“I represent the fight in Brazil to protect the Amazon Rainforest. It’s important to bring my reality and my voice for you to learn what’s happening. I am here for my family and community; I have received death threats because I want to protect the forests. I am afraid because they have brutally murdered other activists. I am here because the people still don’t understand that without the forest there is no life, and without the indigenous people, there is no forest. When the colonizers invaded our lands and destroyed our forests, our ancestors resisted, and today the forests in Brazil are still standing wherever the indigenous people can be found. But the truth is that the colonizers never left, our lands are still being invaded, we suffer the consquences of a climate and humanitarian crisis. Deforestation is advancing on our territories, and there are more than 10,000 illegal cattle there. Do you know where this meat is going to? To here, to France, Europe and the USA. So, everyone is supporting the deforestation of the Amazon and the threat against the indigenous people. According to the latest reports, the Amazon is losing its ability to absorb carbon dioxide which will affect people across the world. The climate change is real, but the world continues to act as if this isn’t happening. The Amazon is near a point without return and could become a desert. We had the seventh warmest years in history, the oceans reached their highest level of acidity, temperatures, and the raising of sea level. The environment and climate will affect everyone, we should all be worried. So why are you continuing the destruction of the forest and our genocide? We have resisted for 500 years and we continue to do that. We work the land sustainably and we reforest. For we understand that we have reached a point at which we need to return to nature what has been taken from it. We are fighting daily for our lives to keep the forest alive. We are 5% of the world’s population and we protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity. But we need you to do your part. I am not here to ask you to save us, I am here to tell you what’s happening in the Amazon and what is your part in this, because we are saving you! It is we who support the Amazon and we are the forest. We need laws that stop our deportation and we need to be protected by human rights violation laws and just solutions so that nobody is left behind. We should remember that we can’t save the nature unless we save those who protect it. There is no chance of a better world as long as there are people starving, children murdered, women raped, forest and oceans getting destroyed, and as long as the money is more important than life. So, let’s change it.”
By Victor N.