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Beyond the Green — and a solar revolution against coloniality

4 min readApr 22, 2021

So here I start, on the day of a new solar revolution. This text is about a project I am carrying, called Beyond the Green (Description below, you can skip the introduction and go for it, if you want). I know there are different temporalities and digital relationships we develop.

And this act right now is also about going beyond my own struggles with writing, an activity that for me combines challenges and pleasure. And, yes, I am a writer, since childhood probably. Life is indeed paradoxical, desire is also about fears.

Since I was a child, every birthday I had to hear at school about what they call the “discovery” of Brazil, April 22. It always sounded strange, but it was only when I was older that I understood how colonial this idea was. My birthday then consciously became the day of a violent invasion, when the Portuguese arrived in cultivated land, inhabited, cared for by diverse indigenous peoples. But nowadays, it is also the month of Abril Indígena (Indigenous April) in Brazil, of the turning point of narratives, 22 is also Earth Day, with the thousand meanings it has, depending on where one looks and what kind of dream one is capable of having. It is then a day to organize anger and expose the role that coloniality plays in all layers in our societies still, of ethnicity, of class, of gender, of sexual orientation. I learn in collective paths mainly with incredible women and non-heteronormative bodies that it is a month of confronting patriarchy and more so heteropatriarchy, the coloniality in it. Then I write with pleasure.

It is also this energy that leads me to share here a project in progress, which has just been publicly launched here (https://thenewnew.space/projects/beyond-the-green)/, a result of many years of work, many collaborations and sharing, many people to thank for and go walk together, and with years still to come. It is called BEYOND THE GREEN. And, at this moment, I am working in a part that I call BEYOND THE DAM. What is it? I explain below, based on the text I prepared for the residency I just started at The New New Fellowship, based in Berlin, where I am currently living.

Here it is: (So… you can also jump in here, straight forward)

Beyond the Green is a journalistic experimental project which explores feminist narratives about megaprojects that affect our lives, bodies, and territories. It combines investigative journalism, academic knowledge, and artistic languages together in a documentary process with the aim of unveiling power dynamics in an increasingly digital world. It aims to strengthen narratives around social-environmental justice.

During the months of residency, I’ll complete two episodes of a web series called Beyond the Dam and write at least two essays. My starting point is the proposed São Luiz do Tapajós hydroelectric dam in the middle of the Brazilian rainforest, which has been suspended since 2016. I will explore the publicly shared stories and views that have coalesced around the planned megaproject, and examine the power dynamics that bring certain voices to the fore. Instead of big data collected by the same heads that hold power, Beyond the Green is situated in online and offline views from different bodies and territories. Throughout, the project will build an ongoing exchange of feminist and social-environmental justice methods that challenge the reporting procedures of traditional newsrooms.

To what future do you aspire?
I aspire towards a future that rejects the obsessive logic that progress and development should guide the world. In this future, people hold the right to collective territories and are duty-bound to protect cultures and ancestral dynamics. Here, time is not linear: new forms of colonization that begin with hierarchies between past and future are denied. Technologies are created from different perspectives and help people shape and share their own narratives. Journalism is situated within local dynamics, challenging allegedly universal ways of reporting. Collective forms of communication take place, feminist networks grow and community processes flourish A plurality of decentralized narratives exists.

Tell us about yourself. What motivates you?
I come from Rio de Janeiro, a city where around 100 thousand people were evicted because of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games. The word ‘megaproject’ crossed our lives and continues to shape the country. As a journalist I’ve covered social-environmental issues for more than a decade, writing for The Guardian, Le Monde, and Mongabay among other publications. My life as a reporter started in newspapers in Brazil, where the majority of employees are women, but most bosses are men. In an unequal and diverse country, the content was dedicated to a white, male, hetero elite. Now, I live in Germany, where I am completing my Ph.D. In the last few years, I have focussed on independent journalistic practices and experimental narratives, while participating in networks for media democratization. I struggle for social-environmental justice and fight against heteropatriarchy. My guides are collective practices, shared knowledge, and the struggles that unite the right to land and the right to communication.

You can also find me on Twitter @camila__nobrega

Illustration by Anna Niedhart

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Camila Nobrega
Camila Nobrega

Written by Camila Nobrega

Journalist, fostering social-environmental justice and feminist lenses. Ph.D Candidate at @FU_Berlin, building in parallel the project Beyond the Green.

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