My name is Atossa Soltani. I work for a US-based organisation that is working South America to defend Indigenous peoples rights and to protect the Amazon Basin. In fact the Amazon Basin is vital to protect the Earth's climate. It is one of the planet's life support systems and it regulates the world climate. In fact we, through our fossil fuel consumption and our search for fossil fuels, are dismembering and destroying this vital ecosystem.
Latin America
So while everyone's talking about how to reduce carbon emissions, what is not being talked about is basically the oil industry and the fossil fuel industry spending upwards of 300 billion US dollars a year looking for new fossil fuel reserves. When we can not afford to burn the reserves we already have found. This is happening in far remote places on the Earth and having huge consequences on the people and fragile ecosystems. Meanwhile 300 billion dollars a year is money that should be going into promoting solutions to climate change. Also looking at alternatives, efficiency, basically ways we are going to cope with our changing planet.
I’m the chief of the Boa Esperança village. I will keep talking now about G8 and indigenous people. And I also want to say to our people that fight for its rights, for its dignity, that is seeking its right as a human being. We understand that the G8 wants to destroy the dignity, the richness… it wants to destroy the people, who are human beings just like them. They want to destroy that. They want the indigenous people, suffering people, to be in their hands but we don’t want that. We never thought of being in the hands of those powerful people. But only God is powerful. We don’t want to be no longer massacred by this economic power for we are capable of running, of making a different world. It’s not in those powerful hands to do that. They can only do it through money, not because they have built the life of a person. That economic group has only power to destroy. Not to get life to human beings. That’s why we think the G8 will only destroy the human being even more and also will confuse more the people that seek their right to be a human being. We do not agree with that economic group they are organizing, that G8 project. We don’t agree with that.
The G8 world mockery and Lula’s ecological mockery… the landless Indians, being expelled of their lands. An useless Ministry of the Environment… And the people at loose in this wind storm of things that don’t happen. Just for one side, right? I think that Lula, in this environmental issue, is only favouring the companies. Because the environmental issue is being left… first is development, currencies, exportations, the big companies.
I live in Espírito Santo state, Brazil. I work with the people that suffer impacts from the large scale monocultures whose raw material supplies the first world. To talk about G8… first of all, I have very few informations about it. I know very little about what G8 means. What I know is when it hits us. The information that gets here is that it is G8 that determines world economic policies. Consequently, it determines all social, environmental, and cultural life of the other countries. So here in Espírito Santo we suffer the consequences of G8, of the political decisions taken at the G8. I think that the Brazilian government would have a key role in giving G8 a new direction. Why? Because Lula presents himself at world conferences as a representative of the third world countries. However, what I understand is that leaders of third world countries that we live in easily let themselves being carried by external policies than internal policies. So I think that Lula, with his social and politics background – he was a person from the bottom, of this country’s union leadership, that knew all the problems – should be sensitive in order to clarify the true reality of third world countries. And more than that, to influence, be a protagonist of third world countries, of the leaders of third world countries. And in this way to influence the policies of this big group to build a healthy policy and not a destroying one, of the Latin-American people, of the third world people, that are who suffers the most the consequences of these decisions taken by the first world.
My name is Paulo. I’m in the leadership of the Coira Velho community, and a coordinator of the Chief Commission. We are articulated to get back our lands since the February 19th Assembly when it was decided by unanimity that we were going to fight for our 11 thousand hectares of our land. So we are preparing with other governmental entities, civil entities, for us to start the struggle. And we are not going to slow down because we know that the land is our right, the land is our mother. And without the land we will not survive. Neither us or our generation. That’s why we decided to fight for our right. We are counting on the governmental support at the national level, and at the international. The power is helping us, is reinforcing our struggle. We will thank for everybody’s support.
And I’m indignant when eight of the most rich countries of the world discuss hidden in a cupola the great decisions, most part of the population doesn’t participate at all. And the whole world is taken by these great decisions that the World Bank, IMF, G8 discuss and define by themselves. And the world’s population – I can speak for the Brazilians – suffer great
impacts coming from those decisions.
And don’t have the chance to participate, and we have a lot to say. There are many impacts
directly affecting the world’s population. We don’t want them to
decide, that small groups, small cupolas decide on our behalf. We can say what we want.
We have a lot to say. And we don’t want to have to accept those definitions. Experts say what we have to do in relation to the world’s climate, to the environment, to society… And what we have seen is that it has got worse, and worse, and worse.
So we have to create opportunities and to accept that many more people have a saying all over the world. Eight countries defining what we have to do. And there’s no use in calling our president Lula, he can’t do it. He can’t handle it. He can’t handle this reality here. He hasn’t solved our problems that are huge, huge… Social impacts, social problems, inequalities… Enough of social inequalities! We want justice!
I’m Brazilian. I live in the Espírito Santo state. Here in our state, we are tired of seeing our lands being invaded by eucalyptus plantations for cellulose production, which will be exported to first world countries. To Europe, to the United States, to the Nordic countries. We suffer all kind of consequences, of negative impacts of these great projects, these great enterprises. At the moment, I act with indigenous populations, Tupiniki and Guarani, in our state of Espírito Santo, Brazil. And we are living a historical moment, where for more than thirty years the communities have been struggling to get their lands back, which are now under a company’s power, a multinational megacompany, Aracruz Celulose. And we are now working with the Indians, organizing, so that they have their rights respected by this megacompany. So that their rights are recognized in our country and abroad. So that foreigners, strangers in our land, don’t come and take our properties, the land, life, the environment. The life of this population that has lived here since the arrival of the first Europeans. We are not going to settle while they are colonizing us. Colonizing the people, colonizing our land, colonizing the environment. We want our lands back, we want that the lives of our indigenous peoples be respected and given back.
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My name is Marilda. I'm an activist and geographer participating in a movement that struggles against this development model, monoculture, industrial, exporting. Brazil is a victim of this world policy in which G8 represents the countries leading this logic. And what I have to say is that the speeches that come out of G8 regarding measures against poverty, environmental measures related to climate, the issue of the carbon market… we here understand that as a big hypocrisy. Because what causes poverty, what causes environmental and socio-environmental damage is exactly this developmental model, the logic of production, the consuming logic of the capitalist society. What is ending poverty for the G8? If their actions are fundamentally aiming at appropriating land mainly from poor countries, adapting these territories in an transnational organization, with their governments saying “Yes!
G8, we don't want your model of development. We don't want your money. We don't want your solidarity. We want to build another world. We want another country, another civil society. For us The G8 is not the solution for the planet. On the contrary G8 means more problems and more poor people in the world.