reveals<\/a> that agribusiness companies that seize Indigenous land often are backed by millions of dollars of loans from Brazilian and international banks. <\/p>\n\u201cI want to send letters to the presidents of the Bank of Brazil, Santander Bank, the Bank of the Northeast and tell them, \u2018We don\u2019t want this,\u201d Carolman Koganon Canela, a leader of the Memortumr\u00e9- Kanela people in Brazilian state of Maranhao, says in the video. \u201cThey don\u2019t respect our culture, our language, our way of life\u2026. They don\u2019t know our history, that our ancestors left us this land.\u201d That history includes a massacre, one Indigenous woman says, that killed so many people, including her grandfather and great-grandfather, that \u201cthe river was red with blood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over images of a vast brown plateau empty of even a single tree, captions report that big farms operating in these Indigenous territories received $12.8 million in loans between 2020 and 2024. The loans were used mainly to finance soybean cultivation and cattle breeding, with one big farm deforesting 4,000 hectares (15.4 square miles) of land. The territories had been declared Indigenous land by the Brazilian government, but the process of so-called demarcation is currently \u201cparalyzed,\u201d Sumuma reported, which enables banks to continue providing such loans. The banks involved declined to be interviewed but did send Sumauma a statement saying that they complied with all legal norms.<\/p>\n
Conflicts like these are playing out across the Amazon and indeed in tropical forests around the world, notably in Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The resulting loss of forests, whose absorption of carbon dioxide helps offset the global warming generated by burning oil, gas, and coal, helps explain why deforestation is a central issue at COP30. The Tropical Forest Forever Finance initiative put forward by the Brazilian government is aimed at halting deforestation by making forests more economically valuable when left standing than if cut down. In an unprecedented step, 20 percent of the proceeds from the $125 billion endowment envisioned for the initiative are supposed to flow directly to Indigenous people, who peer-reviewed science says are the single most effective protecters of forests.<\/p>\n
But agribusiness companies and their financiers remain hungry to exploit the riches of the forests, peer-reviewed science or not. For their part, the Memortumr\u00e9 people are no less determined to protect their land and way of life. \u201cThey want to take everything,\u201d Carolman Koganon Canela says of the big farmers. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to stop fighting. We will fight to the death. We are not many, but we are fighting to protect our lands and the entire planet.\u201d<\/p>\n