On Tuesday 21 April, the Frontline Club hosted a panel to discuss the water crisis in Brazil and the world’s largest green area, the Amazonian rainforest. Chaired by Andrew Mitchell, chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society, the event was the second in a series entitled ‘Exploration of the Frontline,’ a collaboration between the Scientific Exploration Society and the Frontline Club that aims at bringing together journalists, explorers and academics for an evening of informed debate.

l-r: Andrew Mitchell , Sue Cunningham, Nixiwaka Yawanawa, Peter Bunyard, Dr Friederike Otto, Rogerio Simoes

“In Sao Paulo you have a city of 22 million people facing chronic droughts, a situation unique in the history of Brazil,” Mitchell said. This drought is largely the result of wide-scale deforestation, and of changes to the ecosystems in the Amazonian area, hundreds of miles north of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Brazil’s coastline.

Sue Cunningham, an author and photographer with more than 20 years of experience in Brazil, illustrated the consequences of the massive deforestation that she had been witness to during a 2007 expedition on the Xingu river in the heart of the rainforest. Travelling by boat and small planes, the group visited 48 different tribes living along the river.

“When you fly over the forest, you can see when the pollution happens from a pristine river to a contaminated river,” said Cunningham, showing an aerial picture of the polluted Xingu where mercurial refuse had caused a significant change in the colour of the water.

Nixiwaka Yawanawá, a member of the Yawanawá tribe currently working with Survival International to raise awareness about the Amazon and the rights of tribal communities, showed the Frontline Club audience a video of the latest flood that had hit his indigenous community in the Brazilian state of Acre.

Up to 80% of the villages and settlements of the Yawanawá community were swept away. “We never thought that this would happen,” said Yawanawá. “One of our shamans, and they usually are the oldest people in a tribe, he said that in one hundred years we have never seen this kind of flood. Everyone was very shocked and surprised, but we have to carry on.”

The task of explaining the meteorological dynamics of the issue was assumed by panelists Peter Bunyard and Dr Friederike Otto.

Peter Bunyard, founder of The Ecologist, explained the role of trade winds that flow from Africa and the Atlantic over the Amazonian basin. These winds create a mechanism called the ‘biotic pump’, a natural phenomenon that influences the climate of the entire Latin American region, from Panama to Patagonia.

Otto, a senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, linked the occurrence of drastic climate events such as droughts, typhoons and hurricanes to longterm climate change and the consequential rise in temperature of the planet. “This is a longterm change, and all of these events play together.”

Rogerio Simoes, a Brazilian journalist based in London and former head of the Brazilian Service at the BBC World Service, explained that the rising population of Sao Paulo was a major game-changer in environmental terms.

“Brazil just cannot cope with the population growth,” said Simoes. “According to the latest census in Brazil, there are 11.6 million people living in slums, illegal slums.”

Simoes finished by adding that the short-sightedness of Brazilian politicians was leading to a worsening of the situation. For example, the governor of Sao Paulo state, Geraldo Alckmin, repeatedly denied any issue of water shortage during the 2014 election campaign, at a time when the main water reservoir was at just 7.2% of its total capacity.

But this is modern day Peru. Protests in the country’s indigenous-majority north-eastern region were put down by armed police late last week. At least 22 police and nine protesters have died, the BBC reports. Indigenous leaders say closer to 30 protestors were killed and around 150 injured, many with bullets.

It’s not the first time this remote area has witnessed bloodshed. Fuel and transport blockades have disrupted Peru’s Amazon region for almost two months. The indigenous groups want lawmakers to repeal laws that encourage mining in jungle regions. Critics say that over two-thirds of the Peruvian Amazon territory is now leased for oil and gas exploration.

The case is not an isolated one. For a decade or more, local inhabitants have run an international campaign against US-based mining firm Newmont for alleged environmental destruction at its mine in nearby Cajamarca. Neighbouring Ecuador has faced similar protests by indigenous groups who oppose natural resource extraction in their native lands.

The Achuar people of the north-western Amazon demonstrate a new tack in indigenous campaigning. A warrior tribe by tradition, they have chosen to fight their battle in an environment that their corporate adversaries understand: the law courts. In 2007, the Achuar filed a class action lawsuit against oil giant Occidental Petroleum in Los Angeles. Their lawsuit alleges that the US company dumped around nine billion barrels of toxic waste water into streams and rivers over a three-decade period. The judge is still deliberating to to whether the case can proceed.

An increasing number of affected communities are seeking legal redress in the US. Last month, for example, members of Nigeria’s Ogoni people brought Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell before a US federal court in New York. They accuse the oil major of colluding with the Nigeria military junta in the 1990s and, by extension, for aiding and abetting human rights violations.

Two mains reasons explain this shift towards international cases of this kind. Firstly, the plaintiffs lack confidence that their national courts will provide them with a fair hearing. In corrupt corners of Latin America and Africa, their fears are well-founded. Secondly, thanks to some clever lawyering, such communities now have access to the US justice system for the first time. Litigators have unearthed a statute that has lain dormant for almost two centuries. Under the Alien Tort Claims Act, anybody can theoretically bring a case against a US-domiciled individual, government agency or company for gross human rights violations.

The Shell case promises to be a landmark. If the company is found guilty, a flood of similar cases against large companies can be expected to follow. Then the indigenous of the Peruvian jungle will have an alternative recourse to fighting it out with heavily armed police.