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On the coast of Paraná, indigenous families of the people Guarani Mbya are having their territory and traditional way of life threatened by sectors opposed to the shared management of overlapping areas between Indigenous Lands and Conservation Units.

Community leaders are the ones reporting the situation Kuaray Haxa Indigenous Land, a land in the process of demarcation by Funai that is overlapped by Bom Jesus Biological Reserve, an area of ​​almost 35 thousand hectares between the municipalities of Antonina, Guaraqueçaba and Paranaguá (PR).

“The Bom Jesus Biosphere Reserve was created on our traditional territory without us being consulted. We then began to be persecuted by the park managers, treated as invaders on our own land. Treated as threats to the Atlantic Forest where our relatives have always lived and which we have a mission to defend,” the Guarani state in a statement. letter released this Thursday (17/4).

On February 20, the Guarani community and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) celebrated the signing of a Commitment Term that regularizes the traditional presence of indigenous families in the area overlapping the Conservation Unit – after more than 10 years of legal disputes. 

Recognized as guardians of the Atlantic Forest, the Guarani communities invested in dialogue with the environmental agency's technical staff to build shared management solutions for the area, seeking to reconcile the territorial and cultural rights of their people with the conservation of biodiversity in one of the most threatened biomes in the world.

After signing the term, however, a sector of environmental organizations Civil society began to question the agreement, suggesting that the Guarani way of life would put biodiversity in the Bom Jesus Biosphere Reserve at risk, due to the hunting of wild animals, and that the indigenous people were not historically native to this region, having supposedly been “allocated” to the area.  

The demonstrations against the agreement evoke the anti-indigenous thesis of the “temporal framework”, ignoring the traditional nature of the Guarani occupation in this region of the Atlantic Forest. According to a technical note attached to the process by Guarani Yvyrupa Commission (CGY), the Kuaray Haxa community has traditionally inhabited the area even before the creation of the Bom Jesus Rebio, established in 2012.

Opponents of the agreement also ignore the historical debates on the most appropriate ways to guarantee environmental preservation between indigenous communities and environmental agencies in areas of overlap between Conservation Units and Indigenous Lands – in addition to recent studies which document the Guarani's contributions to the conservation of biodiversity and to mitigating illegal hunting in the area, as indicated in ICMBio's own documents. 

Vera Yapuá Rodrigo Mariano, legal advisor for CGY, an organization representing the Guarani people, points out that Brazilian legislation recognizes the compatibility between environmental protection and the rights of indigenous peoples to their territories, guaranteeing the exercise of traditional activities. “In addition to the scientific evidence that indigenous peoples protect the forests, we have a guarantee from the Federal Supreme Court (STF), when defining the theses of theme 1031, case of general repercussion RE 1017365”, highlights the advisor, who works in defense of the community.

The position of preservationist organizations is also criticized by the Forum of Traditional Peoples and Communities of Guaraqueçaba (PR), which brings together caiçara, quilombola and indigenous communities from the region. In April, the forum launched a Letter in defense of the traditional occupation of the Kuaray Haxa IT, which garnered support from several community and socio-environmental associations, including the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), the Indigenous Work Center (CTI), the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) and Terra de Direitos.

About the Term of Commitment

In this agreement between the indigenous community and the environmental agency, two zones of use were established for the Guarani:

- Intensive use zone (19 hectares, of the total 34.179,74 hectares of the Reserve): intended for the construction of housing and infrastructure for the community, such as farms and raising of domestic animals.

- Dispersed use zone (6.698 hectares, of the total 34.179,74 hectares of the Reserve): intended for use that respects the traditional way of life (nhandereko) in accordance with the rules of the Term of Commitment.

ICMBio – which created the Commitment Agreement with the involvement of the Federal Public Ministry and Funai – emphasizes that since the indigenous occupation there has been no evidence of significant environmental impact on fauna and that the hunting rules, signed in the agreement, are respected. Check out the full document.

The National Biodiversity Monitoring Program – Monitora Program, will be one of those responsible for this type of monitoring, even though the signed term grants legal security to the parties, assisting in the management of the Conservation Unit and in environmental monitoring that establishes limits on the use of natural resources.

More information: comissao@yvyrupa.org.br

Read also
Term of Commitment between the community in the Kuaray Haxa IT and ICMBio
Ojejapo Tekoarã – Ethnomapping of the Kuaray Haxa tekoa, coast of Paraná
Bom Jesus Biological Reserve: questions and answers about the Term of Commitment between ICMBio and the Guarani Indigenous Community