In his book Land of the Amazons published in 1885 Baron de Santa-Anna Nery assessed the Amazon as the ‘virgin soil which awaits the seed of civilisation’. During the 19th century the Brazilian Amazon was largely developed by European and American entrepreneurs exploiting and developing the forest reserves of rubber. Fortunes were made.
The Amazon cities of Manaus and Belém developed as the centres of the rubber boom; the Europeans even constructed opera houses in these cities to mirror those of Europe. This expansion of development and wealth came to an abrupt end at the turn of the century with the collapse of rubber prices; the Europeans and Americans packed their bags and went to find profits elsewhere. The Amazon region remained marginal to other centres in the economic and social development of Brazil until the 1960s, when Brazilian military governments decided to focus on opening up the Amazon as part of their plans for national development.
In the 1990s Westerners have returned once more to the Amazon but this time in a different guise to that of the rubber barons of the 19th century. Western institutions in the form of the World Bank, G7, Western NGOs and others, came back this time not to exploit the Amazon but to conserve it and implement plans for sustainable development, in order to protect the environment. This Western intervention remains controversial and the issues surrounding it are explored in the opinion sheets elsewhere in the pack.

Brazilian Development of Amazonia
The opening up of the interior of Brazil had been part of the national vision of post World War Two Brazilian governments. In the 1950s the decision was made by civilian governments to relocate the capital city and seat of national government from Rio de Janeiro to the mid west. The new capital, Brasília was built within four years. At the same time the Government created the Superintendency for the Valorisation of Amazonia (SPVEA) which constructed a highway 2,100 kilometres long from the new capital Brasília to Belém–the 19th century city at the mouth of the Amazon.
During the 1960s Brazil’s military Government pushed forward with plans for modernisation and development. As the military Government’s leading strategist General Golbery put it, the objective was to ‘inundate the Amazon with civilisation’. The Superintendency for the Development of Amazonia (SUDAM) was set up in 1966 and President Branco declared, ‘This is a country that is going forward’. It was thought that the living standards of many of the forest dwellers (caboclos) and Indians could eventually be transformed through the injection of resources and modern technology. Regional development was promoted through the continuing construction of an infrastructure in Amazonia. A massive road building programme was inaugurated. Migration and settlement were also encouraged with a colonisation plan which gave incentives to small farmers. A tax incentive scheme and financial inducements were made to stimulate the development of cattle ranching, mining (such as the Grande Carajás project) and other industrial enterprises. Some $1.5 billion of incentives were paid out between 1967 and 1988.
In 1970 the Government embarked on the ambitious 5,400 kilometres TransAmazon Highway, combining it with a planned resettlement scheme along the highways for the drought stricken farmers of the north east. Through the government colonisation agency (INCRA) they hoped to settle 100,000 landless peasant families in model communities in the 100 kilometres strips of land reserved either side of the highway. Each family was given a 100 hectares (247 acres) plot with house, basic tools and seed on credit. The land was given with the stipulation that 50 hectares of the plot was to remain forested. Larger agrovilas were set up at intervals like co-ops, each containing a school, shop, social centre and sports facilities. This 1970s experiment in social planning and development in Amazonia failed. Only about 7,000 families relocated to these plots and because of the lack of agricultural support most of them quickly ran into difficulties. This sort of planning and development is now rejected and often criticised in current discussion on the Amazon. Even more criticism has been levelled at the government-subsidised development of large cattle ranching concerns concentrated on the southern borders of the Amazon forest.
In 1981 the Government launched Polonoroeste. Again the plan was seen as part of the development and integration of the Amazon and as a way of solving the problem of landless farmers, many from the South, who had been displaced by the rapid development of mechanised agriculture in the 1970s. This programme was given a $450 million loan by the World Bank. In 1985 the new civilian Government launched another development plan in northern Amazonia called Calha Norte which included highway projects, the São Paradão hydroelectric plant and plans to settle Indians on 240 acre plots with the intention of transforming them into small farmers.

The return of the West
Western countries were instrumental in overseeing the stepping down of military government in Brazil in 1985, just as they had been instrumental in supporting their coming to power in 1964. In 1985 Western institutions made their first explicit intervention in Amazonian policy.
Following a highly publicised campaign by Western NGOs against the World Bank and Brazilian Government about the Polonoroeste plan, the US Government’s Foreign Operations Committee forced the World Bank to suspend its loan disbursements pending the reformulation of the plan. The aim of this suspension was to avoid environmental degradation and social conflict.
From this point on, Western institutions would have a lot more to say on policy and development for the Amazon region. The mood for Western intervention in the Amazon was reinforced by massive media coverage of satellite pictures issued by the American National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in the summer of 1987, which showed large forest fires in Amazonia. This stimulated the emerging debate on the greenhouse effect and its contribution to global warming. Americans sweltering in that September’s continuing hot summer demanded immediate action. The Brazilian President, Jose Sarney, responded by issuing a decree prohibiting burning in the whole region. Rural credit and other fiscal subsidies for development were ended.
In March 1988 the world powers held a summit conference at The Hague on measures to be taken for the protection of the global atmosphere. The importance of the Amazon was stressed and President Mitterand of France went so far as to call for the right of UN forces to intervene in regions where a threat to the global environment arose. The Brazilian delegation argued against the inclusion of reference to the Amazon in the final Hague communique. President Sarney refused to participate in the summit and talked publicly about these manoeuvres as a threat to Brazil’s sovereignty. The Brazilian position in early 1988 was clearly stated by its Foreign Minister Abreu Sodre: ‘Brazil does not want to transform itself into an ecological reserve for humanity. Our greatest duty is with our economic development’. Brazil also resisted US attempts to get agreement on debt-for-nature swaps and rejected demands for tighter environmental conditions on World Bank funding. Nevertheless the Brazilian Government did start to respond to this external pressure. In April 1988 the Government launched Nossa Natureza (Our Nature) with a stress on the need to protect the environment of forest dwellers and river people. Plans involved the creation of the Brazilian Environment and Renewable Resources Institute which had powers to speed up ecological zoning, demarcation of Indian and conservation reserves and development of a more effective environmental monitoring and a fire prevention scheme. Environmental impact assessments were decreed compulsory for all major public and private developments.
Another issue brought to world attention in 1988 was the social conflict in the western Amazon between ranchers and rubber tappers demanding protection rights for those parts of the forest from which they extracted rubber. This conflict culminated in the murder of Chico Mendes in December 1988. In January, following international media coverage of the Mendes case and responding to international pressure and criticism, the Brazilian Government created a system of extractive reserves designed to promote a new policy of sustainable development of the Amazon. In these reserves the preservation of extractive modes of agriculture, like rubber tapping, were seen as key to protecting the Amazon from modern development. The Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve in the western Amazonian state of Acre is the largest of the rubber tapper reserves. In February 1989 a number of NGOs, including Survival International and Friends of the Earth, participated in a five-day protest summit with the Kayapo Indians at Altimira to protest at the proposed building of hydroelectric dams on the River Xingu. This received world-wide publicity.
Throughout 1989 Western NGOs mounted a concerted campaign to limit Brazilian access to multilateral finance. This helped to undermine European Union financing for the Grand Carajás mining project, a $500 million World Bank loan to the Brazilian energy sector and other lending programmes. The Inter-American Development Bank cancelled a $65 million loan for the extension of a highway in Rondônia. The Brazilian Government was more successful in gaining funds for environmental projects; these included a $117 million World Bank loan for its National Environment programme, $150 million from Germany and $3 million from Britain for environmental aid.
In the 1990s the Western powers began to renegotiate relationships with Brazil and the developing world through environmental policy. The Brazilian Government responded by taking another significant step towards making environmentalism the basis of its development policy. The new President, Fernando Collor de Mello, created the new top Government Secretariat for the Environment under the direction of internationally-famed environmentalist and Government critic Jose Lutzenberger. The Secretariat for the Environment launched Operation Amazonia to counter forest burnings and they planned to blow up and destroy 80 airstrips used by the garimpeiros in the Amazon, a source of livelihood for a million or more people in Amazonia. An income tax on agricultural land was introduced, reversing the past policy of incentives. A National Environment programme was established (PNMA). The Government also gave new resources and appointed a new director to the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Resources. The Research Center for Tropical Forests was created and environment sections in all major government departments were set up. In March 1990 the Brazilian Government decided to ratify the Montreal Treaty on the Ozone Layer.
The Brazilian Government moved away from denouncing the West for interference and moved towards co-operation and asking for external assistance in the management of Amazonia. In a major turn around the Foreign Minister announced the need for foreign assistance: ‘For the preservation of the tropical forest it is necessary to have financial and human resources from all the developed nations concerned with the problem.’
In 1990 the G7 nations held a summit in Houston to draw up plans for the preservation of the Brazilian rainforests. This initiative met with support from the Brazilian Government who proposed an external aid package of $1.56 billion. The summit meeting in London in 1991 agreed to a $50 million aid package but with the stipulation that new plans were to be researched and drawn up for environmental projects. In June 1991 Brazil reversed its opposition to debt-for-nature swaps. The Brazilian Government brought together the Secretariat for the Environment and the PNMA in a more powerful Ministry of the Environment which enacted a degree creating a 9.4 million hectare reserve for the Yanomami Indians and four extractive reserves.
In 1992 Brazil hosted the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro. This was the largest environmental conference to date, attended by all the world’s most powerful leaders and NGOs. The conference resulted in far-ranging proposals that demonstrated the change of attitude to development since the 1980s. Emphasis on modernisation and a concern with poverty in developing countries were overshadowed by environmental concerns. These are summed up in the summit’s Agenda 21 on sustainable development. The major treaty to emerge from the summit was on conserving biodiversity.
In 1993 the Secretariat for the Environment was replaced by the Ministry for the Environment and Legal Amazonia (MMA) and in 1995 the present government led by Fernando Henrique Cardoso set up the Secretariat for Amazonia within the Ministry to deal specifically with the implementation of development and environmental measures in the region. In the 1996 package the Government increased from 50 per cent to 80 per cent the proportion of land that must be left forested by enterprises in Amazonia. It also declared a two year moratorium on logging permits for mahogany and virola and announced the cancellation of half the existing concessions.
One of the more important Western interventions in Amazonia at present is the G7 Pilot programme, first proposed at Houston, Texas, in 1990. This is now a $270 million aid package administered through the World Bank and Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment which is primarily involved in extractive reserves, environmental monitoring–including involvement in Planafloro (which replaced Polonoroeste) in Rondônia and the control and demarcation of Indian lands.
Western involvement in the monitoring of Amazonia was stepped up this year with the signing of contracts for SIVAM, the $1.7 billion dollar deal, which will set up a system of satellites and other surveillance equipment for Amazonia. Controversy surrounds the winning of the contract by the multinational US arms and electronics manufacture, Raytheon, developers of the Patriot missile, who were heavily supported in their bid by the US State Department.
The return of the West to Amazonia has another aspect besides environmental control. The West is also returning in its old entrepreneurial form. In 1997 relative economic stability in Brazil has been achieved through austerity measures for its population and the opening up of its economy to the world market. A rapid programme of privatisation has allowed foreign companies to bid for industries once run by the Brazilian state and government subsidised private firms. Included in this privatisation programme is the massive Carajás mining project in eastern Amazonia. This year, American, Japanese and European firms will be bidding for control of this vast area of the Amazon which is rich in natural resources.