Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Pará state has a general reputation of lawlessness. It is by far the Brazilian state
where the most conflicts over land use occur (CPT 2009). A well-documented report
by Greenpeace (2003) described it as a 'state of conflict'. Land grabbing, human
rights violations and conflicts between communities, big landowners and (multina-
tional) companies occur on a regular basis. High-profile murders over land-use, which
attracted international attention, have taken place in western Pará. In 2005, Amer-
ican Sister Dorothy Stang, locally a well-known protector of the rainforest and the
poor, was killed. She had repeatedly received death threats from loggers and landown-
ers, although in the end it appears ranchers were responsible for the murder. In
2011, a prominent couple of rainforest protectors were also murdered. Their names
had been on a hit list for a long time, but the two were refused police protection.
This double murder was widely reported in the international press as it occurred on
the very same day that the Brazilian House of Representatives voted for a new and
controversial Forest Act that allows farmers and ranchers to deforest more (Phillips
2011: 27).
While these murders received considerable international attention, deforestation
in the Amazon has led to numerous, mostly unknown cases of conflict, violence and
murder (Boekhout van Solinge 2010a; 2010b). Before the murder on rubber tap-
per Chico Mendes in 1989 (which also garnered much international attention), only
ten people had ever been brought to court despite the roughly 1,000 murders that
occurred in the Amazon in the 1980s (Phillips 2008: 23). It is estimated that 475
activists were murdered in the state of Pará between 1996 and 2001 (London and
Kelly 2007: 139). The Pastoral Land Commission CPT revealed in 2008 that at least
260 people, among them a Catholic Bishop, were living “under the threat of murder
because of their fight against a coalition of logger, farmers and cattle ranchers'' (Phillips
2008: 23).
In the Tapajós valley in western Pará, several conflicts can be identified: land
(especially soy cultivation), water and mining conflicts. Deforestation for soy has only
exacerbated the existing conflicts between forest exploiters (cattle, agriculture or min-
ing) and forest inhabitants. The majority of the deforestation is illegal and land tenure
disputes are common.
Soy cultivation has increased substantially in the area since 2003, when American
soy giant Cargill constructed a soy export harbor terminal in Santarém, the location
at which the clear water Tapajós river flows into the muddy Amazon river, some 800
kilometers from the Amazon river's mouth. Large landowners from the south of Brazil
buy -often through corruption- or grab land. It is common for farmers to use
pistoleros
(gunmen), forcing traditional communities to leave (CIMI 2009).
A recently constructed bauxite mine run by the American aluminium corporation
Alcoa near the town of Jurutí, also along the Amazon river, has become the subject
of yet another conflict. The Federal government has approved deforestation to clear
rainforest for the mine, but traditional forest communities have protested, exclaiming
that their existence was not mentioned in environmental impact studies. Other conflicts
are emerging in the area too, such as one over the planned hydroelectric dams in the
Tapajós river.
Activities from a green criminological perspective that have been developed or sup-
ported by the LAR project in Brazil include research on the water pollution around soy
fields by environmental biologists, the legal/illegal mechanisms and practices behind
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