Grand Theft Chaco II: The Vice Continues

This lack of accountability has encouraged new illegal activity. Earthsight analysis of satellite data provided by Global Forest Watch reveals that forest clearances for agriculture have continued at PNCAT. At least two new areas were cleared between August 2020 and April 2021 as the figure below shows. Around 100 hectares of this clearance took place in densely forested land. 

Totobiegosode representatives have also submitted complaints to public prosecutors denouncing fresh illegal invasions and forest clearances by settlers, including close to a lagoon traditionally used by uncontacted groups.

As noted in Grand Theft Chaco, a 2018 government decision to suspend all land management plans for properties within PNCAT has rendered any such clearance there unequivocally illegal.

The importance of action to protect PNCAT was dramatically highlighted this year as the strongest evidence in many years emerged of the continued existence of uncontacted Totobiegosode groups in the area and their fears about what is happening to their territory.

Julio Duarte, a lawyer representing the Totobiegosode, told Earthsight that in January and February 2021, a band of uncontacted Totobiegosode approached a community of their settled cousins in the southern part of PNCAT at night, and sang to them of their worries about the continued encroachment of outsiders.

Duarte alleges the Paraguayan government has done “absolutely nothing” to comply with the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights’ (IACHR) 2016 request to protect PNCAT and fully restore it to the Totobiegosode. This leaves the indigenous communities with no other alternative than to “invest time and resources in pursuing criminal cases” against illegal occupiers.

“The Totobiegosode would have no need to resort to prosecutors and the judicial branch if the Paraguayan state had taken the IACHR’s request seriously. Illegal invasions and deforestation would have ceased if the government had fulfilled its obligation to find a solution to this situation,” Duarte said.

Inaction by Paraguayan authorities has led the Ayoreo Totobiegosode to conclude the government is not serious about protecting their rights or saving the Chaco from destruction. The community recently withdrew in frustration from dialogue with the government mediated by the IACHR.

As one of its representatives explained: “After having participated in most of the 42 meetings [with Paraguayan authorities], I can confirm that the government doesn’t keep its word, that it lies and doesn’t want to protect my people or return the lands that we’ve always lived in and cared for.” The community is instead calling on the IAHCR to get tough with the Paraguayan government over their continued failure to act.

In the meantime, Paraguayan leather sales to Europe have continued apace. Exports in the first four months of 2021 totalled 9,424 tonnes, a substantial increase from the same period in 2020 (7,084 tonnes). Two of the three Paraguayan leather exporters highlighted in Grand Theft Chaco as having supply chains tainted with hides from PNCAT have actually increased their shipments to Italy since the report was published.

Trade records also reveal continued shipments to Conceria Pasubio, the car leather specialist we found was the conduit for leather from illegal clearance in PNCAT ending up in cars made by BMW and Jaguar Land Rover. Nearly three-quarters of the leather shipped to Italy since our report was published came from Paraguayan firms Earthsight had exposed for having supply chains contaminated with dirty goods.

Meanwhile it turns out that halting the breakneck destruction of the Chaco for cattle rearing is more important for the planet than anyone had realised. In June 2021 the shocking news emerged that researchers at the Humboldt University of Berlin had found the Chaco stores up to 19 times more carbon than previously thought. 

Forest clearances in the biome between 1985 and 2013 resulted in over 800 million metric tons of carbon emissions. This puts the Chaco at a comparable level of emissions and contribution to climate change as other deforestation frontiers in the Amazon and South-East Asia. Researchers have called for more international attention to the biome’s conservation, which remains neglected in the fight against climate change

In 2019 the French government spearheaded the creation of the Alliance for the Conservation of Rainforests, bringing together over two dozen countries – among them Paraguay – to discuss and coordinate actions on forest protection. It’s not clear what role, if any, the Alliance could play in pressuring the Paraguayan government to enforce its conservation and indigenous rights laws. Earthsight submitted questions to the Alliance’s secretariat but obtained no response. 

These recent findings underscore the urgent need for large consumer markets such as the EU, UK, and US to implement legally binding regulations to curb their ties to forest loss and indigenous rights violations abroad.

Lawmakers in all these consumer markets are currently debating legislation to make it compulsory for companies to better monitor their supply chains and ensure they are not contaminated by the illegal or unsustainable practices as the ones highlighted in Grand Theft Chaco and here. However, some concerns about these efforts remain.

The Environment Bill under debate in the British parliament is likely to leave indigenous communities unprotected. A number of MPs and peers have argued for the inclusion of customary indigenous land rights, but the government has refused to concede on this point. Secondary legislation will determine what commodities are covered, which will be a major test of the UK’s efforts. If leather and other cattle products are not included, this would effectively mean that the UK retains an open-door policy for the types of abuses exposed by Earthsight.

In the EU, a European Parliament resolution clearly states that the “legal framework should cover the protection of human rights as well as the formal and customary rights of indigenous peoples and local communities in relation to the lands and resources involved in the harvesting, extraction and production of products.” The European Commission should include such provisions in the regulatory proposal it will soon publish and that will be later debated by the European Parliament and Council. All three bodies must ensure indigenous land rights are addressed and leather included in the final regulations.

Earlier this year Germany passed its own supply chain legislation. Regrettably, it fell woefully short. Its narrow scope and focus on first tier suppliers mean German car firms are free to continue sourcing leather linked to tropical deforestation.

If they are to make a real contribution to forest conservation abroad, the EU and UK must be much bolder.