 Urgent pleas to save the rainforest as the Amazon burns. One NASA scientist saying nearly all the fires at satellite sea in Brazil were started by people. Igniting palm trees here on the Bolivian-Brazilian border, fueled by wind, the flames leaping across the dry brush. Amazon, the Brazilian government in August, the largest number of fires of the last 12 years. It's been more than 50 years since we've heard that the Amazon rainforest is disappearing because of the fires and the deforestation. In the last 50 years, Brazil has lost almost 800,000 square kilometers of rain forest. In the last 5 years, deforestation has grown at a slow pace. Under Bolsonaro's administration, we lost an area more or less the size of Switzerland in the Amazon. The most affected regions were the Mato Grosso and Pará. Now it's the turn of the Rondonia. The percentage was 17% of the original Amazon rainforest. The Amazon is getting very close to what some scientists call the tipping point. The tipping point means the point of no return, in addition to the fact that the Amazon would turn into a savannah. This would happen if we had to get to the 25% of the forest. And if we continue like this, we really don't have much left. The Amazon is essential for the Earth's balance, because it helps to maintain a temperature that makes our life possible on this planet. Its vegetation not only converts to carbon dioxide into oxygen, but also into carbon particles. If they were all relaxed in the atmosphere, they would greatly increase the planet's temperature. That's why if we lost our green lung, we would also lose every chance of maintaining climate change, because every time we burn a field, that field is in the grass. Only in 2020 it was deforested the equivalent of 3,500 football fields a day. And the main reason why we deforested the Amazon is one, the production of meat, which already occupies 77% of the global agricultural land. Then I was asked, how deep is the connection between meat, climate and deforestation? To understand it, we decided to go to Brazil. The largest exporter of meat in the world is also the largest producer of soy, which for 80% is used as food for the animals. Everything starts in the 1970s, when Brazil sees in the Amazon a possibility to make the economy of the country grow. The government begins to offer land placements to the workers employed in the construction of the trans-amazonic highway. Just at that time, the consumption of meat begins to grow vertically in the world and those who have managed to dig a piece of land, start to raise cattle and cultivate soy. As the wealth grows, land owners start to expand their properties. And in a state like Brazil, which wants to economically grow and where the Amazon forest covers 3.6 million square kilometers of its territory, deforestation starts to grow from south to north. The municipalities around, in the north of the state, start to increase deforestation, increase the number of farmers. Today, the border has arrived in Rondônia, the most deforested Amazon state, which has already lost a third of its rain forest. We went exactly here, on the land of Caripuna, an area of 150,000 hectares that in 1998 the Brazilian government recognized exclusive properties of this indigenous community. The land of Caripuna is a perfect example of what is happening in Amazônia. In 2022, it was the most deforested indigenous land in its region. Caripuna means true people, people who have always lived in harmony with the forest. Before the 1970s, Caripuna had rarely had contact with the outside and the contacts had been more positive. But after the 70s, the situation is degenerate. More and more people violate their territory and their laws, and Caripuna is in contact with viruses and bacteria against which they do not have antibodies. In less than 40 years, the super-states are less than 10. Today, they have managed to repopulate their tribe, but the risk that their community is extinct is still very high. What we try to do is to do a constant fiscalization work. She is Giselle Bleggi. And as a general prosecutor of the Republic in Rondonia, she has often found herself busy with the environment and indigenous rights. The indigenous land of Caripuna is already suffering over the years. This pressure, this anthropological pressure of invaders. In our journey towards the village of Caripuna, we immediately encounter the effects of deforestation. As soon as the city is out of the way, there are traces of soil that have found space where the forest used to be. And as soon as we get to those that would be protected lands, we see how factories, elevations and industries linked to agro-business have taken possession of these territories. The land of the forest has been flooded. We find the remains of a fire a few weeks ago. The smell of burnt is still strong. Here everything is dead. There is no more. Everything that had died, everything. There are more. This space here is all dead. The land is also dead. He is André Caripuna. He was recently appointed as the new leader of the community. Now the future of his agent and of his territory is in his hands. They are entering here to be able to take our land of Caripuna and then create cattle. The land of Caripuna is a protected area. No one could enter and deforest it. And by law this should not be happening because a homologated land registered by the Brazilian law is unfortunately happening. Patrolling an area of these dimensions is practically impossible. And many people invade without scruples, knowing very well that they are pushing into a protected area. And the deforestation cycle is repeated always the same. It works like this. First they enter, they mark the space and then they destroy it. Then after a few weeks, someone comes back and takes away the logs of the most prized trees to sell them as agnoms on the international market. Then they burn the rest. After they burn there, they choose if they are going to put soja, or if they are going to burn it. Usually, those who rob a piece of land do it through the elevation. If they are angry with the wood, they throw them from the fire on the ground and then they put on their clothes, re-bending that space. The next day we meet at the Alba and sail through the jungle towards an area that has been attacked by invaders and which is now ready to be transformed into a wood. While we travel between alberi, maesthosa, liana, or celli, farfalle, I think of something that, without people like Caripuna, it would be impossible to preserve the forest. Because they, unlike governments and economic interests, recognize more value in protecting it than in destroying it. André opens a path in the dense vegetation and we find ourselves in front of an immense herd of grass that is now higher than us. There won't be much time before the beastly land appears. After a month, a rudder will also appear and then a person who will re-bend his right to be there. And when the beastly land will grow and the grass will grow again, it will give itself back to everything and it will plant a monoculture of soil. While he explains to us these things, André is not at his age. He fears that someone can see it. Caripuna had decided to build a new village near the border of deforestation to counter the invaders. But then, in the struggle, in making our TV, which is to charge the government, in making the denunciations. But these, when they are agreed, have burned the whole area around the village, leaving a very clear message. You are my neighbor, friend. My role as an activist and leader of the Caripuna people is to be denounced. It is good to remember that the Indians are murdered. He is Adriano Caripuna, a member of the community who has chosen to leave the village to study law in Porto Vello. He helps his tribe by denouncing to the world the actions of deforestation that have destroyed his land. Following his denunciations, he received several death threats. That is why he preferred to be interviewed in the private room of a hotel. Caripuna and I have already been threatened that at any time it will take us both on the river and on the road. The Caripuna respond to these threats without using violence. They know that to obtain more protection it will be more effective to fight on the legal and media level. There are many discussions, many romantizing and tripping the struggle of the people. I do not have this romanticization. I tell the truth. I am suffering, I am being threatened. My forest is ending, the river is contaminated. But defending on the legal level so far has not brought many fruits. In fact, in August 2020 and July 2021 850 hectares of deforestation have been removed. Despite the fact that we have made several denunciations and charges, the state has been doing very little and it has been done very little so far. The paradox is that those deforestation is really the land. Those who want the land they take it out on the power to invade. In fact, the phrase that became famous all over the world we are going to let it pass. The minister of my environment offered this and I expanded as much as possible. In the last four years Bolsonaro's government has given a free way to deforestation. For actions that could happen monthly it was going on for 6 months and then really we had a delay a huge loss during these four years that we could not advance at all. We could not work. And Bolsonaro has provided an ideological justification for deforestation. The indigenous have too much land without doing anything. While this same land could be productive and contribute to the economy of the country. This is a long story. As this article of the New York Times of 1992 during the first vertical on deforestation in Brazil the disease of the rich is not preferable to poverty because in the end it leads to poverty through the waste of natural resources the erosion of the soil and the scarcity of water. And here there is to clarify one thing it would be too easy to explain what happens as a tension of poverty. Who goes personally to deforestation often is not rich or powerful often it is about farmers who see in a piece of land the possibility of having a house and a garden with which to live and with these people the Bolsonaro discourse works. We tried to tell the point of view of farmers and elevators but no one wanted to talk to us. We went to a pro-Bolsonaro demonstration but we were not accepted and they asked for help to the police to get away. Unfortunately, however, this narrative and this dynamic make it very comfortable also to those from the deforestation can win without getting dirty directly their hands. In the last decade, the largest companies of deforestation and exportation of meat such as JBS, Marfrig and Minerva have adhered to a voluntary protocol that said that they would no longer have bought cattle raised in land recently deforested. The same thing has been decided by the soy. But something does not come back. Satelites do not increase and show that the forest continues to be reduced. Only between August 2018 and July 2021 34,000 sq. km. and we have understood that there is a way far too simple to hide the beast that comes from land recently deforested. Just physically move the beast from a dirty elevation to a clean elevation in order to sell it to the deforestation companies. This is the process that we call ghost cattle. This cattle was in a property that was protected in the sea so that it could be commercialized the owner passed the cattle to the next owner. The absurdity is that most of this recycling of the beast has been discovered. All the findings that have shown this problem were based on Brazilian public records. In a property that has no cattle head in a month after passing up to a thousand cattle heads where did the cattle come from? Just make a call. I have a lot of land but I sell 1 million tons of meat but how is that? The recent study has raised about two thirds of all those exported from Brazil was at least a period when cattle were protected. The point is that the big companies only control the legality of direct suppliers but indirect suppliers don't know anything. And this is how to say that the recycled money is clean only because the bank where it is deposited has not committed any crime. The JBS was accused of increasing deforestation in the Amazon and the indigenous land. JBS are the initials of José Batista Sobrinho which in 1953 started selling meat to the workers who built Brazil. The company becomes the main producer and exporter of meat in Brazil and is taken in the hands of José's twins, Josley and Wesley. But in 2017 it is discovered that they paid hundreds of millions of dollars to political parties, banks and institutions to facilitate their expansion projects of the company. At this point we could ask ourselves what is going on in Brazil? First of all in 2020 Italy imported 48,000 tons of soy from London and the European Union is the second largest imported soy after China but not only. A quarter of the imported meat from the European Union comes from Brazil and Italy is the first European imported Brazilian meat. The main supplier is JBS. So much so that the scandal of 2017 against the Brazilian company had hit the bulkhead of the EGP. The bulkhead is produced almost exclusively with Brazilian beef. It was imported in Italy frozen and then worked in Valtellina as expected by the certification of the quality of the EGP. After the scandal of 2017 Rigamonti, the main producer of Italian beef was agreed with Col Diretti to produce most of the meat for the beef directly in Italy. Today on the Rigamonti website you can see a separate line for the 100% Italian beef. But it is also believed that it was produced in Brazil. In the meantime, JBS has bought Rigamonti and other producers of meat in Italy. The European Union knows its indirect impact on forest loss and has just taken more serious actions against the import of products linked to deforestation which in recent decades has destroyed mainly the tropical South American forests and those of Southeast Asia committed to the production of palm oil. They intend to help us but this help they have to come directly to the people. In December 2022 a law has been approved that says that in a couple of years to sell something on the European market it will be guaranteed that it is not linked to deforestation or deforestation. This new directive concerns food products such as meat, coffee, cocoa and soy. Follow the money where the money is coming from, make a system that detects where the land is legal or not legal as I say or if it is unregulated. But the directive problem is as always their application. With the ghost and ghost we have seen why it is difficult to guarantee zero deforestation in a system so full of escapes. What has been said in many of our interviews is that deforestation protects the forest. That the subjects pass to be valued by keeping the forest on foot and that the fight for the land stops being criminalized and is seen as a social problem. The indigenous people protect the forest but we are not known we are not known no one does anything only goes to the statistics everything is fine but that's it destroyed destroyed destroyed destroyed And it is true that animal products if in a forested field or in an intensive training at 26 floors remain the main emitters of the food system. For example, the eruptions and bovine excrement are responsible for 15% of the global gas emissions. If only half of our meat is bought from low-impact producers we will reduce emissions up to 20%. What I think is that while there is no boycott about these products coming from crimes and murdering the traditional peoples of the Amazon it is impossible to stop this destruction and this murder. Conscious consumption has its great value especially coming from Europe. We need to solve a cultural issue the one that associates red meat to a well-being, to a status. This chart shows well that the more people pass from a condition of poverty to a condition of well-being the more they increase their consumption of meat. And this is because the middle class emerges, recognizes the meat historically seen as inaccessible prey a demonstration of social elevation and therefore the goal is to convince the majority of people that industrial meat has nothing prestigious. There are other types that have nothing prestigious or desirable. Spatula and puffa diets that are always compromising our health. For the last stage of our journey we went to California to see with our eyes the paradise for which, at a few meters away there are those who suffer from malnutrition for completely different reasons. Music Music Music Music Music Music