[News] Our Life Project Against Their Death Project

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Our Life Project Against Their Death Project
Letter of Indigenous Peoples, Peasants, Traditional Communities and
Afro-Descendants In Latin America
July 23, 2024
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*Alto Turiaçu, July 2024*

In the Indigenous territory of Alto Turiaçu, in the Aldeia Ararorenda of
the Ka’apor people, in the state of Maranhão, Brazil, from the 9th to the
11th of July, we held our first meeting as indigenous peoples, peasants,
traditional communities, quilombolas (descendants of escaped slaves),
organizations defending Indigenous rights from different countries in the
Pan-Amazon region and Central American territories, where projects known as
REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) have
arrived. To make it easier, when we refer to REDD below, we are also
including other names created using the same logic as REDD (for example,
when talking about forest carbon projects, nature-based solutions, or
jurisdictional REDD programs implemented by state or provincial governments
and national governments, among others).

After three days of sharing experiences and analyzing what REDD+ really
means for our peoples and territories, we concluded that we are facing two
projects: one is the death project that oil, mining, hydroelectric and
large infrastructure companies, agribusiness, and now compensation projects
such as REDD, together with nation-states, promote, and second, a life
project that is carried forward by our peoples and communities through
respect and care for our territories.

In view of this, we issue the following statement, so that our brothers and
sisters from different peoples and communities do not fall into this trap:

*REDD’S DEATH PROJECT*

1. Breaks the unity and harmony of our people and generates conflicts,
including within our own families.

2. Threatens the lives of women, children, and the elderly, by depriving us
of the subsistence we have in our forests for food and access to water.

3. Criminalizes the livelihoods of our people and communities.

4. Manipulates our leaders into signing contracts without the consent of
our people.

5. Seeks greater economic benefits for its businesses and encourages
deforestation, because the more deforestation there is, the more business
for companies that sell carbon credits.

6. Take control of our territories and take away our autonomy.

7. Like other false solutions to the climate catastrophe, called
“unconventional oil exploration”, “biofuels,” “responsible mining,” or
“green gold,” “energy transition,” it is greenwashing that allows companies
to continue their business and polluting.

Furthermore:

8. Compensation mechanisms, such as REDD, allow companies to continue
polluting and do not reduce emissions.

9. REDD promotes the creation of protected areas, depriving us of
livelihoods and banning us from our territories.

10. We reject the 30×30 goals that seek to achieve conservation affecting
our territories while protecting the interests of large companies.

11. Governments violate Constitutions and change laws that protect our
territories to facilitate and favor extractive companies and REDD-type
projects.

REDD projects are projects of death, because instead of protecting, they
are destroying nature and our people.

IN OUR LIFE PROJECT

1. We defend our territories, our rivers, forests, sacred sites, spirits
with whom we interact so that they can live and so that we can live, our
ancestral knowledge and culture, our medicinal plants, materials for our
homes, for crafts that we use for our subsistence, our food.

2. We demand and fight for the titling and demarcation of territories.

3. We recognize and respect the rights of nature in harmony with people.

4. We defend self-government, self-determination and autonomy of peoples.

5. We defend and respect our ways of life, which are those that guarantee
the defense and care of our territories.

6. We demand the implementation of the fundamental right to consultation
and free, prior and informed consent, respecting the right of veto,
considering ILO Convention 169 and the various agreements and declarations
of international law.

7. We recognize and respect traditional knowledge as a fundamental
condition of life.

8. We respect and fight for health and education in our languages and
cultures.

9. We fight for territories of peace, free from companies and government
policies that pollute and destroy.

10. We advocate and work to create opportunities for our young people based
on our knowledge and wisdom.

11. Our territories have no economic value. They are financially invaluable.

12. We emphasize the central role of women in defending our territories.

13. We urge human rights organizations to speak out and defend respect for
the territorial rights of our peoples.

They have been killing us since colonization began more than five centuries
ago. Currently, oil, mining, agribusiness, hydroelectric and other
infrastructure projects and carbon offset projects, such as REDD, together
with State policies, continue the ethnocide of our people, killing our
cultures, languages, identities , knowledge, and wisdom.

ENOUGH! NO to REDD!

*Translation by Forrest Hylton.*
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