Indians Tembé-Ténêtéhar: The Guardians of the 'Carbon Storage' in the Amazon

The indigenous Tembé-Ténêtéhar people, who live in the north-west of the federal state of Pará ,will sign the first carbon credit contract to preserve their forests.
The Indians living in Terra Indígena Alto Rio Guamá will receive money from a foreign company to keep the forest within their reserve standing as it is.

The contract for the sale of carbon credit was due to be signed last Friday, World Environment Day. Only heavy rain postponed the ceremony, which was planned to take place in Belém. The agreement will bring together the American company C-Trade and the Indians of Terra Indígena Alto Rio Guamá.

C TRADE, is an international developer of Carbon Trade Credits (aka CERS - Certified Emission Reductions) for renewable energy projects that offset the use of fossil fuels, such as solar, wind turbines, energy efficiency, forest carbon sequestration and waste-to-energy power plants.

Ronald Shiflett, C-Trade’s Director, International Utility Efficiency Partnership, is in Belém and will meet his new partners in a traditional business suit, as the Indians will show up in their traditional outfit, with cocares (feather headdress) and body paintings, done based on the jenipapo (black) and annatto (rood) fruit pulps representing their ethnic traditions.

”The C-Trade proposal is beneficial for us,” says Valdeci Tembe, community leader of Susuarana, one of 14 villages in the south of the Terra Indígena Alto Rio Guamá on the banks of the Rio Gurupi, and with Muxi Tembe, leader of the Tekowau village, one of the promoters of the proposal.

Considered one of the poorest Indian people in Pará, according to the National Indian Foundation (Funai), the Tembé-Ténêtéhar live permanently under threat from illegal loggers. Without hardly any source of income, the sale of logs from illegal cutting is one of the only income sources for some of the 216 families. Furthermore (illegal) loggers invade the reserve, and part of the reserve is already taken by marijuana plantings run by drug traffickers.

Conservative calculations of the C-Trade project show that the Indians could have a financial return of BRL 1 million (€ 350.000) annually. The offer stipulates that the Indians will receive 85% of the value of the sales of carbon credit in the international market, while the remaining 15%, will stay with the company. Only one quarter of the reservation will be subject to the contract. For each hectare of preserved forest, it is estimated that four tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) will be avoided in the atmosphere.

In Terra Indígena Alto Rio Guamá some 145.39 tonnes of carbon are stored per hectare. The volume is so large that it turns the Tembé-Ténêtéhar people in real guardians of a huge "carbon storage" of the Amazon rain forest: 40.8 million tonnes of carbon stored in an area of 279 hectares, on the border with Maranhão.

The Tembé-Ténêtéhar with their 281 indigenous lands scattered throughout the Amazon and their more than 61 extractive reserves in the region stock a total of 15 billion tons of carbon. This signifies 30% of the 47 billion tons of carbon stored in trunks, branches, leaves and soil of the Amazon forests, according to calculations of the Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (Ipam = Environmental Research Institute of the Amazon). Experts warn that if this volume is released to the atmosphere, the effect would be a further worsening of the climate crisis.

Defining the key target of the negotiations, Juscelino Bessa, the regional administrator of Funai (Fundação Nacional do Índio is the Brazilian National Indian Foundation, or protection agency for Indian interests and their culture) said in Belém: “We are selling the idea of preservation. In addition to profit, the contract may add a social and ethnic content to the products of the forest.”

Felício Pontes, federal prosecutor with the Public Ministry in Pará, who was crucial to the negotiations, concluded: “If Brazil is a signatory of the Kyoto Treaty, nothing more is just then that the Indians receive payment for environmental services rendered to the country.”

The Federal University of Pará, also an important partner in the negotiations, established a management model for the use of the sold resources of carbon credits. The project envisages the creation of a Bolsa Floresta, similar to the Bolsa Familia, which will supply the Indians monthly with money to develop sustainable projects in the reserve.

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The World Social Forum - Preparation and Opening

The event was outlaid so ambitiously that it had to go completely wrong. The organizers had clearly forgotten that they had to do with the Federal State of Pará with its public administrators and political leaders, who are still unable to look up the word 'organization' in the dictionary, let alone find the word.
During the six-day forum (from Jan 27 to Feb. 1), 2400 activities were scheduled, which means that some 200 activities were held simultaneously about topics such as the environment, global warming, poverty, child- and slave labour, exclusion of poor countries, and of course, the destruction of the Amazônia region and alternatives to the capitalist system, which threw the world in an economic and financial crisis (I am sure, that Davos is anxious to have a look at the proposals). But the farmer, he ploughed on, so if everything raised by somebody should be found important, then it might come to something ... ever.

The World Social Forum (WSF) is regarded as the largest marketplace on the planet of ideas, with discussions for everyone.
But a month before the international event, the city was still looking for solutions to its problems. Lack of security, traffic chaos and deficiencies in public transport are some of the most serious problems of Belém. And for years it is no different. On top of all this the complaints of the population of the capital of Pará itself.

During the forum, the hotels and pousadas in town were fully booked - even the motels, normally operating as centres for lovers and other sex activities, had their faces adapted to accommodate participants of the event. Another 15 thousand houses were rented, the rent up to BRL 2 thousand (€ 660) for the 5 days of the forum. The hotels did not stay behind and reached the, for Belém, exorbitant price of BRL 900 (€ 300) per day, including breakfast, lunch and dinner.

To house the event and guarantee the safety of the participants the state government invested BRL 143 million (€ 48.5 million), with a third for the purchase of police cars. Ten field hospitals were built on the campus of the Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA = Federal University of Pará) and the Universidade Federal Rural da Amazônia (UFRA = Federal Agriculture University of the Amazon), where also an encampment for 30 thousand young visitors was raised. An additional 270 hospital beds were reserved in the public and private hospitals for emergency situations.

During the days of the event about 600 thousand male condoms from the Program for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and AIDS were distributed. (nb, 1 condom per day per participant)

Until Sunday, February 1 (the last day), the organization of the Forum hopes to greet 120 thousand people from 150 countries, including ......... continue reading and see more images

Columbus as scapegoat

History tells us that the conquerors of the New World carried many a contagious disease unknown to the native Indians killing millions of them. It was not only the cruel murder, slavery but the “white colonist’s” diseases as well that brought the native populace at the brink of extinction. Recent history tells us that the natives hit back as well.

Artist-impression of Columbus taking possession of the New World
chrome-litho by the Prang Education Company in 1893

A new released study determines that Columbus brought the disease syphilis back to Europe. With the study a centuries old discussion about the origins of the disease is re-opened. The researchers concluded, that an analysis of the syphilis family tree shows the closest relative being a tropical infection, which causes red skin eruptions due to a sub-specie of the same bacteria.

The study acknowledges as plausible the “Columbus-theory”, which connects the very first registered European syphilis epidemic in 1495 to the return of Columbus and his crew. Kristen Harper, an evolution biologist of the Emory University in Atlanta/USA and whose team did the research, declares: “What we found is that syphilis or a predecessor thereof went from the New World to the Old World and with that fairly recent in history. When you combine the genetic details with the ones of the epidemic in Naples of 1495, you see a reasonable strong support for the Columbus-hypothesis.”

When you start thinking of all native Indians of Latin America running around with syphilis, you are totally wrong, there is prove that the natives were immune for the bacteria contrary to the “white men" of the Old World”.