Sustainable development and conservation in the Amazon region

Brazil: Sustainable Development in the Amazon

While it is generally regarded as true that developing countries offer more biodiversity than developed ones, and that the developed countries are not particularly receptive to 'native' products, there are exceptions. Two of these, pharmaceuticals especially and also ecotourism, are potentially lucrative avenues for Brazil to explore in order to minimize the disparity in income among its divergent populations. While there has been some development in both cases, more often, development has been of the industrial variety -- not even the technological sort -- and has brought with it vast damage to both populations and the rain forest. There are, however, in a post-modern 'transformational' economic model, abundant reasons to develop both of these industries, and Brazil is poised -- by virtue of its physical assets and the commitment of at least some of its bureaucracy -- to exploiting these in positive ways for the economy, the ecology and the population.

Introduction

The core principle in modern life, which most historians trace to Columbus' voyage, is that of continual expansion. Unfortunately, unless outer space truly, and quickly, becomes a frontier worth staking out, that paradigm is at an end. The fact that there are "no significant new territories to colonise or integrate into the world economy" has resulted in dire consequences, including:

Global environmental consequences for human activity

Weapons of mass destruction that threaten global extinction

Globalism -- not community -- is the frame for beliefs and actions of much of the world

Non-western values are becoming increasingly significant.

The result is a "social and political crisis that affects all regions and most countries of the world, albeit in different ways."

In addition, the principle of quantitative growth, which is based on measuring GDP per capita, became a dinosaur along with the idea of continuous expansion. After World War II, however, there had been the notion in play that decolonization and the competition between capitalism and communism would make at least the economy of capitalist states expand. This idea, obviously, was predicated on the notion that the expansion, no longer possible in terms of undiscovered (the West) land would instead be expansion into -- and Brazil's president Cardoso, at one time in his life, and others would say ownership of -- less affluent or richly endowed areas.

The politico-economic setting

Indeed, Cardoso was one of the developers of the dependency school in Latin America. The theory of dependency was based on Marxist political economy. In it, underdevelopment "was an deliberate process designed to perpetuate the exploitation of Third World economies by western capitalism."

This postulated that neo-colonial structures blocked development and could "only be countered by import-substitution strategies designed to increase national economic and political autonomy."

Like colonialism itself, this model was also shown not to be successful by the mid-1970s.

The future economic model began to be worrisome in nations such as Brazil, where exports led rapid industrialization. The result, in order to explain a phenomenon unlike others, was the new international division of labor (NIDL) approach. This model "argued that capital export and establishment of factories in low-wage countries was a way for the highly-developed countries to maintain global economic control" and at first glace, it appears to hold promise. However, according to Castle, it was compromised by the "economic and political independence of the oil-rich economies and newly industrialising countries (NICs)."

It looked as if there was no model to explain the economic profile of nations such as Brazil. In its pure form, neo-classical theory, which had become dominant in capitalism, might explain conditions because of its emphasis on "free enterprise and unfettered markets."

The only drawback to this, and one which could be significant in Brazil where indigenous tribes remain still uninvestigated and understood (despite being subjected to the depredations of the colonizers' epidemics and so on), is that, as a development model, it is "impaired by its methodological individualism, which tends to neglect the role of social and cultural factors in economic change."

Although the neoclassical approach also fails to include the effects of government action on economies, it is the concept assumed to make the world "safe for global investors and corporations," while at the same time failing to enact any policies that would protect workers, farmers or consumers form market irrationality. Indeed, the policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, "global policemen of capital" are predicated on this model and challenge any states that attempt "to safeguard economic autonomy or social equality."

Arguably, the information and technology revolutions accelerated economic and cultural globalization, which would have the affect of increasingly diffusing cultural values "based on an idealised U.S. consumer society. A leap in military technology shifted the global balance of power to the United States and its allies."

That, naturally, threw the economies of the nations that had struggled most with dependency issues, including Cardoso's Brazil, back into a situation in which dependency -- having been supplanted at least briefly or in part by other mechanisms of economic development or lack thereof -- was once again the operative economic structure to all intents and purposes. As Castle puts it, "The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the partial shift to a market economy in China heralded the end of the Second World and the bipolar global system. Victorious capitalism appeared to be an uncontested economic model."

One could trace further dissections of this neo-colonial model because of the changes in world alignment of powers caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union and, notably, the booming economies in East Asia and some parts of Latin America and the Middle East. No longer was the dualism exemplified by the United States and the Soviet Union the basis for all economic theory; in that seemingly far-off world, smaller nations could hope for some relief from marginalization by playing the U.S. And U.S.S.R. off against each other to their at least temporary and 'applied from outside' relief from economic turbulence. Now, however, this opportunity is lost, and, as Castle notes, all former development theories become unworkable. In response, he believes, a new "North-South Divide" concept has emerged.

This divide, too, is subdivided into exploitative (example: Malaysian logging in Papua-New Guinea) or cooperative (example: international networking between nongovernmental organizations, NGOs, concerned with human rights, women's issues or environmental issues).

This alone allows for a number of permutations and combinations, but in the end, it all leads to dividing the globe into what Castle believes is the operative model for economics: transformation "Transformationalists regard contemporary patterns of cross-border flows (of trade, investment, migrants, cultural artifacts, environmental factors, etc.) as without historical precedent. Such flows integrate virtually all countries into a larger global system, and thus bring about major social transformations at all levels."

This does not indicated, to Castle, a rosy world in which all nations are brothers and all are equally endowed with wealth and prosperity; indeed, the opposite it seems is more likely. He proposes that within this transformation, there are pockets of exclusion (the classic haves vs. have-nots) and that they are:

Most widespread and severe in the South: virtually the whole of Africa, as well as large part of Asia and Latin America experience globalisation as disempowerment and impoverishment. Nor can globalisation be equated with a general reduction in the power of states. Rather, as the nexus between territory and sovereignty is undermined by globalising forces, new forms of governance emerge at the national, regional and global levels, with the military and economic power of the dominant states still playing a decisive role.

Indeed, it is arguable that the United States still plays a mighty role in the economies of South America in general, and of the Amazon basin in particular, and further, that this state of affairs extends back for a century and a half and is therefore entrenched all the more difficult to break.

In January 1853, Lt. William Herndon of the U.S. Navy, had taken a trip from the Andes down the Amazon. When his report was published, it was apparent in the U.S. that "The Amazon and the Atlantic Slopes of South America called for the opening of the great river to both the U.S. merchant fleet and to settlement by American planters."

Worse still, in the run-up to the Civil War, the Amazon was also viewed as a possible solution to the problems of slavery vs. abolition. Because slavery was still acceptable in the Amazon basin, slaves -- "recorded as assets on plantation books" -- could simply be shipped to new U.S. plantations in the Amazon, avoiding loss of capital. At the time, there were those who thought, "The time will come when [the free navigation, the settlement, and the cultivation and the civilization of the Amazon] will prove the safety valve of the Union."

While that did not occur in fact, it might well have occurred in spirit. By the time of the 1998 forest fires in the Amazon region, bureaucrats in Brasilia had assumed the hubris of the 19th century American oligarch; they were more interested in "the purchase of expensive Oriental carpets for their offices so that 'foreign visitors could be more elegantly received,' as a spokesman for the minister of communication explained to the New York Times."

One would think, then, that in light of these glaring disparities, the environmental movements in Brazil would be perceived as indigenous, as indeed they are, fostered by FUNAI (National Foundation of Indians) and "famished peasants." However, they are regarded as more unwanted imports from the "owners of power," in this case, the United States. This is problematical, considering that the environmental movement, "composed of some 800 organizations stirred into being by the uncontrolled destruction of the Amazon rain forest, ecological disasters in the grotesquely polluted chemical complex at Cubatao in Sao Paulo state, and rampant encroachment on the remnants of the once lush Atlantic forests" could otherwise be instrumental in creating a sustainable economy, despite the operational fact of the 'transformational' economic environment.

The physical setting

The Amazon rain forest covers 40% of Brazil's total territory or 2,722,000 square miles, and is the drainage basin for the Amazon River and its 15,000 tributaries. The underlying geology is comprised of two large, stable masses of Pre-Cambrian rock, the Guiana Shield or Highlands in the north and the Central Brazilian Shield or Plateau in the south. It is bounded to the west by the Andes Mountains and the river flows eastward, emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. At a length of 4,195 miles, the Amazon basin is the largest river basin in the world. Its discharge into the Atlantic is about eight trillion gallons a day, 60 times greater than that of the Nile and eleven times that of the Mississippi. The mouth of the river is more than 250 miles wide, making this the largest estuarine area in the world, as well. Moreover, it is also deep, exceeding 150 feet throughout most of the Brazilian portion of the river; some parts near the mouth have evidenced depths as great as 300 feet. The river itself ranges from one to 35 miles wide.

It is unique in other was as well. The climate, with an average temperature of 79 degrees and average yearly rainfall of 80 inches, is the quintessential rain forest environment, and it has been around a very long time. The Amazon Rain Forest is thought to be the oldest such area in continuous existence, for as much as 100 million years.

However, despite the age and abundant water, the soil of the region is relatively infertile. This may help explain the ease with which the rain forest is destroyed. Still, its biodiversity, despite recent destructive episodes, is enormous, and may reasonably be proposed as the means for the salvation of the Amazon Basin itself and of Brazil's economy. One hectare (2.47 acres) of rain forest may containing more than 750 species of trees and 1,500 species of other plants; that same area is estimated to contain about 900 tons of living plants. Along with the Andean mountains, the region is thought to be home to more than half of the worlds' species of flora and fauna; in addition, one in five of all the birds in the world live in the rainforests of the Amazon. Moreover, to date, "some 438,000 species of plants of economic and social interest have been registered in the region and many more have yet been cataloged or even discovered."

However, the very abundance of the region has, until now, also sown the seeds of its own destruction.

The Amazon Basin: How has it been mismanaged, and by whom?

Among those who have helped destroy the Amazon's ecologies are the World Bank, by funding large-scale agricultural and industrial schemes that the thin and fragile soils cannot support.

Logging accounts for a great deal of destruction, as well, and estimates of the "total amount of forest now cleared vary between five per cent and 20 per cent. Most independent experts now accept a figure of 12 per cent by 1985, of which 75 per cent had taken place since 1960.

Incidental and accidental incursions by humans have destroyed great tracts: "In 1974 a single fire set by Volkswagen destroyed 10,000 square kilometres of forest: the largest fire ever known." and, "In 1987, probably the worst year for deforestation so far, satellites detected 8,000 fires in the states of Rondonia and Mato Grosso between June and September. In that year, an area of 210,000 square kilometres, almost as big as the UK, was cleared."

Below is a chart showing the destruction of the Amazon rain forest:

LANDSAT Surveys: Deforestation

Area of forest cleared as a percentage of State or territory

Amapa

Para

Roraima

Maranhao

Tocatins

Acre

Rondonia

Mato Grosso

Amazonas

0.1

0.7

0

1

1.2

0.8

0.3

1

0.1

0.4

9.6

1.4

19.7

11.6

12.8

23.6

6.8

Source: New Internationalist via National Zoo Web site

Brasil's government also needs a share of the blame. Its '2010 Plan' includes constructing 31 hydroelectric dams in the Amazon Basin, of which tow, Tucurui in Para and Balbina near Manaus, have been completed, flooding about 5,0000 square kilometres of rainforest. While this is a lamentable loss of habitat, even without counting the economic cost of the lost estuarine life (food, fish, etc.), the energy produced by Tucurui is used by aluminum smelters, which contribute their own pollution to the environment.

Where there is a dam, there must also be a highway to reach it, and arguably, to reach the development of industry and residential compounds it has permitted to be built. That being the case, non-indigenous people will bring non-indigenous diseases with them, as is arguably the case in the Balbina Dam area. There, Waimiri-Atroari Indian "have been decimated both by the dam and by the BR 174 Highway running north: in 1972 they numbered 3,000, but by the mid-1980s their numbers had been reduced to less than 300."

In addition, there are the "highways to hell," established to enhance the official government policy of colonizing Indian peoples, and converting them to the life of "agricultural peasants on one-square-kilometre size plots," arguably achieving what the colonials from the north, the U.S., had in mind 150 years earlier.

How to turn it around in Brazil's favor

There is a saying among New Thought aficionados that within every problem is its solution. That is the case with the Amazon. It extends over an area ten times the size of France. It makes up one-third of the globe's remaining tropical rain forest, and is home to 30% of all known plant and animal species. Better still, for the potential for sustainable development, it contains "80,000 known and at least 10,000 unknown species of tree." (Emphasis mine.) it also offers 3,000 known species of land vertebrates, 2,000 known species of fresh water fish (which is ten times as many as in all of Europe). Moreover, a single tree stump in the Bolivian portion of the basin was "found to house more ant species than the whole of the UK."

This is important because of the potential for developing both ecotourism and pharmaceuticals, arguably the two least damaging and most lucrative potential development possibilities for the region. In addition, both might easily make use of indigenous peoples' knowledge without turning them into peasants, or subjecting them to the disruption of superimposed 'technological' industries.

In addition, it is arguable that, in developing Brazil, all North Americans are not alike. As of the early 1990s, Canada, and not the U.S., was responsible for a number of ecologically sound development project in the Brazilian Amazon. Then, Canada was backing activities of the Council of Amazonia Cooperation "in the fields of natural resources development and environmental management; and helping obtain external resources for specific projects." Canada had contributed a little over $1 million between 1991 and 1993, although the Organization of American States had supported the sustainability projects going back to the 1980s to the amount of $1.4 billion (U.S.). The projects supported span almost 8 million square kilometers and affect more than 22 million people. Projects have included:

Physical planning and management of the San Miguel and Putumayo River Basins between Colombia and Ecuador (1986)

The model plan for the integrated development of the border communities along the Tabatinga-Apaporis axis between Colombia and Brazil (1987)

The plan for the integrated development of the Putumayo River Basin between Colombia and Peru (1988)

The integrated development plans for the Peruvian-Brazilian border communities (1988).

Notably, one of the results of these projects is identification of:

Environmental zones for resources management and sustainable development. Zoning helps divide large, unwieldy regions into smaller, more homogenous areas. In binational areas, governments can attempt to integrate transportation and communication systems, thus improving the management of resources.

Observers have concluded that zoning alone had significantly improved the situation for more than 18m000 Brazilian Indians. In general, physical and management planning can help the land settlement process to be oriented "towards making efficient use of resources, setting standards to minimize potentially polluting activities, delimiting the uses of land and promoting a restructuring of the productive sector."

This sounds suspiciously like a renewing of the exploration, or modern era; Columbus visited only the islands, after all, and did not discover the amazing wealth of the interior of the New World. It is possible that, in fact, the Amazon Basin constitutes the only remaining 'new land' (although Antarctica might also be proposed, although -- despite various poisonous plants and animals and hostile Indians -- the Amazon is more accessible, and therefore more likely to produce economic results, and/or be ruined in the process). OAS is considered to have a long-term commitment to balances and sustainable development in the region, however, and notes, "Amazonia cannot be conquered as the American West was. We need to learn how to live in harmony with Amazonia."

Two avenues suggest themselves, based on the Amazon Basin itself, and coupled with globalization, that might trump the 'transformational' economy. These are pharmaceuticals (both allopathic and natural/homeopathic) and ecotourism.

Moreover, the pharmaceutical development of the Amazon may have a local, as well as global, market that has not been much regarded before. Despite the problems of deforestation and decimation of Indian peoples, Brazil has experienced the sort of prosperity in parts that would suggest an ability to take advantage of the fruits of globalization's prosperity, which includes the financing and luxury to indulge in new pursuits, such as natural lifestyles. In the mid-1960s, Rio de Janeiro, for example, was "still largely rural, with short life expectancy, large families, low per capita income, and a high illiteracy rate."

However, by the 1990s, the nation had become one of the world's largest economies, with a per capita income of more than $5,000. Family size had dropped from six children per family in the 1970s, to as low as 2.5 in the mid-1990s. "Infant mortality had decreased from 118 per 1,000 in 1970 to 17 per 1,000, and illiteracy has greatly diminished." All that suggests a market similar to that of Western Europe, the United States and Canada with a potential for the same sort of 'consumerism' that Castle notes is the real arbiter of economic theory in the transformational age.

The negative factors, which arguably contribute to economically disparate, environmentally detrimental and socially unfair conditions, are these:

By the 1990s, Brazil's two million cars had become 26 million.

There were 31 million TVs, up from four million.

But worse, the effects of dependency and the vacuum left when it was supplanted by more 'modern' theories, have resulted in, for Brazil, a large segment of the population -- as many as 40 million people -- with incomes below $50 a month, making the nation's income disparities the worst in the world. "The most impoverished 20% of Brazilians receive a mere two percent of the national wealth, while the richest 20% receive 60%."

Pharmaceuticals

There are ample reasons to exploit the rain forest for pharmaceuticals. First, compared to logging and other 'heavy equipment; industries, it ahs the potential to be environmentally gentle. Second, native peoples can be gainfully employed and compensated, as will be demonstrated below, without altering dramatically their cultures or lifestyles.

In addition, the market potential is enormous as the three graphs below demonstrate.

Annual medicine usage per person, 2002

Notes

£ per person

Includes prescription and hospital medicines

Source

IMS World Review

United Nations, World Population Prospects

Office for National Statistics

Source: Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry

Market share of new medicines in various countries 2002

Notes

Products launched between 1996 and 2001

Primary and hospital markets

Source

IMS World Review

Source: Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry

Spend on medicines as a percentage of GDP in various countries, 2002

Notes

Includes prescription and hospital medicines

Source

IMS World Review

OECD

http://www.oecd.org/std/nahome.htm. downloaded August 2002

Office for National Statistics

Source: Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry

Among the largest markets, of course, is the U.S., with growing interest in buying natural remedies. "A recent survey of family physicians in the U.S. found that more than half regularly prescribe alternative treatments or have tried alternative therapies themselves."

Moreover, it is time to investigate the potential for life-saving substances in the rain forests as a matter of practicality; species extinction is happening at an alarming pace. However, "Rain-forest plants are complex chemical storehouses that contain many undiscovered biodynamic compounds with unrealized potential for use in modern medicine."

The likelihood that such substances will be acceptable to both pharmaceutical companies and consumers (the drivers of the new economic model is this:

Almost half of all prescriptions dispensed in the United States contain substances of natural origin -- and more than 50% of these medications contain a plant-derived active ingredient. In 1974 alone, the United States imported $24.4 million worth of medicinal plants.