Sustainable Development in Brazil's Amazon: Pharma & Ecotourism

Introduction

While it is generally accepted that developing countries harbor greater biodiversity than developed ones, and that developed countries are not particularly receptive to "native" products, there are exceptions. Two of these — pharmaceuticals and ecotourism — are potentially lucrative avenues for Brazil to explore in order to reduce the income disparity among its divergent populations. While some development has occurred in both areas, more often development has been of the industrial variety, bringing with it vast damage to both populations and the rainforest. There are, however, within a post-modern "transformational" economic model, abundant reasons to develop both industries. Brazil is well positioned — by virtue of its physical assets and the commitment of at least some of its bureaucracy — to exploit these opportunities in ways that benefit the economy, the ecology, and the population.

The core principle of modern life, which most historians trace to Columbus' voyage, is that of continual expansion. Unfortunately, unless outer space 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 produced dire consequences, including:

Global environmental consequences for human activity; weapons of mass destruction that threaten global extinction; a frame for beliefs and actions in much of the world defined by globalism rather than community; and the increasing significance of non-western values.

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

The Politico-Economic Setting

In addition, the principle of quantitative growth — measured by GDP per capita — became obsolete alongside the idea of continuous expansion. After World War II, however, there had been a notion in play that decolonization and the competition between capitalism and communism would expand at least the economies of capitalist states. This idea was predicated on the assumption that expansion, no longer possible in terms of undiscovered land, would instead occur into — and Brazil's president Cardoso and others would say "ownership of" — less affluent or richly endowed areas.

Cardoso was one of the developers of the dependency school in Latin America. The theory of dependency was grounded in Marxist political economy. In it, underdevelopment "was a 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 to be unsuccessful by the mid-1970s.

The future economic model became a source of anxiety in nations such as Brazil, where export-led rapid industrialization was underway. To explain a phenomenon unlike others, the new international division of labor (NIDL) approach emerged. 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." At first glance it appeared to hold promise; however, according to Castles, it was compromised by the "economic and political independence of the oil-rich economies and newly industrialising countries (NICs)."

It appeared that no model could adequately explain the economic profile of nations such as Brazil. In its pure form, neo-classical economic theory, which had become dominant in capitalism, might explain conditions through its emphasis on "free enterprise and unfettered markets." The drawback to this — potentially significant in Brazil, where indigenous tribes remain uninvestigated and poorly understood — 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 account for the effects of government action on economies, it is the framework assumed to make the world "safe for global investors and corporations," while simultaneously failing to enact policies protecting workers, farmers, or consumers from market irrationality. The policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank — described as "global policemen of capital" — are predicated on this model and challenge any states that attempt "to safeguard economic autonomy or social equality."

The information and technology revolutions arguably accelerated economic and cultural globalization, increasingly diffusing cultural values "based on an idealised U.S. consumer society." A leap in military technology shifted the global balance of power toward the United States and its allies. This, naturally, pushed the economies of nations that had struggled most with dependency issues — including Cardoso's Brazil — back into a situation in which dependency was once again the operative economic structure for all practical purposes. As Castles 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 the dissection of this neo-colonial model in light of the changes in world power alignment caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the booming economies in East Asia and parts of Latin America and the Middle East. No longer was the dualism of the United States and the Soviet Union the basis for all economic theory. In that seemingly distant world, smaller nations could hope for at least temporary relief from marginalization by playing the two superpowers off against each other. Now that opportunity is lost, and, as Castles notes, all former development theories have become unworkable. In response, he believes, a new "North-South Divide" concept has emerged.

This divide is further subdivided into exploitative relationships (for example, Malaysian logging in Papua New Guinea) and cooperative ones (for example, international networking between nongovernmental organizations concerned with human rights, women's issues, or environmental issues). In the end, all of this leads to what Castles regards as the operative economic model: transformationalism. "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, to Castles, signal a rosy world in which all nations are equal partners in prosperity. He proposes that within this transformation there are pockets of exclusion — the classic haves versus have-nots — and that they are "most widespread and severe in the South: virtually the whole of Africa, as well as large parts 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."

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

In January 1853, Lieutenant William Herndon of the U.S. Navy traveled from the Andes down the Amazon. When his report was published, it became apparent in the United States 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 viewed as a possible solution to the slavery debate. Because slavery was still legally practiced in the Amazon basin, enslaved people — "recorded as assets on plantation books" — could simply be relocated to new U.S. plantations in the Amazon, avoiding loss of capital. At the time, some believed, "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."

The Physical Setting

While that did not come to pass literally, it may have in spirit. By the time of the 1998 forest fires in the Amazon region, bureaucrats in Brasília 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 that in light of these glaring disparities, Brazil's environmental movements would be perceived as homegrown — as indeed they partly are, fostered by FUNAI (National Foundation of Indians) and impoverished peasants. However, they are regarded by those in power as unwanted imports from the United States. This is problematic, because 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 São 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 realities of the transformational economic environment.

The Amazon rainforest covers 40% of Brazil's total territory, or approximately 2,722,000 square miles, and forms 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 4,195 miles in length, the Amazon basin is the largest river basin in the world. Its discharge into the Atlantic is about eight trillion gallons per 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. The river exceeds 150 feet in depth throughout most of the Brazilian portion; near the mouth, some areas have been measured at depths as great as 300 feet. The river itself ranges from one to 35 miles wide.

The region is unique in other ways as well. With an average temperature of 79 degrees Fahrenheit and average yearly rainfall of 80 inches, it is the quintessential rainforest environment, and it has existed for a very long time. The Amazon rainforest is thought to be the oldest such area in continuous existence, persisting for as much as 100 million years.

Despite its age and abundant water, however, the soil of the region is relatively infertile — a factor that may help explain the ease with which the rainforest is destroyed. Its biodiversity, despite recent destructive episodes, remains enormous. One hectare (2.47 acres) of rainforest may contain more than 750 species of trees and 1,500 species of other plants, representing an estimated 900 tons of living plant matter. Along with the Andean mountains, the region is thought to be home to more than half of the world's species of flora and fauna. One in five of all the birds in the world lives in the rainforests of the Amazon. Moreover, "some 438,000 species of plants of economic and social interest have been registered in the region and many more have yet to be catalogued or even discovered." The very abundance of the region has, until now, also sown the seeds of its own destruction.

Conclusion

The possibility of closing the gap between the well off and the disadvantaged in Brazil presents challenges not prevalent in less "frontier" parts of our almost-completely explored world. Brazil has not fit neatly into any of the prevalent economic models, although the transformational model offers the most useful framework. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Brazil's economically disenfranchised sometimes include people at what might be called a Stone Age level of technological development — not only unfamiliar with modern technology, but also unprotected from diseases that affect but do not devastate other world populations. Finding industries that can contribute to the well-being of the most disadvantaged groups without further decimating their populations or diluting their cultures is therefore essential in any post-modern world with a social conscience. In addition, Brazil, as the largest South American nation, "has obvious geopolitical reasons to want to enhance its status as a leader of developing countries."