The World Council of Churches has called for greater protection to be given to the Amazon, saying that the life it sustains is “withering” as forest loss continues and its defenders face increasing “intimidation and violence”.
A statement released by the WCC’s executive committee as it meets in Amman, Jordan, this week, stated that: “The Amazon, the green heart of the Earth, is mourning and the life it sustains is withering.”
The committee said that although annual forest loss began to slow from 2004 onwards, the last two years have seen many of the achievements reversed.
“Defenders of the Amazon are encountering increasing intimidation and violence, with Brazil recording the highest number of killings of environmental protectors – 49 women and men – many of them Indigenous leaders, in 2016,” they wrote.
The committee said the Brazilian Government is reversing previous protections, noting that “most significantly”, in August, the nation’s President Michel Temer abolished a vast national reserve protected since 1984 and opened it to commercial mining activities. The move was blocked by a Brazilian court following an outcry but the WCC committee said they were concerned this is only a “temporary reprieve”.
“The Government claims that the measure, aimed at attracting new investments, will generate employment and wealth for the country,” they said. “However, WCC member churches in Brazil believe that if the decree is enacted, it will further undermine the rights and livelihood of Indigenous Peoples, accelerate deforestation, undermine water resources, hasten the loss of biodiversity and precipitate further land conflicts.”
“With this proposal, the government of Brazil seeks to roll back environmental protections established over the last two decades, with major implications not only for the protection of land rights and the survival of the region’s Indigenous Peoples, but for the health and sustainability of the entire planet.”
The committee said they were also concerned for the protection and the health of the recently discovered Amazon Aquifer, a groundwater reservoir, which Brazil shares with Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru, and which is nearly four million square kilometres in size.
“Studies have shown that though the chemical quality of water in the Amazon Aquifer is good, there is nevertheless a risk of contamination due to the use of mercury in mining activities and agricultural pesticides,” they wrote. “This vast yet fragile groundwater reservoir must be protected and not be exposed to the threats posed by private and commercial exploitation.”
The executive committee called on churches and people of goodwill to “continue to challenge governments, politicians, companies, and enterprises, holding them accountable for all unscrupulous destruction of sources of food, water, shelter, medicine and livelihoods for current and future generations”. It is also urging the Congress and Government of Brazil to “withdraw the regressive and destructive initiatives to abolish existing environmental protections in the Amazon Basin in order to open those areas to extractive industries and commercial exploitation”.
