Rodrigo Teruel from Repórter Brasil on climate and clas… — Transcript

Hi everyone, my name is Rodrigo Teruel, I'm project advisor here at Repórter Brasil. Repórter Brasil is an NGO based in São Paulo, Brazil, and we are dedicated to produce knowledge on labor violations, environmental violations and those problems that affects the most the marginalized communities such as indigenous peoples, other traditional communities and rural workers.

Basically, we have three main areas of act. We act through journalism, so we produce investigative journalism regarding those themes that I've just mentioned. The second branch of our work is research, basically we investigated how everything we consume, everything we wear, could or could not be connected to these violations, for instance, the juice we drink or the meat we eat.

The third area of Repórter Brasil is the education area. We focus our work in training public servants regarding slave labor in order to prevent mainly slave labor, but as slave labor is a complex phenomenon, which is linked to a lot of other violations, for instance, environmental crimes, human trafficking, child labor, forced migration, so we have to connect all these themes and understand the process as a whole. We focus our work in the formation, in the training of public servants, but the idea is that through them, we get to the most affected communities, the most marginalized communities because everywhere you go, you have a school where you have a public servant, you have a social assistant, a social service public servant that can enact and enable this content to to get to these communities that need it the most.

And the idea is simple. The ones that are most affected by climate crisis, climate change, are the communities that are more marginalized socially, economically. So in that sense, it's vital, it's important to give voice to those communities who are the most affected so that they can speak up of what they're going through, of what they're passing. For instance, in the Tapajós region, which is a region in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, we have this indigenous community called the Munduruku, and they have been really and seriously affected by the mercury that is used in illegal mining, which is then thrown in the water, and then these contaminated mercury goes into the fish and then contaminated the food that they eat and the water that they drink. And then they're getting sick, they're getting really ill. So illegal mining is affecting them locally.

But at the same time, illegal mining has an broad environmental impact because it has to deforest a lot of land, deforest of native land, and then at the same time, the people, the ones that are subjected to these conditions of work at illegal mining are poor workers who have little or no option of work and then are obliged, they are forced into this kind of work and they are subjected to precarious, to degrading conditions of work.

I could give other examples of how classism and climate crisis are interlinked. For instance, much is talked about in the media about the deforestation of the Amazon, about the environmental impacts of deforestation of the Amazon, but little is said about the labor impacts and the social impacts of those communities that are involved in illegal deforestation. Usually, the worker that are that is involved in illegal deforestation, he's subjected to precarious, to degrading working conditions. He's usually don't have access to potable water, don't have access to means of sleeping or preparing food or even to to to eat. So he's in the middle of the jungle with little or no access to any of these basic needs, and then at the same time, he's performing an illegal activity. And why is that? Because this illegal activity has a production chain above him, which determines where this wood goes, who pays him and usually he depends entirely on this payment to survive.

Climate crisis pushes these communities away from their original land. They are forced to work for other people because they don't have the means the basic means of of of production of of subsistence of living, and they are forced into these kind of works. We have to think about each one implementing and have their own responsibilities. For instance, governments have to push for laws, have to push for regulation so that companies do not benefit, do not profit from slave labor and from environmental degradation. At the same time, these companies have to push to implement due diligence reports, they have to implement due diligence mechanism so that their productive chain is not contaminated by violations in labor issues or environmental issues. So for instance, we have to ask who made our clothes? Where was our food produced? Where where is all the means of goods that we consume are produced? So we have to make ask these questions and then force these companies not to get involved in these kinds of of of violations. And as a society, as civil society, we have to be aware of that, we have to spread knowledge about what is slave labor, how is it connect to classism, how is it connect to the climate crisis, and then spread the word in our social media, to the communities that are most affected as well. We have to implement trainings, campaigns, and work as a whole so we can eradicate illegal deforestation, we eradicate slave labor as well.