Amazon Indigenous woman wins Goldman environment prize

Apr 24, 2023, 12:27 AM

Munduruku leader Alessandra Korap poses at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, Wednesday, April 19...

Munduruku leader Alessandra Korap poses at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, Wednesday, April 19, 2023. Korap, from the Brazilian Amazon, has been awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her work fighting against illegal mining and large-scale projects aimed at facilitating soybean exports in the Tapajos River Basin. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS

(AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

SÃO PAULO (AP) — When Alessandra Korap was born in the mid-1980s, her Indigenous village nestled in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil was a haven of seclusion. But as she grew up, the nearby city of Itaituba, with its bustling streets and commercial activity, crept closer and closer.

It wasn’t just her village feeling the encroachment of non-Indigenous outsiders. Two major federal highways paved the way for tens of thousands of settlers, illegal gold miners and loggers into the region’s vast Indigenous territories, which cover a forested area roughly the size of Belgium.

The influx posed a grave threat to Korap’s Munduruku people, 14,000-strong and spread throughout the Tapajos River Basin, in Para and Mato Grosso states. Soon illegal mining, hydroelectric dams, a major railway and river ports for soybean exports choked their lands — lands they were still struggling to have recognized.

Korap and other Munduruku women took up the responsibility of defending their people, overturning the traditionally all-male leadership. Organizing in their communities, they orchestrated demonstrations, presented compelling evidence of environmental crime to the Federal Attorney General and Federal Police, and vehemently opposed illicit agreements and incentives offered to the Munduruku by unscrupulous miners, loggers, corporations, and politicians seeking access to their land.

Korap’s defense of her ancestral territory was recognized with the Goldman Environmental Prize on Monday. The award honors grassroots activists around the world who are dedicated to protecting the environment and promoting sustainability.

“This award is an opportunity to draw attention to the demarcation of the Sawre Muybu territory,” Korap told The Associated Press. “It is our top priority, along with the expulsion of illegal miners.”

Sawre Muybu is an area of virgin rainforest along the Tapajos River spanning 178,000 hectares (440,000 acres). Official recognition for the land, or demarcation, began in 2007 but was frozen during the far-right presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, which ended in January.

Still, the Munduruku people celebrated a victory in 2021 when the British mining company Anglo American gave up trying to mine inside Indigenous territories in Brazil, including Sawre Muybu.

Studies have shown that Indigenous-controlled forests are the best preserved the in Brazilian Amazon.

Almost half of Brazil’s climate pollution comes from deforestation. The destruction is so vast now that the eastern Amazon, not far from the Munduruku, has ceased to be a carbon sink, or net absorber of the gas and is now a carbon source, according to a study published in 2021 in the journal Nature.

Korap, however, knows that land rights alone don’t protect the land.

In the neighboring Munduruku Indigenous Territory, illegal miners have destroyed and contaminated hundreds of miles of waterways in search of gold, even though it was officially recognized in 2004.

Now Brazil’s new government has created the country’s first mounted operations to drive out miners. But Korap remains skeptical of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. She sees his actions as contradictory, noting that while he advocates for forest protection, he also negotiates trade deals with other countries to sell more of the country’s top exports — beef and soybeans — which are the main drivers of deforestation in Brazil.

“When Lula travels abroad, he is sitting with rich people and not with forest defenders. A ministry is useless if the government negotiates our lands without acknowledging we are here,” she said.

Other Goldman Environmental Prize recipients this year are:

— Tero Mustonen, a university professor and environmental activist from Finland, who led the purchase of peatland damaged by state-sponsored industrial activity.

—Delima Silalahi, a Batak woman from North Sumatra, Indonesia, who organized Indigenous communities across the country to advocate for their rights to traditional forests.

—Chilekwa Mumba, a Zambian community organizer who has fought for and won compensation for residents harmed by copper mining before the UK Supreme Court.

—Zafer Kizilkaya of Turkey, a marine conservationist and conservation photographer who established Turkey’s first community-managed marine protected area in the Mediterranean.

—Diane Wilson, an American shrimp boat captain who won a landmark case against petrochemical giant Formosa Plastics over the discharge of plastic waste on the Texas Gulf Coast.

___

Isabella O’Malley contributed from Philadelphia.

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

United States News

Associated Press

Born in a typhoon: Many, including newborns, remain without electricity as Guam recovers from storm

HONOLULU (AP) — About a week after Typhoon Mawar tore through Guam as the strongest typhoon to hit the U.S. Pacific territory in over two decades, most of the island remained without electricity and the governor appealed for patience during a recovery process expected to take at least a month. Even though Mawar caused no […]

16 hours ago

FILE - JPMorgan Chase & Company Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon testifies at a Senate Banking Committe...

Associated Press

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says he never heard of Jeffrey Epstein until after his 2019 arrest

NEW YORK (AP) — JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has testified that he never heard of Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes against teenage girls and young women until the financier was arrested in 2019, according to a transcript of the videotaped deposition released Wednesday. Dimon said he first heard about it “when the story blew wide […]

16 hours ago

FILE - Solomon Peña, center, a Republican candidate for New Mexico House District 14, is taken int...

Associated Press

Federal grand jury charges ex-GOP candidate with shootings on lawmakers’ homes

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A failed political candidate has been indicted on federal charges including interference with the electoral process in connection with a series of drive-by shootings at the homes of state and local lawmakers in Albuquerque, according to a grand jury indictment that was unsealed Wednesday. The indictment filed in U.S. District […]

16 hours ago

Associated Press

Authorities identify 4 missing, 1 dead after Alaska charter boat found partially submerged

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Authorities on Wednesday released the names of four people who remain missing after the charter fishing boat they were on was found partially submerged in southeast Alaska. The recovered body of a fifth person has also been identified. Alaska State Troopers identified those missing as Danielle Agcaoili, 53, of Waipahu, Hawaii; […]

16 hours ago

Associated Press

Court: No lawsuit immunity for Michigan official who had rifle during online meeting

DETROIT (AP) — A lawsuit can go forward against a Michigan official who flashed a rifle during a public meeting over video conference, a federal appeals court said Wednesday. Patricia MacIntosh is suing Ron Clous, alleging he tried to silence her right to free speech when he displayed the rifle during a 2021 meeting of […]

16 hours ago

In this still image captured by Las Vegas police officer Tierney Tomburo's body camera, 27-year-old...

Associated Press

Las Vegas police video shows moment officer was shot during traffic stop

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Las Vegas police lapel videos played Wednesday during a public review of evidence in a September 2022 shooting showed the moment an officer was shot and wounded during a pre-dawn traffic stop and the dramatic aftermath as her partner rushed to her side to apply a tourniquet. Officer Tierney Tomburo, 24 […]

16 hours ago

Sponsored Articles

...

SANDERSON FORD

Thank you to Al McCoy for 51 years as voice of the Phoenix Suns

Sanderson Ford wants to share its thanks to Al McCoy for the impact he made in the Valley for more than a half-decade.

...

Desert Institute for Spine Care

Spinal fusion surgery has come a long way, despite misconceptions

As Dr. Justin Field of the Desert Institute for Spine Care explained, “we've come a long way over the last couple of decades.”

(Photo: OCD & Anxiety Treatment Center)...

OCD & Anxiety Treatment Center

Here’s what you need to know about OCD and where to find help

It's fair to say that most people know what obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders generally are, but there's a lot more information than meets the eye about a mental health diagnosis that affects about one in every 100 adults in the United States.

Amazon Indigenous woman wins Goldman environment prize