Endangered Amazon - Why the Earth's lungs are dying — DW Documentary

[00:00:00] Marina Silva: If we lose the Amazon Rainforest, I can't even imagine. [00:00:21] Speaker 2: If we lose the Amazon, we lose our future. [00:00:28] Vinícius Borba: But maybe if we lose the Amazon, we'll gain in progress, like the rest of the world. It colonized, destroyed, deforested and progressed. [00:00:50] Speaker 4: That's what we want, progress. [00:00:52] Marina Silva: If we lose the Amazon, we can't survive the climate collapse. [00:01:14] Speaker 5: If we lose the Amazon, we lose the lungs of the world. [00:01:32] Speaker ?: We can't survive. We can't survive. We can't survive. We can't survive. We can't survive. We can't survive. We can't survive. We can't survive. We can't survive. We can't survive. We can't survive. We can't survive. [00:02:04] Speaker 6: Brasilia, seat of the Brazilian government and parliament. In the middle of the night on July 17, 2025, members of the National Congress pass a bill that relaxes environmental regulations for economically lucrative projects, particularly those backed by the agricultural lobby. [00:02:23] Speaker 7: The vote is closed. [00:02:30] Vinícius Borba: In favor, 231 against 87. [00:02:36] Speaker 6: Congress is showing who calls the shots in parliament ahead of COP30. Agriculture remains the strongest faction, despite Lula. [00:02:46] Marina Silva: My name's Marina Silva. I'm a history teacher and I've served as Minister for the Environment and Climate Change three times in President Lula's government. I was a senator and stood as a candidate for the presidency of the Republic on three occasions. [00:02:59] Speaker 2: A warm welcome to the Minister for the Environment, Marina Silva, completing the panel of honour. [00:03:09] Speaker 6: Early 2023, Marina Silva is sworn in as Minister for the Environment and Climate Change. She's the star of President Lula's new cabinet, a former rainforest rubber tapper who learned to read and write when she was 16. She drastically reduced deforestation during her first term in the early 2000s, making her an international beacon of hope for the environmental movement. And Lula's green conscience. But more than half of the 513 deputies in Congress are believed to support the country's influential agribusiness lobby. The most recent success of her ministry is emblazoned on its façade. Amazon deforestation has been halved. [00:04:05] Marina Silva: Deforestation fell 46% during the first two years of President Lula's government. [00:04:18] Speaker 6: But at hearings such as here in the Senate, the minister frequently encounters the arrogance, machismo and racism of powerful men. [00:04:26] Marina Silva: Anyone expecting a submissive woman is mistaken. [00:04:30] Speaker 6: Respect me, know your place. This deputy says he'd like to see her hang. [00:04:40] Speaker 4: Business as usual for the rainforest activist. [00:04:45] Speaker 6: She leaves in protest. [00:04:47] Marina Silva: This is the violent, disrespectful, aggressive, intimidating behaviour that seeks to silence you simply because you're a woman. Because you come from a humble background. Because you're a black woman. But also because you stand for a cause. The cause of defending the environment, the Amazon, and the quest for a new model of development based on social justice. [00:05:21] Speaker 8: It's all part of the same package. [00:05:27] Speaker 6: He's not particularly keen on Marina Silva and her cause. Progress is more important to him. He defends the agricultural lobby as a cornerstone of the national economy, even though it's only helped a handful of families in Brazil to amass fabulous wealth. [00:05:45] Vinícius Borba: My name is Vinícius Borba. I'm a lawyer and cattle farmer. I'm from Góias, but our family has spent our whole lives in the Amazon. We're third generation farmers, pioneers who came when the government issued the call: integrate or lose out. [00:06:03] Speaker 6: The military dictators in power from 1964 to 1985 brought settlers to the Amazon from all parts of the country. It was a form of colonization from within, aimed at subjugating the jungle. The settlers were lured by the promise of a golden economic future. The land grab particularly benefited large landowners. [00:06:26] Speaker 4: The forest can't withstand poverty. [00:06:32] Vinícius Borba: No one will live in poverty in the shade of the trees. They'll cut them down. That's how it's been all over the world. In Europe too, at some point, people found themselves faced with the forest, with the trees that were holding back their progress. They didn't cut them down out of hatred. They cut them down to move forward. And here in the Amazon, it's no different. None of us wakes up in the morning feeling anger towards the trees. We fell them for what we call progress or a better life. [00:07:06] Speaker 6: As a farmer, he runs a modest livestock farm. But his main hobby is horses and lassoing. As a lawyer, he regularly deals with environmental crimes. And as a breeder, he's often on the road attending livestock auctions. He maintains an excellent network within the Brazilian agricultural sector. In 2020, he managed to overturn the largest fine ever imposed by IBAMA, the Brazilian environmental agency, around 25 million euros. For this staunch supporter of former President Bolsonaro, environmental protection goes too far. [00:07:47] Vinícius Borba: It's often said that the Amazon is the lungs of the world. But it's not quite like that. If you do a bit of research and take science a little more seriously, you'll see that neither the Amazon nor humankind has the power to influence the global climate. [00:08:08] Marina Silva: Anyone destroying the Amazon to grow soy, raising it to the ground, to create endless fields and pastures to feed people elsewhere. [00:08:19] Speaker 9: That's not smart. [00:08:23] Marina Silva: Almost 90% of these soybeans leave the Amazon traveling to the other side of the globe, to China, to fatten pigs. Is that smart? [00:08:34] Speaker 9: I call it stupidity. [00:08:35] Speaker 6: The scientist works in João José dos Campos at the National Institute for Space Research. [00:08:51] Marina Silva: My name is Luciana Gachi. I'm a researcher at INPI, and I head the Greenhouse Gases Laboratory. [00:09:01] Speaker 6: She's taken hundreds of flights over the Amazon region to gather air samples. She's empirically demonstrated the increase in greenhouse gases. [00:09:10] Marina Silva: We're pumping more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And we're continuing to drive destruction. Of nature, of the planet as it once was. [00:09:29] Speaker 9: Nature is a living organism. Trees release water vapor. And as the water changes from a liquid to a vapor, [00:09:45] Marina Silva: thermal energy is consumed. [00:09:48] Speaker 9: Where there are trees, it's cooler. [00:09:54] Marina Silva: But when we clear the land, when we cut down the trees, the temperature rises. [00:10:01] Speaker 9: As we kill the trees, the temperature increases. [00:10:07] Speaker 6: In many parts of the world, people have stopped accepting the science, a source of huge frustration to the climate researcher. She's particularly frustrated by U.S. President Donald Trump, who views climate research data as superfluous. [00:10:23] Marina Silva: NoAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, monitors three-quarters of the world's greenhouse gases. Yet Trump has decided that this laboratory should close, and with it, all the monitoring stations, both in the U.S. and abroad. He'll cause a complete blackout, simply cutting off our access to data on temperatures and greenhouse gases. [00:10:59] Speaker 6: Intact rainforest in the Amazon is found mainly in protected areas, places where indigenous people look after the forest. This has been scientifically proven. [00:11:13] Speaker 9: Indigenous peoples are the truly enlightened ones. [00:11:19] Marina Silva: We, on the other hand, seem like children, lacking in wisdom. For knowledge is not the same as wisdom. A humanity that bases its future on the destruction of the planet possesses little wisdom. [00:11:41] Speaker 9: I would say that this humanity has very little wisdom. [00:11:44] Marina Silva: We must learn from them. [00:11:45] Speaker 9: We must learn from them. We must learn from them. [00:11:48] Speaker 6: Porto Veio Airport in the state of Rodonia. The arrival of Chai Souroui. The global climate activist combines indigenous spirituality with a digital presence. She's a member of the Paitar Souroui ethnic group, a name that means "the true people". [00:12:11] Speaker ?: She's a member of the Paitar Souroui ethnic group in the country. [00:12:15] Speaker 6: Whenever she visits her mother at the local council office, she has to walk past CCTV cameras and through security gates. Her mother, Ivaneida Bandeida, whom everyone calls Nadinha, is also a famous activist. Nadinha has received several death threats. [00:12:32] Speaker 10: As Chai's mother, I feel a deep sense of pride. She's long since surpassed what my ex-husband Almir and I set out to achieve. These days, it's more a case of us following in Chai's footsteps. [00:12:56] Speaker 11: We were both always on the front line. [00:12:59] Speaker 10: Right in the thick of the battle. Right in the heart of the territories. But we didn't know how to use the new digital media. Chai, however, has mastered them. And that's what makes our voice even louder. [00:13:17] Speaker 6: Nadinha founded Caninde, an indigenous aid organization. Her daughter gained international fame thanks to a speech at the 2021 Glasgow Climate Change Conference. [00:13:28] Speaker 12: My name is Chai Souroui. I'm only 24. But my people have been living in the Amazon rainforest at least 6,000 years. My father, the great chief Almir Souroui, taught me that we must listen to the stars, the moon, the wind, the animals, and the trees. Today, the climate is warming. The animals are disappearing. The rivers are dying. And our plants don't flower like they did before. The earth is speaking. She tells us that we have no more time. [00:14:10] Speaker 6: This is her home village. The indigenous territory was named after Brazil's national holiday. Seto de Setembro. On September 7th, 1822, Brazil declared its independence from Portugal. Nadinha now laments other forms of dependence. [00:14:34] Speaker 10: Peace is a thing of the past. You used to have your peace and quiet, but not anymore. No matter where you are, the internet is already there. Even here in this indigenous village, you used to have your peace and quiet here. No more. [00:14:52] Speaker 6: But the internet plays a part in their fight against land grabs and deforestation. And it brings their actions to the world's attention. They've planted more than a million trees here. [00:15:04] Speaker 13: We planted them all together. [00:15:08] Vinícius Borba: Chai was still little back then. [00:15:11] Speaker ?: How old are they now? [00:15:17] Vinícius Borba: That was 25 years ago. [00:15:21] Speaker 13: Chai was three years old when we started. [00:15:26] Speaker 2: This used to be nothing but barren pasture land. No trees, no forest. And today, just look. There they stand, strong and tall. Those little saplings have grown into mighty trees. [00:15:48] Vinícius Borba: Look, my child. Your grandfather planted that one, a Brazil nut tree. [00:15:53] Speaker 2: That's how it is. Just like my father, my grandfather was also a great leader. Someone who thought beyond himself and his own life. This forest, left to us by him, is proof of that. [00:16:12] Speaker 6: And it's under threat from advancing deforestation. [00:16:18] Speaker ?: Soybeans. [00:16:20] Speaker 6: As far as the eye can see. The plant now grows where rainforests used to. Agricultural products accounted for just under half of Brazil's exports in 2024. [00:16:32] Marina Silva: In Brazil, we have this large-scale agriculture that just keeps growing and growing, while at the same time the rivers are drying up. Who can guarantee that it isn't precisely this model of large-scale land ownership in Mato Grosso and Randonia that's causing Amazon rivers to dry up? [00:16:55] Vinícius Borba: A third of Brazil's GDP comes from agriculture. And it's not the small farms. They can't meet the demand from abroad. It's the large ones with the necessary infrastructure. I need large farms to produce enough grain to account for 30% of GDP. These are precisely the people who can invest substantial sums. [00:17:18] Speaker 9: There's a project to turn Brazil into the world's bread basket. [00:17:25] Marina Silva: That won't work. It's not sustainable. We must stop producing food here, just to send it somewhere else. We need different approaches. More sensible, smaller-scale solutions. [00:17:37] Speaker 9: Brazilia, the capital. [00:17:46] Speaker 6: The agricultural lobby calls the shots where laws are made. More than 60% of MPs are under its control. [00:18:01] Speaker 2: All the bad bills, like the current environmental licensing bill, but also others - there are many bad bills in the Brazilian Congress - are championed by the agricultural lobby. This is the crux of Brazil's problem. Agribusiness that's modern, but at the same time archaic and outdated. Still failing to grasp exactly why its own business needs protection. Because the first victims of climate instability are always those doing the actual farming. [00:18:43] Speaker 6: Soybeans forever. MPs and farmers are interested in the bean. But above all, in the soil. The land issue has been the central theme in agricultural reform for decades. Writer Miriam Leitao believes the Amazon is at a crucial crossroads. [00:19:00] Speaker 8: Yes, it's precisely the land issue. [00:19:05] Speaker 2: It's a struggle for land. The Amazon is a disputed territory. Take for example the fact that in lots of towns, criminals are in power. Who provides jobs in these towns? Criminals. Criminals. Those linked to deforestation or illegal mining. [00:19:23] Speaker 6: Illegal gold miners don't care about indigenous protected areas. They ravage the forest, poison the rivers, and harm the people. [00:19:32] Vinícius Borba: Researchers from Fiocruz, a health organization, came to visit us. They examined 178 indigenous Paitersurui. [00:19:52] Speaker 13: All had mercury poisoning. [00:19:57] Speaker 6: Illegal gold prospectors have also moved into the Surui forest. Getting to them is difficult. This is a highly organized criminal operation. [00:20:19] Speaker 5: We are about to reach the illegal gold mining site, right in the heart of Paitersurui territory. The road ends here, then it's on foot, straight into the illegal gold mining area. This is the furthest we can go by car. We'll be walking from here. [00:20:49] Speaker 6: An illicit rush is bypassing indigenous consent. The gold prospectors have no right to be on protected land. But surging gold prices are driving a massive wave of illegal mining and fueling deforestation in the process. They've also attracted drug cartels. Actions such as these by lightly armed groups of Surui are extremely risky. [00:21:31] Vinícius Borba: They all ran off. There were five of them. One ran over here. The guy in the digger, he ran off too. They were afraid of being arrested. The engine was still running. He didn't even have time to switch it off. He just ran off and left the engine running. [00:21:48] Speaker 6: They're trying to destroy the criminals' infrastructure. But as soon as the forest guardians have left, the prospectors return. A study by Tulane University in the United States has found that the Amazon's mercury load has risen to more than 200 tons per year. The prospectors use it to extract gold from the rock. Excavators and Starlink Internet, the only tools they need. They sometimes remain in the area for years before moving on. [00:22:24] Speaker 5: My people are dying from mercury, from the diseases brought to us by the gold prospectors. This has been going on since 2000, for 25 years. And nobody's doing anything about it. Nobody. The authorities are aware. [00:22:43] Speaker 6: Brasilia is aware. Brasilia is aware, but does nothing, because most of the deputies support the agribusiness lobby. Relaxing environmental legislation is more lucrative than protecting indigenous people. In most cases, offenders never even pay the fines imposed by environmental authorities. [00:23:03] Speaker 4: Garimperos and mineradores are not bandits. [00:23:07] Speaker 5: Gold prospectors and miners aren't criminals, Minister. But ICMBio and Ibama crack down hard and impose immediate fines. They burn machinery, and with it, the lives, hopes and dreams of these people. The Ministry of the Environment must stop hounding farmers. Today, farmers are feeding Brazil and the world. It's time to end this business of issuing fines, Marina. You're right, Minister. That's what we want. [00:23:34] Vinícius Borba: At any mention of the Amazon, the knee-jerk response is: it's a scandal. People need a scapegoat. And more often than not, it's us, the farmers. [00:23:45] Speaker 13: Yes, there have been record-breaking fires. [00:23:50] Vinícius Borba: But what does that really mean in the vast expanse of the Amazon? Over 84% is still forest. And science confirms it: the rainforest doesn't burn. It's too damp. [00:24:04] Speaker 6: Fire can't spread. But in August 2024 alone, more than 38,000 fires broke out in the Brazilian Amazon region. [00:24:15] Speaker ?: What's causing them? [00:24:18] Speaker 6: The people who work here know the answer. PrevFogo is a specialized center within Ibama responsible for preventing and fighting fires. Fewer than 5% of the fines imposed by Ibama, Brazil's primary Federal Environmental Enforcement Agency, are actually paid. [00:24:38] Speaker 13: We're engaged in a constant battle against impunity here. [00:24:51] Speaker 5: To ensure that perpetrators are truly held to account, that's our daily struggle as an organization. We feel frustrated sometimes, but that also gives us the strength to carry on. To do what we believe in: protecting nature, preserving the planet's ecological balance, and combating climate change. [00:25:13] Speaker 6: Rainforest fires are usually started by humans. Rainfall is decreasing, and temperatures are rising. Deforestation is responsible for just under three-quarters of the decline in rainfall. This includes slash-and-burn farming. Climate change accounts for the rest. [00:25:33] Speaker 5: There's a high risk that what happened last year will happen again in the coming years. Perhaps even worse. Climate change is unfortunately here to stay. And that'll be devastating for our biodiversity. [00:25:49] Marina Silva: The Bolsonaro government effectively abolished environmental policy. It cut funding, dismantled teams through budget cuts, and intimidated Ibama and ECMBio to prevent them from doing their jobs. Today, two and a half years later, we've regained control, and increased the number of inspections carried out by Ibama and ECMBio by 96%. [00:26:11] Speaker 8: The federal police are on climate patrol. [00:26:22] Speaker 6: The federal police are on climate patrol. Environmental crime is the third-largest criminal sector worldwide after drug smuggling and arms dealing. The financial action task force, or FATF, an international organization dedicated to combating money laundering, says it generates up to $281 billion every year. [00:27:03] Vinícius Borba: We're on our way to a protected area in the Iqiri National Forest. Private land overlaps with public territory. [00:27:17] Speaker 4: The network's been broken up by Operation Greenwashing. [00:27:23] Speaker 6: When the environmental authorities are out on patrol, the police provide security. [00:27:36] Speaker 5: We rely on federal police support, because this area is rife with conflict. We can't be out in these areas without bulletproof vests. They're essential, as you can see for yourselves. We're right in the middle of the forest. We could be ambushed at any moment. [00:27:55] Speaker 6: Nature reserves, whether owned by the state or indigenous communities, are being plundered by the logging mafia. And their alarm systems work. Somehow, the loggers always know when it's time to cut and run. [00:28:31] Speaker 5: The loggers were just here. Food, hammocks, mattresses. Signs that they fled just moments before we arrived. [00:28:42] Speaker 6: Environmental protection in the Amazon is expensive and dangerous. Non-profit Global Witness says Brazil is one of the deadliest countries for guardians of the land and environment. [00:28:53] Speaker 5: This area isn't exactly a no-man's land. But if you don't have the means to ensure your safety, it's a hostile place. You might come here and never return. [00:29:06] Speaker 6: The rain forest is vast, and environmental agencies don't have enough personnel to monitor the whole territory. They're not exactly popular in the region. They're not exactly the same. They're not exactly the same. [00:29:23] Speaker ?: They're not exactly the same. [00:29:23] Speaker 6: They're not exactly the same. They're not exactly the same. They're not exactly the same. [00:29:26] Speaker ?: They're not exactly the same. [00:29:26] Speaker 6: They're not exactly the same. They're not exactly the same. They're not exactly the same. They're not exactly the same. [00:29:30] Speaker ?: They're not exactly the same. They're not exactly the same. They're not exactly the same. They're not exactly the same. They're not exactly the same. They're not exactly the same. [00:29:37] Speaker 6: The amount of the timber exported from the Amazon is illegally sourced. But as long as there are buyers and a market. The age-old story of supply and demand. [00:29:57] Speaker 5: The timber appears to be legal, but the paperwork is from somewhere else. In Operation Greenwashing, we were able to prove that our suspects' permits were just a cover. They didn't harvest their timber from their own land, but from the Kacharari indigenous territory. It was laundered using false documents. [00:30:19] Speaker 6: Operation Greenwashing focused primarily on land grabs, corruption and CO2 credits. It's alleged that millions of tons of "saved emissions" were sold and illegal timber laundered using forged documents. Staff at government offices are said to have been bribed, with corruption extending to high-ranking government posts even within the judiciary. The evidence is overwhelming, with criminals going to surprising lengths to push paperwork through. [00:30:53] Speaker 4: We were able to establish Dona Rosalina Gomez's year of birth, the late 1890s. [00:31:07] Speaker 5: Which meant that when she signed the document, she would have been 116 years old. Utterly absurd. They didn't check when Rosalina died. Because by the time she was supposedly signing that document, she had in fact been dead for many years. [00:31:23] Speaker 4: The Fortaleza Itushi Estate is a case in point. [00:31:29] Speaker 6: Greenpeace says 68% of the vast farm overlaps with protected areas, which means it can't be privately owned. But because the project was marketed as an Amazon conservation initiative, it easily won public funding. [00:31:47] Speaker 5: We've been able to prove that the accused seized around 530,000 hectares of federal public land and were treating it as their own private property. And after they'd falsified the documents, they even had these areas certified by international registries, such as the US-based VERA. They then used these certifications to sell carbon credits to multinational corporations. [00:32:26] Speaker 6: Brazilian broadcaster TV Globo names Ricardo Stopé as the project owner. He's a doctor from São Paulo. His group is alleged to have made around 30 million euros from the selling of rotten carbon credits in land-grabbed areas. He's currently under house arrest with an electronic tag and is awaiting trial. [00:32:49] Speaker 7: He's under house arrest with an officer. [00:32:53] Marina Silva: Operation Greenwashing was the world's largest campaign against land-grabs and environmental crimes. [00:33:00] Speaker 7: It was unprecedented. It was a breakthrough for our country. [00:33:09] Marina Silva: The realization that land-grabbing is deadly. [00:33:14] Speaker 7: It leads to violence, murder, and the unlawful enrichment of just a few. [00:33:25] Marina Silva: The operation gave authorities and institutions a new perspective. [00:33:34] Speaker 6: Larissa Magalhães was chief of police in the state of Rodonia during Operation Greenwashing. Every year, the court in Porto Velho honors the pioneering achievements of women. Nedinha's daughter, indigenous activist Chai Surui, also receives an award in absentia. [00:34:08] Speaker 2: I'm absolutely delighted that my mother is representing me today. She's equally deserving of such recognition. She's an inspiration to me. She has always shown me that we, as indigenous women, can be anywhere and do anything we want. She has taught me to keep dreaming and to keep planting trees. [00:34:33] Speaker 6: She is still doing that, not in the rainforest, but on the outskirts of a big city. She moved to Sao Paulo to be with her partner, a Guarani leader. The highest point of this megacity is indigenous territory. The summit of Jaraguá is Chai Surui's new home. She studied law for four years. This helps her in the fight against land grabbing and for human rights. Perhaps one day she'll become a lawyer. She shares her greatest dream with her father: autonomy for indigenous territories. That's what she's fighting for, almost 3,000 kilometers away from her homeland, from her beloved rainforest. [00:35:27] Speaker 11: I came here for love. I married my husband. He's a regional Guarani leader. [00:35:36] Speaker 2: And today I too share in his people's struggle. [00:35:41] Speaker 11: The fight for the Jaraguá indigenous territory. [00:35:46] Speaker 2: An indigenous area situated right in the heart of Latin America's largest metropolis. [00:35:54] Speaker 6: An indigenous village overlooking a concrete jungle. Land speculation and land grabbing are threatening the rights of indigenous people here, too. [00:36:09] Speaker 2: Today we live surrounded by the city, encircled by it. But it wasn't us who came here. [00:36:26] Speaker 11: The city came and surrounded our village. [00:36:30] Speaker 6: Sao Paulo, the beating heart of the Brazilian economy. A single state accounts for around a third of the country's total gross domestic product. [00:36:41] Speaker 14: Hi, my name is Meryl Vandermark. I'm the coordinator of the Forest and Finance Coalition, which is a coalition of organizations and movements that fight to stop financiers, financial institutions from financing deforestation and rights violations. [00:36:57] Speaker 6: Forests and Finance is an international NGO that investigates global financial flows and advises banks. [00:37:04] Speaker 14: We found that in the past five years, an area of 16,500 square kilometers, which is about the half of Belgium, in the Amazon, has received credit while also having deforestation on that area. So there was almost 700 million euros worth of credit flowing to these areas, where the bank could have known that either there was deforestation before they provided the loan or after they provided the loan, the farmer went and caused deforestation, probably using the money from the bank. [00:37:41] Speaker 6: This amateur footage was shot during the record-breaking year of 2024, when the Amazon burned like never before. Look, the calf. The calf is burned. Dead. Scenes straight out of a horror film. Experts estimate only around 1% of Amazon fires are caused by natural factors such as lightning strikes. The rest are man-made. The animals here are being burnt alive. [00:38:12] Vinícius Borba: Look at this, everyone. They can't even open their eyes anymore. Oh, my God. [00:38:21] Speaker 6: Lush green instead of fiery red. What it used to look like, perhaps. And what it still looks like in most indigenous reserves. At least in those places where people's existence isn't yet dictated by investment and compound interest. [00:38:38] Speaker 14: I think that indigenous people's territories are the best protected areas in terms of, you know, there's little deforestation. I think that's also a really important strategy to support indigenous peoples and local communities to have their territories officially recognized, protected, to make sure that they're not involved in deforestation. [00:38:57] Speaker 6: A metropolis that's home to millions, a financial hub, an industrial powerhouse. Sao Paulo is a byword for power, money, and speed. Progress, in short, as defined by industrialized society. For indigenous people, this behemoth is a wound inflicted on nature. [00:39:13] Marina Silva: We've belittled them so much that we've convinced them of the exact opposite. That they have to come to our universities, to our centers of learning. But in reality, it took me 30 years of studying the Amazon to think like an indigenous person today. [00:39:35] Speaker 9: Members of the Guarani community are being hosted by INSPED, a private university in Sao Paulo, which is also linked to Harvard. [00:39:54] Speaker 6: Chai and Thiago are part of a panel discussion and have been offered teaching positions at INSPED. [00:40:10] Speaker 2: What's lacking is action. What's lacking is genuine commitment from governments, from those who call themselves leaders. A good leader must, first and foremost, show humility. Humility to do what matters most: to listen to their people. [00:40:34] Speaker 6: The Minister for Indigenous Peoples, Sonia Guajajara, has come to sign a cooperation agreement with the university. [00:40:41] Speaker 10: The world now recognizes how important indigenous peoples and their territories are in the fight against climate change. [00:41:01] Speaker 6: She heads up a newly created ministry. For the first time in Brazil's history, indigenous heritage is being recognized at a government level. A historic step, but also a new arena for political conflict between the guardians of the forest and the agricultural lobby. [00:41:20] Speaker 2: It's a historic recognition. One that Brazil has denied for far too long. For how can one speak of democracy when there are no indigenous people in the decision-making chambers? In the halls of power? Or within the executive branch? What kind of democracy is that? What democracy is this? [00:41:42] Speaker 6: Perhaps one day, Chai Surui's path will lead them out of the village and into the corridors of power. However they bring it to politics and the world, the sons and daughters of the rainforest have decided it's time their message is heard loud and clear. [00:41:56] Marina Silva: The planet is finite, but greed is infinite, just as humankind's desire and will are infinite. Around 450 years ago, we shifted our focus from the ideal of being to the ideal of having. [00:42:15] Speaker 8: But a finite planet can't satisfy the infinite craving for possessions. [00:42:21] Marina Silva: Perhaps it's time to return to the ideal of being. Because having has its limits, whereas being has none. [00:42:30] Speaker 15: It's time to return to the ideal of being to the ideal of being to the ideal of being to the ideal of being. Jau'ai, don't need to ikatumarai, jau'ai, jau'ai.