Civil Society, Environment, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: Sacrificing His Life to Defend the Life of the Wetlands

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 15 2005 (IPS) - The environmental struggle in Brazil has reached the point of human sacrifice with the death of veteran activist Francisco Anselmo de Barros, who set himself on fire to save the Pantanal wetlands in west-central Brazil that stretch into Bolivia and Paraguay.

Environment Minister Marina Silva personally contacted Barros’s family in Campo Grande Tuesday to express her condolences and solidarity, and stated her determination to prevent, through legal action if necessary, the installation of sugarcane alcohol plants within or along the edges of the Pantanal.

The 65-year-old activist set fire to himself on Saturday at the end of a demonstration by hundreds of people in Campo Grande, capital of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, held to protest the proposed installation of sugarcane processing plants that produce fuel alcohol in the Pantanal area.

Barros died on Sunday with burns over 90 percent of his body. He had dedicated 30 years of his life to environmental activism as the founder of the Fundaçao para Conservaçao da Natureza de Mato Grosso do Sul (Mato Grosso do Sul Nature Conservation Foundation -FUCONAMS), one of Brazil’s oldest environmental organisations.

Silva pointed out that Brazil’s laws on the environment prohibit this kind of economic activity in the hydrographic basins that form part of the Pantanal, a wetlands system that is also protected by the Brazilian constitution, which recognises the Pantanal as a national natural heritage site.

Barros’s self-sacrifice drew reactions of “incredulity”, because nobody, not even his wife, had observed any prior indication of his premeditated decision, Alcides Faria told IPS.

Faria is the executive director of the Campo Grande-based Ecologia e Açao (Ecology and Action -ECOA), which functions as the executive secretariat for the Rios Vivos coalition, a worldwide network of more than 300 non-governmental organisations.

Barros left more than a dozen letters to relatives, friends and the press, calling on environmentalists to “continue the struggle” and explaining that he was immolating himself because it was “the only way to wake people up.”

“As we cannot vote to save the Pantanal, we will give our life to save it,” one of his letters concludes. He was referring to the draft law being debated in the state legislature, which could authorise sugarcane alcohol plants to operate within the Pantanal.

Barros, a journalist who owned a local magazine, was known for his level-headedness and nothing about him led one to expect such a dramatic act, said Faria. “It’s the first case of self-immolation for the environmental cause that I know of,” he added.

Barros’s action has caused amazement, but it may well indicate a tendency towards ever more radical acts in defence of threatened ecosystems, possibly arising from the feelings of powerlessness and frustration among environmental movements, alongside a deep conviction that the future of life itself is at risk.

Six weeks ago Roman Catholic bishop Luiz Flavio Cappio went on a hunger strike for eleven days, and threatened to continue to the death, unless the government gave up its project to divert the waters of the Sao Francisco river to semiarid areas in north-east Brazil.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s promise to re-open public debate on the initiative caused the bishop to desist, but he has stated that he will resume his fast if the government starts engineering works without ensuring measures are taken to prevent the “death” of the river, which crosses east-central Brazil.

In one of his farewell letters, Barros refers to the diversion of the Sao Francisco river, the expansion of transgenic crops and the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, along with other examples of aggression against the environment, all threatening to “sink the ship” while “the government remains impassive.”

Previous environmental martyrs in Brazil have been victims of murder. The most notorious cases are those of Francisco “Chico” Mendes, creator of “extractive reserves” to protect the livelihoods of jungle dwellers in the Amazon region, who was killed in 1988 in the state of Acre, and U.S. missionary Dorothy Stang, murdered in February this year in Pará, another Amazonian state.

They were also leaders of social struggles in favour of forest peoples and landless peasants.

In the last few years, local cases that have not received much media attention have increased. In the state of Rio de Janeiro alone, at least four environmentalists have been killed since 1992. The most recent death was that of Dionisio Ribeiro Filho, slain for defending the Tinguá ecological reserve, near the city of Rio de Janeiro.

Conflicts over land which also involve environmental issues have led to many violent deaths as well, especially among indigenous people and rural activists.

The Mato Grosso Pantanal covers an area of 210,000 square kilometers – four times the size of Costa Rica. Among the other threats to the wetlands are the proposed establishment of a steel industry in the heart of the region, and the construction of the Paraná-Paraguay waterway, a megaproject that would require dredging and modifications of the course of the Paraguay river which is at the core of the ecosystem, Faria said.

The governor of Mato Grosso do Sul, José Orcirio Miranda, has said in defence of the distilleries and sugarcane processing plants that they would be installed outside the Pantanal, using new technologies to prevent pollution.

But factories, however small, installed near the headwaters are equivalent to “cutting the veins” that feed an area which “essentially depends on its water,” countered Faria. Besides, the project would give free rein to sugarcane cultivation in the Pantanal, he added

The sugarcane industry supplies millions of vehicles with fuel alcohol in Brazil. It developed principally in the state of Sao Paulo, after the global oil crisis of 1973, and has been largely responsible for polluting or even killing a number of rivers, by dumping waste products.