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News > Latin America

Brazil: Corporations, Gov'ts Mingle in Water Forum as Activists Targeted

  • Greenpeace activist lies doused in mud during a protest outside the World Water Forum.

    Greenpeace activist lies doused in mud during a protest outside the World Water Forum. | Photo: Reuters

Published 22 March 2018
Opinion

Activists who defend water resources are not invited to the World Water Forum. Instead, they are threatened and criminalized.  

As the world marked World Water Day on Thursday, which coincides with the World Water Forum in Brasilia, Brazil, where transnational corporations like Nestle and Suez meet and greet high-level politicians while environmental activists and Indigenous leaders continue to be targeted.

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The event, organized by the World Water Council (WWC) and sponsored by Brazil’s oil company Petrobras, has as its stated mission “to promote awareness, build political commitment and trigger action on critical water issues at all levels.”

According to a United Nations report, 5 billion people could face water-related stress in the coming decades due to climate change, pollution, and rising demand.

In response, Senate-imposed Brazilian president Michel Temer told the crowd “there is simply no time to lose.” But the reality reveals a government more concerned with resource extraction rather than water conservation, even if it is accompanied by violence towards community leaders and activists who defend water.

Community leader Alessandria Munduruku told The Guardian “the government doesn’t care for us, only for agribusiness so our struggle is very difficult. We are up against illegal mines, loggers, ports, roads, agribusiness, and investors from China and Canada.”

Just last week community activist Paulo Nascimento was murdered after receiving death threats for his work against Norwegian-owned Hydro Alunorte alumina refinery.

As the event in Brasilia unfolded another community leader Ageu Lobo Pereira was running for his life after being warned that assassins were preparing an ambush “to end his resistance to mines, deforestation, and dams that threaten the Tapajós river”, The Guardian reported.

While Nestle was being featured in the Forum’s exhibition center, 600 women of the Landless Workers’ Movement occupied one of Nestle’s factory in Minas Gerais to protest the privatization of water resources, something they say “is what the businesses gathered now in that Forum want.”

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