Third Lemann Dialogue Agricultural and Environmental

Issues in Brazil 

November 7-8, 2013University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Clóvis Cavalcanti

clovati@fundaj.gov.br Clóvis Cavalcanticlovati@fundaj.gov.br

Photo: Murilo Mello – Suape, 1975

Development and Socio-Environmental Conflicts: the Suape Project, Belo Monte, andthe S. Francisco River Diversion

Introductory RemarksEcological economics: analytical reference for the presentation. A transdisplinary field of study attracting systems ecologists and

dissident economists. Inspiration in N. Georgescu-Roegen (1906-1994) together with work

from, among others, ecologist H. T. Odum (1924-2002) and economist K. Boulding (1910-1993).  

Ecological economics sees the economy as a subsystem of a larger finite global ecosystem.

What makes one believe that the extra ecological and social costs of growth are not already larger than the extra production

benefits?

Herman Daly’s suggestion:

The development process in Brazil has provoked a series of grave, well-known ecological problems:

biodiversity loss with deforestation (subsidized cattle-raising) and large-scale agricultural projects;

large dams built at any cost to produce subsidized electricity;desertification processes mainly in the Northeast, but even in

Amazonia; ecosystem destruction such as in the case of mangroves;

a lack of observance of environment protection laws and rules.

The process of development has not taken fully into account its ecological and social costs.

The traditional model of exploitation of natural resources in Brazil is extractivist, predatory and colonialist:

high-energy content (and impact), low value added

As J. A. Drummond says, the economy of Brazil since the 1930s has been submitted to a process “amply dominated by the

developmental belief that it is worth incurring any costs to grow economically”.

Faith in the indispensability of growth can explain the waste of resources in Amazonia as if they had no limits, according to Mary

Allegretti. It has also dominated the orientation of all administrations since 1930.

Short-run considerations determine what is undertaken, especially in connection with economic decisions and their (neglected)

socio-environmental consequences 

Access to information of relevance in relation to big projects subject to environmental licencing

opportunity to adjust the interest of economic iniciatives to the needs of the protection of nature and people

Experience shows that inadequate permissions are given

The licencing process fails in its function of evaluation instrument

of the social and ecological sustainability of great undertakings (the proper occasion to assess mega-projects’ full implications; an opportunity to apply the rules of good environmental governance)

Concession of unjustified permits to projects assessed on the basis of insufficient data and reasonings which disrespect legal

restrictions, and face strong movements of protest and resistance from affected populations

Perception of a hidden reality

Joan Martínez Alier: “the resistance (local and global) expressed in many idioms to the abuse of natural environments and the loss of livelihoods” against the belief that to defend nature is a “luxury” of the rich, typical of a post-materialist age (or the prejudice that “The poor are too poor to be green”).

Socio-environmental conflicts express a survival strategy of the poor, whobecome aware of the necessity to conserve natural resources, such as water and the forest.

This “awareness is often hard to identify because it does not use the language of scientific ecology, but local languages such as the territorial rights of indigenous peoples or the religious language”

It comprises the incommensurability, or weak comparability of values, in front of the modern primacy of the economic over any other dimension of life values at stake, beyond the economic, are: ecological, cultural, subsistence of the populations, sacred, human

Photo: Murilo Mello

Suape, 1975

A village of artisan fishermenAbundance of fishes, shellfish, crustaceans ample mangrove area, great local fish nursery Small, organic subsistence farms (diversity of fruits: cashew, coconut, mangaba, cajá, mango, jackfruit, sirigüela, star-fruit, Malay apple, sapodilla, etc.)Communities existing there in some cases for over 200 years (case of the Tatuoca islet, now the site of shipyards)

Suape (PE): Source of a reaction along the lines of the environmentalism of the poorThe official, imposed perspective: “The search for adequate areas to build ports that live up to future requirements, unfortunately, does not find in our territory an ample range of alternatives […] The choice thus amounts to exploit nature’s gifts, molding them according to our needs and awakening them to fruitful activity”

Lafayette Prado, 1974. Complexo Portuário Industrial de Suape. Recife, 11/8/1974.

Suape area, 1975

Suape port and industries 2005 photo

Questions that arise:

environmental (in)justice, environmental racism, ecological distributive conflicts, ecologically unequal exchange, non-economic values problems resulting from the monopoly of the economic dimension over the other.

“Who has the power to impose the economic language as the supreme language in a socio-environmental discussion? Who has the power to simplify complexity, disqualifying other points of view?” (Martínez Alier) Ecological distributive conflicts manifest the confrontation in the social metabolism of nature between nature and the economy, with ups and downs, vicissitudes, new frontiers, urgencies and uncertainties indication of directions for a truly – not a neoliberal – green economy

The economic perspective over Suape– Francisco Cunha, a consultant (2012)

“Suape is the crown jewel of Pernambuco. A marvel of logistics.

Savings of the people of Pernambuco done for over 30 years without interruption and at the right place. As a collective savings, Suape

confirms the quip attributed to Albert Einstein that ‘the greatest force in the universe is compound interest.’ We are beginning to benefit

from the compounding of applications made in Suape [...][It] is a great opportunity of development [...] the greatest in the last

50 years and for the next generation.”

Government intervention through the Suape companhy has been characterized by violence in the removal of families living there, without fair compensation, and without new homes made available. Those families have become homeless, settling precariously in cities located around the project.The environment has also suffered from the predatory occupation of the territory. Where there were mangroves, rainforest and marshes big structures appear. At the same time, constituted powers (executive, legislative and judiciary) wink at the violation of the rights of those populations invisible to society.

Communities removed from their spaces, whose culture and habits, fostered by the tradition of fishing activities and the small family farms, gave meaning to their lives, face a kind of extinction. Believing in the official discourse, the general population expects Suape to be their redemption. In the case of communities forced to leave their land, whose possession comes from grandparents, and passes from parents to children, the strategy employed be the project is expulsion, with promises of new a place to live, as if this futuristic adventure could be free from suffering and erase from people’s minds all the vital energy used to build a life. This strategy is typical of a policy of modernization and development imposing new structures of production at all costs.

In Pernambuco – and other parts of Brazil with grave socio-environmental conflicts –, what is at stake is the rule of law. Simply, the Constitution is ignored as much as possible

Destroyed farm houses of small landowners ejected violently at Tiriri (Suape) in 2012

BELO MONTE case6th Biennial Meeting of the Brazilian Association of Graduate and Research

Programs on the Environment and Society (ANPPAS), Belém, Pará, Sept. 2012Discussion on Conflicts in the Context of the Great Hydroeletric Dams in AmazoniaAfter hearing the young Indian Juma Xipaya, member of the panel, speak, I thought:

“Syria is here”. There seems to be what people in Amazonia is calling PDA (Plano de Destruição da Amazônia)

Juma Xipaya who breastfed her baby

during the panel

New articulation of the peoples of the rivers where the government intends to implement large hydroelectric complexes – and, with them, violent works in the field of mining, deforestation and social chaos.

“Every problem interacts with other problems and is therefore part of a set of interrelated problems, a system of problems… I choose to call such a system a mess” – Russell L. Ackoff (1919-2009), systems thinker

The occupation movement in Belo Monte in May 2013 demanded the suspension of works, and studies of dams in their territories, requiring prior consultation – with veto power – to be performed.

The definitive Belo Monte license was granted without requiring the observance of the constraints established in the previous phase (preliminary license) – statement of the Public Office of the Prosecution in Oct. 2013.

Invasion of the building site by protesting indigenous peoples. Court of Appeals determined the expulsion of invaders and the works to go on (Oct. 31, 2013, after a week of occupation)

A continuous conflict between different valuation languages marches toward the victory of the economic perspective

Life in the river

Fotos: André Fossati

Photos: José Alves Siqueira

Social reality

Environmental problemsThreatened species (Araripe marakin, e.g.)

Extinction(ararinha azulde lear)

Desertification

“The inexorable end of the São Francisco”: the repetition of disastrous public policies in the river basin. Serious consequences of the construction of big works without

efforts to minimize their impact along the river – José Alves Siqueira (2012)Today, in the traditional Fish Square in Petrolina (PE), just 700 m from the São

Francisco left bank (the river had 158 different fish species), Amazon species from the state of Pará are among the most commercialized disappearance of local ones

Fotos: André Fossati

“The [development] story starts with the ancient dream of utopia, and then mutates into the historical project of creating paradise on earth […] On the way, the idea of moral limits to human ambition, which underpinned all pre-modern conceptions of the good life, was lost and dormant energies of creativity and destructiveness were set free […] At various stages on this journey, the greatest thinkers of the age tried to envisage an end state, a point at which humanity could say ‘enough’, only to find that the machine it had created was out of control, a Frankenstein’s monster which now programmed the game of progress according to its own insane logic. This is the story of how it happened – how we came to be ensnared by the dream of progress without purpose, riches without end.” - Robert Skidelsky & Edward Skidelsky, How Much Is Enough? The Love of Money, and the Case for the Good Life (2012)

Thank you!