The Future of Amazonia in Brazil. Marcílio de Freitas
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analyzed. Environmental and social impacts from large socioeconomic development projects implemented in the region are shown. Technical elements to clarify the sustainability concept and its correlation with the development of Amazonia and the world are presented and analyzed. In the seventh chapter , several actions taken by Brazil’s new president designed to destroy important sustainable programs from Amazonia and Brazil are presented. It shows politics in the service of non-sustainability. Environmental and social tragedies caused by large mining companies are also analyzed. The study reaffirms the incompatibility of predatory capitalist productive forces with the sustainability of places and people. It also shows the control that these productive forces have over the national state, turning it into a weapon against citizenship. Through macro-scenarios, the eighth chapter ←xii | xiii→shows from a humanist perspective, that the history of capitalist and communist expansion was a tragedy. To this day, capitalism continues destroying the environments and cultures of colonized peoples. Its wars and the unsustainable use of the planet are a growing threat to mankind’s future. In bloodthirsty actions, the use of weapons always surpasses diplomacy and sustainability. The Vietnam War remains as a singular example.
In a slower and camouflaged but no less predatory form, the repetition of this history is fully under way in Amazonia. The Brazilian state is its main protagonist. To illustrate this framework, several scientific and ethnological scenarios from Brazilian Amazonia are presented, and the importance of this region to contemporary world is emphasized. Finally, in the ninth chapter, our commitment to sustainability and the preservation of Amazonia are presented, along with the six main issues raised by the twenty-first century’s concern with sustainable development. All related to the accumulation, expansion, and circulation of capital.
As proposed by the authors, this book has broadened the meaning of the notion of sustainability and reaffirmed the importance of Amazonia for Brazil and mankind. In this complex panel, it presents new theoretical and empirical elements in order to understand Amazonia and its links with sustainability, culture, and nature. It also constitutes a complaint against the destruction of Amazonia and an instrument for environmental preservation and education for sustainability. Brazilian Amazonia is in jeopardy. This potential tragedy has accelerated this publication.
Manaus, October, 14, 2019
Marcílio de Freitas
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Amazonia is one of the planet’s last utopias. Before the New World was discovered, it already instigated the imaginary of people, travelers, and government. What is its future? The Future of Amazonia in Brazil: A Worldwide Tragedy is a study on the importance of protecting Amazonia and constructing its sustainable development.
According to Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, “Environmental preservation should not be important for those who want to do business and produce.” At this juncture, at this time, Amazonia is a great border open to the predatory forces of capitalist production. Its continued existence is in danger. On the initiative of the UN, World Environment Day has been celebrated on 5 June since 1972. Its objective is to promote programs and actions that protect and preserve the environment, raise awareness on the need to protect life, the planet, and the future of mankind. The world environment has never been more threatened. This study approaches this subject of universal importance with Amazonia and worldwide processes as its central focus. It is organized on the basis of recent research and studies I have developed in collaboration with Marilene Corrêa da Silva Freitas since 2017. Its central axis is sustainable development in Amazonia and its articulations with worldwide socioeconomic processes. The authors integrate several themes that compose the theoretical and empirical substratum of sustainability, in the context of the development of Amazonia and worldwide processes, as illustrated in Figure 1. The destruction of Amazonia announced by the current Brazilian government has ←xv | xvi→accelerated the organization of this book. The threat to 68% of its protected areas and indigenous territories, this is equivalent to 390 million hectares (Barifouse, 2019), the state’s breaking with international import agreements on the ecological protection of Amazonia, and the complete opening up of the region to predatory capitalist development are the Brazilian government’s perverse political actions. It is a tragic picture, the return of the massive timber and mineral complexes, agroforestry companies, deforestation (cutting and burning) and the occupation for extensive agriculture and cattle breeding, the expansion of agribusiness, multiplication of huge hydroelectric plants, and infrastructure for highways, in addition to public policies on the research and exploration of fossil energy and natural gas, causing irreversible environmental destruction on Amazonia. Inadequate environmental protection from these initiatives will accelerate the irreversible ecological destruction of the region. These are the main threats to Amazonia, all of them legitimated by the current Brazilian government. In 2018, Brazil led the world in deforestation, with the disappearance of 1.3 million hectares of its primary forests (McGrath, 2019). In addition, the Report published by the UN registers the threat of extinction of 1 million species (UN News, 2019). Life has never been so threatened on the planet. The destructive interventions in Amazonia lead this civilizing ←xvi | xvii→barbarism that affects us all. Man’s relationships with nature need to change radically. Simultaneously, there is need for a radical break with predatory capitalism. At its limit, it is paramount to give new meaning to the foundations, the explanatory meanings, and the operative mechanisms of this type of capitalism. We can affirm that, in Amazonia, the growing poverty of its populations is proportionate to the degree of destruction of its cultures and biomes. These subjects are analyzed in this book. New proposals are made with a view to safeguarding life and nonpredatory development; for a better and sustainable world for us all, at this time and in the future.
Figure 1. Map of Amazonia with its two main cities, Manaus and Belem, and its main economic poles.
The second decade of this century has reaffirmed the importance of ecology to the processes underlying civilization. The environmental degradation of the planet is putting mankind’s future at risk. The environmental destruction of Amazonia deepens this crisis, and generates worldwide socioeconomic impacts. Changing the polluting industrial matrices and the relationship between man and nature is a mark of this new era. In a certain way, the solution of complex problems such as the matrices of occupation, production, and social dynamics of places and planets presupposes a new design and socioeconomic insertion of people in the contemporary world. This context has formalized the need to construct sustainable processes.
In counterpoint to the global economy’s pragmatic structures, worldwide public opinion builds new ethical foundations committed to the human condition and to universal rights. The overlapping of world issues with regional development in a process of mutual feedback has required a continuous recreation of social and economic realities, resonating in social groups, in general, and in the human psyche, in particular.
In spite of global environmental protection policies, deterioration of worldwide biodiversity has been aggravated at an increasing speed. Its main causes are the use of fossil fuel; inadequate use of soils and waters; commercial overexploitation of some species; introduction of predatory species in certain ecosystems; increasing soil, air, and water pollution; intensification of extensive agriculture using predatory techniques; territorial reordering and global climate change; and lack of political consensus among the world’s major nations on the implementation of ecological protection measures for the planet. The United States of America and, more recently, Brazil lead this political resistance.
Various other factors are also contributing to this process, among which are the acceleration of demographic growth, policies of forcing nonadaptive and nonintegrated economic development on local and regional environments, nonregulation of the rights of access