When I think back to growing up in Paraguay, I think first about nature, and how completely I was surrounded by it. I grew up on a small farm in the countryside, where growing food and living alongside animals were everyday realities. The soil was red sand—difficult to cultivate. But it supported mango and guava trees, banana plants, and fig trees. Life felt closely connected to the land. At the time, I didn’t have the language to understand environmental issues. I only lived there until I was almost nine, and issues like deforestation and agribusiness were not ever really discussed. At least, not in my household. Only later did I understand how these industries involved much larger systems.
Many years later, when I returned to Paraguay in 2017, the scale of the destruction truly hit me. I had travelled by land from Misiones to Foz do Iguaçu before, but this time I was in the middle of my undergraduate degree, already thinking critically about land, power, and political economy. Looking out of the bus window, all I could see for kilometres was soybean plantations: vast uniform fields with barely a tree in sight. Seeing the same journey through a different lens made the damage impossible to ignore.
Photo: iStock / Jesibel Fernandez, as featured on Trase.earth — “Soy deforestation risk in Paraguay continues despite decline” (Trase Earth).
Through my studies in International Relations, I began to see that what was happening in Paraguay was not accidental. The country’s economic dependency on agriculture and cattle ranching, combined with unequal land distribution during the dictatorship, created conditions where land was sold cheaply or given to political allies and wealthy foreign buyers. The benefits accumulated at the top, while the poor and Indigenous communities, and the environment, paid the cost. For me, environmental damage was no longer just about trees. My eyes were opened to health issues from pesticide exposure, displacement through illegal land grabbing, and the erosion of Indigenous rights.
Just so you grasp why this matters: Paraguay exports leather to international markets, including the UK, through cattle systems linked to deforestation. The charcoal we use for everyday products like barbecue fuel is also used domestically and exported. What may seem like ordinary consumption in the UK can be connected to environmental destruction and human rights abuses elsewhere.
Deforestation in Paraguay’s Gran Chaco. Photo: Jim Wickens/Ecostorm via Mighty Earth (source: Earthsight).
Moving away from Paraguay gave me clarity. It made me more aware of how global systems work, and how countries in the Global South are shaped by political and economic forces beyond their borders. This is why Planet Over Profit resonates with me. The campaign challenges systems that treat environmental destruction and human suffering as acceptable side effects of economic growth. We must push back against the idea that endless extraction and corporate profit are inevitable… or justified.
Paraguay is just one example. Similar patterns play out across the Global South, from forest loss and mining to polluted waterways and unsafe labour conditions. They are not isolated cases; they are a result of global systems that continue to prioritise profit over people and the planet. Being involved in the Planet Over Profit campaign through Birmingham Friends of the Earth allows me to connect personal experience with collective action.
Climate change is not just ‘happening somewhere else’—global systems connect us whether we like it or not. We all have a role to play, by supporting stronger regulations, demanding corporate accountability, and pushing for political action that puts people and the planet before profit.
