Advocates of sustainable development believe that economic development is dependent upon the preservation of natural resources. Natural resources such as the Amazon are defined as a form of ‘natural capital’. Once this capital is degraded or lost development will falter or even fail.

The key claim made for sustainable development is that it can simultaneously solve two problems: meet the economic and social needs of the poor in Southern countries like Brazil, whilst preserving the environment. Sustainable development treats ‘natural capital’ as a renewable resource for present and future development needs.
For the Amazon it is claimed that the working methods of poor peasants farmers, rubber tappers and Indians are an optimum form of sustainable development. It is argued that these groups have an inherent understanding of the need to protect and sustainably use the forest’s resources because they are dependent upon them for their survival and development.
Supporters of sustainable development concede that these groups are not natural ‘eco-warriors’, that they do not live in harmony with the forest and that many of their techniques are both inefficient and do damage the environment. Yet they argue that these forest peoples are the best defenders of the forest and that their removal or migration will lead to the destruction of the forest’s natural capital. They also insist that with the application of technologies which are appropriate to the Amazon environment, the destructive and inefficient techniques practised by forest peoples can be made more sustainable. None of this is true. Sustainable development does not meet the economic or social needs of the poor in the Amazon or any part of the South. The reason for this is that environmental preservation is incompatible with the objective of economic and social development. Poor communities in the Amazon do not have an inherent understanding of the need to preserve natural resources. Rather they have worked out the best way to survive with limited resources at their disposal in an unforgiving environment. Finally, sustainable or appropriate technologies will not free these people from poverty and underdevelopment, nor do they offer a rational basis for the development of the Amazon as a whole.
Two examples of sustainable development will illustrate these facts: sustainable agroforestry and extractivism. These sustainable initiatives involve the cultivation and harvesting of non-traditional forest products, (NTFPs), such as spices, nuts, fruits and medicinal plants, selective and sustainable tree cultivation and logging, fish nurseries and rubber extraction or tapping. In some cases these activities are encouraged, combined with limited cattle rearing and staple crop production. Western NGOs and governmental aid institutions, such as the British Department for International Development, (DfID), fund such initiatives. A core component of the G7 Pilot Programme, is technical and financial support for sustainable agroforestry and extractivism.
Advocates agree that these methods cannot be used across the whole of the Amazon and that they will not solve every problem faced by poor communities. They do insist that they are capable of improving the lot of many groups and that they are a more progressive form of development than large industrial projects, large-scale cattle ranching and logging.
This is not the case. The problems faced by poor communities in the Amazon are caused by economic and political factors, not environmental ones. Their relative lack of economic and political power forced them to seek an existence in the Amazon in the first place and keeps them trapped there to this day. Yet, environmentalists perceive these social obstacles as environmental ones. This is the basis of sustainable development - the fusion or confusion of social and environmental problems. Through the application of sustainable development, environmentalists attempt to solve social problems with methods for solving environmental problems. This represents social problems as environmental ones. The consequence is that they impose solutions for preserving the environment which restrain the social development of poor people in the Amazon. Ultimately this perpetuates the poverty of Amazon peoples and contributes to the underdevelopment of Brazil.

Agroforestry
In the Amazon state of Pará, sustainable agroforestry initiatives reveal how the environmental imperative of sustainable development undermines farmers’ attempts to economically develop. They show how the real social problems faced by farmers are deprioritised by the application of the environmentalists’ sustainability agenda.
In this state as in many others in the Brazilian Amazon the present peasant farmer population is the result of waves of migration from over the past 30 years. As Brazilian agriculture was modernised from the 1960s on, small farmers and peasant labourers lost their land and jobs. These workers and peasants fleeing the drought-ridden north-east of Brazil, joined the Brazilian Government’s Amazon colonisation schemes.
They faced years of violent conflict as heavily subsidised cattle ranchers, logging companies, large development schemes and land speculators, fought them for possession of land and resources. Many were given plots of land by the Government and others simply cut an area of forest for themselves. On this land they have striven to eke out an existence in often brutal conditions.
The predominant agricultural method used by these farmers is the slash and burn technique to clear the forest for the cultivation of staple crops such as cassava and rice. They also rear small quantities of cattle. This is the most profitable activity for the farmers. Slash and burn is a medieval and primitive farming technique. It was learnt from caboclos (traditional forest peasants and river people) or Indians who had learnt to survive in the harsh environment for many years. It is labour intensive and produces little income. As a consequence many farmers are forced to work on large farms, sell parts of their land and work in the informal sector in towns. In effect they are trapped in a cycle of back-breaking work and poverty. The majority are too poor to leave the forest permanently and they must continue this method of farming in order to just survive.
Environmentalists isolate the slash and burn technique as the key problem faced by these farmers. Not because it is primitive and produces little income but because of its environmental impact. They highlight the fact that Amazon soils are very nutrient poor. Most of the nutrients are held within the forest biomass (plants and trees). After burning and cutting these nutrients enter the soil and give good initial harvests. Soon the soils become poor again as the crops rapidly absorb most of the nutrients. Weeds begin to dominate the land and the farmers have to cut and burn more forest.
The environmentalists’ priority is to find ways to prevent this increase in deforestation. In Pará they are using sustainable agroforestry involving the cultivation of NTFPs. Sustainable agroforestry initiatives in Pará include: the Agricultural and Environmental Centre of Tocantins which is funded by the European Union, Christian Aid and the British Government; the Agro-ecological Programme of the TransAmazon highway, PAET; and a joint project of an independent Amazon environmental research institute and the Woods Hole Research Center of Massachusetts, US.
The problems encountered by these projects exposes their underlying rationale of environmental preservation and their consequent inability to solve the poverty experienced by the farmers involved in them.
First, it is argued that they will increase the income of poor farmers. In reality the cultivation of NTFPs is designed to increase incomes primarily as a means of preventing farmers either from cutting more forest or from migrating and so leaving the forest to cattle ranchers who cut large areas for pasture.
Second, NTFPs may produce greater wealth but they take many years to grow and farmers cannot afford the time and investment when they face the immediate task of survival. Also there is no significant or reliable market for NTFPs and this adds to the risk for poor farmers. As a consequence the main activity in these areas by small farmers remains cattle rearing, staple crop production and logging which generate higher earnings.
Third, some of these projects recognise the long term nature of NTFP cultivation and are developing ways of making staple crop cultivation and cattle rearing more productive. Yet, this still has the underlying motive of preventing deforestation.
Fourth, whether long term NTFP cultivation or short-term traditional crop and cattle production, both sustainable development driven initiatives demand the continued use of low-tech, labour intensive techniques. This perpetuates the brutal and impoverished living and working conditions of these farmers.
Finally, by focusing on ways which preserve the forest, methods which could relieve the burden of such primitive techniques and hugely increase farmers’ incomes are excluded. These might include chemical fertilisers to enrich the nutrient poor soil, chemical pesticides, mechanised farming and the creation of large-scale plantations or farming systems.
Extractivism and extractive resources
The example of the extractivism and extractive reserves also illustrates how environmentalists efforts to apply sustainable development to the Amazon limits the economic opportunities of poor Amazon peoples.
Rubber tappers are some of the poorest peoples of the Brazilian Amazon region. They were left there after the collapse in the rubber boom in 1910 and after several failed attempts since to make Brazil’s rubber industry viable. Since the 1970s the rubber tappers have fought bloody conflicts with cattle ranchers and land speculators.
As a consequence they organised themselves into trade unions to combat this threat to their land and livelihoods. In 1985 they set up the National Council of Rubber Tappers to defend their interests. Soon after they created the concept of extractive reserves. These reserves were a central aim of the rubber tappers’ social struggle to achieve a form of agrarian reform in the forest. They were perceived as a means of protection from the encroaching cattle ranchers and land speculators.
On an extractive reserve only extractive activities are permitted, such as rubber tapping, Brazil nut collection and sustainable agroforestry techniques. The processing of these products is also permitted. These activities, with the exception of processing, are the traditional activities of rubber tappers since they were freed from their slave-like bondage to their old rubber bosses from the 1920s onwards.
Extractivism has been developed as a means of making a living with only limited resources and in isolated conditions. Like slash and burn farming methods it too was learnt from caboclos and Indians. It is back-breaking and tedious work with little financial reward. For the majority of rubber tappers it is their only form of subsistence. The rubber tappers’ diet is poor and communicable diseases are rampant. Again, like slash and burn agriculture it is a primitive method of survival. As a consequence, rubber tappers use other methods of subsistence such as logging, cattle rearing, gold mining, slash and burn clearance and staple crop cultivation.
By the 1990s extractivism and extractive reserves were being celebrated as an optimum form of sustainable development. In the late 1980s environmentalists adopted extractive reserves as a means of preserving the rainforest while allowing forest peoples to enjoy a limited form of economic development. During this period there were influential Western environmental campaigns over the levels of deforestation in the Amazon. Rubber tappers and Indians were brought to Western capitals to campaign against road and dam projects. The World Bank was lobbied over its involvement in such projects.
In this maelstrom of green campaigning and hysteria the rubber tappers became a cause célèbre for Western environmentalists. It was at this moment that the extractive reserve became a key element of the Western environmentalists campaigns to preserve the rainforest. By the end of 1992, nine federal extractive reserves, under the supervision of the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Resources had been set up. They cover an area of over two million hectares and have a population of approximately 29,000 inhabitants.
A substantial quantity of Western NGOs and institutions have given support to extractive reserves: the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Canadian International Development Agency, the Environmental Defense Fund, The Gaia Foundation, Cultural Survival and Health Unlimited. In 1996 the Assistance Programme for the Development of Extractivism was set up by the Brazilian Government to supply credit.
The largest amount of funds for extractive reserves has come from the G7 Pilot programme. US$9 million of funds have been allocated for the four largest reserves in the Amazon. Huge amounts have also been spent on extractive produce processing initiatives such as the Agro-Extractive Co-operative of Xapuri (CAEX) in the Amazon state of Acre.
The Agro-Extractive Co-operative of Xapuri was set up to serve the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve. Part of the CAEX initiative was the building of a Brazil nut processing factory. By 1993 this CAEX initiative had received over US$1.6 million in overseas grants from donors such as the World Wildlife Fund and Cultural Survival and the Inter-American Foundation.
Even with such support and subsidies extractivism, extractive reserves and related processing remain economically unviable.
First, extractivism is supported by environmentalists because it does not involve techniques which lead to deforestation. They hope that the security provided the rubber tappers by the legal recognition of their land rights will discourage them from engaging in more destructive exploitation of the forest for short-term gain as they have done so in the past. Second, extractivism is a back-breaking, labour intensive method of subsistence which does not give rubber tappers either the time or income to have a decent standard of living and the opportunities we take for granted. Each dollar of the millions spent on sustaining extractivism perpetuates this state of under-development.
Third, processing has also proved to be economically unviable because of extractivism’s dependence on high inputs of labour. In the experience of the Agro-Extractive Co-operative of Xapuri, the labour force was predominantly female because men had to do the more physically testing labour on the settlements. Yet, there was competition for the time of the female labour due to the labour intensive nature of rubber tapper subsistence methods, such as extractivism.
As a result, productivity in the processing plant dropped and the Agro-Extractive Co-operative of Xapuri lost valuable contracts. This problem was compounded by inefficient technology. As a solution, the plant was decentralised and child labour and piece-work were introduced to increase productivity and lower wage and social security bills. This failed to solve the problem of low productivity.
Fourth, rubber tappers have been cultivating NTFPs for consumption purposes for a great deal longer than peasant farmers. Yet, they face the same problem as these farmers in the absence of a reliable market for their NTFP produce. This has led rubber tappers to increase their use of more destructive yet higher income generating methods like cattle rearing and logging.
Finally, by focusing on sustainable extractivism environmentalists are precluding research and development of other more lucrative activities, such as large-scale agriculture. In Acre, the home of many sustainable extractive initiatives, the soils are uncharacteristically rich in nutrients for the Amazon region and therefore good for crop cultivation.
The reaction by environmentalists when rubber tappers ‘threaten’ to use such environmentally unsustainable methods exposes their real priority –preserving the environment not meeting human needs. In a southern rubber tapping area of Acre, Acrelândia, rubber tappers have been involved in a G7 Pilot programme initiative to sustainably log the forest. It is hoped that this will generate income as so prevent the rubber tappers engaging in more destructive forms of logging.
This has led to alarm and consternation amongst the ranks of environmentalists. They fear that they will have to prevent these rubber tappers from cutting beyond their sustainable quotas as they increase their incomes from the sale of the timber.
Finally, extractivism may be a means of preserving the forest but it does not meet the economic or social needs of its human inhabitants. Rubber tappers accepted the transformation of extractivism and extractive reserves into a form of sustainable crusade for pragmatic reasons. They sought to take advantage of the huge support, political and financial, for their attempts to defend their livelihoods. Extractive reserves are now policed by environmentalists from Western NGOs and the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Resources. They resemble a form of sustainable stockade locking rubber tappers into a low-tech, low-productivity, back-breaking form of work which presently promises nothing more than mere survival.
Many environmentalists argue that at least these sustainable development initiatives are better than the large-scale development projects installed in the Amazon by the Brazilian Government and large multinational corporations.
They argue that large-scale projects such as dams and mines destroy the Amazon’s natural resources and environment upon which peasants depend, are implemented by authoritarian means and do not give work to most of the Amazon’s population of poor peasants. They claim that sustainable initiatives can offer the peasants more opportunities and control over their own development because they are sustainable, local and small-scale.
It is wrong, deceptive and disingenuous of environmentalists to use social problems as a means of arguing for environmental preservation.
By confusing these issues environmentalists in fact help to keep the poor in the Amazon and Brazil poor. The two issues must be separated if peasants and workers in the Amazon and Brazil are to enjoy better lives.
First, large development projects or mega-projects’ as they are disparagingly known, do destroy huge tracts of the forest. It is also true that many of these mega-projects are inefficient. Yet, the attitude towards development expressed by their construction is progressive.
The most important factor for the development of the Amazon is man. Man has transformed the forest. He has manipulated its ecology for tens of thousands of years to serve his needs. The Amazon itself, as a natural phenomenon, does not have any development needs. It spontaneously evolves and is devoid of any plans or opinions. The question therefore is how can the Amazon best serve man’s needs today?
Today, unlike previous periods of man’s occupation of the Amazon, we have the capacity to more fully exploit it to serve our needs. As we research its potential we have discovered how it can supply huge amounts of hydroelectric power and minerals and that it is a source of biodiversity and genetic wealth which could be used for drugs and the manufacture of food stuffs. One study has shown that the pupunha fruit, from the peach palm, which is grown on a vast plantation in the Amazon, contains twice as much starch as corn from Iowa. All that is lacking is the technological knowledge to produce flour from it. The Amazon also contains approximately US$5 trillion worth of timber.
Large development programmes in the Amazon are an attempt to expand and exploit such discoveries. Sustainable development threatens to stall the massive benefits that they can provide. This is because it is driven by a precautionary attitude to development. It is predicated upon a strong and prevailing belief that there are limits to social development.
In the Amazon this perception of limits assumes the form of natural limits–that the forest itself is our main resource for development and that we must therefore preserve it at all costs. This is expressed in the notion of ‘natural capital’ which is so often used to describe the forest ecology. This notion presents the forest as a static natural resource. A resource which has to be exploited through methods which are in harmony with its ecology and which allow it to be a renewable resource if it is to serve the economic needs of its inhabitants. Small-scale and local sustainable development initiatives, such as agroforestry and extractivism, therefore promote a precautionary and anti-experimental approach to human intervention in the Amazon. The consequence is the imposition of a development strategy which advocates low-tech, small-scale survival in place of real human development. The only result can be poverty for the majority of the Amazon’s inhabitants.
In contrast the approach behind the construction of mega-projects is based upon the assumption that development is a uniquely human or social concept and that man is the key resource for development.
Environmentalists argue that mega-projects are constructed by and for the economically and politically powerful. They claim that the benefits from them are denied to the majority of the Amazon’s population. This is a political and economic question and should be treated as such. The cause of this state of inequality is the market and the most powerful interests in the market–the rich Western nations. Their economic and political power ensures that development in the Amazon and Brazil suits their interests and expresses their ambitions.
Today, the leaders of these nations do not hold out much for development. They are consumed and preoccupied with the negative affects of human activity and therefore with limits to social development in the world. For them the Amazon is a fragile resource that will be inevitably damaged by man’s large-scale intervention. It is a symbol of their own pessimism. Consequently, they look upon it as something to be conserved rather than a potential resource to be developed. Sustainable development is an expression of this preoccupation with the impact of human intervention. They are content, in pursuing sustainable development, to see millions struggle to merely survive equipped with their sustainable tools and methods.
The West is imposing this preoccupation on the Amazon and Brazil. This is the new form of Western intervention in Brazil. As such, it is arrogant and undemocratic. Brazil faces huge social problems. Millions of its citizens live below the poverty line and it has a foreign debt of some US$150 billion.
The Amazon is a potential resource for the resolution of such problems. Any development strategy for the Brazilian Amazon must serve the needs of Brazilians first and they must have the right and independence to determine that strategy. Instead, through the promotion of sustainable development, Western governments and environmentalists are dictating to Brazilians how their country should be run. Through sustainable development they are working to prevent Brazilians developing out of poverty.
We should therefore reject sustainable development and take inspiration from the words of an Amazon citizen:
‘You talk little about life, you talk too much about survival. It is very important to remember that when the possibilities for life are over, the possibilities for survival start. And there are peoples here in Brazil, especially in the Amazon region, who still live and these peoples that still live do not want to reach down to the level of survival.’ (A speaker from the floor at a public hearing of the Brundtland Commission in São Paulo, Brazil, in October 1985. Scarcity and Sustainability, Hans Achterhuis in Global Ecology. A New Arena of Political Conflict, Ed. Wolfgang Sachs, 1995, Zed Books)