"French retailer Casino, Amazon tribes offered mediation over deforestation row", 09 June 2022

...A French judge on Thursday proposed mediation in a legal dispute between Casino and indigenous groups from Brazil over Casino's links to Amazon deforestation.

Lawyers for Casino said the French retailer supported the mediation proposal, while an attorney for the indigenous groups said he would be advising his clients to back the proposal.

The Amazonian groups allege Casino failed to do adequate due diligence of its supply chain, resulting in the sale of beef linked to deforestation and human rights abuses in the Amazon...

Casino lawyers Sebastien Schapira and Thomas Rouhette told Reuters that the retailer "hopes this mediation can help overcome legal action which, along with a hostile communication campaign from the plantiffs, is counter-productive."

The lawyers added that Casino and its subsidiaries were "without contest among the sector's most advanced companies in the fight against deforestation."

Environmental activists and representatives of the indigenous groups from Brazil, who claim that their rights have been violated, land and territory stolen, and their forests and livelihoods destroyed, earlier protested outside the courthouse...