In Brazil, the charcoal industry fuels illegal deforestation and slavery
Illegal deforestation and worker misery lie behind a supposedly ‘green’ industry in South America’s largest nation
By Fabio Teixeira / Thomson Reuters Foundation, Brasilia
For more than a year, Antonio slept with a wasp nest humming above his head. Not in the open, but inside a small brick house on a farm a couple of hours from Brazil’s capital, Brasilia.
Outside, a dozen charcoal kilns burned wood day and night, filling the air with smoke, next to piles of logs illegally cut from the endangered Cerrado biome, South America’s largest savanna.
Antonio, who asked for his real name not to be disclosed, worked feeding native trees into the kilns to make charcoal.
Illustration: Louise Ting
That fuel, used by steel mills and for the traditional Brazilian barbecue, has links to labor rights abuses and environmental contraventions.
Antonio and several other men were hired in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais for jobs in the center-west state of Goias, where they were forced to work in conditions that labor inspectors described as “slavery-like” after discovering the workers last month.
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