What future for Amazonia?

UNESCO Courier, Nov, 1991 by Ignacy Sachs

Many people in the industrialized countries would like Amazonia to be preserved exactly as it is, and transform it into a vast nature reserve.

Some of these advocates of the non-development of Amazonia attach the highest priority to safeguarding planet Earth and at the same time contrive to regard human beings as parasites. Others point out that the Amazonian forest plays a major role in counteracting the greenhouse effect, and wish to see it act as a gigantic filter so that 500 million cars can continue to consume fossil fuels.

THE CURRENT

CONTEXT

The non-development of Amazonia is totally unacceptable both to the people who live in the region and to Brazilians in general. The gratuitous advice handed out to the people on the spot may well be seen as a kind of ecological colonialism as long as the industrialized countries of the North refuse to change their ways of life and patterns of consumption.

Let these countries prove their sincerity by proposing to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development a specific programme for the reduction of energy consumption in industrial societies.

Let them also provide the countries of the South with access to the scientific and technical knowledge that is needed to develop the immense biological heritage of the Amazonian forest within a framework of sound ecological principles. For this long-term task, Brazil and the other countries of Amazonia need the capacity to carry out their own in situ research.

For tropical countries biotechnology opens up considerable possibilities based on progress in the production of biomass and the range of products that can be derived from it. Eventually we may see the emergence of a new "plant-based industrial civilization", a particularly interesting prospect for tropical countries. Mr. Monkombu S. Swaminathan, a former President of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, believes that a new form of civilization based on the sustainable useof renewable resources is not only possible but essential. The vision of this Indian scientist coincides with the intuitions of the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre, who in the 1960s founded a seminar on tropicology at Recife.

However, at present biotechnology seems to be so effectively shielded by a wall of patents that people in many developing countries are wondering whether it will not become an instrument for the recolonization of the South by the North. The industrialized countries would provide another token of their disinterestedness if they were to relax their position on patents and intellectual property rights, and establish more open forms of access to science and technology.

In 1989 Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India, suggested that a 0.1 per cent tax be levied on world revenue and its yield of $18 billion used to establish a world fund to finance research into environment-friendly technologies, their purchase and their free distribution to all interested countries. However, nothing came of this proposal, which relaunched the debate on the financing of environmental protection and development.

Another possible course of action would be to create a network linking Asian and African researchers to Brazilians and other Latin Americans who are seeking to harness the renewable resources of humid tropical forest ecosystems to development, a process that should harmonize three objectives of what is known as ecodevelopment:

* the promotion of greater social justice in the name of the ethical principle of synchronic solidarity, with development being regarded as a civilization based on the equitable sharing of possessions;

* self-development in harmony with nature rather than through domination of nature, in the name of the ethical principle of diachronic solidarity with future generations;

* the pursuit of these two goals through a search for a kind of economic efficiency that is not restricted to a concept of business profitability which often takes no account of ecological and social costs.

In addition to such measures, however, international co-operation must primarily be directed at improving the general economic environment of Latin American countries. In other words solutions must be found to the problems of debt, terms of trade, and the reduction of protectionist barriers in the industrialized countries.

The internal challenges posed by the development of Brazilian Amazonia are as vast as the size of this immense area which has captured the imagination of so many and inspired so many exaggerations.

DREAMS

AND REALITIES

There is a golden legend which portrays Amazonia as a region of fabulous wealth, a mirage which has lured generations of adventurers. A variant of this legend, inspired by the philosophy of the Englightenment and the expiatory inclinations of our ethnologists, paints a picture of noble savages living happily in perfect harmony with nature.

There is also a black legend which describes Amazonia as a green, impenetrable hell, protected by tropical diseases which afflict all intruders.