Our Climate

 We have to change our ideas, we have to change our pattern of behaviour if we want to reconnect with the family of life, and leave to future generations a living planet. The past and the future are intimately connected through our actions in the present and we must remember our ancestors while thinking ahead to all future generations.

This is what "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore the 2007 Nobel Laureate brings home to all of us as a moral challenge facing our  global civilization.

We congratulate Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the award and we hope that the Governments of the world will seriously address the challenge of climate change, with all its implications, not only on the international scene but at home.

 There is always a big gap between declarations made in the international forum by the governments of the world, and actions undertaken in their own country.

  While at the United Nations discussions are underway on the crucial issue of climate change and governments are finally realizing that they have to change their pattern of  development, in the Brazilian Amazon plans are well advanced to build dams along the Xingu River, the last of the great Amazon rivers in a good state of conservation.

The Brazilian government, in a program designed to advance economic development based on large-scale infrastructure, plans ten new dams in the basin rivers by 2010. Some of them can be characterized as 'mega dams' and have been controversial when they were proposed by past governments, because of the impact they have on the lives of Indigenous Peoples, on their waters, on the flora and fauna of the River Basin.

In 1989, our Founder Sting attended the Altamira meeting, a gathering organized by the Kayapo Chiefs Raoni and Payakan together with  environmental activists from the West to protest the construction of a massive dam complex, the Kararao, on the Xingu River. The present ecological integrity of the Xingu and the fact that so far no hydroelectric plant has been built along its course is the result of that meeting in Altamira and the determination of the indigenous peoples and their success in getting the World Bank to suspend the funding for the project.

But now, almost twenty years later, indigenous peoples from the Xingu Basin are again standing up to protest against the Xingu hydroelectric plant, now the Belo Monte dam, and calling for a new Altamira  meeting to try to stop again the ecological disaster looming ahead. "Considering the scarcity and commoditization of the planet's  freshwater and the imminence of a water crisis, it is unacceptable  that the rivers of Amazonia, our principal hydrological reserve, be  the prime target for dams"says an anti-dam manifesto put out by  SOS Xingu, a collective of indigenous, religious, and eco-activists.

 Indigenous Peoples, first and foremost want to be part of any discussion regarding their land, and their waters.

It is an obligation imposed on States to get free, prior and informed consent from them when decisions that could impact their water rights, their environment and their lives are being made. The right to genuine public participation is underscored by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and is embedded in ILO Convention 169  on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples.

We believe that it is a duty of the Brazilian Government to initiate a  dialogue with the indigenous people affected by these projects in order to take into account their concerns about the impact of the dams on their daily lives, their environment, the biodiversity of the region, their waters, and evaluate whether the costs of mega-dams outweigh benefits.

The Rainforest Foundation Fund will support Indigenous Peoples' claim to better information, and free, prior and informed consent to this economic project, and their rights to a healthy environment.