On August 29, 2019 The Harvard Crimson reported that “(a)s the Amazon rainforest continues to burn, members of Divest Harvard — a student group demanding the University divest from fossil fuels — are renewing their calls on Harvard to withdraw its holdings in farmland across the globe, including in Brazil.
In a statement released last week, Divest Harvard specifically condemned the role Brazilian agribusiness has played in the Amazon fires. The statement noted that, according to a 2018 report by activist group Genetic Resources Action International, the Harvard Management Company — the University’s investing arm — owns 300,000 hectares of land in the Brazilian Cerrado, an area of wooded grasslands that neighbor the Amazon rainforest.
Recent documents cited by Divest Harvard and provided by GRAIN, however, now put that figure closer to 400,000 hectares of land owned by Harvard in Brazil.
‘This appropriation of land is both a health and environmental risk and an example of land theft on an enormous scale; it has caused the pollution of local water supplies and poisoning of indigenous territories in Brazil’s bio-diverse Cerrado region,’ the Divest Harvard statement read.”
You may read the article on The Harvard Crimson internet site.