In the last seven years, we have experienced an escalation of violence, death, and suppression of traditional peoples and nature. The last four years have been the most tragic in Brazilian history, culminating in social, political, economic, health, and ecological crises that
have affected especially the most impoverished. We have actively fought against the setbacks, trying to curb the “cattle herd” that has devastated Brazilian socio-biodiversity. There were hundreds of acts that relaxed environmental norms, dismantled environmental inspection and control agencies, and caused record-breaking rates of forest burning, privatization of Conservation Units, persecution of human rights organizations and social movements, and attacks against and exoneration of public servants, among others. As a result, we had an increase in socio-environmental and agrarian conflicts and murders of environmental leaders and activists, such as Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips.

This scenario of destruction, however, was rejected by the majority of Brazilians. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected president of the Republic, even in a context characterized by countless episodes of fabrication of fake news, use of the machinery of government, and vote buying. Democracy and the active position of social movements have won.

This new chapter allows us to look at the future of the country with hope. But in order to rebuild, we need urgent measures to combat hunger and poverty and defend socio-biodiversity. It is necessary to guarantee the rights of Indigenous peoples, traditional communities, peasants, and family farmers, especially to land, territory, and the seas. Brazil must take the lead again – as a megadiverse country – in fostering initiatives that promote biological diversity, traditional agricultural systems, and the use and management of these resources in association with the knowledge and culture of Indigenous peoples, traditional peoples and communities, and family farmers. This resumption must move away from the privatization of common goods and the initiatives of green capitalism and financialization of nature, since they only accumulate capital and exclude the peoples from the forests, the waters, and the countryside.

Considering that civil society should actively participate in this reconstruction, we, men and women, peasants, family farmers, Indigenous peoples, traditional peoples and communities, quilombola communities, popular scientists, social movements, trade unions, and urban collectives, aware of the themes that will be under discussion at COP 15, come, through this open letter: a) to denounce policies
and processes underway in Brazil that affect our territories and biodiversity; and b) to express our position and our recommendations, in the hope of a more socially and environmentally fair country.

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