In a public hearing in the Chamber, government bodies, ministries and indigenous peoples supported the policy becoming law, having resources and receiving a new climate change axis
The National Indigenous Territorial and Environmental Management Policy (PNGATI) was the focus of discussions in the National Congress and in activity at Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL), which celebrates 20 years of struggles in Brasília.
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During the afternoon of Tuesday (23/04), a public hearing took place in the Chamber of Deputies, chaired by deputy Célia Xakriabá (PSOL-MG), to talk about the agenda. “This commission has an important place to welcome the indigenous presence, but above all the urgent policy that is PNGATI. We suffered here in this house an attempt to exterminate indigenous peoples when the Temporal Framework was approved and now we are mobilizing to vote on the urgency of PNGATI”, stated Xakriabá.
Established in 2012 through decree presidential, PNGATI aims to guarantee and promote the protection, recovery, conservation and sustainable use of natural resources in indigenous lands and territories, ensuring the integrity of indigenous heritage, improving the quality of life and full conditions for reproduction physical and cultural of current and future generations of indigenous peoples, respecting their sociocultural autonomy.
Despite having been institutionally made official 12 years ago, its management committee was formed only last year, after the 19th edition of Camp Terra Livre.
Coordinator of the PNGATI Steering Committee, representing indigenous organizations in the Brazilian Amazon, Auricélia Arapiuns commented that in the resumption of PNGATI many hopes arise and one of them is that PNGATI will become law.
Even when she was a federal deputy, the current president of the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (Funai), Joênia Wapichana, proposed in the Chamber, in 2021, the bill 4347 / 2021.
“We have several concerns as indigenous peoples in the context of this house, which is a house that sees us as enemies. PNGATI needs to arrive here very strengthened, because our rights are being attacked and many other laws contrary to us are being made and built here in this house”, he warned.
Plenary at ATL
During the plenary session on PNGATI, which took place in the main tent of ATL, this Thursday morning (25/04), the leaders who participated in the formal session took updates on the discussion on resuming the policy to the public. Auricélia Arapiuns reinforced the budget point. “This issue of financing is very important, because this is not just the responsibility of the [Ministry of Indigenous Peoples] MPI and Funai. It is 50% indigenous and 50% government. It’s not just participation in the [management] committee.”
The steering committee is responsible for coordinating the implementation of the policy and is made up of government representatives and representatives of indigenous organizations. It was established in 2013 and its last meeting took place six years ago, in 2018. On July 3, 2023, the PNGATI management committee was reinstalled and on March 25 of this year, the six permanent technical chambers were installed. Are they:
- - PNGATI technical monitoring and financing chamber;
- - Technical Chamber for Climate Change, Environmental Services and Sociobioeconomics;
- - Technical Chamber of Forestry, Biodiversity, Restoration and Recovery and Recovery of Degraded Areas;
- - Technical Chamber for Integrated and/or Shared Management of Indigenous Lands and Conservation Units;
- - Technical Chamber for Territorial Protection and Combating Leasing and Socio-Environmental Illegals;
- - Technical Chamber for Continuing Training.
"This policy is one of the most important and innovative policies we have, firstly because it was created with the participation of indigenous peoples", said Lucia Alberta, director of Promotion of Sustainable Development at Funai. "It was built so that indigenous peoples could manage their territories. And there are several ways to manage these territories, from management plans, life plans, georeferencing, projects that they develop together with other partners ", he added.
Expansion and challenges of PNGATI
Bárbara Tupinikim, from the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples and Organizations of the Northeast, Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo (Apoinme), called for indigenous youth to be informed about politics. “We are resuming PNGATI and it will continue, because it’s not just us carrying out this process of resumption, we have to follow and follow, and there are many generations that will continue to follow PNGATI”.
Apoinme's leadership also brought to the debate the issue of regeneration of territories, due to deforestation and mining. “I like to say that we are past the era of sustainability. There is no longer this sustainability phase, there is no way for us to sustain any of the habits that society does anymore. There’s no way, we have to regenerate,” she emphasized.
Jaime Siqueira, from the Indigenous Work Center (CTI), commented on the three main challenges he believes PNGATI has. “The first is to continue maintaining this protagonism and participation. There are instruments for this to happen and one of them is the steering committee itself and the National Council for Indigenous Policy [CNPI], and it is important to occupy this space and make it really work.”
“The other challenge is to maintain the politicization of PNGATI, in the sense that it is not possible to manage it without land. PNGATI is not an element to depoliticize the demands of demarcated territories. The last challenge that I think PNGATI has to consolidate is financing to support the implementation of the policy. We know that international cooperation has always contributed to implementing the policy in the territories, and the challenge is for PNGATI to be implemented with government resources. Rely less on this international cooperation”, he concluded.
Ceiça Pitaguary, Secretary of the National Policy for Environmental and Indigenous Territorial Management, pointed out that the policy is made up of seven axes, which are:
Axis 1 - Territorial and natural resource protection;
Axis 2 - Governance and indigenous participation;
Axis 3 - Protected areas, Conservation Units and Indigenous Lands;
Axis 4 - Prevention and recovery of environmental damage;
Axis 5 - Sustainable use of natural resources and indigenous productive initiatives;
Axis 6 - Intellectual property and genetic heritage;
Axis 7 - Training, training, exchange and environmental education.
“Now there is a reflection: if we present an amendment here in the PNGATI process or if we carry out regional consultations until we reach a conference to deal with an eighth axis, which we did not deal with when we were building, which is the axis of climate change. It is a topic that is on the table here, with all government officials concerned, but we must also include in PNGATI the important contribution that indigenous peoples and their territories make to maintaining environmental balance”, reinforced Ceiça.
Representative of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, Rodrigo de Lima Medeiros recognized the importance of the policy becoming law. “That we effectively have more public resources to implement PNGATI, that we have a Union budget for implementing PNGATI, that we have a budget from States and municipalities to implement PNGATI”, he signaled.
“The issue of territorial management is not just conservation, it’s not just preserving the forest or vegetation, it’s also bioeconomy, it’s the [Gross Domestic Product] GDP that Indigenous Lands produce, it’s thinking about biodiversity, the environmental services they provide for world, is to think about socio-biodiversity chains, is to think about the recovery of degraded areas. So there is a portfolio of socio-environmental themes that need to be effectively rethought within PNGATI, they need to become public policies, so that both the State and the Union effectively have a budgetary commitment to PNGATI”.
Representative of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib), Sineia Wapichana also participated in the session in the Chamber of Deputies. For her, this is an important issue for all the people of Brazil, not just those in the Amazon. “It is important for all biomes. It was the only policy that consulted the indigenous peoples of Brazil. Despite having some gaps, it was a policy built by us”, she underlined.