Photo: Colin + Meg en Unplash
In his studies, geographer Diosmar de Santana Filho has argued that environmental racism constitutes a crime of racism, above all, because it operates within the institutional framework of the Racial State. [1] The researcher analyses the impacts and effects of climatic, hydrological and geological events and phenomena on territories and communities facing inequality in the Global South.
In this essay, I attempt to draw a connection between digital infrastructures and (non)access to the internet as yet another element in centuries of predatory exploitation. I dare to suggest that the current methods used to implement digital infrastructure not only exacerbate what has been termed environmental racism but also have enormous potential to worsen climatic events. The objective here is to develop a line of thought that does not separate racism from the ways in which digital inclusion policies have been managed by the Brazilian state.
In Cartografia da Internet, produced by the organisation Coding Rights, researchers and activists reveal illegal gold and lithium extractions, for instance in Kayapó, Munduruku and Yanomami Indigenous territories, which are traded by suppliers serving the world’s major tech giants. Like any Global North project, the expansion of the internet is based on a predatory extractivist business model that dictates who “naturally” provides the raw material and who benefits from the deals that devastate territories, recreate new forms of slavery and undermine autonomy.
Where does electronic waste go? Where are the main tech industries located, and what labour models prevail in this field of internet governance? In Brazil, a lot of mineral extraction occurs in rural areas, but mapping data shows that in 2022, 32% of rural households lacked internet access, including Quilombola communities and Indigenous lands. Such abundance of raw material is exploited to serve the logic of development built on inequality. According to a 2024 household survey on ICT access and usage, 18% of rural households still had no internet access that year.
For this reason, it is essential to understand the role of the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 30) being held in a city in the Brazilian Amazon. After 29 versions of agreements and negotiations far from the planet’s greatest tropical socio-biodiversity, this conference must be broad and unrestricted, analysing all inequalities imposed since the earliest colonisation, still persistently referred to as “development”.
Another issue that must be debated in depth at this Conference is oil exploration in the Foz do Amazonas Basin. This poses an enormous risk of reinforcing pre-existing structural inequalities. There has never been a large dam project without the worsening of inequalities, including impacts on Indigenous lands. This is a foreseeable environmental risk, one already warned against and fought by socio-environmental movements.
Yet Brazil does not live by the Amazon alone. Another risk is the implementation of data centres in the country. These represent a serious environmental threat to the Brazilian coastline, an energy burden on surrounding communities, gentrification and territorial loss, all very high costs in the name of a development model that serves only to maintain coloniality in Global South countries, especially in traditional communities. And attacks on the territorial rights of these communities still occur with regrettable frequency.
Societies in the Amazon region have long had their resilience tested. I recall the stories told about the gold rush at Serra Pelada and the hope of wealth for many families, of the men who left and never returned, of bodies buried, of those felled by disease and conflict. Since the arrival of the concepts of development and national integration, the Amazonian lands and social organisations have been supplying wealth.
Digital infrastructures are the new promise of development, accompanied by governmental rhetoric of bringing the region into the 21st century and, at the same time, a race to control the narrative, visible in the dozens of construction projects scattered across Belém in 2024-2025. These include sanitation and urban mobility upgrades, asphalt paving and the refurbishment of central areas of the city. It seemed as if the government feared people might notice that Belém had never been as much of a priority as in these past years.
Will infrastructure without territorial policies bridge the gaps?
As of the completion of this text, the most recent development is that the government of the state of Pará, through its data processing company Prodepa, will install 40 new 4G and 5G antenna points in Belém and modernise the existing infrastructure. This is a requirement of the COP 30 Organizing Committee and a commitment to be met by the state government. Yet what models do these contracts follow? In early 2025, the mayor of Belém openly promoted Starlink on his Instagram profile, disguising the contract as an opportunity.
In the recent past, the state of Pará benefited greatly from the Gesac and NavegaPará governmental programmes, but the state (like other key Amazonian cities) was left without a consistent digital policy package ensuring the population’s right to communication. This further increased the cost of internet access in the region and, above all, deepened the precariousness of connectivity, both in certain urban areas and in traditional rural communities.
Internet access is a human right to communication, and we can no longer doubt this or treat it as a marginal issue in the challenges of reducing inequalities. In a year marked by the March of Black Women and the Climate Conference, inequalities are even more in focus, and internet access and digital policies continue to be debated, to the extent that the March movement created a technology committee composed entirely of Black researchers and activists who have spent over a decade addressing the challenges posed by digital communication.
For years we have been pointing out that in the Amazon region, as in other areas, access is still not guaranteed – it is not only precarious but also expensive, and when implemented, it follows the Brazilian model of large-scale projects in the Amazon that self-proclaim themselves as development initiatives.
It is unacceptable to be almost completely disconnected while travelling the 74 kilometres of a highway as important as the PA-483, known to the people of Pará as the Alça Viária and serving more than one and a half million people. How can we uphold the right to communication for the thousands of people who depend on highly unreliable connections such as Starlink, given its business model that has placed Indigenous populations and other territories at the mercy of illegal small-scale mining, mineral extraction and agribusiness?
From kilometre 0 of the Alça Viária up to Perna Sul, where the PA-252 begins, the road leading to the Quilombola territory of Jambuaçu, which encompasses 15 Quilombola communities, there are about 40 kilometres, and the only place where a 4G signal is available is at the top of the Almir Gabriel Bridge. For those living in the communities along the road, internet access is provided by satellite. If these are Black and Indigenous territories harmed by such precarious conditions, it is racism, because it reinforces this system of economic power – like a rural worker forced to pay R$150 for an unreliable service simply because it is the only option available, while that same worker is expected by the government to have an updated gov.braccount.
The political decision not to prioritise digital communication in these communities is racism. Pará has the third-largest Quilombola population in Brazil, with 6,250 Quilombola people living in the municipality of Moju. Some of these communities have gained internet access through Conexão Povos da Floresta, using low-orbit satellite kits. Others are connected via the Rede Comunitária Floresta Digital and the Ministry of Communications’ Programa Norte Conectado.
Environmental racism has been used as a definition to describe the specific actions of climatic events that reinforce racial inequalities through the consequences they generate for the most vulnerable populations. Many of these disasters are, in fact, crimes committed by large mining, soybean and hydroelectric enterprises, or by denying people the right to their own land, even though all of these rights are guaranteed by law: the right to housing, territory, health, safe food, education and communication.
Without well-structured policies directed toward these populations, and without enabling dignified access to communication, the Brazilian state continues to exclude these communities. The impacts are numerous: entire communities have migrated, or continue to migrate, in search of better conditions for survival, or rather, of imagined better conditions, since being forced to leave the land where one’s identity is rooted can hardly be considered an improvement in quality of life. In the case of digital infrastructures, racism begins with the dispute over land exploitation, continues through insecurity and high costs, and reaches its peak in the way these technologies are used.
Community networks/community-centred connectivity initiatives as alternatives
What we advocate is community participation in decisions about infrastructure and its uses, along with an understanding of what kind of internet these communities want and need, with the opportunity for learning and collective management to ensure autonomy, and to mitigate the cultural and environmental impacts of these processes in their territories. This means not only countering how racist infrastructures operate, but also reducing inequalities.
It is in this participation that the philosophies of community networks in Brazil are anchored. These have proven to be among the least harmful approaches to combating racism in the relationships between infrastructures and traditional communities, since community network projects make it possible to guarantee access and use in accordance with each community’s own protocols. However, a supportive and encouraging environment is necessary for this to happen.
But what are community networks? It is important that we understand what they are, both to demand them and to recognise their necessity in each territory.
As Bruna Zanolli explains in a community networks manual published in Portuguese specifically for Brazil, “They are digital networks self-organised by groups of people, such as neighbourhood associations and/or cooperatives, on a non-profit basis, to address the lack of connectivity. These networks rely on affordable equipment and local labour. They exist in various forms around the world and are basically local networks that can use different technologies, and that are created and managed by communities often neglected by telecommunications markets and public policies. The community organises itself to generate local connectivity and, from there, connect to the internet through a link purchased from a commercial provider, a small local provider, or even obtained from a public sector network (e.g., a city hall, library, Gesac project).”
In a 2022 article for Agência Brasil, journalist Camila Maciel cited a survey by the Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (Cebrap), which identified the existence of 63 community networks in Brazil, four out of every five of them located in traditional communities.
It is not only the Amazon biome that is affected by climatic events, and not only Amazonian communities that experience racism. Many territories that suffer racist violence can mitigate these harms through technopolitical debate and critical engagement with these tools. Other data such as racial identity and educational level can also be found in the mapping.
And what does it mean for a network to be community-centred? Referring once again to the community networks manual by Bruna Zanolli, “In a community network, most functions are carried out by the community itself, although partners (NGOs, companies or even public authorities) may assist in planning, installation and maintenance. The more partnerships a community network can build, the better! However, it is essential that, over time, the community gains increasing autonomy in managing and operating the network.”
The values of community networks follow principles declared by many communities: self-management, solidarity economy, cooperativism, community empowerment and the valuing of local cultures and ways of life, among others. These are the paths on which we can anchor the reduction of inequalities and the mitigation of environmental racism in these territories, whether rural or urban. It is through community-centred political action that we can nurture hope for an internet that truly becomes a space for practicing democracy through communication.
* This text includes contributions from researcher Bruna Zanolli and researcher and geographer Diosmar Marcelino de Santana Filho.
[1] de Santana Filho, D. M. (2024). A Terra gira entorno do Eixo Imaginário: Escala Racial Global na Natureza Terra. Rio de Janeiro: Justiça Global.
Thiane Neves-Barros is a PhD Communication Science. She was Mozilla Fellow (2024-2025), Centro de Estudos e Defesa do Negro no Pará (Cedenpa) and part of the Transfeminist Network of Digital Care.