Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples Articulation (BIPA) Statements on the EU–Mercosur FTA (2019–2025): Human and Environmental Security Implications

Abstract

Drawing upon the decolonial approach within Peace Studies, this paper assesses human and environmental security issues identified in all statements adopted by Brazil's Indigenous Peoples Articulation (BIPA) and published on its webpage concerning the EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement. The five official statements issued by BIPA throughout the twenty-five-year negotiation period were located and analyzed, with all documents having been identified within the 2019–2025 period. Employing Content Analysis (CA), utilizing ATLAS.ti software, the paper is structured in two main parts. First, it establishes the decolonial theoretical framework, specifically the Indigenous perspective in Peace Studies, and contextualizes it within current struggles involving Indigenous peoples in Brazil. Second, it systemizes the coding results from the analyzed documents to identify potential implications. The central hypothesis posits that BIPA was predominantly opposed to the EU-Mercosur agreement, emphasizing in its discourse how the strengthening of economic sectors, such as agribusiness and mineral extraction, has the potential to undermine Indigenous land rights and the protection of environmental reserves. The findings reveal a consistently critical position toward the agreement, evidenced by the predominance of the Human and Environmental Security issues category, which accounted for 68 units out of the 117 multiple associations across all subcategories within the coded data. These findings highlight the academic debate on the agreement's potential to exacerbate human insecurity, threatening the livelihoods of Indigenous communities in Brazil