A New York company managing the retirement savings of workers in Sweden, the US and Canada is evading Brazilian laws on foreign investment to acquire farmlands from a businessman accused of violently displacing local communities Read more        

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Pension funds are among the most influential actors in the global financial industry. They manage more money than all the sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds and private equity funds of the world combined, and Canada is home to some of the biggest pension funds on the planet. The decisions that pension fund managers make on how to invest working people’s savings have enormous consequences. They can inflate real estate bubbles and commodity prices, make controversial megaprojects possible or, in much rarer cases, change corporate behaviour by threatening divestment. read more

How northern consumers and financiers enable Bolsonaro's assault on the Brazilian Amazon1 As the world's largest rainforest, the Amazon provides 20% of our oxygen, houses 10% of the planet's biodiversity, and helps stabilize the global climate. The world needs it to survive. None understand this better than the indigenous peoples and traditional communities who call it home, and are proven to be its best stewards. Despite their importance, the Brazilian Amazon and its peoples are suffering the worst assault in a generation. Deforestation is mounting dramatically while hard-fought environmental and human rights protections, critical to the future of the rainforest, are under serious attack. Indigenous peoples and traditional communities themselves suffer disproportionate violence and repression for defending their rights and forests. Download PDF source: https://amazonwatch.org/ 

by Friends of the Earth US, GRAIN, National Family Farm Coalition, Rede Social de Justica e Direitos Humanos razil is smoldering, still. The surge of fires that raged across the Amazon in July and August has now spread to the country’s biodiverse savanna lands in the Cerrado, where the number of fires in September was double what it was a year ago. read more source https://medium.com/@foe_us/harvard-and-tiaas-farmland-grab-in-brazil-goes-up-in-smoke-52dbfe57debf

Read an article based on this report on Bloomberg Business Week, an article about this report on The Crimson (Harvard's student newspaper), and a harsh critique from AgriInvestor on how Harvard has reacted to our report. ----- One of the world's major buyers of farmland is under fire for their involvement in land conflicts, environmental destruction and risky investments. A new report by GRAIN and Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos1 presents, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of Harvard University's controversial investments in global farmland. read more  

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BACKGROUND Not many people realize that currently the largest and most endangered ecosystems and cultural communities in South America are not in the Amazon, but instead the Brazilian Cerrado. The Cerrado is a biome that borders the Amazon and covers 20% of Brazil. Cerrado can be translated as “dense” or “closed” and refers to the natural vegetation of this type of savannah due to the diversity and density of the mix of trees, shrubs and grasses. The Cerrado region is home to around 15 million inhabitants including both rural and urban settlements, and the land is used by 80 different indigenous peoples and many rural communities recognized under Brazilian law as “traditional peoples”. These traditional peoples often have centuries of cultural adaptation to making their livelihoods in the Cerrado environment through farming, herding, fishing, hunting, and harvesting wild products. download PDF source: https://www.actionaidusa.org     

IMPRINT Published 2018 by FIAN International, Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos and Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT). The research for and elaboration of this report has been a collective work of social movements, national and international human rights organizations, development organizations and academics. In addition to the publishers, the following organizations were involved: ActionAid Brasil, ActionAid USA, Aidenvironment, Brasil de Fato, Campanha Nacional em Defesa do Cerrado, Cáritas Regional do Piauí, CLOC – La Via Campesina, Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT), Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT/ PI), Development and Peace, Escola de Formação Paulo de Tarso (EFPT-PI), Family Farm Defenders, FASE, Federação dos Agricultores Familiares (FAF), Federação dos Trabalhadores Rurais na Agricultura (FETAG-PI), FIAN Brasil, FIAN Germany, FIAN Netherlands, FIAN Sweden, Friends of the Earth International, GRAIN, Grassroots International, HEKS/ EPER, Instituto Comradio do Brasil, InterPares, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, National Family Farm Coalition, Obra Kolping do Brasil, Paróquia de Santa Filomena, Presbyterian Hunger Program, PROGEIA (Santa Filomena), Sindicato dos ...

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This report analyses the sustainability and financial risks of the farmland investment funds of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA, formerly TIAA-CREF) in Brazil. Such risks are most prevalent in Matopiba, Brazil’s newest soy frontier, consisting of part of the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia. TIAA farmland investments operate through various companies, such as Radar and its subsidiaries, that acquire and manage properties. CRR’s sustainability analysis shows that deforestation and fires have taken place on TIAA’s farmland portfolio, enabling negative social impacts on local communities. Download the PDF here: TIAA’s Farmland Funds Linked to Fires, Conflicts and Legacy Deforestation Risks in Brazil Key Findings: Radar is part of a complex web of companies through which TIAA invests in Brazilian farmland assets. TIAA has been accused of using complicated corporate structures to circumvent legal restrictions on foreign land ownership. Farmland acquisitions are funded through investment vehicles financed by 20 different institutional investors. Despite a recent increase in transparency, the land portfolio in TIAA’s investment ...

Publication of Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos with the support of the Land Research Action Network - LRAN. Download PDF source https://www.social.org.br