Ecocide in the Cerrados (Brazilian Savanna): Agribusiness, water spoliation and pesticide contamination

Abstract

At 65 million years old, the Cerrados biome is constituted of wide biodiversity related to its water’s abundance and hydrological cycle’s dynamics, perpetuating rivers in six of eight Brazilian river basins and overflowing its waters to other countries of the South American subcontinent. The biome hosts a diverse set of traditional communities that constituted livelihoods based on their ancestral knowledge. In recent decades, the Brazilian State has been implementing development policies in these territories that are subordinated to neo-extractivism and accumulation by the plunder of large corporations. Thus, the Cerrados biome was invaded by the agribusiness accelerated expansion that results in intense conflicts, threatening or refraining the livelihood of different populations. Information and analysis were gathered to characterize the Cerrados biome Ecocide, where around 120 million hectares are destined to produce 75% of Brazilian commodities soy-cane-corn-cotton, which destroyed 52% of the native vegetation, and consumed 91.8% of surface water and groundwater in pivot irrigation systems, resulting in the migration of springs, the interruption of river flows and the reduction of aquifer volumes, as observed in the analysis of ongoing conflicts in western Bahia and the basin of the Formoso and Javaés rivers, in Tocantins State. Also, the impacts of intensive use of pesticides on all forms of life are observed: there are more than 600 million liters of poison annually, concentrating 73.5% of the total pesticides consumed in the country in 2018, which, regarding human health, results in rates of exogenous poisoning and childhood cancer higher than the national averages. The Cerrado biome is characterized as a sacrificial zone of the Brazilian development model where nature, and populations, are plundered to guarantee the accumulation of few in an Ecocide process that is a modern-colonial racist product in this territory.