Author Archives: Daniel Brindis

About Daniel Brindis

Daniel Brindis Daniel Brindis is a Forests Campaigner for Greenpeace USA

Why California should not be allowed to outsource hot air

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This week Greenpeace and other leading environmental groups including Sierra Club California, California Environmental Justice Alliance, Asia Pacific Environmental Network, and Friends of the Earth sent a letter to California Governor Jerry Brown in which we urge him to stop a proposal that would allow companies to keep polluting in California in exchange for some highly controversial forest projects abroad. Not only could this have devastating social and environmental consequences in developing countries but it would also allow for higher emissions in California. Continue reading →

Brazilian slaughterhouses sued for Amazon destruction

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Cattle ranch located in Figueirópolis d’Oeste, Mato Grosso State, Brazil.

Life is about to get a whole lot harder for the slaughterhouses in Brazil who are still tied to a business model based on forest destruction and violation of indigenous and labor rights.

IBAMA, the Ministry of Labor, the Federal Public Ministry in the states of Amazonas, Mato Grosso and Rondônia, and the Federal Prosecutor in Amazonas and Rondônia sued 26 slaughterhouses for buying cattle from farms involved in illegalities. The fines for the slaughterhouses total US$ 280 million. Continue reading →

NY Fashion Week’s Unexpected Show: Prada, Dolce&Gabbana, Chanel and Hermès get a visit from Greenpeace

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Greenpeace activists post a banner on the window of the Hermes store. Greenpeace is asking supporters and consumers to challenge fashion's deforestation and toxic history.

In the midst of a rainy New York Fashion Week, four exclusive fashion brands were greeted by “clean-up crews” challenging them to adopt forest friendly and toxic free policies. Activists decorated store windows with giant images of forest destruction and toxic pollution, and the invitation to be part of the solution. The brands visited had one thing in common (besides decades of setting trends), they all ranked at the bottom of a recent Greenpeace survey of environmental policies for the world’s leading fashion houses. Continue reading →

Vote Greenpeace’s ‘Barbie’ campaign for this year’s BENNY awards

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This week Greenpeace had the honor of being nominated for a Business Ethics Network “BENNY” Award for the 2011 “Barbaric” campaign, in which we shined the spotlight on Mattel, the world’s largest toymaker and told the world about how Mattel’s throw-away packaging was driving the destruction of rainforests and eliminating the habitat of the critically endangered Sumatran tiger.

You can vote for us here- voting ends September 30, 2012.

As you may recall, in June of 2011, the Greenpeace investigation Toying with Extinction exposed how toy industry leaders like Mattel, Hasbro and Lego were sourcing throw-away toy packaging from Indonesian rainforest. Our video showing Ken breaking up with Barbie over her “deforestation habit” was viewed over 1 million times in a matter of days and Mattel received over 250,000 emails from activists all over the world urging the company to stop destroying tiger habitat for its packaging.

Within months after “Barbie” appeared at Mattel’s headquarters in a pink bulldozer and activists, dressed as Ken, draped banners over the buildings, Mattel, as well as other leaders in the toy sector, Lego and Hasbro moved to introduce forest-friendly policies for their packaging. Mattel, Lego, and Hasbro (as well as numerous other companies) have abandoned rainforest-destroying paper suppliers, nonetheless this fight isn’t yet over others like KFC and its parent company YUM! brands have kept their heads in the sand.

You can find the ballot here on the Business Ethics Network web site. 

Good News: Brazilian companies to cut ties with deforestation and slave labor

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Illegal charcoal camps fuel production of pig iron, the primary ingredient in steel

Only a few weeks ago, Greenpeace activists occupied the anchor chain of the Clipper Hope, a barge filled with pig iron, the primary ingredient for steel used by the world’s leading auto brands. This pig iron was processed using wood charcoal made from natural rainforest, which is often illegally logged. To make matters worse, the pig iron is ‘cooked’ in clay ovens by workers under conditions that can only be compared to slavery (see our infograph below).

Our two-year investigation, launched the same day as the action, documented the devastation the region experiences at the hands of the pig iron industry. Greenpeace exposed the way this industry has been throwing the forests into its furnaces, destroying indigenous lands, and forever altering a globally important biological reserve to help produce the cars and appliances we buy. Continue reading →

President Dilma – Veto This Forest Code Hatchet Job

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Following years of intense pressure from the agribusiness sector, Brazilian Congress late last week approved sweeping reforms to the country’s forest protection law that spell destruction for the Amazon rainforest.

Despite the indignation from Brazilian scientists, Labor and faith groups, small-scale farmers, environmentalists and the Brazilian public opinion, the congress approved dangerous changes to the country’s forest laws, at the behest of the agribusiness lobby. This new law undermines decades of progress fighting forest destruction in Brazil. Continue reading →

Rainbow Warrior arrives in Brazil for the launch of the Zero Deforestation campaign

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This past Tuesday morning, I joined a group of Brazilian Greenpeace volunteers to welcome the new Rainbow Warrior as she begins the Brazilian leg of her maiden voyage. From the city of Manaus, we took four boats, national TV journalists in tow, a few kilometers downstream to meet and welcome the ship at the Encontro das Águas (“the meeting of the waters”), where the dark Rio Negro meets the sand-colored Amazon River.

From Manaus, the ship is about to embark on a multiweek journey out of the Amazon, followed by a tour around the coast of Brazil in time for Rio +20 in June.

This morning, however, was the main event- the launch of the Zero Deforestation Initiative. The Brazilian Constitution allows Brazilian voters to advance a ‘public law, where, if supporters can collect the signatures of 1% of the population, the Brazilian congress will be required to vote on the law. Today, Greenpeace Brazil announced launched its new campaign to collect the signatures of 1.4 million voters to support a national Zero Deforestation law.

Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace Brazil Executive Director Marcelo Furtado, and Amazon Campaign Director and United Nations Forest Hero, Paulo Adario presented the campaign in the hull of the Rainbow Warrior, which was packed with journalists, local government representatives and NGOs. Our allies, including indigenous groups, unions from the Amazon region, and the Federal Public Prosecutor joined the presentation and pledged enthusiastic support. It was inspiring to see that Greenpeace was far from being alone in this mission and also a solemn reminder to hear from those who live on the front lines of deforestation and are impacted by the violent land conflicts occurring in the frontier areas of the Amazon.

 

This past year, the world witnessed the Brazilian congress pass Forest Code legislation that would severely weaken the country’s forest protections, despite the Brazilian public opinion being overwhelmingly opposed. In addition, we watched Brazilian President Dilma weaken the authority of the federal government to enforce environmental laws. This petition-like effort allows the Brazilian public to take back the future of their forests.

Sign up here for more updates.

If you hadn’t already, write to Brazilian President Dilma, and urge her to not turn her back on the Amazon.

If you are Brazilian, or have Brazilian friends, you can help make Zero Deforestation in the Amazon a reality and help save the Amazon once and for all.

Brazil Update: President Dilma gives forest criminals an early Christmas present.

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In themidst of a political street fight over the Brazilian Forest Code, the UN climate talks in Durban and the holiday season,  President Dilma approved a signed a law that will weaken environmental enforcement, making it much easier for loggers and cattle ranchers to break the law and destroy more Amazon rainforest in the coming years.

Environmental protection in the frontier areas of the Amazon in recent years have depended heavily on the national Brazilian environmental enforcement agency, IBAMA. In many frontier areas of the Amazon, state and local governments have been “reluctant” or ill-equipped to crack down on illegal logging, especially when it may have been done at the behest of local elites, wood barons or agribusiness. Many times in recent history these interests have used violence and intimidation to silence critics or even local governments with the best intentions. One can credit this past decade’s decreasing rate of deforestation in Brazil to better enforcement by the Brazilian federal government who has been able to send IBAMA agents into the field to bring forest criminals to justice.

The state governments are typically responsible for issuing permits logging permits and fining those cutting the forest illegally. Before this new law, the federal government, through IBAMA, was also able to enforce the law. The new law, however, only allows the agency responsible for the permit to penalize violators of the law. IBAMA, being a federal agency, will no longer be as able to step in to support forest protection. This change basically paralyses one of the most effective means to stop illegal forest destruction.

IBAMA Agents’ presence in the advancing Amazon frontier is more necessary than ever considering that the new forest code, if approved, will open up a new deforestation rush in the Amazon.

Now it will be up to other parts of the federal government or the states to enforce the law and many are ill-prepared and not ready for such a challenge. As Greenpeace Amazon Campaign Director Paulo Adario explained his concerns, “enforcing the law will be up local powers, who are much more easily influenced by perpetrators of the law than the Brazilian federal government.”

According to the Brazilian newspaper O Globo, the Brazilian Environmental Ministry had even urged Dilma not to approve the new law. This new law that weakens IBAMA gives us no assurances whether Dilma will be able stand up to Agribusiness interests in Brazil and follow the wishes of the vast majority of Brazilians who want to protect the Amazon. It isn’t too late to voice yourconcern to Dilma about how her decisions are crucial to the fate of the Amazon.

Review: Searching for the Amazon’s last tribes in “The Unconquered” by Scott Wallace

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It’s hard to believe that even in 2011, after over 500 years of colonization and generations of new technologies that there still exist uncontacted groups of indigenous people have been able to preserver and maintain their lifestyles. Even more incredible is how, in recent years we are still finding out about communities we never even knew existed in the far-reaches of the Amazon. Today, National Geographic reporter Scott Wallace released a fascinating account of a journey to learn more about the uncontacted with the hopes of protecting these people and their culture.

 

In The Unconquered, Wallace tells the story of a true adventure he took to track the uncontacted Flecheiros, (‘the arrow people’). He and 33 others, led by Sydney Possuelo, an expert on uncontacted indigenous cultures and a compelling advocate, try to gather information about the Flecheiros without putting them at risk. In the book one feels the urgency of creating a plan to protect these groups as the modern world continues to encroach into the Amazon. It is a wonder that the Flecheiros have survived until the present day and one realizes it is only a matter of time before they are contacted and face danger or assimilation. Further complicating efforts to save this culture is the need to not contact them- not only because it could corrupt their identity but also because we, as denizens of Babylon, carry germs and illnesses that the immune systems of the Flecheiros are unable to tolerate.

The book represents a thoughtful reflection about what it means to be an advocate for communities that you might never know and in some cases, like this one, you shouldn’t meet. We know that “civilization’s” invasion of these communities would have a negative impact but what how do we as outsiders determine ‘what’s best for them?’ How do we learn more about these cultures to develop effective solutions without endangering them in the process?  As we learn from Sydney Possuelo, working on behalf of distant communities can raise ethical challenges and requires advocates and observers to employ restraint and humility. Accompanying this dialogue in The Unconquered is a real life cast of intriguing characters taking part in an exciting adventure unfolding in some of the remaining areas of true isolation.

 

Scott Wallace is starting a U.S. speaking tour this Thursday that includes Miami, New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland, and Seattle-definitely check these events out if you live nearby:

 

  • Tuesday, October 18: The Unconquered Launches
  • Thursday October 20, Miami Beach: Books & Books
    927 Lincoln Road # 118, Miami Beach, Fla. 33139. More information at: 305.532.3222
    7:00pm – Reading from The Unconquered
  • Thursday-Friday October 20-21, Miami: Society of Environmental Journalists Annual Conference
    Friday, October 21, 3:00pm – panelist, “Indigenous People and Climate Change.” 
    Available for press interviews at other times. Contact Ellen Folan, Crown Publishing: 202.782.8944; efolan@randomhouse.com
  • Monday, October 24, New York City: The Half-King
    505 West 23rd Street (10th Avenue), New York, NY 10011. More information at: 212.462.4300
    7:00pm – The Monday Reading Series.
  • Thursday, November 3, Washington, DC: National Geographic Live! “Quest for Adventure” Lecture Series
    Grosvenor Auditorium, National Geographic Society, 1745 M St. NW, Washington, DC 20036
    7:30pm – “The Unconquered: Brazil’s Arrow People.” 
    Tickets at nationalgeographic.com or National Geographic Box Office: 202.857.7700.
  • Monday, November 7, New York City: The Explorers Club
    46 East 70th Street, New York. Tel: 212.628.8383
    7:00pm – Monday Night Lecture, open to the public: “Uncontacted Tribes of the Amazon.”
    Tickets at explorers.org.
  • Wednesday, November 9, Santa Cruz, CA: Capitola Book Cafe
    1475 41st Avenue, Capitola, Calif. 95010. More information at: 831.462.4415
    7:30pm – reading from The Unconquered
  • Thursday, November 10, Menlo Park, CA: Kepler’s Books
    1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, CA 94025. More information at: 650.324.4321
    7:00pm – Reading from The Unconquered
  • Friday, November 11, Pt Reyes Station, CA: Pt Reyes Books
    11315 State Route 1, Point Reyes Station, Calif. 94956. More information at: 415.663.1542
    7:00pm – reading from The Unconquered
  • Saturday, November 12, Berkeley, CA: Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore
    2904 College Avenue, Berkeley, Calif. 94705. More information: 510.704.8222
    4:00pm – Reading from The Unconquered
  • Sunday, November 13, Corte Madera, CA: Book Passage
    51 Tamal Vista Boulevard, Corte Madera, Calif. 94925. More information at: 415.927.0960
    4:00pm – Sunday Reading Series, reading from The Unconquered
  • Tuesday, November 15, Portland, OR: Powell’s City of Books
    1005 W. Burnside, Portland, OR 97209. More information at: 503.228.4651
    7:30pm – reading from The Unconquered
  • Wednesday, November 16, Seattle, WA: Elliott Bay Book Company
    1521 Tenth Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122. More information at: 206.624.6600
    7:00pm – reading from The Unconquered and multimedia show on the Amazon’s uncontacted tribes
  • Tuesday, November 22, Washington, DC: Busboys and Poets Langston Room, 2021 14th Street, NW (14th and V Streets) Washington, DC 20036 7:00pm – “The Unconquered: Brazil’s Arrow People.”