Brazil’s Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling this week that could determine the fate of controversial legislation that conservationists fear will undermine efforts to protect the nation’s forests.
Indigenous and environmental groups are urging the court to reject a long-standing legal bid to weaken the ability of Brazil’s roughly 300 Indigenous groups to lay claim to traditional territories. If the justices rule in their favor, the decision—expected Wednesday—would also prevent Brazil’s Senate from finalizing a closely related bill, approved last week by the Chamber of Deputies, that could dramatically reduce the land area governed by Indigenous groups.
At stake in the legal and legislative battle is control of huge swaths of Indigenous land—including roughly one-quarter of the Amazon—that are rich in biodiversity and “essential to [securing] the world’s climate stability” because they store huge amounts of carbon, says environmental scientist Ana Claudia Rorato of Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research.
If forests on these lands are cleared, the nation’s carbon emissions would skyrocket, making it “virtually impossible for Brazil to fulfill its climate pledges” or meet its sustainable development goals, Silva-Junior says. Rorato says protecting forests on Indigenous territories is also key to preventing the Amazon forest from reaching a
, where the loss of trees and changes to the hydrologic cycle convert wetter forests to dryer savanna.found that Brazil’s Indigenous territories have helped protect Amazon forests. From 2000 to 2021, Indigenous territories and other protected areas expanded to cover 52% of the Brazilian Amazon, the researchers found.
“It is also a human rights issue,” Rorato says. The legislation, she asserts, “violates our Constitution, goes against [Brazil’s] Indigenous peoples statute, and against the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention Brazil signed at the International Labor Organization.”
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