Tatiane Santos de Britto

The Surui Carbon Forest Project in the Brazilian Amazon exposes a conflict

between the appropriation of indigenous people's forest and the making of

corporate profit. The Surui Project has sold 120 tonnes of carbon to Natura, a

Brazilian cometics company and 70 tonnes of carbon to FIFA, for their 2014 World

Cup emissions to be offset. In addition to that, Google has provided the Paiter

Surui people with carbon measuring devices, surveillance mobiles phones and

helped them draw cultural maps on Google Earth.

The Carbon Conundrum investigates how indigenous lands in Brazil have been

commodified through the UN framework called REDD, focusing specifically on a

carbon credit project located in the Territory Sete de Setembro, initiated by the

indigenous people themselves, the Paiter Surui. Reducing emissions from deforestation

and degradation (REDD) is a clean development mechanism that provides

incentives for the protection of tropical forests considered at risk of destruction. The

system allows companies based in countries where the emissions of carbon is high

by allowing them to invest in the “protection” of forests in the global south. In

exchange, investors receive carbon credits to offset their greenhouse gas

emissions.

The lack of economic alternatives to guarantee the well-being of the Surui people

and the entry of external actors to conduct illegal activities in their territory are the

main reasons why the Paiter-Surui chose to engage in a carbon credit project. As a

result of the implementation of the carbon project, not all of the villages were seeing

the benefit of the project and instead were being limited to how they could use their

own land. Currently, the Surui are living within 6 boundaries which constrains their

movement and way of living.

In a time where indigenous people are pushed into contractual agreements that

commodify the forests they inhabit, and in order to mitigate the harms of climate change

in the Global North, The Carbon Conundrum questions ways in which the Paiter -

Surui can develop new ways to foster the growth of their forest against the growing

international pressures seeking to commodify it.

The Carbon Conundrum blurs the demarcation boundary line by extending the

forest to external areas of the indigenous territory. The landscape strategy utilizes

an existing Brazilian forest code to mitigate the expansion outside of indigenous

territory.

The project proposes a sustainable living and learning center that sits on the edge of the

territory Sete de Setembro. The aim of the learning center is to expand the forest

through its learners, where they are put through the process of decolonising the

environment. By teaching farmers how to sustainably inhabit the forest through

agroforestry and sustainable modes of habitation, the learning center is reinforcing

an existing form of protection that is alternative to Natura’s, Fifa’s and Google’s way

of controlling the financial value of nature. The intervention comprises four

structures located along the edge of the indigenous territory Sete de Setembro,

together with a long bamboo structure that functions as a Brazil nutcracker. The

proposal is an on-going plan, that allows for a continuous transformation on the

external lands.