 Latin American countries have gathered together for an initiative to save the Amazon rainforests. What is the future of this move? Debates about a law in Western Australia have brought to the fore the question of how aboriginal people and their heritage in the country are treated. What is this debate about? And nurses in Portugal recently went on strike on a variety of issues. What is its take here? We will be discussing all these issues in this episode of Daily Debrief so do keep watching and don't forget to hit that subscribe button. Leaders from eight Latin American countries met to discuss one of the most important issues of our time, the future of the Amazon rainforest. The struggle to say what is called the lung of the earth has gotten a boost ever since Lula de Silva became the president of Brazil. A noteworthy part of the summit was the participation of Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia, as well as the participation of Venezuela, which has often been excluded from such meetings. We go to Abdul for more. Abdul, thank you so much for joining us. We have talked a lot on this show about the Amazon forest, their importance to the Latin American and in fact the entire world actually. So it's kind of encouraging to see that so many countries across the region have come together. So could you maybe give us a bit more details about the countries, what the aim of this summit was, the kind of proposals, etc. Well, significance of the Amazon forest is of course well known. There is no point talking about repeating that fact. Given that importance and given the fact that since president Lula came to power, he has a agenda to kind of bring all the countries in the region, which has the forest cover, come together and try to achieve zero deforestation by 2030. That was the primary objective with which the summit was held in Brazil. Of course, that particular goal was not achieved at this moment because the countries, different countries, we should not forget that most of these countries in the region are also developing countries. They have aspirations to kind of related to the larger economic development which they need and that basically has had an impact on the larger objective, which was the center of the summit of achieving zero deforestation. Nonetheless, all the countries agreed on certain basic points, which is of course a move forward about kind of creating a common research scientific institution, which basically will study the forest and changing patterns of it and kind of help the countries to devise their own ways to reduce deforestation and protect the forest. Apart from that, they also agreed that they need to work harder to kind of protect the right of the indigenous people living in and around the forest, which those rights have been compromised for decades. In fact, centuries of colonial interventions and some policies pursued by the governments in the past, whenever the right being government comes to power, they basically have a tendency of kind of compromising the right of the indigenous people living there and also kind of compromising the overall protection of the forest. So these things where there was an agreement related to that. And of course, most of the countries agreed that they will, they agree with the idea that deforestation need to be reduced and they will pursue their individual goals. Of course, not the common goal, but the individual goals to kind of reduce the deforestation. And that was the primary, you can say, and this is of course, this is one of the meetings that will be for the meetings in the future. And of course, that will help consolidate the larger common agenda related to both the climate and sustainable development, which are the two key factors. And also encouraging to see on the one hand, Colombia under President Gustavo Petra, who has actually been a very strong spokesperson for some of these causes. We have heard him on multiple forums where he is strongly advocated to about the need to protect the environment, the need to protect the earth to talk about, you know, to take concerted action. And also good to see Venezuela, which has long been excluded from these platforms from many of many of such regional gatherings. Exactly. So if you see Gustavo Petra's proposal of kind of just to kind of discuss that about kind of freezing all kind of oil exploration in the region has, of course, is a well-meaning proposal. It basically talks about how this can lead to further deforestation and kind of destruction of the rainforests altogether. And this need to be frozen. But of course, as we discussed before, the countries in the region also have their basic economic needs. And since the forest cover a large area of their geographical territories, they need to kind of create a balance between the economic needs and the needs of the climate protection. So this particular proposal of freezing the oil exploration and all related to the industry in the region, of course, was not adopted. But this is one point which needs to be and most of the countries in the region agreed to discuss it. For example, Bolivia, which of course does not have given the fact that it's economically it needs the forests and the resources, but also understands the need of climate protection has to kind of find a balance between it and that between both the issues. And that basically creates a kind of a complex situation. And therefore, they need a large, strong international backing. The UN needs to back it and all the developed countries which are basically benefiting from the Amazon Forest there needs to kind of pitch in and kind of compensate these countries. So these are the issues which were highlighted both by all the countries participating in the in the meeting. And they also basically noted how since when Lula came to power, how deforestation has radically reduced. When Bolsonaro was power, the deforestation rates are quite high and within a year 60 percent, the rate of deforestation has reduced 60 percent. This is a huge achievement. And this need to be built on. This kind of moves needs to be strengthened and this can not be strengthened without the financial backing from the developed global north, which has been the beneficiary of the forest and its resources. So this is the gist of the summit and it seems that there will be future deliberations how to make it much more stronger and how to kind of work together for both sustainable development. And climate protection. Right, Abdul, thank you so much for talking to us and giving us an update on what is clearly a very important initiative, not only for Latin America, but for the entire world. Exactly. Australia's largest state is set to overturn a recent law that afforded protection to indigenous heritage sites. The premier of the state of Western Australia announced on Tuesday that the government will be repealing the 2021 legislation. Now this legislation was passed after countrywide outrage over the destruction of rock shelters in Jhukan Gorge by the mining corporation Rio Tinto. The law gave significant say to local indigenous bodies in the management of heritage sites and it is considered important to indigenous culture and history. It was widely opposed at that time by landowners and mining corporations in the state that contributes the most to mining exports in Australia. Let's talk to Anish on this. Anish, quite a controversial development and it looks like the amendment concerned, as I was saying, is connected to a significant law. There's been a lot of struggles around it. So could you maybe take us to the legal aspects first? What is being proposed? What does it seek to change, for instance? So let's begin with the law in itself, the 2021 Abortment of Heritage Law, a protection law, basically created as the mechanism, a multi-tiered mechanism whereby local indigenous groups can be consulted about any kind of activities like that can actually impact abortment of heritage sites across Western Australia. Now, the issue at the time, at the time of when the law was passed or even proposed, indigenous groups actually talked about how they were not consulted. The law was in many ways just a reaction to what happened in the Jhukan Gorge and the blasting of that indigenous site, which was about 6,000 years ago. And also the fact that the law does not give them the right to refrain from giving consent or withhold consent to any kind of construction, mining activity or anything that will actually damage their heritage sites. It privately gives that right completely to a single minister in the government, basically the Cabinet House, the right And so at the time there was that factor, but then there was also the other factor that you have the settlers who are agriculturalists in the region who pretty much contribute a large section of Australia's agricultural exports. And then obviously you have the miners who pretty much control most of the mining sector in the country and also other ones who bankroll most of the governments in the region as well. So in both of these groups have very strongly and we are going to be opposed to this law. And at the time there were like multiple campaigns and the result of that campaign is you have these farmers and agriculturalists saying that they will be held for any kind of small infrastructure that they might not be aware of, that the law is too contorted, that it's too confusing for them to understand what can and what cannot be considered as an indigenous site and so on. And so there were multiple myths that were being produced at the time as well that also added to the paranoia and frenzy. So eventually what you had is that the government right now gets this cover to say that it is withdrawing from this law under public pressure because the public doesn't want, the people doesn't want it. So you do not have indigenous factors, obviously. And at the same time you are not using a reactionary pushback as a reason for taking down the law and obviously adding an amendment, you also have to add this amendment because it doesn't really change. It brings back the 1972 Heritage Protection Law which was amended in 1979 to actually allow for the government to basically destroy heritage sites so that mining can continue. And we have to remember the fact that it's very, very rare for governments to actually deny any kind of mining activity, especially mining activities and destruction of heritage sites for mining activities. In fact, there are statistics showing that since 2010 there has been no single project that was a request that was denied by the government for mining corporations. So you have already a very compromised system and this law this law at some level gave some advisory powers to the local groups and even that has been taken back even before it actually got to be implemented. And also in this context, there is some debate about what is being called the indigenous voice, some kind of an institutionalization. But I understand it even that is controversial. Why is that so? Well, the indigenous voice in general, the larger campaign is basically a constitutional amendment that has been pushed and the amendment will see to recognize the fact that the indigenous aboriginals are actually the original inhabitants of the land. And they obviously have a primary authority when it comes to matters that deals with them, their communities and their lands, their native title as we say in North America, but pretty much similar like aboriginal lands and obviously heritage sites. So it's a very wider constitutional recognition of indigenous rights and standing as the actual indigenous group and the original inhabitants of the continent. So there is definitely controversy on one hand in the fact that obviously this again does not give very similar to the Western Australian law does not give them the power to withhold consent or prevent any kind of projects that they might be or any kind of legislation that they might need to be not in their favor or not in their interest. And so there are indigenous groups have criticized that. But on the wider scale, the fact that it will include a constitutional recognition of the fact that there are original inhabitants and not the and pretty much, you know, undermining this whole Nullius era kind of, sorry, Terran Nullius kind of attitude that the government's constitutional system had about Australia where they assume that there were no humans living in Australia before the colonizers came. So that is something that is supported widely by the indigenous groups. In general, you have progressive movements across different ideological lines. You have neighbor, greens and obviously the communists supporting it. And at the same time, so there is this sort of campaign being happening and you see the referendum closing in. There has been a massive reactionary pushback, but the labor in the federal level has not backed down their support for this new amendment. But at the same time, you have the labor government in Western Australia backing down from a very small. It might not be that much, but a small and significant progress that did happen in Western Australia that was instituted by them when it comes even in its limited scale of just preventing mining activities and heritage site is being backed and they're backing out because of the reaction of the pushback. So you have in both cases a contradiction. And at the same time, you have at some level, there might be some, you know, backfiring because it might actually give reactionaries and molded them with the fact that they can definitely overturn legislation that they might not seem to be in their favor in the future. So even if the amendment and the fact that the amendment is not getting that much traction in public opinion, primarily because the government is not actually, you know, using its resources to campaign very strongly for it, while the reactionaries and corporations have actually supported, you know, in massively financing of the no vote creates the situation where you have this being used by reactionaries as a linchpin to say that this is exactly what they want to do. They want to pretty much prevent us from our development. So you have a very complicated situation, obviously, but we need to see how this is going to have impacted in the final vote because obviously there are a couple of months left to go before the vote actually does happen. Reinhardt, thank you so much for that update. And finally, at the end of July, nurses working in private hospitals in Portugal held a strike to raise awareness about the problems they face at work. Among the reasons behind the strike were low salaries and longer work schedules when compared to their counterparts in public hospitals. We have with us Anna Rachara, the People's Health Movement, with more details. Anna, thank you so much for joining us. Of course, on this show, we have time and again covered protests by health workers across the world. And it's in some ways interesting and also depressing, maybe that many of the issues are almost exactly the same. So now we're talking about nurses in Portugal. So could you tell us what was the reason for the nurses going on strike? Well, you know, it's it's actually one of the many strike actions that they organized at the end of July. In the this time, in particular, among the nurses working for the private health sector in Portugal. So, you know, if we look a bit back, we know that from November 2022, there have been on and off strikes both in both public and private sectors because of multiple multiple reasons. So, you know, of course, we have the issue of staff shortages, which is quite quite common right now in Europe. But of course, there are also the issues related to to salary increases, which are not coming, but also to the long working hours and so on and so on. So the most recent example that we have seen in Portugal, sorry, so it's at the end of July was organized by the by the nurses in the private sector, who said that, you know, the the way that their work was organized was lacking behind even behind that of the public sector, which is not great to begin with. So they were saying and there still are saying that the private sector is not actually keeping up with the pace with the salaries in the public sector. So they're not paying all the additional working hours that the nurses are putting in. They have longer working schedules compared to the public sector. In the private sector, you have to work. So the starting point is 40 hours a week for for for nurses in the public sector, formally the starting point would be 35 hours. So it's this kind of inconsistencies between the two systems that that the nurses were protesting against. And it's important to to say here that, you know, it's for for quite a bit of time, the private sector in Portugal was seen as something quite marginal. Let's put it that way. It was not so big. But then, in the last in the past 10 years, health activists on the ground have worn that it has it has grown very, very like insistently and continuously. So right now they're estimating that about 15,000 nurses in Portugal are working full time for the in the private sector. So this is not something that that relates only to a very small group of nurses. Absolutely an interesting point, Anna, because often you hear that people leave the public sector to go to private sector jobs. What it seems is that private sector jobs are in some senses maybe even more underpaid, which is which seems to be the case in Portugal. But can you maybe take us to also the larger context of the health system that itself and for that matter in many European countries, which is leading to such a crisis? Yes, so, you know, I think that here also we've talked multiple times about the deosterity and the budget cuts that have actually shaped health systems in Europe for the for the past decades. And this is not very different from what we are seeing in Portugal. You know, again, it's interesting to point out here that when it comes to nurses in Portugal, they have been quite vocal about supporting other nurses' struggles in other countries in Europe. For example, when the nurses in the UK first went on strike last last winter in 2022, Portuguese nurses stood behind them and actually supported them in their requests. And what they're pointing out in Portugal right now is something that, again, we're seeing in many countries in Europe right now. It's a lack of recognition for nurses' work. So, you know, we had that moment during the COVID-19, the early COVID-19 pandemic when nurses along with doctors were held as heroes, as someone whose work actually kept people alive. But then as we move away from that, we see that, you know, nurses are still in a subordinate position compared to physicians in particular. Their rights are not so well articulated in health policies when they're made. And what the nurses in Portugal now are saying is that that's also because nurses are not part of the conversation. So nobody's actually asking the nurses what they need, what they want to see, what they think would be the best thing to happen for the patients. And so instead, it's all about the money. It's always about the lack of management. It's always about the right of doctors. And what seems to be the case in Portugal right now is that there is a group of nurses who is trying to change that and to actually try and organize and make sure that the nursing associations, the nurses organizations in general are more responsive to what nurses tell them and then able also to bring it back to the government and back to the employers. Right. Thank you so much, Anna, for that explanation. I think also analyzing some of the larger patterns that are affecting the healthcare health sector across Europe. We've talked about how there is a shortage of employees, how they are bringing health workers from parts of Africa, which are already understaffed. And in many ways, these actually these two issues connect very well together and a lot of issues to be addressed in the future for these countries. Well, thank you so much. And that's all we have in today's episode of Daily Deep Brief. Do visit our website, peoplesdispatch.org, our YouTube channel so that you can watch more such episodes, more videos from around the world. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button.