Nothing about the land
without those who inhabit it
Words to unite struggles and chart a living future.
Manifesto
On our doorstep.
Around the corner.
In the land where we grew up.
Yet another open-pit mine eating into the mountain. Yet another mega solar park covering the montado. Another dam drowning hectares. A resort for the few on dunes that belong to everyone. Golf courses in drought-stricken areas. Super-intensive monocultures drying up springs, poisoning the soil and our lungs. Endless eucalyptus. Yet another airport. Yet another dredging operation and an oil well dug into the seabed. These projects are no longer far away.
A system that devours what is common: the land, the water, life.
They are reaching every corner. They are the visible face of a system that demands infinite growth on a finite planet. A system that devours what is common: the land, the water, life.
And we know it will not change on its own. The forces that run it are accelerating in the opposite direction: the artificialisation of land, the exploitation of Nature in the name of profit, legislation to speed up the rollout of these projects, and so on.
Because it is revolt that generates knowledge,
and not the other way around.
And now? Now we resist. Because it is revolt that generates knowledge, and not the other way around. It is from the emotional shock of facing the imminent destruction of the lands we love that the will and the courage to act are born. This action leads us to investigate, to learn, to question what is presented to us as inescapably inevitable, to forge bonds and stronger communities, able to say no. Something has to touch us directly for knowledge to trigger a change in our habits.
We reject extractivism
and affirm regeneration,
justice and solidarity between territories
BRAVA was born to strengthen these communities that organise to confront this destructive advance. We reject extractivism and affirm regeneration, justice and solidarity between territories and ecosystems. We reject the ‘climate fight’ framed as the demand for a sacred union of earthlings to manage a planetary catastrophe – instead we fight for our own living conditions, and for the preservation of what sustains us, locally and regionally, as communities.
We pool funds, experiment with new democratic models, and build new forms of support and struggle. We fight for the right to say no to destruction, to greed, to expropriation — and yes to life, to diversity, to communities with roots and power.
We build bridges between those who resist and those who support. Between resources and struggles.
We support those on the front line, because every local victory is a global victory. We build bridges between those who resist and those who support. Between resources and struggles.
Between courage and future. Because perhaps the capacity to act comes, in part, from acting itself. Because we often overlook what we are capable of until we have done it. And because struggle teaches us that revolt is a catalyst for encounters with places and with people — something that engenders its own possibility and its own knowledge. We resist because we deeply believe, as communities anchored in our territories, in our capacity to act — and because that capacity is discovered in action itself. We resist because the future cannot wait. Because to fight for the land is to fight for life.
