{"id":30247,"date":"2016-07-07T07:00:15","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T10:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=30247"},"modified":"2016-07-08T13:38:34","modified_gmt":"2016-07-08T16:38:34","slug":"after-21-years-unattended-rio-fishermen-demand-compensation-and-the-restoration-of-guanabara-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=30247","title":{"rendered":"After 21 Years Unattended, Rio Fishermen Demand Compensation and Restoration of Guanabara Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On Sunday, July 3, a coalition of fishermen\u2019s organizations held a protest by boat<\/a> in the Guanabara Bay<\/a> demanding returns on a promise by the city of Rio<\/a> to clean up 80% of the pollution in the Guanabara Bay before the 2016 Olympics<\/a>. The organizations Ba\u00eda Viva<\/a> (Living Bay), Forum of Fisherman and Friends of the Sea<\/a>\u00a0and Tubiacanga Association of Fishermen<\/a>\u00a0joined forces to organize the demonstration, which had around 80\u00a0fisherman, community members and journalists in attendance.<\/p>\n

The event\u00a0began with the announcement of the movement\u2019s agenda<\/a>. The coalition demands compensation\u00a0be paid to fishermen for the Petrobras leak<\/a> of January 18, 2000, the creation of a fishing school and research center to be shared with universities on the small Ilha Seca island, and an end to the sewage leaks<\/a> from the Gramacho and Ita\u00f3ca garbage fills\u00a0in Duque de Caxias<\/a> and S\u00e3o Gon\u00e7alo<\/a> that are devastating marine life.<\/p>\n

\"Community<\/a><\/p>\n

The government\u2019s failure to clean the bay before the Olympics<\/a> is the latest in a series of unfulfilled commitments towards the Bay, beginning with the Guanabara Bay Remediation Program (PDBG)<\/a> of 1991. A coalition of fishermen\u2019s and environmental organizations, Ba\u00eda Viva was founded to hold the government accountable to the PDBG, but they say 21 years later not one of the PDBG\u2019s goals has been carried through. Ba\u00eda Viva became active again last year, when the\u00a0city\u2019s latest broken promise to clean 80% of the Bay before the Olympics \u201cprovoked great indignation.”<\/p>\n

For Sunday’s\u00a0protest, participants took to fishing boats, sailing from the Zumbi beach on Ilha do Governador<\/a> to Ilha Seca with signs reading \u201cPresident of Petrobras pay the Guanabara fisherman NOW\u201d and \u201cThe fisherman asks for help.” Environmentalist and Ba\u00eda Viva founder S\u00e9rgio Ricardo highlighted\u00a0the abandoned oil tanks on Ilha Seca that the coalition of fishermen\u2019s organizations would like to convert into fish nurseries<\/a> to repopulate the bay.<\/p>\n

\"Fishermen<\/a><\/p>\n

The fishermen funded the fuel for the boat protest themselves, which Ricardo describes as a \u201cgreat effort.” He hopes the coalition will be able to find financial backing to pull off an even larger boat protest during the Olympics.<\/p>\n

Fishermen and women described their experience of the devastation of the Guanabara Bay over the last several decades. Zaine Coutinho is known in the neighborhood as the first fisherwoman of Rio\u2019s oldest artisanal fishing community<\/a>.\u00a0Recently, she saw\u00a0an entire school of fish jump out of the water to die on the sand, something she says she had never seen before. \u201cI reached into the water with my flip-flop and and it came up covered in oil. The fish couldn\u2019t breathe,\u201d she concluded. \u201cThere are mattresses, televisions and everything you can imagine in this water.”<\/p>\n

\"Guanabara<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cLong ago, we would catch tons of fish. Today, you cannot find even two kilos of fish here. We are forced to find other employment because we cannot sustain ourselves through fishing.\u201d\u00a0Coutinho would like to see Petrobras pay compensation\u00a0to the fishing community and for the government to pay more attention to their needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish we had more support, so that our fishing class\u00a0doesn\u2019t have to come to an end. Because there are schools that teach people how to fish. But how are you going to teach them if there\u2019s nowhere for them to fish?”<\/p>\n

According to Ricardo, only 12% of the Bay\u2019s surface is free for fishing. The remainder has been turned into \u201cfishing exclusion zones\u201d by oil companies. \u201cThe fisherman who doesn\u2019t fish within the right zone can be imprisoned as an environmental criminal, while the fossil fuel industry poses a much greater hazard to the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ricardo claims that until the 1970s, the state of Rio de Janeiro was the second largest producer of fish in Brazil. \u201cToday, Rio is behind states like Santa Catarina and Par\u00e1, because Rio has degraded its ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n

The protests are targeting the public. \u201cThere is a conflict of visions of what the future of the Guanabara Bay should be,\u201d Ricardo stated. \u201cSome would like to turn it over to the oil industry to be reindustrialized, while we defend the vision of a living bay which serves the economic and social development of Rio de Janeiro.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas On Sunday, July 3, a coalition of fishermen\u2019s organizations held a protest by boat in the Guanabara Bay demanding returns on a promise by the city of Rio to clean up […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":125,"featured_media":30253,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1736,1288,1333,452,328,336,1329],"tags":[9,756,694,474,385,267,386,531,1996,5,1292,530,18,270,120,471],"writer":[2121],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-30247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-1736","8":"category-highlight","9":"category-event-reports","10":"category-rio20","11":"category-understanding-rio","12":"category-violations","13":"category-by-international-observers","14":"tag-9","15":"tag-community-organizing","16":"tag-duque-de-caxias","17":"tag-environment","18":"tag-environmental-education","19":"tag-fishing-colony","20":"tag-trash","21":"tag-guanabara-bay","22":"tag-ilha-do-governador","23":"tag-olympics","24":"tag-organizing","25":"tag-pollution","26":"tag-protest","27":"tag-resistance","28":"tag-sao-goncalo","29":"tag-sustainability","30":"writer-sophia-zaia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30247"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=30247"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=30247"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=30247"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=30247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}