We open with drone shots of The French Guiana portion of the Amazon Rainforest. Our host Rafaela is en route to Cayenne, to meet with a local politician to get a better picture of how their policy will affect the Amazon. 

Cayenne city center. Rafaela walks with a local politician through the city. They explain that while the French government seems eager to approve legislation that would bypass French environmental law that bans large-scale deforestation to build several soy-fired biofuel power plants in French Guiana. They tell us that 98% of this region is still covered in the Amazon rainforest. Yet, the largest of the proposed biofuel plants would a large amount of rainforest clearing, totaling 892 square miles. This concerns environmentalists and startles them that France is pushing for policy deviations against the European Union’s sustainability standards. 

To get to the bottom of this, Rafaela goes straight to those who’d be affected most, The Indigenous communities. She sits down with the Téleuyu peoples who live along the coast. Their traditional practices of fishing, hunting, gathering, and slash-and-burn agriculture have become increasingly difficult due to regulations and gold mining activities. These affect habitats and those that depend on those habitats. As forest and river environments are being polluted and the local populations are experiencing health problems and food scarcity. 

A Téleuyu leader and Rafeala walking on through the Amazon together, towards an illegal gold mining site. On the trek over, the leader tells Rafaela about their struggles with forced evangelisation during recent years. The evangelisation has no room for traditional, particularly shamanic beliefs and artisanal and ceremonial activities. This is heartbreaking for the Téleuyu peoples. Just then, they land at the illegal gold mining site. Here Rafaela watches secretly as miners pollute the water with mercury and cyanide, as they extract the gold from the rock. The Téleuyu leader tells us how badly it’s effected their people. They say that fevers, birth defects, and trembles are a part of life in their village on the river. That this is a clear example of environmental injustice and failure to protect the indigenous communities. 

The Téleuyu leader and a handful of conservationists remove the illegal miners, before anything gets worse. Rafaela watch and gather data, to help improve their way of life. To combat this, Rafaela speaks with an NGO leader that wants to help end illegal mining in South America. They tell us that during the social protests in French Guiana in 2017, France signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Indigenous peoples. These included the return of 400,000 hectares of land, yet now, in 2022, no land has been returned. Rafaela shows the NGO leader footage of the illegal gold mining, and unfortunately, they’re already aware of the magnitude of the problem. The NGO leader further explains that representatives of Indigenous organizations, continue to make their voices heard about how these practices are poisoning their families, but it’s fallen on deaf ears. Rafaela walks through the rainforest of French Guiana, she tells us how worried she is about how these illegal gold mining activities are poisoning the indigenous communities and putting the Amazon at risk of deforestation. Beyond this, she calls attention to France, and their backwards politics. Being the front runner of The Paris Agreement yet exporting their bad business practices to South America by funding the deforestation for Biofuel plants. We see drone shots that outline a patch as large as New York City. Rafaela tells us, that if these Biofuel plants come to pass, the deforestation efforts would not only displace the indigenous people but could cause irreparable damage to the Amazon.