Solidarity to Breathe

By Ariane Sousa Campos

(Portuguese and Spanish)

As I write this, we learn that 2024 has been confirmed as the hottest year on record with 44% of our planet affected by extreme heat stress like humans have never experienced. We watch from Brazil as the fires rage in California and Patagonia, knowing all too well the reality of our own desperate environmental situation and the results of a dry and hot winter.

Since last July, Brazil and parts of South America have been engulfed in wild and uncontrollable fires, with flames consuming entire biomes. Several capitals in Brazil have the worst air quality indexes in the world, and in many cities, the sun rises red. A thick layer of smoke covers the atmosphere, and soot is everywhere, even in the apartments of tall buildings or cities far from forests and plantation areas.

Through these fires, we have already lost part of the Cerrado biome and forest reserve areas in the Atlantic Forest, the Pantanal, and the Amazon. Rivers are contaminated, and many animals have died, burned, or are dehydrated, frightened, or run over while trying to escape the fire. Forest firefighters continue to lose their lives in this unprecedented climate disaster, which is lethal for the entire planet.

My name is Ariane. I’m a feminist activist, Purposeful consultant, technologist, and researcher. This is my home — where our nostrils burn, it is difficult to work, and even the cats and dogs are tired, listless, and having difficulty breathing. Some days, there are official alerts about poor air quality due to low humidity, high pollution, and high temperatures. It seems like we are living in a dystopian film. We wonder how long we will continue to live like this.

The fight for our land and our futures

It’s not only the fires. In May, torrential rains and floods hit the state of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil, devastating urban and rural areas as well as traditional and Indigenous communities. By early June, official data recorded 173 dead, 38 missing, 423,486 homeless, 18,854 people in shelters, and 806 injured. Countless animals — from livestock in their natural habitat, those in science labs and stores, and those at home — were killed or just disappeared.

The entire country mobilised to help those in the south and ensure that essential items could quickly reach the thousands of people in need, including ready-to-eat food, winter clothing, as the cold had already set in, personal hygiene products, shoes, drinking water, and fuel for the rescue efforts.

Throughout this tragedy, I reflect on how girls and women of all ages become even more vulnerable to gender-based violence in disaster situations. In the Brazilian context, due to the racism streaked through our society, this violence is even more complex and hostile towards black or Indigenous people, and also impacts people with disabilities, homeless people, older people, those who are overweight, those who are pregnant, or nursing, and LBTQIAPN+ people, in a multitude of ways.

Along with other young feminist activists, I have felt the urgency to support groups at these intersections that affect the life chances of girls and women in the face of extreme climate change. And it is simply urgent now that the voices of the biomes guardians — the Indigenous women-biomes — be heard. The wisdom of Indigenous, quilombolas, and peasant women as they fight for the land in Brazil is a fight against the earth’s destruction and for a fairer future, it’s a fight against hunger, for our souls, and our survival.

With a crisis response grant through the Global Resilience Fund from Purposeful, we have been able to mobilise fast so that two groups could receive rapid response donations and mitigate the disastrous effects of this climate catastrophe: the Atinuké collective focussed on the studies and knowledge of black women, based in the city of Porto Alegre, and Vila Resistência, a community collective on the outskirts of the town of Santa Maria, where the impact of this funding is already demonstrating the impact of supporting small groups in local activism networks, as their community action has both mitigated against the next climate disaster in their community and ensured food sovereignty.

Transforming a community

Vila Resistência’s resident visual artist and educator, Rusha Silva, shared with me the story of the 40 families whose women grew this community from vulnerability and struggle for decent housing through arduous legal battles and violence due to the lack of infrastructure, basic sanitation, and public services. I learned about community improvement initiatives such as Teia dos Povos and how collaboration and knowledge exchange with other communities have made small financial resources go a long way.

The climate response funding, combined with the community’s ability to coordinate collective care has meant that during extreme rainfall, it has been possible to meet the most basic needs of the families and their children, along with other black and Indigenous communities, like Quilombo dos Machado. Crucially, the funding has provided for the purchase of tools and equipment to restore the community water pipes that had simply not been able to cope, due to the lack of public management, and had been overflowing with raw sewage during the rains.

Together, the collective has created an agro-ecological garden, both to teach and to practice traditional organic agriculture, respecting both soil and environment, and alongside developing new agroforestry techniques, they have grown vegetables to feed the entire community and planted fruit trees, which are now strengthening the soil against landslides. The work of these women, the creativity and the ingenuity of their strategies is completely transformative for their families and communities.

Like other young feminist activists in the region, I will continue to demand climate justice and push for unrestricted, flexible funding that enables women like this to deepen their work and drive the movement forward from the grassroots up.

“We need solidarity to be able to breathe. With the devastating advance of the fires, we have to strengthen and find alternatives. The urgency to be planting is about resisting agribusiness and aligning in the fight for land, for life, and for our very ability to breathe.”

-Rusha Silva, Vila Resistência

I urge you to read more about the devastation in my region and follow the links in this piece to learn more about the work of these communities and collectives. Understand that there is no climate justice without funding the feminist movement, which is navigating for their communities, and that there has never been more need to trust that we have the solutions we need to address this crisis.

Ariane Sousa Campos is a feminist activist and a Purposeful consultant within the Latin America and Caribbean region. To find out more about how you can support through the Global Resilience Fund, visit theglobalresilience fund.org, and learn about the work of Purposeful visit wearepurposeful.org. To understand more about the struggle of the Indigenous women-biomes, you can watch the short documentary Out of Place (2023), co-directed by Ariane and featuring two leaders of the Indigenous Mbya Guarani territory in her home city, São Paulo.