Sucre Ethique - Shell’s Brazil Biofuel Venture Said to Threaten Indians

Latin American Herald Tribune - mardi 28 septembre 2010

Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s ethanol joint venture with Brazil’s Cosan poses a threat to Guarani Indian communities, indigenous rights organization Survival International said Tuesday.

“Shell is threatening to aggravate what is already one of the most critical situations of all Indian peoples in Brazil. Now the company knows what its Brazilian partner is up to, we hope they won’t want to be implicated in the appalling theft of the Guaranis’ land,” Survival director Stephen Corry said in a statement.

Some of the land on which Cosan plans to cultivate sugarcane for the $12 billion ethanol project with Shell is officially acknowledged as belonging to the Guarani people, according to the London-based advocacy group.

Survival noted that a Brazilian prosecutor charged with defending Indian rights has written to Shell to warn the company that the joint venture” con Cosan jeopardizes the multinational’s “commitment to biodiversity and sustainability.”

The 2008 movie “Birdwatchers” called the world’s attention to the Guaranis’ problems and one of the stars of that film, Ambrosio Vilhalva, comes from a community affected by Cosan’s activities.

“The sugarcane plantations are finishing off the Indians. Our lands are getting smaller and smaller. The plantations are killing the Indians,” Vilhalva said in words cited by Survival.

Almost all Guarani lands have already been stolen for the use of cattle ranches and plantations of soybean and sugarcane, Survival said.

And the Guarani suffer violent attacks whenever they try to return to their ancestral lands, where dozens of their leaders have been slain by hired guns.

The Guarani people also have one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and their babies die of malnutrition because they have no land for crops or for hunting, Survival said.