witness statements


name: Fiona Watson
section: Environment
for: The Defence
expertise: Campaigns Coordinator for Survival International

summary:

Cattle ranching in the Amazon had an extremely negative impact on a number of indigenous peoples in the region known as Amazonia Legal. It is in fact, one of the most important causes of both rainforest destruction and the invasion of indigenous people's lands in the Amazonian rainforest as a whole.

cv:


I am Campaigns Coordinator for Survival International, a woldwide organisation which defends the rights of indigenous peoples. I have special responsibilty for Brazil, Venezuala and Guyana. I have worked for Survival for nearly six years and in that time hav made three field trips to Brazil each lasting 2-3 months whaere I have travelled extensively in the Amazon and elsewhere. The main focus of these trips was to visit indigenous communities to assess and discuss with indigenous people their concerns and problems.

Prior to my work with Survival, I worked on an ecological project in the Amazon organised by the Royal Geographical Society, London, and the Institute of Amazon Research (INPA) Manaus. During this project I lived in the Amazon state of Roraima for 14 months. After the field phase I returned to Britain and was responsible for researching for an education pack on the Amazon based on the project's research and aimed at G.C.S.E. This won the gold medal at the Geographical Associations Annual Awards in 1993.

Full cv:
Not available for this witness

full statement:

Cattle ranching in the Amazon had an extremely negative impact on a number of indigenous peoples in the region known as Amazonia Legal. It is in fact, one of the most important causes of both rainforest destruction and the invasion of indigenous people's lands in the Amazonian rainforest as a whole. The problem is particularly acute in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Rondonia, Roramia and Para. When fiscal incentives for incentives for ranching were created by the Brazilian government, many indigenous areas were and continue to be illegally invaded, and in a number of cases appropriated by ranchers. Cattle ranching has threfore caused:

  1. displacement if indigenous peoples from their lands, to which they have original and inalienable rights as enshrined in the Brazilian Constitution (article 231). Having been thrown off their land, many Indians have been resettled on inferior land, often totally inadequate for them to live off in terms of livelihood placing them in an alien market economy where they are exploited.

  2. increased violence towards indigenous peoples who are routinely threatened and in some cases have been murdered by ranchers when attempting to defend their lands from invasion or wholesale take-over.

  3. devastation of indigenous peoples' principal means of of livelihood by destroying their resources eg. game, fishing, agricultural plots, and forests and/or cerrado containing trees and plants used for medicinal purposes, handicrafts, housing and hunting materials. Fencing put up by the ranchers has often impeded indigenous peoples' ability to hunt.

  4. introduction of diseases to which many indigenous peoples have no resistence. Isolated peoples are particularly vulnerable. Roads built and/or maintained by ranchers have acted as corridors for migration bringing great fluxes of colonists who have invaded indigenous peoples' lands spreading disease and violence.

  5. in dry areas indigenous peoples have been deprived of water which has been used by herds.

  6. cultural devastation - losing ancestral land with which indigenous peoples have strong spiritual as well as material ties.

I would be happy to expand on this statement should it be necessary. I shall be out of Britain from 12 February to 20 March 1996.

date signed: 9 February 1996
status: Appeared in court
references: Not applicable/ available
exhibits: Not applicable/ available

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