Babaçu nut breakers of Brazil
Country: Brazil |Â Partner: MIQCB
Aims
- To give the women babaçu breakers an effective voice in social and political movements in Brazil
- To protect the babaçu forests and guarantee that the babaçu breakers have free access to them
- To reduce the dependency of women babaçu breakers and their families on exploitative middlemen and ensure their subsistence and security
Successes
- Successfully lobbied for the establishment of a national law that protects the nut breakers' access to the babaçu palms and shields the trees from destruction.
- Marginalised ethnic minority women have become political actors. More than 700 babaçu women are now organised to lobby the authorities on issues affecting them.
- Through workshops and training on their rights, leadership, accounting and marketing, babaçu women have gained the necessary self-confidence and knowledge to influence decision-makers. They are also able to present business alternatives to maximise their benefits from the babaçu and reduce the vulnerability of their livelihood.
- The MIQCB has established important links with local, regional and national government and gained a voice in key forums both at national and regional level to hold the government accountable for illegal logging and forest destruction.
- MIQCB officially obtained the status of cooperative and created the Interstate Cooperative of Women Babaçu Nut Breakers. This will enable MIQCB to better commercialise babaçu products and hence support the babaçu women to strengthen their livelihood and income.
The facts
- In the Brazilian regions of Pará, Tocantins, Piauà and Maranhão over 300,000 women pick and break the babaçu coconut to sustain their families
- Women babaçu breakers usually collect and break about five kilos of babaçu per day, which sells for a meagre 7p per kilo to the middlemen
- The Brazilian government’s support for economic activities such as biofuels, cattle, mining and other large-scale profitable activities has put the babaçu palm trees in line for destruction. Yet it takes 90 years for a babaçu tree to bear fruit.
Women babaçu breakers are one of the most marginalized groups of workers in Brazil and their source of livelihood is now in danger. During the 1990s, a collection of local grassroots organisations formed a movement, the MIQCB, to voice the concerns and demands of the nut breakers, improve their living conditions and challenge society’s perceptions of their status and value.
The babaçu breakers live in the 18 million hectares of forest between the Amazon and the semi-dry areas in the northeast of the country. Here, few public policies guarantee peoples’ basic rights and land distribution is extremely inequitable.
The babaçu nut has many practical and commercial benefits - from natural medicine, food products and roof toppings to cosmetics and cattle fodder. Although the income the women glean from the babaçu nut is tiny - about 60 pence per day - it is often the only monetary income a family has.
However, this is now under threat. Large-scale commercial farmers - who do not view the babaçu nut as sufficiently profitable - want to burn the forests to clear the area for soya farming or cattle breeding. They have tried to charge women workers or to prevent them from collecting nuts by erecting barbed wire fences or hiring gunmen.
The babaçu breakers also face discrimination because they are descendants of slaves or indigenous people and because they are women.
The MIQCB has given the nut breakers a voice, to protect their forests from being chopped down and to gain official permission to pick the nuts which would otherwise lie unused - for free.
With the support of War on Want, the MIQCB launched and won a mass campaign to protect the babaçu. In 2007 the Brazilian Congress passed a law that gives the nut breakers free access to the palms, and protects the trees from destruction. War on Want is now helping the MIQCB to advocate for local government to enforce the existing legislation and promote new laws that guarantee access to the babaçu and prevent its destruction. War on Want also supports the MIQCB to build the movement's links within Brazil and its communication with other organisations both at home and internationally.
»For more information on MIQCB and their activities, visit their website
