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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/23/our-life-project-against-their-death-project/">counterpunch.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Our Life Project Against Their Death Project</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Letter of Indigenous Peoples, Peasants, Traditional Communities and Afro-Descendants In Latin America</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">July 23, 2024<br></div>
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<p><img src="https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/bastaredd.jpg" alt="" width="394" height="177" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;"></p><p><em>Alto Turiaçu, July 2024</em></p>
<p>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).</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p><strong>REDD’S DEATH PROJECT</strong></p>
<blockquote><p>1. Breaks the unity and harmony of our people and generates conflicts, including within our own families.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>3. Criminalizes the livelihoods of our people and communities.</p>
<p>4. Manipulates our leaders into signing contracts without the consent of our people.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>6. Take control of our territories and take away our autonomy.</p>
<p>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.</p></blockquote>
<p>Furthermore:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>8. Compensation mechanisms, such as REDD, allow companies to continue polluting and do not reduce emissions.</p>
<p>9. REDD promotes the creation of protected areas, depriving us of livelihoods and banning us from our territories.</p>
<p>10. We reject the 30×30 goals that seek to achieve conservation
affecting our territories while protecting the interests of large
companies.</p>
<p>11. Governments violate Constitutions and change laws that protect
our territories to facilitate and favor extractive companies and
REDD-type projects.</p></blockquote>
<p>REDD projects are projects of death, because instead of protecting, they are destroying nature and our people.</p>
<p>IN OUR LIFE PROJECT</p>
<blockquote><p>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.</p>
<p>2. We demand and fight for the titling and demarcation of territories.</p>
<p>3. We recognize and respect the rights of nature in harmony with people.</p>
<p>4. We defend self-government, self-determination and autonomy of peoples.</p>
<p>5. We defend and respect our ways of life, which are those that guarantee the defense and care of our territories.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>7. We recognize and respect traditional knowledge as a fundamental condition of life.</p>
<p>8. We respect and fight for health and education in our languages and cultures.</p>
<p>9. We fight for territories of peace, free from companies and government policies that pollute and destroy.</p>
<p>10. We advocate and work to create opportunities for our young people based on our knowledge and wisdom.</p>
<p>11. Our territories have no economic value. They are financially invaluable.</p>
<p>12. We emphasize the central role of women in defending our territories.</p>
<p>13. We urge human rights organizations to speak out and defend respect for the territorial rights of our peoples.</p></blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<p>ENOUGH! NO to REDD!</p>
<p><em>Translation by Forrest Hylton.</em></p>
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