By Rodrigo Leitão, lawyer, environmentalist, and member of Pororoka

The Brazilian State, through IBAMA, has issued an operating license for oil exploration at the mouth of the Amazon River. This licensing process dragged on for more than a decade, driven by heavy misinformation spread by politicians and Petrobras.

By authorizing the operation, IBAMA violates the fundamental rights of the Indigenous Peoples of Oiapoque and of Traditional Communities, fishermen, and quilombolas, by failing to respect the principles of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent, thus infringing both national and international legal frameworks.

The federal government has failed to address the social and environmental problems already faced in Oiapoque, fueled by institutional propaganda that misleads the population with promises of wealth, progress, and development—drawing crowds to a municipality already suffering from severe deficits in sanitation, healthcare, and education.

This narrative has already triggered disorderly urban expansion, with the creation of new neighborhoods and illegal land subdivisions along the borders of Indigenous Territories and Conservation Units.

These neighborhoods and settlements have devastated the native forest in a municipality where less than 3% of the territory is available for urban expansion, since it is surrounded by Indigenous Lands and Conservation Units.

The influx of people seeking opportunities has direct consequences: rising rental and lodging prices, growing social conflicts, and increasing demand for already precarious public services—affecting Indigenous peoples who need medical care or move to the town center to study.

The claim that only the oil industry can bring development to Oiapoque and Amapá is false and built on misinformation. It ignores the existing bioeconomy in the region, which generates and distributes income based on the relationship between traditional communities, Indigenous peoples, and nature—insisting instead that the only path forward is the brutal destruction of the forest.

Never Again, Guanabara — A senator recently stood on a Petrobras oil platform, arms wide open, declaring that the company had never caused an oil spill in its history. In truth, several have occurred. One of the most significant took place at dawn on January 18, 2000, when a pipeline rupture spilled oil into Guanabara Bay. The pipeline connecting the Duque de Caxias Refinery (REDUC), operated by Petrobras, to the Ilha d’Água Terminal on Governor’s Island, released approximately 1.3 million liters of fuel oil.

It remains one of the largest environmental disasters caused by the oil industry in Brazil, leaving irreparable damage to mangroves and devastating the bioeconomy sustained by artisanal fishers in Guanabara Bay—whose livelihoods and culture were forever changed.

Guanabara Bay and the seven municipalities impacted by the oil industry in Rio de Janeiro stand as examples of the negative environmental impacts caused by ongoing oil and effluent leaks that kill mangroves, biodiversity, and the culture and economy of the traditional communities that live there. In exchange for such destruction, nothing improved for the population.

A Policy of Erasure — Cultural erasure is deliberate, as are the marginalization and devaluation of the culture, economy, and labor practices of these communities. The Brazilian State erases history, strips these communities of their dignity, and fosters the illusion that nothing exists there—no life, no work, no culture—and that intervention is needed to create jobs, income, and development. But for whom? Today, Oiapoque residents can earn more than the minimum wage, working fewer hours and in harmony with nature.

An economy already exists in Amapá and throughout the Amazon—one that coexists with nature, respects its rhythms, preserves the environment, and generates and distributes income. Yet now, it faces the threat of a State unwilling to confront the climate crisis, to protect nature, or to promote environmentally sustainable and socially just human development.

Brazil acts in favor of the very industry responsible for the climate crisis—an industry that concentrates wealth among its shareholders while distributing misery and destruction to everyone else.