story for each city, starting with the biggest cities and followed by the Amazonian ones.
The project, which received funding support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, will close with an in-depth analysis of the Indigenous presence in Brazil’s urban areas as a whole, including the cities with the highest percentage of Indigenous residents and other municipalities that don’t appear in the ranks but are very relevant in representing the Indigenous way of living in the urban areas.
Pereira, the sociologist, who has a postdoctoral degree in social anthropology, highlights the importance of the 2010 census, as it is the first to recognize, through a self-declaration process, the Indigenous presence in population compacts in reserves, rural and urban areas, as well as their 300 ethnicities speaking multiple languages.
“For a long time, the Indigenous people were removed from the population count. They only appeared in the 1990s through the question of color and race. And this was repeated in the early 2000s. Only in 2010 we had Brazil’s first Indigenous census,” Pereira said. “So it is an important fact that you can’t deny anymore: the Indigenous presence in Brazilian cities.”
Aerial view of the Jaraguá Indigenous Reserve in São Paulo’s northeast region. November 21, 2020. Image by Jonne Roriz for Mongabay.
He said the census began during the colonization period, with an aim of counting the population for taxation purposes and army conscription. “So, all the diversity of language, of people, of customs, they were erased because this information did not matter to the metropole; it aimed to standardize and reorder the data according to the interests of the metropolitan power,” Pereira said.
Censuses carried out by the Brazilian government date from the end of the 19th century. But it largely excluded the Indigenous population, Pereira noted; only those who had been evangelized by missionaries appear in the statistics under the race categories of caboclo and pardo, both of which refer to mixed-race individuals.
Aerial view of the Shrine of Shamans, the only demarcated Indigenous reserve in Brazil’s capital, Brasília. Located beside a high-income residential complex, the land was demarcated in 2018, after a decade-long legal dispute to recognize the Indigenous ancestral rights over the area. Image by Fellipe Neiva for Mongabay.
Education as a weapon
One of the highlights of our coverage is how access to higher education has helped Indigenous people fight against this prejudice and has improved their living conditions in urban areas. Between 2010 and 2019, the number of Indigenous people enrolled in universities through the quota system, launched in 2012, spiked from 10,219 to 80,652.
Given that about 81,000 Indigenous people from a population of about 900,000 were attending university in 2019, this gives a much better rate of higher education than the average for Brazilian citizens in general in the same year (9% compared to 5.8%, respectively), said anthropologist João Pacheco de Oliveira, a professor and curator of the ethnographic collections at the National Museum — a member of the Science and Culture Forum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), which completed 200 years in 2018.
Oliveira pointed to the enormous potential of Indigenous peoples in universities. “From this group, the brains of the movement will be formed: lawyers, anthropologists, doctors, teachers,” he said. “The Indigenous project in relation to being a Brazilian citizen, it is not a project to become simply a repository from the past. It is to have and gain citizenship, to be prominent people, to exercise science, to hold positions.
“Those who go to the city didn’t become white people,” he added. “They continue to be Indigenous, and will be very important for those that are within the villages, and this junction between one thing and the other is essential for the Indigenous project.”
Oliveira added that most of the international public “would take it by surprise to see the real face of the Brazilian Indigenous,” which doesn’t match with the stereotypical image of a person dressed in traditional clothing.
Baré said that entering Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) through the quota system was his biggest achievement in life. “I am the first of my family who entered university, who achieved this feat. And I was very happy and proud to be able to give [this] pride to my mother,” he said.
Michael Oliveira Baré Tikuna poses for a photograph in front of a building at Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), where he was the first Indigenous enrolled through the quota system. December 1, 2020. Image by Mongabay
Education, he said, has helped him overcome the prejudice he felt against his Indigenous identity, citing the concept of autophobia from Domenico Losurdo, an Italian Marxist philosopher and historian. “Autophobia is when the victims introject the point of view of their oppressor. It’s when one hates oneself. I realized that this happens to all Indigenous people, from South to North America [due to the colonization process],” Baré said.
But from the moment he started gathering academic knowledge of racial democracy and ancestral culture he said, citing Brazilian anthropologists Darcy Ribeiro and Berta Ribeiro, he realized that education is the only effective “weapon” to end the prejudice.
“I realized that education is not only … a shield to defend myself against prejudice and racism,” he said, “it is also a weapon … and the only weapon that we can use, as Indigenous people, that will not generate a genocidal reaction [from non-Indigenous people].
“It was thought of by the Brazilian people that if you were placed in the city, you are no longer an Indigenous,” Baré said. “If you wear shorts, you wear a watch, you wear a cellphone, you wear sneakers, you are no longer an Indigenous. But that’s a big lie, a big mistake.”
He said his dream is to free the Brazilian people from the ideological discourse game of the slave colonizer, which keeps Indigenous people subdued. “My dream … is that Brazilians instead of saying ‘Ah, they are the Indigenous,’ they say, ‘They are our ancestors.’”
Indigenous people are claiming their ancestral ownership rights over this building, located beside the famous Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. December 1, 2020. Image by Mongabay.
This project received funding support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting’s data journalism and property rights grant.
Infographics: Ambiental Media/Laura Kurtzberg
Data research and analysis: Yuli Santana, Rafael Dupim and Ambiental Media
Karla Mendes is a staff contributing editor for Mongabay in Brazil. Find her on Twitter: @karlamendes
We in DGR stand in solidarity with Survival International and support them because we believe that their analysis is correct and the organization is doing incredibly important work in standing up for indigenous peoples worldwide. While we encourage everyone to support Survival International and their very well-made campaigns, as an organization DGR pushes for more radical approaches than writing or signing letters and petitions, begging those in power to act in a different way. Those in power have never been on the side of the masses, the poor, the indigenous or the natural world. Asking nicely will not stop them continuing their atrocities.
At the next Convention on Biological Diversity summit, world leaders plan to agree turning 30% of the Earth into “Protected Areas” by 2030.
Big conservation NGOs say this will mitigate climate change, reduce wildlife loss, enhance biodiversity and so save our environment. They are wrong.
Protected Areas will not save our planet. On the contrary, they will increase human suffering and so accelerate the destruction of the spaces they claim to protect because local opposition to them will grow. They have no effect on climate change at all, and have been shown to be generally poor at preventing wildlife loss.
It is vital that real solutions are put forward to address these urgent problems and that the real cause – exploitation of natural resources for profit and growing overconsumption, driven by the Global North – is properly acknowledged and discussed. But this is unlikely to happen because there are too many vested interests that depend on existing consumption patterns continuing.
Who will suffer if 30% of Earth is “protected”? It won’t be those who have overwhelmingly caused the climate crisis, but rather indigenous and other local people in the Global South who play little or no part in the environment’s destruction. Kicking them off their land to create Protected Areas won’t help the climate: Indigenous peoples are the best guardians of the natural world and an essential part of human diversity that is a key to protecting biodiversity.
In many parts of the world a Protected Area is where the local people who called the land home for generations are no longer allowed to live or use the natural environment to feed their families, gather medicinal plants or visit their sacred sites. This follows the model of the United States’ nineteenth century creation of the world’s first national parks on lands stolen from Native Americans. Many US national parks forced the peoples who had created the wildlife-rich “wilderness” landscapes into landlessness and poverty.
This is still happening to indigenous peoples and other communities in Africa and parts of Asia. Local people are pushed out by force, coercion or bribery. They are beaten, tortured and abused by park rangers when they try to hunt to feed their families or just to access their ancestral lands. The best guardians of the land, once self-sufficient and with the lowest carbon footprint of any of us, are reduced to landless impoverishment and often end up adding to urban overcrowding. Usually these projects are funded and run by big Western conservation NGOs. Once the locals are gone, tourists, extractive industries and others are welcomed in. For these reasons, local opposition to Protected Areas is growing.
“If the jungle is taken away from us, how will we survive?”
Kunni Bai, a Baiga woman, denounces efforts to evict her people in the name of “conservation”.
Why should we oppose it?
Doubling Protected Areas to cover 30% of the globe will ensure these problems become much worse. As the most biodiverse regions are those where indigenous peoples still live, these will be the first areas targeted by the conservation industry. It will be the biggest land grab in world history and it will reduce hundreds of millions of people to landless poverty – all in the name of conservation. Creating Protected Areas has rarely been done with the consent of indigenous communities, or respect for their human rights. There is no sign that it will be any different in the future. More Protected Areas are likely to result in more militarization and human rights abuses.
The idea of “fortress conservation” – that local peoples must be removed from their land in order to protect ‘nature’ – is colonial. It’s environmentally damaging and rooted in racist and ecofascist ideas about which people are worth more, and which are worth less and can be pushed off their land and impoverished, or attacked and killed.
If we’re serious about putting the brakes on biodiversity loss, the cheapest and best-proven method is to support as much indigenous land as possible. Eighty per cent of the planet’s biodiversity is already found there.
For tribes, for nature, for all humanity. #BigGreenLie
Indigenous peoples worldwide are the victims of the largest genocide in human history, which is ongoing. Wherever indigenous cultures have not been completely destroyed or assimilated, they stand as relentless defenders of the landbases and natural communities which are there ancestral homes. They also provide living proof that humans as a species are not inherently destructive, but a societal structure based on large scale monoculture, endless energy consumption, accumulation of wealth and power for a few elites, human supremacy and patriarchy (i.e. civilization) is. DGR stands in strong solidarity with indigenous peoples.
David Kaimowitz describes his career as a “a 30-year quest to understand what causes deforestation,” one that has brought him full circle to where he started: at the issue of land rights.
Kaimowitz, who heads the Forest and Farm Facility, based at FAO, says the evidence shows that secure communal tenure rights is one of the most cost-effective ways to curb deforestation.
In that time, he’s also seen the discourse around the drivers of deforestation change from blaming smallholders, to realizing that a handful of large commodities companies are responsible for the majority of tropical forest loss.
In an interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler, Kaimowitz talks about why it took so long for Indigenous people to be recognized as guardians of the forest, the need for conservation NGOs to address social justice, and society’s capacity to effect meaningful change.
Over the past 20 years, the conservation sector has increasingly recognized the contributions Indigenous communities have made toward achieving conservation goals, including protecting biodiversity and maintaining ecosystems that sustain us. Accordingly, some large conservation NGOs that a generation ago were heavily focused on establishing and fortifying protected areas are today advocating for Indigenous rights and helping communities secure land tenure.
As a researcher who has worked at the intersection of forests, agriculture and local communities for more than 30 years now, David Kaimowitz has been well-positioned to observe the recent evolution of the conservation sector’s relationship with such communities.
“Indigenous Peoples and local communities have increasingly been recast as heroes, rather than villains,” said Kaimowitz, who currently serves as the manager of the Forest and Farm Facility, a partnership between the the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the IUCN, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), and the AgriCord Alliance. He attributes this shift to three factors: changing realities on the ground, a growing body of evidence, and better messaging.
“As more and more forest not managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities disappears, the conservation community has realized that increasingly these are the only forests left; at least, the only intact forests with large undisturbed areas,” Kaimowitz told Mongabay. “A growing [amount of] literature showed that, given a favorable policy environment, Indigenous Peoples and local communities often manage common property forests and other natural resources sustainably.
“The Indigenous Peoples and forest community groups themselves have become more effective at getting their messages across and making their voices heard. They have become powerful political forces in many countries and on the global stage, and conservation groups have had to listen.”
But while conservation is changing, it hasn’t yet been transformed: Indigenous peoples and local communities still face marginalization, lack of meaningful engagement, and underrepresentation, especially in conservation decision-making an leadership roles. Kaimowitz says conservation organizations need to become more inclusive.
“The more these organizations reflect the true diversity of the broader societies, the better they will be able to do that,” he said.
“Conservation has two strong long-standing strains. One harks back to nobles and moguls, who wanted to stop villagers from poaching big animals they hunted for trophies. The other finds its voice among those who depend on (and often nurture) nature to survive. The question is who will speak for conservation? The sheriff of Nottingham, protecting his majesty’s fowl and game, or Robin Hood, with his merry men (and women), living in the forest. That same unresolved tensions persist today; and will determine the movements’ future.”
In parts of the world, those tensions have been heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led some international conservation groups to pull out of projects, triggered a collapse in ecotourism, disrupted access to markets and the flow of remittances, and led some city dwellers to return to the countryside to farm. In some places, those developments have pushed local communities to take up subsistence farming and hunting in protected areas or become poachers, putting them in conflict with conservationists.
Colombia. Photo credit: Rhett A. Butler
The pandemic, says Kaimowitz, has been devastating to local communities, causing “profound pain” and loss of traditional knowledge with the death of elders. But COVID-19 has also shown us that governments are capable of taking dramatic action when facing a crisis.
“If the pandemic proves anything, it is that political and economic elites can take extraordinary measures to stave off disaster if they decide to do so,” he said. “Many things that ‘could not be done’ suddenly were. Central banks and ministries of finance pulled out their checkbooks and spent money they supposedly did not have. Both governments and the broader society stepped up to the plate. It has not been smooth or easy, but the world has largely pulled back from the abyss.
“Something similar will have to happen to avert catastrophic climate change and biodiversity loss; and there are signs that elites are getting the message.”
Kaimowitz spoke about these issues and more during an April 2021 conversation with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.
Mongabay: What sparked your interest in land rights and land use change?
David Kaimowitz: My whole life has revolved around an intertwined concern for social justice and the environment.
The land rights interest comes from undergraduate courses I took highlighting the huge inequalities in Latin American landholdings. It became clear that, in places where natural resources represent a large share of economic wealth, who owns and manages them influences every aspect of society.
We studied agrarian reforms in class, but I never imagined that one day I would be involved in one myself. Then, by pure coincidence, I entered a doctoral program in Wisconsin, just after the Nicaraguans overthrew the dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. The university had just gotten funding for a project with Nicaragua’s Ministry of Agricultural Development and Agrarian Reform (MIDINRA), and I became a research assistant. When Somoza fell, the Sandinistas took over many large farms and prominent experts flocked to the country to debate what to do with them. As a budding professional, it was an amazing opportunity to witness history being made.
Soon after, MIDINRA hired me directly, and we were asked to do oral histories of village elders in the northern Segovias region. The elders talked about major changes in how they farmed during their lifetime and the rapid loss of forest cover and soil fertility. That brought home how much daily life and the environment could change in a single lifetime.
Even so, I did not focus on land use change until the 1990s, when the United Nations held the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and “sustainable development” became the buzzword. I had read about how government subsidies and burgeoning export markets for beef triggered mass forest clearing for pastures in Central America. But by 1994 the situation had changed, and the region’s livestock sector was in crisis. That made me wonder if high beef prices and subsidized credit bolstered deforestation, would low prices and no credit bring the forest back? (It turned out, not much; but that is a story for another day.)
This initial puzzle led to a 30-year quest to understand what causes deforestation. Ironically, that has now brought me back full circle, to land rights. Because the evidence shows that secure communal tenure rights is one of the most cost-effective ways to curb deforestation and people won’t restore forests unless they have rights to trees.
Mongabay: What is your current focus at the FAO?
David Kaimowitz: The realization that Indigenous Peoples and local communities’ land and forest rights were so important for protecting forests led me to champion the need for greater funding to that end. It turns out that such rights and community resource management are key for addressing many major global challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, social conflict, and rural poverty, as well as forest loss per se.
So, I left my job in forest research (at CIFOR) and moved to the Ford Foundation to fund this work. Much of my work centered on supporting Indigenous Peoples and community groups and convincing international agencies to do the same. Many colleagues at those agencies found the arguments compelling but did not know how they could fund that work. Some great new initiatives emerged, like the International Forest and Land Tenure Facility, Indigenous and community-managed territorial funds in Brazil, the Nia Tero Fund [Mongabay Interview with Nia Tero’s Peter Seligmann], and the World Bank’s Direct Grant Mechanism, but they were all tiny compared to the need.
Rainforest creek in the Colombian Amazon. Photo by Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay.
So, I became manager of the Forest and Farm Facility so I could champion that cause. The Forest and Farm Facility is a partnership between the FAO, IUCN, IIED, and AgriCord, which supports forest and farm organizations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, which has been doing great work since 2013. I saw an opportunity to build on that and demonstrate that international agencies can support rural grassroots organizations effectively and achieve results at scale.
The FFF focuses on improving rural livelihoods and resilience and promoting more climate and biodiversity friendly landscapes. We provide funding and technical support and advocate for local, national, regional, and global farmer, community forestry, and Indigenous Peoples organizations. We also help organizations strengthen their advocacy, community enterprises, and operations, with special attention to women’s rights and youth inclusion, and facilitate links between these rural membership organizations with other internationally funded programs and with private investors and buyers.
Mongabay: How are the drivers of deforestation different today than they were in the 1980s and 1990s?
David Kaimowitz: Not only have the drivers of deforestation changed since then, but people’s thinking has also changed. The discourse of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio was that poverty drove deforestation. Environmental policies might be important, but ultimately the trick was to lift people out of poverty, so they would not have to overexploit their natural resources. While some talked about large cattle ranchers and logging companies, blame for deforestation was squarely on small-scale shifting cultivation.
Deforestation in Kapuas Hulu, Indonesian Borneo. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
That discourse probably overplayed the role of poverty and poor people in forest clearing even back then. Moving to forested regions, logging or clearing large forests and replacing them with crops or livestock requires more capital and labor than poor people usually have. It is true that clearing many small patches of forest can affect large areas — and we definitely see that in some regions — but that has always been responsible for a smaller portion of total tropical forest loss than many people thought.
In any case, since the 1990s large companies and landholders have played a more dominant role in global deforestation, both empirically and in the discourse. An increasing portion of deforestation has been linked to a small number of commodities — beef, palm oil, soy, and pulp and paper — where only a few hundred large companies dominate global value chains. The trend has been toward clearing larger areas (although this has varied over time and by region).
Soy field and forest at the transition zone of the Cerrado, Chaco and Amazon biomes. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Mining, of various scales, and production of illicit crops and related money laundering have become much more prominent causes of deforestation. In contrast, commercial timber production has lost prominence in the discussion, in part because timber resources have largely been exhausted in many regions, especially in the dipterocarp and teak forests of Southeast Asia.
Small-scale shifting cultivation, logging, and charcoal and fuelwood collection have increasingly disappeared from the global agenda and have lost importance in many regions. The main exception has been Sub-Saharan Africa, where small farms and common property resources remain dominant and burgeoning urban markets for forest products sometimes fuel overexploitation.
Mongabay: You’ve been working at the intersection of forests, agriculture and local communities for more than 30 years now. In that time, what have been the biggest changes in this space?
David Kaimowitz: As I began to discuss earlier, both the drivers of forest loss and the narratives about them have changed. To some extent the narrative change reflected empirical trends, but it is more complex than that.
Indigenous Peoples and local communities have increasingly been recast as heroes, rather than villains. Studies from different regions of the world called into question alarmist reports about the fuelwood crisis, devastating effects of shifting cultivation, and the extent of small farmer deforestation more generally. The motives behind these discourses were also questioned and cataloged as neocolonial attempts to justify stripping poor families of their resources, as often occurred in colonial days.
Indigenous man holding Tinamou eggs.
A growing literature showed that, given a favorable policy environment, Indigenous Peoples and local communities often manage common property forests and other natural resources sustainably. Elinor Ostrom became the first woman (and first non-economist) to win the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009 for demonstrating that, and it was a clear sign the tide had changed.
I recently wrote a report about forests in Indigenous and tribal territories in Latin America, published by FAO and FILAC, that cites dozens of relatively new studies that show that these territories’ inhabitants have generally managed their forests better than other groups. The most surprising thing about the peoples’ reaction to that conclusion was that no one was surprised. In a few decades, claiming that Indigenous Peoples were “guardians of the forests” went from being heresy to an established fact.
That is not to say that small farmers, or Indigenous Peoples for that matter, never destroy forests, or that it is not a problem when they do. Poor rural households clearly overexploit forest resources in some places, and the issue must be addressed. However, most experts now hold large-scale actors responsible for a majority of global tropical forest destruction and think it is better to work with communities to reduce smallholder overexploitation of forest resources, rather than repressing them.
Mongabay: Over the past decade, there seems to be much greater awareness in the conservation sector about the contributions Indigenous peoples and local communities have made toward achieving conservation outcomes. What has driven this shift?
David Kaimowitz: Part has to do with changing realities on the ground. As more and more forest not managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities disappears, the conservation community has realized that increasingly these are the only forests left; at least, the only intact forests with large undisturbed areas.
Part also has to do with the avalanche of rigorous research highlighting those contributions. When I did my meta-analysis of research on forests in Indigenous and Afro-descendant territories in Latin America for the FAO-FILAC report, the sheer volume of high-quality recent research that all pointed in the same direction amazed me. These territories’ forests have been better preserved, even when accounting for things such as distance from roads and soil fertility. When the territories have formal rights and additional support, their forests are doing better still.
Finally, the Indigenous Peoples and forest community groups themselves have become more effective at getting their messages across and making their voices heard. They have become powerful political forces in many countries and on the global stage, and conservation groups have had to listen.
Mongabay: We’ve heard a lot more about stakeholder inclusivity in recent years, especially in the context of the past year between the social justice movement in the U.S. and criticisms of colonial practices among some big NGOs. Is this being translated at the levels of decision-making within the institutions that fund and implement conservation projects?
David Kaimowitz: The big conservation NGOs are large bureaucracies with strong institutional cultures, dominated by upper-middle-class whites, like me. In any such bureaucracy, transformative change rarely happens overnight. I do think, though, that the dramatic upswing of the racial justice movement in the United States and elsewhere, and the growing environmental justice movements have shaken them to their core. They have been forced to come to grips with sordid elements in their past, recognize implicit bias against people of color, and focus more on how environmental problems affect poor people and people of color disproportionately.
How far this will get is hard to say. Many previous efforts to get these organizations to address social and racial justice concerns petered out over time. But I am cautiously optimistic that this time will be different, and we will see real change. Many funders that support these organizations expect that.
Mongabay: What do you see as major gaps that still persist in the conservation sector?
David Kaimowitz: Most immediately, there are staffing issues, bringing in more people of color and from low-income households. But more broadly the question is, will they embrace an approach that is not so elite? Can they speak to regular peoples’ daily lives in ways that they can understand and respect those peoples’ lived experience and traditional knowledge, be they rural or urban? The more these organizations reflect the true diversity of the broader societies, the better they will be able to do that.
Clouds reflected in a blackwater oxbow lake in the Peruvian Amazon.
Conservation has two strong long-standing strains. One harks back to nobles and moguls, who wanted to stop villagers from poaching big animals they hunted for trophies. The other finds its voice among those who depend on (and often nurture) nature to survive. The question is who will speak for conservation? The sheriff of Nottingham, protecting his majesty’s fowl and game, or Robin Hood, with his merry men (and women), living in the forest. That same unresolved tensions persist today; and will determine the movement’s future.
Mongabay: You spent some time in the philanthropic sector. What was your most impactful grant during that time? And why? Or if not a single grant, what type of grant was the most impactful?
David Kaimowitz: The greatest impact came from communications grants, which allowed Indigenous and community leaders to be heard for the first time. Most media coverage about tropical forests cites government officials, companies, NGOs, and scientists from the Global North. Everyone except those who live in and from forests and often protect them most. When politicians plant a tree, it is a big photo op. Farmers plant millions of them all the time, and no one seems to notice.
We funded communications firms, filmmakers, social media wizards, innovative digital media groups like Mongabay, and worked with musicians and actors to help grassroots leaders and villagers give their own account, in their own words. Not to be used as props by some NGO or project, but to tell their own story. What they were proud of, worried them, or needed to change.
Arhauco indigenous leader in a former coca-producing area of Colombia.
It was incredibly powerful, authentic, like reality TV. These were people who walked the walk, and often risked their lives; and made the world greener and cooler in the process. These were the real Guardians of the Forests; and their message resonated well beyond Wall Street and ivory towers.
Minutes ago, I watched an advertisement from the Guatemalan government showcasing the community forest concessions in the Peten. That would have been almost unimaginable a few short years ago. These communities that manage the concessions have gone toe to toe to keep some of Central America’s most powerful groups from wresting control over their forests. But once the wider audiences heard their stories, they won the PR battle. Now even the president wants them in the photo.
Something similar happened with the murder of local environmentalists and land rights defenders, many of them Indigenous. This is a long-standing problem, although the situation may be getting worse. But the communications groups were able to shine a light on it, and help people realize that these were not just local disputes over land or water, the outcomes affect us all. Indigenous martyrs like Berta Cáceres in Honduras, Edwin Chota in Peru, Isidro Baldenegro in Mexico, Charlie Taylor in Nicaragua, or Paulo Paulino Guajajara in Brazil died in the defense of Mother Earth, and we all have a stake in that.
At first Global Witness was the only high-profile NGO to raise the issue. But as it got more attention, all the big international human rights groups got on board. The problem is by no means solved, but the intellectual authors of these attacks can no longer be so confident that they can act with total impunity.
Mongabay: COVID-19 has obviously had an enormous impact around the world. What have you heard from the partners and allies you have in the field?
David Kaimowitz: The first thing, of course, is the profound pain. So many leaders and elders lost. People we knew or hoped to meet. Stories, wisdom, languages gone. Sickness, hunger, markets lost. And too many governments shamelessly indifferent.
But also, amazing resilience. One Forest and Farm Facility partner, AgriCord, surveyed grassroots forest and farm organizations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and found that practically all had stepped up and were responding to the pandemic. They were providing masks and information, planting gardens, finding new markets, pressing governments for support, and caring for those in need. They didn’t sit back and wait for aid. They acted.
A U.N. study about the pandemic and Indigenous Peoples in Latin America found the same thing. Indigenous organizations took the initiative and monitored the virus’s spread, regulated entrance into communities, and supplied Western and traditional medicine, with women often in the lead.
Mongabay: And what do you expect the impacts of the pandemic to be on deforestation in the near term?
David Kaimowitz: It is hard to say. At first, I thought the global economy would practically collapse, and deforestation would decline as a result. Last March and April there were many signs of that. But then the world’s central banks stepped in with huge stimulus plans, which turned things around. Now the global economy is starting to boom and that could easily increase the pressure on forests.
The pandemic has also affected politics, not just economics. For example, one could argue that Trump would still be president in the United States if it were not for the pandemic, and that might have affected what happened to forests. We may see similar stories play out elsewhere, but it is too early to say who stands to benefit.
Mongabay: And what do you see the longer-term impact of COVID-19 being on the relationship between society, especially Western society, and the world around us?
David Kaimowitz: The pandemic made us all feel more vulnerable and realize how fragile and tenuous our societies are. Now when we hear discussions about the devastating effects of climate change, they seem less abstract and distant. COVID-19 was a wake-up call, a reminder that we are still linked to the natural world, and of the many links between forests and health. But it is still unclear how many heard that wake-up call or how long they will stay awake.
Short term, most people are probably desperate to go back to how things were. To go out, socialize, and travel. That will tend to pull us back toward the status quo. But there does seem to be greater awareness of the Anthropocene; that the ecosystems we depend on are severely strained and the limits are not far away. As people experience that in daily life, that awareness will probably grow.
So will the backlash. Denialism, Western fundamentalism. The parallel universe on Facebook and Youtube. Many people are scared and feel threatened, and that rarely leads anywhere good.
Mongabay: You’ve done a lot of research in Latin America. While there are exceptions, taken as a whole, the region is experiencing rising authoritarianism, tropical deforestation, and violence against defenders. Why is this and what’s your medium and long-term outlook for the region in terms of these issues?
David Kaimowitz: Latin America faces difficult dilemmas. The population is increasingly urban, but the economies depend heavily on rural agriculture, oil, and mining. The predominant economic and political model of the last decade was to increase government revenues from extractive activities and use them for clientelist programs that earned political support. But this model has largely run its course; and the environmental costs piled up. Nor can countries simply expect to live off remittances from migrants abroad. Most countries failed to invest enough in education, research, innovation, and technology, so they could transition to less extractive economies, based on more skilled labor. On top of this, the pandemic has left the region much more indebted, and no one knows how it can pay its bills.
All of this has tended to undermine the existing political systems, opening paths for authoritarians. Organized crime has become an erosive force, filling in spaces where governments are fragile, and weakening them even more. Meanwhile, many predominantly white middle-class civil society groups run by professionals concerned with conservation, human rights, feminism, and other important issues failed to connect with the broader public, leaving them vulnerable to attack.
There are no simple solutions or magic bullets, but my vision of a potential route forward includes some of the following: Economic models that depend more on small-scale and communal enterprises that can innovate and produce value added. Less funds for buying votes and more for investing in people and landscapes. A renaissance of local democracy, real recognition of the plurinational and multiracial character of most Latin American societies, and more political space for women and youth.
It will not be simple and may not happen. But the region needs to find a way forward, because it cannot go back to where it was.
Mongabay: What are the levers that need to be pulled to drive systemic change toward averting catastrophic climate change and biodiversity loss?
David Kaimowitz: If the pandemic proves anything, it is that political and economic elites can take extraordinary measures to stave off disaster if they decide to do so. Many things that “could not be done” suddenly were. Central banks and ministries of finance pulled out their checkbooks and spent money they supposedly did not have. Both governments and the broader society stepped up to the plate. It has not been smooth or easy, but the world has largely pulled back from the abyss.
Something similar will have to happen to avert catastrophic climate change and biodiversity loss; and there are signs that elites are getting the message. We may soon see truly massive investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy. It is less clear whether the forest and biodiversity messages are getting across. There is no way to meet global climate goals without more robust forests, but most people don’t realize that, not even many experts.
Sungai Utik rainforest in Indonesian Borneo. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
In any case these efforts will only succeed if they address inequality. One reason climate action is moving forward is it has been linked to jobs. “Green New Deals” are not just partisan political slogans, they are essential to reach wider audiences. Agriculture and land use are big parts of the problem and must be front and center in the solutions; but the policies must speak to — and with — rural and small-town people, in all their diversity. Cleaner air, more urban trees, parks and gardens, public transportation. It is nice to listen to the scientists; but we also have to listen to workers, farmers, nurses and waitresses, people of faith.
Mongabay: What would you say to young people who are distressed about the current trajectory of the planet?
David Kaimowitz: I am truly sorry we let you down. We thought we knew what we were doing and got many things wrong. But it is not too late, and you have many things going for you that we never had. New ways to organize and communicate, more empathetic and accountable women leaders.
No matter how things seem now they may look different later. Many things I used to believe proved wrong and many I thought were permanent proved ephemeral. Some turned out worse than I expected, but others much better. No matter how things look these days, they can and will change. In the meantime, we cannot afford to stop trying to make things better and learn along the way.
Continue to demand the impossible. It is only impossible until it is not. It may be too late to restore much of the natural and cultural riches we lost, but you/we can still save some; and it is definitely worth the effort.
Happening today: Bright Green Lies the documentary premieres Earth Day – April 22nd — as a live-streaming event and Q&A with director Julia Barnes, and authors Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Max Wilbert. Tickets are available at https://www.brightgreenlies.com/
Solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars have long been touted as solutions to the climate crisis.
The “green” image attached to these technologies masks a dark reality; they are adding to the problem of environmental destruction, failing to reduce CO2 emissions, and accelerating the mass extinction of life on the planet.
In my upcoming film Bright Green Lies, based on the book by the same name, I take a critical look at the industries that claim to be about saving the planet.
60% of the European Union’s “renewable” energy comes from biomass. Forests across North America are being clear cut and shipped across the Atlantic to be burned for electricity. Biomass is inaccurately counted as carbon neutral, when in reality emissions from biomass plants can exceed that of coal fired power plants. The burning of wood in Europe is subsidized to the tune of nearly 7 billion euros per year.
Dams have been called “methane bombs” because they produce large amounts of methane. They also harm rivers by increasing the water temperature and blocking the passage of fish who swim upriver to spawn.
So-called “renewables” like solar panels and wind turbines are made of finite materials that require mining. The materials that go into creating “green” tech range from copper and steel to concrete, sand, and rare earths. In Baotou, China, a dystopian lake is filled with toxic waste from rare earths mining. Fossil fuels are burned throughout the production process.
Wind turbines in the US kill over 1 million birds per year. Bats who fly near the turbines can die of barotrauma – their lungs exploding from the pressure differential caused by the blades.
A proposed lithium mine in northern Nevada currently threatens 5000 acres of old growth sagebrush habitat. The industry calls this a “green” mine because the lithium will be used in electric car batteries. I doubt the golden eagles, sage grouse, pronghorn antelope, rabbitbrush, or Crosby’s buckwheat who call the area home would agree. The mine would burn around 11,300 gallons of diesel fuel and produce thousands of tons of sulfuric acid per day.
There are plans to mine the deep sea to extract the materials for electric car batteries and “renewable” energy storage. It is predicted that each mining vessel would process 2-6 million cubic feet of sediment per day. The remaining slurry would be dumped back into the ocean where it would smother and burry organisms, toxify the food web, and potentially disrupt the plankton who produce two thirds of earth’s oxygen.
These are just a few examples of the environmental harms associated with “green” technology. To scale up the production of these technologies would require increased mining, habitat destruction, global shipping, industrial manufacturing, and the production of more toxic waste. “Renewables” are predicted to be the number one cause of habitat destruction by mid-century.
So-called green technologies both emerge from and support the industrial system that is destroying life on the planet.
We have been told a story that there is a baseline demand for energy, and that if this demand could be met with so-called renewables, fossil fuel use would diminish. This story runs contrary to the entire history of energy usage. Historically, as new sources of energy have been added to the grid, old sources have remained constant or grown. Instead of displacing each other, each additional source stacks on top of the rest, and industrial civilization becomes more energy intensive.
We see the same pattern today, in the real world, with the addition of so-called renewables. On a global scale, “green” technologies do not even deliver on their most basic promise of reducing fossil fuel consumption.
All the mining, pollution and habitat destruction simply adds to the harm being done to the planet. Nothing about the production of “green” energy helps the natural world.
The push for “green” energy solves for the wrong variable. It takes a high-energy, high-consumption industrial civilization as a given, when this is precisely what needs to change if we are to live sustainably on this planet.
The real solutions are obvious; stop the industries that are causing the harm and allow life to come back. Fossil fuels need our opposition. So do lithium mines, rare earths mines, copper mines, iron mines, and industrial wind and solar facilities. Fracking should not be tolerated. Neither should biomass plants or hydroelectric dams.
Forests, prairies, mangroves, seagrasses, and fish have all been decimated. They could all sequester large amounts of carbon if we allowed them to recover.
While making my first documentary, Sea of Life, I visited the village of Cabo Pulmo. The ocean there had once been heavily overfished, but within ten years of creating a marine protected area, the biomass – the mass of life in the ocean – increased by over 450%. When I arrived, 20 years after the marine reserve was created, I found an ocean that was teeming with fish.
Life wants to live. If we can stop the harm, nature will do the repair work that’s necessary. But there are limits to how far things can be pushed, and we are running out of time. Up to 200 species are going extinct every day. The destruction of the world is accelerating, thanks in part, to the very industries being touted as “green”. With life on the planet at stake, we cannot afford to waste time on false solutions.
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