Shaji Thomas was born in Kerala, studied in Mysuru and lives in mainland Brazil, but his heart is in the Marajó archipelago, deep in the Amazon rainforest. It’s a massive cluster of river islands, one of the largest in the world. Here, Thomas has been fighting alongside local tribal communities to protect the land, river, forests, and their rights to these. This year marks three decades since he joined this fight.
In 2015, he even got a law degree, to arm himself better, and was the first Indian to register with the Brazilian Bar Association. He is married and raising two children with Elysangela Pinheiro, a Brazilian public prosecutor. How did this all come about?
Thomas, 54, first arrived in Brazil in 1989, for a two-year cultural exchange programme. On a trip into the Amazon rainforest, he met the Quilombola people, an Amazonian tribe with African heritage. The meeting would change the trajectory of his life.
“The tribal communities here are very much like the adivasis in India,” says Thomas, who volunteered with tribal-rights activists in Odisha while studying for his BA. “They have their own languages, cultures, music, and a respect for nature, which is their goddess or mother. They depend on the forest for their survival, and they know how to protect it. Similar to what is happening in India, tribals in Brazil are being displaced so that the land can be exploited.”
In the Marajó archipelago, for instance, forest communities are being moved into nearby cities as the central government and corporations claim land for logging, industrial farming and hydroelectric projects that further swamp and destroy acres of forests.
“Even though these communities have lived here for centuries, they have no official documentation of their rights over the land,” says Thomas. “So land, sand and timber cartels show up and force these people to leave.” Thomas helps them file public interest litigations, and acts as a bridge between tribes and philanthropic foundations, helping raise funds for reskilling, reforestation, aquaculture and rainwater harvesting initiatives.
What keeps him going is the scale of what’s at stake. The Amazon is the world’s largest rainforest. It influences rainfall patterns, hosts endemic species, and is one of the world’s largest natural sinks for carbon emissions. Spread over 6 mn sq km and across eight countries, nearly two-thirds of the rainforest is in Brazil.
Between decades of deforestation, illegal encroachments and infrastructure projects, according to the Brazilian government’s own estimates, 17% of the Amazon forest system has been lost. As the rainforest transitions from a major carbon sink to a carbon emitter, primarily as a result of massive fires set to clear large swathes of forest, the impact is expected to be felt on climate stability around the world.
Already, amid deforestation and rising sea levels, the ocean is flooding parts of the rainforest’s archipelagos. The change in climate has been dramatic too. Communities once depended on six months of rain and six months of dry season to grow and harvest their staple food, tapioca. “For the last few years, we’ve been seeing five, six, seven months of rain, and when it comes, it’s harsh and floods the farmlands,” Thomas says.
He is currently working to set up climate-change-resistant agroforestry systems in three municipalities in the Marajó archipelago, using $10 million sanctioned by the United Nations to the Avina Foundation. “His work done is of fundamental importance,” says local researcher Meiriane Lopes, who has worked with Thomas on climate vulnerability research in Marajó.
What motivates him to keep fighting? “They say if you protect the Amazon, you protect the world,” Thomas says.
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