WEBVTT - Feature Story: Amazon Rainforest Point of No Return 0:00:00.680 --> 0:00:04.640 Broadcasting from the financial capital of the world Bloomberg eleven 0:00:04.760 --> 0:00:09.360 Frio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, 0:00:09.440 --> 0:00:12.879 Bloomberg one O six one, to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:16.200 sixty to the country Sirius XM Chado one nineteen and 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:19.640 around the globe the Bloomberg Business app and Bloomberg Radio 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:24.840 dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Carol Masser 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:27.480 and I'm Tim Stanabek, a story in the magazine this week. 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:31.280 The Amazon rainforest is one of the globe's greatest natural resources, 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:33.440 yet in the past forty years we've lost an area 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:37.400 as big as California to DeForest station. Some scientists suggest 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:39.800 the Amazon is now close to a tipping point, at 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:42.199 which point it will become a savannah rather than a 0:00:42.320 --> 0:00:45.760 rainforest and contribute to climate change rather than helping to 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:49.280 limit it. Brazil's government, especially under President Jay R. Bosonaro, 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:52.120 is engaged in an active campaign to open up the 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:55.720 Amazon to privatization and development, first by turning a blind 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:58.840 eye as lands are rated and cleared, and then by 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:03.160 systematically pardoning the people responsible and granting them legal title 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:06.360 to the stolen lands. Poverty, drives. The calls to develop 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:09.440 the rainforest, and the surging prices of commodities today are 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:13.479 fueling schemes, many increasingly violent, to grab even more land. 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:17.520 What sure is that the destruction is accelerating last days 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:22.120 of the rainforest. The Brazilian Amazon is approaching the point 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:26.080 of no return, and the government is fanning the flames. 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:34.240 By Jessica Bryce and Michael Smith. In April, lawmakers in 0:01:34.240 --> 0:01:37.760 the Brazilian state of Rondonia gathered for a hasty vote 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:39.959 in a squat cube of a building that had sat 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:43.720 largely empty for months. Few places on Earth had been 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:49.240 hit harder by COVID nineteen than Portovello, the concrete capital city, which, 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:51.880 like everything else in the region, has been carved out 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:55.720 of the Amazon rainforest. But on that rainy afternoon, while 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:59.120 the city was in lockdown, the legislators felt they couldn't 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:02.800 wait any long. Her They needed to pass a bill 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:05.840 that would slash the size of a state rainforest reserve 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:10.760 known as Jesse Parana and another park farther south, Once 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:14.240 a vast expanse of sinuous streams and soaring stands of 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:19.560 mahogany and Castagna trees, Jesse Paranagh extractive reserve has been 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:24.000 largely transformed into pasture for cattle. Roads cut into the 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:27.360 bright red mud criss crossed the reserve, connecting hundreds of 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:31.720 ranches where one and twenty thousand cattle grays. The ranches 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:36.079 are illegal. The new law would change that. Their owners 0:02:36.160 --> 0:02:38.200 would no longer have to hide the origin of their 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:42.600 livestock to sell to big beef producers. More important, the 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:46.000 land grabbers would have a path to legal title. Almost 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:48.920 half the state legislators are ranchers or got elected with 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:52.520 agribusiness money. They'd long wanted to wipe the slate clean 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:55.320 for their rural base, and now they had support all 0:02:55.320 --> 0:02:58.520 the way up to the presidential palace in Brazilia. In 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:01.600 a few days, President Ira Bulsonaro would appear at a 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:05.480 US sponsored climate summit to defend Brazil's record on the Amazon. 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.160 For two years, Donald Trump had been a friend as 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:14.200 Bolsonaro dismantled protections for the rainforest. President Joe Biden most 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:18.239 certainly would not be. The lawmaker's plan could fall apart 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:22.680 if Biden ratcheted up the pressure. Listen well ezekiel Nieva, 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:26.480 a rancher and lawmaker, told his colleagues this is one 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:30.680 of our last chances to vote. The bill passed unanimously. 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:36.920 Coronel Marcos Roscha, Rondonia's governor and one of Bolsonaro's staunchest allies, 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:41.400 signed it into law on May. It's being challenged in court. 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:46.520 Jesse Parana, formerly large enough to swallow Mexico City, was 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:50.160 slashed in size by eight nine percent, leaving only a 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:53.840 sliver of terrain along its western edge. The other state 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:58.000 reserve mentioned in the bill, Guajarrat Mirim, lost fifty thou 0:03:58.240 --> 0:04:03.320 hectares or a thousand acres. Two days after the Rhondonia 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:08.040 law passed. Bolsonaro didn't let down the ranchers. He was defiant. 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:10.520 When he spoke via video link to Biden and other 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:14.600 heads of state at the Leader's Summit on Climate Bolsonaro 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:18.000 praised Brazil's work in protecting the Amazon while pointing a 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:20.960 finger at the developed world's addiction to fossil fuels as 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:24.720 the key culprit and climate change above all, he lamented 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:28.839 the Amazonian paradox. The rainforest is one of the globe's 0:04:28.880 --> 0:04:32.960 greatest natural resources, in both the commodities it holds and 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:35.960 its role in producing oxygen and cleaning the world's air, 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:39.000 and yet most of the twenty four million people living 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:42.320 in and around it are poor. The value of the 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:47.000 standing forest must be acknowledged. Bulsonaro said there must be 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:50.760 fair payment for environmental services provided by our biomes to 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:54.520 the planet at large. The message to the world was clear, 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:58.240 pay us to leave the Amazon alone, or Brazil will 0:04:58.279 --> 0:05:02.200 find its own way to extract that value. There's ample 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:05.720 evidence that the government is already doing that. A review 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:09.599 of thousands of public documents and dozens of interviews with prosecutors, 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:13.479 forest rangers, and members of Bolsonaro's inner circle show that 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:16.680 Brazil's government is engaged in an active campaign to open 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:20.480 up the Amazon to privatization and development, first by turning 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:23.440 a blind eye as public and protected lands are rated 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:27.560 and cleared, and then by systematically pardoning the people responsible 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:32.080 and granting them legal title to the stolen lands. Bolsonaro's 0:05:32.120 --> 0:05:37.320 government didn't invent the practice. It's rooted in the nation's constitution, 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:41.680 and two presidents before Bolsonaro rammed through changes that essentially 0:05:41.720 --> 0:05:45.200 amnestied about twenty five thousand people who had been squatting 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:49.080 on public properties. A review of Brazilian land records shows, 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:52.840 but Bolsonaro and his team want to accelerate the process 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:56.120 like never before by making it easier for big ranchers 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:58.880 to get in on the game. All that land that's 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:01.919 been cleared in the Amazon on the law allowed it, 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:07.360 says Louise Antonio navan Garcia. Wilsonaro's land policies are That's 0:06:07.360 --> 0:06:09.760 how it happened in the United States. It happened in 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:13.799 Australia when Colonizer's first went out and took that virgin land. 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:18.160 All of it came from the state. Navan Garcia, sixty three, 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:21.560 is himself a rancher. He and his boss came of 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:24.760 age during the nineteen seventies, when the military government in 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:28.640 Brazil viewed turning the wild expanses of the Amazon into cities, farms, 0:06:28.640 --> 0:06:33.280 and mines as an imperative of national security. The dictatorship, 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:38.280 which endured until built military bases, power plants, and a 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:42.719 network of roadways throughout the thick jungle. Those infrastructure projects 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:46.120 fueled what's known as the Brazilian Miracle, a period of 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:49.599 ten percent annual economic growth that still stands out in 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:53.279 many minds as the nation's golden era. But these were 0:06:53.279 --> 0:06:56.880 some of the darkest days for the rainforest itself. Millions 0:06:56.920 --> 0:07:00.880 of people migrated inland from coastal cities, carved homesteads and 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:04.679 huge industrial hubs out of the jungle. In forty years, 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:07.719 the Amazon has lost an area as big as California 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:12.160 to deforestation. Some scientists suggest the Amazon is now close 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:14.640 to a tipping point at which it will become a 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:18.880 savannah rather than a rainforest. It will pump greenhouse gases 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:22.200 into the atmosphere instead of pulling them down, and so 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:25.640 called flying rivers, bands of moisture in the air that 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:29.440 bring rainfall to the continent will dry up. As many 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:32.559 as ten thousand species may be at risk of dying off. 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:38.400 Since taking office in January nine, Bolsonaro, a former Army captain, 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:41.560 has revived the fifty year old world view that Amazon 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:45.440 development and Brazilian prosperity go hand in hand, and he 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:49.280 stacked key land management and environment agencies with farmers and 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:53.400 ranchers who share his vision. Jesse Paranah is the latest 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:56.960 example of that vision's realization, but it's far from the 0:07:57.000 --> 0:08:05.640 only one. Uniao Bandaranchez, located east of jesse Parana, is 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:08.840 a dusty blip of a farming community, a cross hatch 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:11.760 of dirt roads and a few dozen structures, surrounded by 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:15.840 coffee plantations and cattle pastures. A little more than two 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:20.600 decades ago, it didn't exist, no roads, no ranchers, just 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:24.200 rain forest. Today it's something of a model for would 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:29.160 be land grabbers across Rondonia. Edmo Fererra Pinto, forty nine, 0:08:29.480 --> 0:08:32.959 is proud to take credit for the transformation. Wearing trim 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:36.200 jeans and a fitted button down shirt, He's intense and 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:38.760 energetic as he sits in a trendy wine bar on 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:41.920 a recent evening in Porto Vellu, recounting how he and 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:44.840 his friends hacked their way through the jungle and divvied 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:48.720 up land that wasn't theirs. He fancies himself a modern 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:51.480 day robin Hood who stole from the state to give 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:54.480 to the poor. I still look back and can't believe 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:58.600 we've pulled it off, Ferera Pinto says, known as gen 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:02.600 Jin Fererra Tow was only twelve when he his parents, 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:06.120 four siblings, and two other families piled into the back 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:08.760 of an open air fruit truck and traveled the twenty 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:12.280 five hundred kilometers from coastal Bay Yea estate to Rondonia. 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:15.720 It was the mid nineteen eighties, and the truck's owner 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:17.880 made a living, charging a few bucks per head to 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:21.480 faery migrants such as them to the Amazon. For years, 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:25.120 government ads on TV and radio and in newspapers had 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:29.120 promised plots and prosperity for anyone willing to make the journey. 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:33.560 The Amazon was a land without men, for men without land, 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:37.679 the ads declared. Millions answered the call to conquer the 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:41.920 green hell, and the population of Rohondonia swelled from about 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:45.319 one fifteen thousand people in nineteen seventy to more than 0:09:45.360 --> 0:09:49.080 one point one million in nineteen ninety. Behind the boom 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:53.880 was the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform or INKRA, 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:58.000 a government agency the military regime created to speed Brazil's 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:02.200 industrial revolution. The trip took a week. They sat on 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:05.760 wooden benches, a tarp offering shade from the scorching sun. 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:09.120 Like the millions of others making their way to Brazil's 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:12.400 wild West, they followed a highway built as part of 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:15.760 a World Bank backed push to thread roads through the jungle. 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:19.240 Once in Rohndonia, the family moved in with an uncle 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:22.040 who had made the same track a decade earlier. He'd 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:25.960 been rewarded with land, but by the time Ferrara Pinto arrived, 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:30.320 everything had changed. After the military dictatorship gave way to 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:34.120 a democracy, INCRA was given a new mission. Instead of 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:38.360 colonizing the Amazon with industrial farms and factories, the agency 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:41.680 was told to reclaim whatever hadn't yet been developed, dice 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.400 it up into tiny lots, and hand those out to 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:47.960 Brazil's poor for subsistence farming. It was one of the 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:52.319 largest social welfare giveaways of all time, but the execution 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:55.960 was bungled. No longer backed by the power of the military, 0:10:56.360 --> 0:11:00.360 INKRA couldn't enforce its rules. When conflicts over land broke out, 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:03.880 people rushed to claim whatever plots appeared to be free. 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:07.720 Wealthy owners stripped of their properties fought in court to 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:11.679 save their stakes, tying the land up for decades. Documents 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:15.280 were easily forged or altered to make bogus titles look legitimate. 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:19.679 A resale black market for the dubious claims proliferated. Some 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:23.240 falsified documents have now changed hands so many times that 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:26.359 it's impossible to determine the real owners of some parcels. 0:11:26.800 --> 0:11:30.600 A decade after they arrived, Ferrera Pinto's parents found their 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:33.320 way to an Incra settlement on a massive farm that 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:36.760 had been granted to a conglomerate during the dictatorship, then 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:40.600 confiscated after the company failed to develop the land. Ferrera 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:43.440 Pinto looked around at people who'd been there for years. 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:47.000 They were still living in tarp covered shacks without water 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:50.080 or electricity, while waiting for Inkra to tell them which 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:54.120 plot was theirs. You see that and it hurts, Ferrera 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:57.439 Pinto says, I don't think my father ever really let 0:11:57.440 --> 0:11:59.800 it get to him, or at least he didn't show it, 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:03.840 but me it hurt. By then, he and his friends, 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:06.520 who'd also come with their parents in search of land, 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:09.600 had been waiting for most of their lives. When they 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:11.960 heard about a strip of terrain standing free to the 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:16.319 east of Jesse, Paranah, they hatched a plan. On December third, 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:20.199 nineteen ninety nine, which locals still remember as an independence 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:23.520 Day of sorts, Fererra Pinto and three bus loads of 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:26.200 people drove to the edge of the rainforest and set 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:30.600 up camp. They built small huts, then started cutting out roads, 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:34.440 knocking down trees everywhere they went. It took a year 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:36.520 to hack through the rain forest to the spot that 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:40.480 is now the heart of Uniau Bandaranchz, which translates as 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:45.920 Pioneers Union. Along the way, they recruited topographers, lawyers, builders 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:49.120 and administrators, all of them eager to fill the vacuum 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:52.000 left by the government and grab a slice of public 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:57.160 land for themselves. Fererra Pinto was arrested twice for conflicts 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:00.760 and invasions, but was never convicted of a crime. In 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:05.040 the end, he estimates his group settled some eighteen hundred families. 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:08.760 Current law allows anyone who developed land as recently as 0:13:08.800 --> 0:13:12.199 two thousand and eight to apply for amnesty. The people 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:15.920 of Unillau Bandaranchez made a bet and it paid off. 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:22.440 Everaldo Pandolfi is sitting on a brown horse at the 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:26.040 intersection of two dirt roads, watching his son tend to 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:29.160 cattle in a fenced in lot. That's all his now, 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:32.199 Pandolfi says as he points to a sweeping field in 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:34.920 front of him, where the jagged teeth of torched tree 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:38.439 stumps still poke out from the tall grass. Behind him 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:40.880 is a plot he transferred to his daughter. To his 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:44.319 left is a field owned by his other son. Combined, 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:47.280 they add up to more than two hundred hectares. It 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:50.640 used to be pure rainforest. He says, I tore it 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:56.560 all down. An original settler of Unillau, Bandaranchez Pandolfi, who's 0:13:56.600 --> 0:13:59.880 fifty one, paid two hundred and fifty rays about eighty 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:02.960 dollars back then to a surveyor working with Gene Jean 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:06.280 to mark his future farm. From there, he followed a 0:14:06.320 --> 0:14:10.760 familiar playbook. First he went for the majestic hardwoods, hundreds 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:13.439 of years old and as much as eleven feet in diameter. 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:17.920 They brought in fast cash from exporters. Then he torched 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:20.840 the land to clear the scrub before planting a weedy 0:14:20.920 --> 0:14:24.640 grass that is a staple in cattle diets. Eventually he 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:27.440 built a small house with two fish ponds and a 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:30.680 pen for pigs out back. In a few more years, 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:33.200 the burned tree stumps may break down enough to make 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:37.800 way for the pay day coffee or soybeans. That's the dream, 0:14:38.000 --> 0:14:41.360 a neighboring farmer explains. In the south of the state, 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:44.800 where big farmers reign, the shift to soybeans is already 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:49.200 under way. But for that you need investment, irrigation, machinery, 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:54.119 and fertilizer. The little guys rarely get there. The Brazilian 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:58.520 Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources. The federal regulator, 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:02.320 known as IBAMA, knows all about the deforestation, but doesn't 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:05.240 do much to stop it. A study by the independent 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:09.560 news site Info Amazonia found that between nine and twenty nineteen, 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:13.760 IBAMA issued finds worth seventy five billion ray eyes, or 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:17.960 about fourteen billion dollars adjusted for inflation, but collected only 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:22.040 three point three percent of the total. Pandolfi has himself 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:26.040 been fined three times, adding up to six thousand ray eyes. 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:30.280 He doesn't plan on ever paying it. How can i? 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:33.640 He asks, Sitting barefoot on his porch late in the 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:37.440 afternoon with a straight shot view of rainforest territory set 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:42.440 aside for indigenous people, blonde and ten, Pandolfi is unassuming, 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:45.360 in a little bit goofy, curling his legs beneath him 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:47.680 as he breaks down how he gets around the finds 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:50.640 in order to sell his cattle to big beef producers 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:55.160 whose policies prohibit them from buying from deforesters. I took 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:59.000 everything out of my name, he says, my car, my house, 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:02.080 the land. He sells cattle to one of the biggest 0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:05.440 slaughter houses in the area by registering the transactions in 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:10.000 another rancher's name. It's a well known practice. Laundered beef 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:12.400 has been found in the supply chains of meat packers 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:16.120 j b S and Marphyrid Global Foods, and the supermarket 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:20.800 chain carafor these companies say they vet direct suppliers extensively 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:23.800 and that such cases represent a very small portion of 0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:27.480 their beef purchases. It would be easy to think of 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:31.080 Pandolfi as a villain, a callous land grabber who blithely 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:34.480 destroyed a patch of precious rainforest, But he and his 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.680 neighbors paint a picture in which policy, poverty, and the 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:41.520 world's insatiable demand for commodities all pushed them toward the 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:44.520 choices they've made. The only way to get credit from 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:48.680 lenders is to use cattle or land, even untitled land, 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:54.000 as collateral. Global markets don't buy enough sustainably produced foods 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:57.400 such as brazil nuts or assai to keep people afloat, 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:01.840 whereas the appetite for beef grain in timber seems bottomless. 0:17:02.440 --> 0:17:07.400 In Brazil exported thirty five point two billion dollars of soybeans, 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:11.560 soybean meal, and soybean oil, and only one eight point 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:16.439 three million dollars of nuts. Meanwhile, politicians from local council 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:19.840 members all the way up to the president encourage the destruction. 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:24.119 A cross check of political databases and Deboma findes shows 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:28.119 almost one thousand elected officials and political appointees are on 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:33.600 government blacklists for environmental crimes. It's poverty that truly drives 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:36.680 the calls to develop the rainforest from both the left 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:40.120 and the right. Thirty percent of Brazilians live in poverty, 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:43.560 including thirteen percent to survive on less than two dollars 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:47.320 a day, according to the World Bank. In the country's north, 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:52.680 where the rainforest is poverty is especially dire. Clean water, sanitation, 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:56.760 and electricity are luxuries. Almost one third of the population 0:17:56.880 --> 0:18:00.280 is functionally illiterate, unable to meet day to day eating 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:04.000 or riding needs. The COVID pandemic became just one more 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:08.040 item on a long list of scourges that includes malaria, dingey, 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:11.680 and zica. The commodities boom in the mid two thousands 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:15.320 brought a wave of prosperity that few Brazilians had experienced. 0:18:15.800 --> 0:18:19.679 The crash a few years later dragged down everyone. Today, 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:23.359 prices are again surging, and with them schemes to grab 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:26.879 even more land, Only now the schemes are more daring, 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:35.160 more organized, and a lot more violent. Carlos Ranhealda Silva 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:39.040 hikes into the Picas Novos National Park in central Rondonia, 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:42.680 leaving behind the waist high grass and searing tropical heat 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:45.080 of a cattle pasture for the cool shade of the 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:50.320 rainforest canopy. Suddenly he stops, pointing his machete at something ahead. 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:53.720 The eight armed police officers and three park rangers in 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:57.919 his entourage freeze waiting for his cue. He motions to 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:01.280 a lightly trampled patch of grass and farther out a 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:05.240 faint track across the red dirt a motorcycle he says 0:19:05.760 --> 0:19:08.639 could be someone going after timber or scouting the area. 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:12.159 The lead ranger breaks off to check it out, trailed 0:19:12.200 --> 0:19:16.440 by two police officers their assault rifles ready. It turns 0:19:16.480 --> 0:19:19.080 out to be nothing, but there's a reason ran Hell 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:22.520 is on high alert. Informants had been warning that land 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:26.119 grabbers were massing for another assault on Picas Novos, a 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:29.080 vast national park that's home to a stunning half moon 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:34.679 shaped canyon, towering cliffs, and plunging waterfalls. The preserve overlaps 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:38.080 the territory of the Uru a wau Wau, an elusive 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:41.320 indigenous tribe that didn't make contact with the outside world 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:45.680 until the nineteen eighties and still keeps its distance on paper. 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:48.720 Being both a park and a preserve for indigenous people 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:52.400 gives a preserve two layers of protection under Brazilian law, 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:56.600 but that doesn't mean much, especially these days, ran Hell says. 0:19:57.400 --> 0:20:00.240 At seventy two, ran Hell may be the oldest park 0:20:00.320 --> 0:20:04.720 superintendent in Brazil. His team consists of nine firefighters who 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:07.919 double as rangers, patrolling a park twice the size of 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:11.040 Rhode Island. He's been in the job for twenty years 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:14.840 and fantasizes about retiring and riding the next big Brazilian 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:18.320 best seller. But the names his bosses in Brasilia put 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:20.960 up to replace him, he says, are a joke. They 0:20:20.960 --> 0:20:24.680 want to bring in a bureaucrat. The work is physically demanding, 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:27.920 requiring Ronhell and his rangers to hack their way through 0:20:27.960 --> 0:20:31.199 the jungle and sleep in tents among the poisonous snakes 0:20:31.200 --> 0:20:34.960 and the mosquitos. You need someone who will fight, he says. 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:38.600 A few years back, ron Heell discovered an especially well 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:42.480 organized push to claim sixty thousand hectares of park. It 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:45.760 was led by a local rancher named Stabla Curos, his 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:48.920 two brothers, and a ninety two year old grandmother named 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:53.000 Victoria Pando de Sousa. According to a criminal complaint filed 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:56.919 in federal court, Pando's family had been granted permits to 0:20:56.960 --> 0:21:00.240 tap rubber in the park in nineteen seventeen, and the 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:02.800 crew argued that those documents gave them the right to 0:21:02.840 --> 0:21:06.360 buy and sell the land. According to the complaint, they 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:09.000 tried to divide the park land into small plots to 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:12.040 sell to anyone who wanted a farm. They hired a 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:15.240 lawyer to create an association and sent people into the 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:18.920 park to build a sales office. Hundreds of potential buyers, 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:22.919 mainly impoverished farm workers in the area, jumped at the offer. 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:26.280 Kiros dreamed of creating a new farming town to be 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:30.160 named Rio Bonito or Beautiful River. He would be its 0:21:30.160 --> 0:21:34.920 de facto mayor. Federal officials monitoring satellite images in Brazilia 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:38.400 tipped off run Hill. A skilled logger with a chainsaw 0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:41.159 can cut through more than two hectares a day, and 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:45.360 Kiros had a whole team. The destruction was spreading quickly. 0:21:45.960 --> 0:21:49.600 For months, Runhell plotted raids from his office in Campo Novo, 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:53.320 a remote town of about fourteen thousand people where rangers 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:57.800 and deforesters live side by side. Runhell mustered a few 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:01.520 police patrols made up of junior officers who volunteered in 0:22:01.600 --> 0:22:05.240 order to make an extra one rays to day. Any 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:08.600 time they ventured out, they were met with threats and intimidation. 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:11.480 From now on, it's going to be fire and steel, 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:14.440 Kiros warned in a voice message that was cited in 0:22:14.560 --> 0:22:18.000 court papers. From now on, you will respect us, or 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:21.560 you will suffer the consequences. It took twelve hours to 0:22:21.680 --> 0:22:25.160 drive twenty kilometers over rutted and roadblocked trails to where 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:28.240 the illegal loggers operated, and once they got there, it 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:30.440 was all too easy for the gang to flee into 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:33.720 the thick jungle. Once after run Hell and his team 0:22:33.800 --> 0:22:37.640 managed to arrest someone, Kiros and about thirty others ambushed 0:22:37.680 --> 0:22:40.399 them on the road back to Campo Novo. They carried 0:22:40.480 --> 0:22:44.280 molotov cocktails and surrounded the police vehicles, threatening to set 0:22:44.359 --> 0:22:46.400 them on fire if they didn't get their man back. 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:50.200 According to sworn statements by run Hill, the standoff lasted 0:22:50.240 --> 0:22:52.880 an hour before run Hell and his lead ranger talked 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:57.200 Kiros down, but they did give up the prisoner. The 0:22:57.280 --> 0:23:00.760 complaint against Kiros and his associates was fild in October 0:23:00.840 --> 0:23:05.280 twenty nineteen. They denied any wrongdoing. They were let out 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:07.960 of jail in the spring before their trial when the 0:23:08.040 --> 0:23:11.600 government emptied cells because of the pandemic. They've been ordered 0:23:11.640 --> 0:23:14.280 to stay far from the park. But if there's one 0:23:14.320 --> 0:23:17.000 thing the past twenty years have taught run Hell, it's 0:23:17.040 --> 0:23:19.879 that there's always someone in the wings, waiting for the 0:23:19.960 --> 0:23:27.440 guards to look away. Under the glaring sun, several watchmen 0:23:27.480 --> 0:23:31.160 with walkie talkies take cover in two shacks. A rope 0:23:31.240 --> 0:23:33.840 dangling between the shacks forms a makeshift gate to the 0:23:33.960 --> 0:23:37.800 Jacunda National Forest, a two d and twenty thousand hectare 0:23:37.880 --> 0:23:40.800 preserve that's become a flash point in the war for land. 0:23:41.680 --> 0:23:44.600 Past the rope, a dirt trail dips into a narrow 0:23:44.720 --> 0:23:48.240 valley where a river meanders under a sturdy bridge built 0:23:48.320 --> 0:23:52.159 with slabs cut from giant logs. Children jump from the 0:23:52.240 --> 0:23:54.920 bridge into the water while two women fish with a 0:23:55.000 --> 0:23:58.440 green plastic net. A half dozen more wash clothes. A 0:23:58.480 --> 0:24:01.800 few meters downstream, the trail climbs back up into a 0:24:01.880 --> 0:24:06.280 camp called Terra Promatida or Promised Land, where two hundred 0:24:06.320 --> 0:24:10.040 families have settled inside the protected jungle. At the entrance 0:24:10.119 --> 0:24:13.440 to the camp, Fernando Santana, twenty years old and eight 0:24:13.520 --> 0:24:16.840 months pregnant, lounges in a white plastic chair inside a 0:24:16.920 --> 0:24:20.240 two room hut with palm leaves covering the roof and walls. 0:24:21.000 --> 0:24:24.919 She has straight brown hair that passes her shoulders, acrylic nails, 0:24:25.200 --> 0:24:28.440 and a calm conviction. In the room next door, a 0:24:28.520 --> 0:24:33.040 mint green dentist's chair and equipment stand idle outside. Men 0:24:33.119 --> 0:24:36.359 are constructing a clinic to house it all. The camp 0:24:36.480 --> 0:24:39.280 sprouted up fast in the five months since the land 0:24:39.320 --> 0:24:42.680 seekers arrived. They've built a church with a loudspeaker and 0:24:42.800 --> 0:24:46.200 a couple of hundred huts identical in design and arranged 0:24:46.240 --> 0:24:49.960 in an orderly grid. There's an internet tower, a generator, 0:24:50.160 --> 0:24:53.720