On Feb 28, Grist published an article by Sarah Sax and Mauricio Angelo called “Who’s Behind the Destruction of Brazil’s Cerrado?” The authors trace the sudden global land rush that drew investors to gobble up farmland after 2007, leading to massive deforestation and monocropping.
The Cerrado, historically, has been rich in trees and shrubs with thick roots that channel water into acquifers and store billions of metric tons of carbon. Now millions of acres of this biodiverse vegetation have been replaced by sugar plantations, cattle fields, and soy. The World Wildlife Fund predicts that at current rates of deforestation, the biome will collapse in the a few years, taking crucial water sources with it. This process is the most significant contributor to Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The process by which TIAA has obtained its land in the Cerrado is itself sinister. According to Sax and Angelo, there is a great deal of land in Brazil that is in the public domain, inhabited by traditional communities and small farmers, who have a legal right to the land but often do not have official deeds. “Those seeking to claim that land — often business owners or corporations — reportedly hire armed men to intimidate and run off residents. They then clear the land of trees or native vegetation, either seeding pasture for cows or preparing it to grow crops like soy, cotton, or corn.
According to leaked documents, TIAA knew full well that they were buying deforested and stolen land from known criminals—and they went ahead anyway.
Read the full story here.