Two Complementary Approaches to Protecting the Amazon

Guardians of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest. Environmental Organizations and Development. Barbosa, L. 2015. Routledge, London, U.K. xxii+226 pp. £89.00 (hardcover). ISBN 978-1-138-82582-6. Radical Territories in the Brazilian Amazon. The Kayapo's Fight for Just Livelihoods. Zanotti, L. 2016. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ, U.S.A. 282 pp. $60.00 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-8165-3354-1. While working for the World Wildlife Fund in the mid-1980s, I received a most unforgettable visitor in my Washington, DC, office: a short, stout, charming, and charismatic ethnobiologist named Darrell Posey. I knew of him long before this meeting, as he had written a master's thesis on the so-called “Freejacks,” a triracial community of Caucasians, Afro-Americans, and Amerindians who lived across Lake Ponchartrain from my native New Orleans. Posey had finished his master's degree at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and then enrolled in the University of Georgia prior to heading south to research ethnoentomology among the Kayapo people of the Brazilian Amazon. On completing his PhD in 1979, Posey embarked on an ambitious quest: to help his Kayapo teachers and colleagues seize control of their environmental and cultural destinies and—in so doing—make a case that indigenous people around the world were often the best stewards of their own lands, forests, and waters. I had the great honor of being in attendance when Posey, the Kayapo, and other likeminded colleagues promulgated the Declaration of Belem at the inaugural meeting of the International Society of Ethnobiology in 1988. Although Posey died of cancer in 2001, his overarching intellectual achievement prior to his untimely demise was to highlight not only how much his indigenous colleagues knew about tropical ecosystems, but also how much they did to modify and shape them (Posey 1985). Some have questioned the accuracy of some of Posey's data, but there exists today widespread recognition that Amerindian people of the Amazon rainforest were not mere bystanders living off the land. Ethnobiologists, anthropologists, and geographers such as William Balée and Nigel Smith present compelling arguments that much of the South American rainforest has been shaped by human hands (Balee 1993; Smith 1999). Whether it is the surprisingly fertile soils of terra preta or monumental stands of palm forests, these ecosystems offer testimony that preliterate cultures understood and practiced what conservation professionals would call sustainable development. More than 3 decades after Posey began speaking out on the importance of incorporating indigenous knowledge into rainforest development projects, the Amazon is still being destroyed at an astonishing rate. Uncontrolled gold mining continues to expand in many Amazonian countries, and deforestation—despite earlier effective controls being put in place in Brazil—seems to be on the rise. In addition to these on-the-ground threats to the environment, there are the twin plagues of climate change and murders of environmental activists. What can be done? One of the promising routes forward is to partner with the Amazon's indigenous people to help them better protect their lands. Research into relative rates of protection gives strong evidence that indigenous people, who depend on the forest's ecosystem services and are affected directly by their quality, longevity, and protection, appear to be able stewards of their traditional territories. And, indigenous lands in Amazonia encompass more territory than all Amazonian national parks combined. In a world gone mad for natural resources, however, even the most remote communities are feeling the pressures of the outside world. Indigenous communities sometimes find themselves surrounded on all sides by wildlife traders, gold miners, timber concerns, or even fundamentalist missionaries. In this ever-changing and challenging landscape, Amerindian people may need to partner with outside entities to effectively fend off these threats and devise their own solutions. The resulting collaborative activities may include ethnographic mapping, signposting of borders, creation of management plans, training of indigenous park-guard forces, and culturally appropriate sustainable income-generating activities, usually focusing on nontimber products. A new and important book, Radical Territories in the Brazilian Amazon: The Kayapo's Fight for Just Livelihoods, by Dr. Laura Zanotti of Purdue University, details a case history of the cooperative approach that focuses on the Kayapo tribe originally studied by Darrell Posey. The Kayapo of Brazil are a Gê-speaking tribe that number about 6000 individuals living along the Xingu River on both sides of the border between the states of Pará and Mato Grosso. Beginning in the late 1970s, the Kayapo began demanding land rights and recognition. Marshaled by charismatic leaders such as Raoni and Paulinho Payakan, aided by anthropologists such as Posey and Terence Turner, and promoted by Sting and a host of Brazilian and foreign organizations, the Kayapo obtained title to a butterfly-shaped, 11-million-ha tract of rainforest, one of the largest indigenous reserves in Amazonia. Despite its successful demarcation, the Kayapo live in a tough neighborhood, where monoculture soy farming, huge hydroelectric dams, gold mining, and illegal timber harvesting are now besetting the greater region. Zanotti details this story. From a conservation-science standpoint, the most interesting and relevant portion of Radical Territories is the fourth chapter, “Valuing Nature,” which focuses on nontimber forest products (NFTPs) and sustainable development. Aided by partnerships with The Body Shop (led by British entrepreneur Anita Roddick) and Conservation International (spearheaded by Canadian biologist Barbara Zimmerman), the Kayapo have experimented with production and marketing of diverse products to generate income, including Brazil nuts, achiote, acai, and honey. By drawing on a broad panoply of forest products, the Kayapo have successfully avoided the boom-and-bust cycle that has undermined NTFP programs based on a single good. Zanotti notes the existing skepticism regarding the extent to which local people are treated equitably when NTFPs are commercialized, especially when entering an international marketplace. She points out that efforts similar to those of the Kayapo have stressed both the harvested species and the community itself. The Kayapo's emphasis on diversification has for them largely obviated such strain. At night, when the sky is jet black and the stars are piercing bright, the houses become dark silhouette cutouts. The sky above looks like it was tailored to the village's size. Family hearts or lights burning bright would give the village a magical, warm glow in the darkness. On such days, while looking up, I would momentarily feel as if I were in a snow globe, with borders of the world around me almost, but not quite, close enough to touch. Emerging from postcolonial scholarship, science and technology studies, and political ecology work, these theories show the limitations of western epistemological approaches to space grounded in Cartesian-Newtonian philosophies, as well as the force from which the processes of late liberalism has both deepened historically segmented ideologies of the world order and simultaneously ruptured their moorings thereby creating new networks of belonging (p. 8). Zanotti makes an important contribution to the literature of human-centered conservation, however, through her examination of the means by which one extraordinary group of people has successfully retained their cultural identity, protected their ancestral lands, and confronted the outside world on their own terms. I do, however, have an aesthetic quibble. The Kayapo are famous for their body painting, their beadwork, and especially their extraordinary and often vivid headdresses, and, Zanotti notes that ceremony and song play a pivotal role in maintaining and celebrating Kayapo culture and writes evocatively of the role of color in ceremonies. The cover of this book, however, is a flat, dull green, and the photos in the text are dull black and white. A splash of Kayapo color—even if only on the exterior—would better help the reader appreciate the remarkable people and culture profiled within. I do not recall a single account of ‘destruction’ taking place in Amazonia when I was growing up. For me, the Indians were being taken care of by gaining access to the products of civilization, such as medical care, schools, etc. It never crossed my mind that contact was causing them harm. With the exception of a few academics and those working with the Indians…very few people questioned what was taking place in Amazonia (p. xiiv). This all began to change in the late 1970s with the demise of Brazil's military dictatorship and the advent of democracy and less fettered capitalism. Despite the many benefits of liberalism, many Brazilians became concerned about the increased destruction of their national patrimony, rainforests constituting the majority of the Amazon. The growing hue and cry—particularly from outside the country—led to a backlash by nationalists “who thought that foreigners should take care of their own business; after all, they [Americans] had destroyed their own forests and killed their own native people” (p. xiv). Some of the more reactionary elements believed that “Brazil must develop Amazonia before other countries invade it and take control of its vast natural resources” (p. 3). In 1989, Brazilian President José Sarney invited the United Nations to hold an extraordinary 1992 meeting in Rio de Janeiro on global environment issues that brought together the world's heads of state, at which the national government showcased Brazil's commitment to sustainable development. In the meantime, important and effective nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as SOS Mata Atlântica and the Socio-Environmental Institute were created in Brazil, and local arms of large environmental organizations such as The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund joined them. Barbosa divides those struggling to determine the fate of the Brazilian Amazon into 3 main parties: nationalists, who believe that developing the region is imperative for the future of Brazil; environmentalists, who criticize the ongoing destruction and fight to protect the rainforest; and those who argue for sustainable development. The main focus of Barbosa's book is “documenting the strengths and limitations of the environmental movement in creating positive change towards protection of the forest” (p. 3). In particular, he examines the politicization of commodity chains as a means of stopping or modifying destructive practices. Roughly, two-thirds of Barbosa's book is devoted to detailing 4 case histories: the fight over mahogany, the battle over soybeans, the boycotts of illegally produced beef and leather, and the construction of the Belo Monte dam. In each instance, Barbosa turns an incisive eye toward analyzing what worked, what did not work, and the reasons for each. …[T]here is the danger of dependency, that is [these organizations] will be reluctant to criticize the government and / or corporations that contribute to their funding. Given this risk, organizations such as Greenpeace – whichrefuse to accept any contributions from the government or the private sector – are becoming more important than ever because they are free to maintain an antisystemic stance and challenge environmentally harmful developments (p. 177). Barbosa's main—and in my eyes, correct—conclusion is that these NGOs have had a preponderantly positive impact on the Brazilian environment. He notes the evidence that the terrible 2014 drought in São Paulo can be traced in part to deforestation in the Amazon and uses such correlations as an important additional argument for protection of the rainforest. As this book was being published, however, Brazil was melting down economically. After a decade of declining rates of deforestation, forest felling has increased alarmingly in the past 2 years. I found this to be a well-argued, well-researched, and well-written book. The author has a clear and instructive tone and brings together in a useful and easily digestible manner important information from a variety of sources, from obscure journals to personal travels. One odd but nontrivial fault nagged at me: misspellings of both French Guiana (“French Guyana”) and Suriname (“Surinam”) somehow survived the copyediting stage. Putting aside my proofreading spectacles, this is an important book that deserves a wide audience.

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.