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Rio de Janeiro (AFP) – The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, assured this Monday that he intends to demarcate new indigenous lands “as soon as possible”, a process that stalled during the term of his predecessor, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro.
“I asked the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs to show me all the lands ready to be demarcated. They must be demarcated as soon as possible, before others appropriate them (…) by falsifying documents,” Lula said during an assembly of indigenous leaders in the state of Roraima (north).
“We must quickly legalize all the lands whose studies (for delimitation) are ready or practically ready, so that the indigenous people can occupy their territory,” insisted the leftist president.
It is common in the Brazilian Amazon for individuals to usurp land to deforest it and then officially claim it using false documents.
The approval of new indigenous lands “will help us take care of the climate, otherwise humanity will disappear due to our irresponsibility,” said Lula, 77, who ruled the country between 2003 and 2010.
“The indigenous people are not occupying other people’s land, they are only fighting to recover what was theirs and what the invaders took from them since 1500”, the year of the arrival of the first Portuguese colonizers in Brazil, added the head of state.
Some 800,000 indigenous people live in Brazil, the majority in environmental reserves that occupy 13.75% of the national territory, according to the last census in 2010.
Shortly before beginning his term (2019-2022), Bolsonaro had promised “not to give another centimeter” to indigenous lands, and the approval process for new reserves was paralyzed for four years. Under his presidency, average annual deforestation in the Amazon also increased 75% over the previous decade.
But the official figures reveal that the government has a great challenge ahead.
Deforestation in the Amazon in February (322 km2) increased 62% compared to February 2022, a record for that month of the year.
Environmental organizations are for now patient with the new authorities, while they await the data of the dry season, which begins in July, when deforestation tends to increase.
© 2023 AFP
