In pictures: Love the Amazon on Amazon Day!

Posted by Angela Glienicke - 2nd September 2016

5^th September is the day the largest rainforest in the world is celebrated in Brazil. It’s Amazon Day! With an estimated 16,000 tree species the Amazon is often referred to as the lungs of the planet. It is also home to over 20 million people, including thousands of Indigenous Peoples, hundreds of bird species and mammals and over 2.5 million insect species!
But climate change and deforestation are threatening the Amazon which has existed for at least 55 million years.

We have been campaigning for the protection of the rainforest for decades. Past campaigns included the fight to save the Amazon rainforest from the destruction by soya bean farming, resulting in the soya moratorium, a collaboration between civil society organizations, the Brazilian government and the soy industry which was renewed indefinitely this year.

We are currently addressing the threat posed by the construction of hydroelectric dams, like the Belo Monte dam, in our latest campaign. The Brazilian environmental agency IBAMA cancelled the license to build the giant São Luiz do Tapajós dam, happy news for the Munduruku people. But a fight to stop further dams continues.

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Tapajós river, which lays threatened by the constructions of dams along its course. Itaituba, Pará, Brazil.

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Woman cleaning fish by the shore of Cururu river, a major tributary of Tapajós river.

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Greenpeace Brazil activists have joined forces with Munduruku Indigenous leaders to protest the Brazilian government’s plans to build a mega dam complex in the Tapajós River, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon.

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Construction of Belo Monte Dam, on the Xingu river, Belo Monte Site. Altamira, Pará, Brazil.

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The Munduruku people have inhabited the Sawré Muybu in the heart of the Amazon, for generations. In addition to preserving their way of life, the demarcation of Sawré Muybu ensures the conservation of 178,000 hectares of Amazonian rainforest.

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Chief Arnaldo Kaba Munduruku and Ademir Kaba Munduruku, Indigenous People from the Tapajos Basin in the Amazon rainforest, came to Siemens UK’s headquarters in Surrey to demand a meeting with their senior management last month.

Siemens has been a key player in the last four megadams built in the Brazilian Amazon, and is one of just a handful of companies that can supply turbines for large-scale hydroelectric projects.

The Munduruku delegation, General Chief Arnaldo Kaba Munduruku and his senior advisor Ademir Kaba Munduruku, travelled all the way from the Tapajos Valley deep in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest to ask Siemens to publically state that they will not participate in plans to build new dams on their ancestral lands. Unfortunately they made no such promise.

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Hummingbird, Atlantic Forest, Camino do Itupava, Curitiba, Parana.

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Ka’apor people set up trap cameras to monitor the indigenous territory in areas used by illegal loggers. In late August 2015.

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The Tapajós River basin.

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A lone tree stops the endless pattern of lines formed by soybean sprouts in Nova Mutum, in Mato Grosso. There is no more room for the forest there.

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Forest area invaded by forest fires and pasture, in Rondônia state, next to the capital Porto Velho. In August 2016, Greenpeace flew over the Amazon to search for and register forest fires spots. This year’s forest fire season is already being considered one of the worst ever.

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