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Seventy four percent of the Brazilian Amazon population lives in cities. This percentage is lesser in Peru (54%), but it’s rapidly increasing and in both countries the growth of urban population is greater than of rural population. In other words, it’s urban dwellers, even in the Amazon, who have the greatest influence and ultimately decide upon the region, in spite of their understanding of the reality being incomplete and many having practically never left city limits. They know about the Amazon just as much or even less than inhabitants of other state capitals, but the feeling of being “far away” makes them lean towards accepting as desirable the building of more means of communication and to rapidly occupy all land areas and, of course, to shift the use of forest land to agriculture, as it was with the lands which they came from. They also need energy and, therefore, are in favor of oil drilling and the construction of large hydroelectric powerplants. Even more so because they will receive financial benefits (oil royalties, for instance) or privileged job opportunities from these economic activities.
The rise in urban population comes in great part from local migration. Riverside farmers or forest inhabitants, including the indigenous population, are lured to the city by the presupposed or real benefits it offers, but their lack of preparation leads them to the miserable suburbs of cities such as Iquitos and Pucallpa, in Peru, or Manaus, Porto Velho and Rio Branco, in Brazil. From the latter, Laranjal do Jari is the most extreme case. All Amazonian capitals have extensive areas of misery and suffer from serious deficiencies in public services, among other things.
In countries such as Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, the new indigenous peoples have considerably assimilated the life of national majorities. They started a struggle often radicalized by demands that in some instances are fair while in others are downright absurd, such as when, while being a national minority, they aim to impose their viewpoints over all the inhabitants of the great nations. They do this even in countries such as Bolivia and Peru, who have enormous populations of indigenous Andeans who do not think like they do. These modern Amazonian indigenous populations, highly politicized and well organized, constitute a new reality that was practically unforeseeable two or three decades ago. Aside from this, they legally possess a large share of the Amazon, especially in Brazil, where their lands amount to more than 100 million hectares, or 20% of the Brazilian Amazon. In Colombia they also own a considerable share of land and in Peru it increases with each passing year.
| “All countries, but especially Brazil, are thick with public construction projects, such as roads and hydroelectric powerplants, which provide visible development while at the same time being intrinsically connected to massive forest devastation for farm use.” |
Another old truth that has recently lost its weight is that the Amazon has no infrastructure. All countries, but especially Brazil, are thick with public construction projects, such as roads and hydroelectric power plants, which provide a visible development while at the same time being intrinsically connected to mass forest devastation for farm use. There are already a great many in existence, but what’s being planned for the next two decades is truly enormous in terms of roads, railways, waterways, hydroelectric plants, airports and, especially to facilitate the increased exploitation of oil and mineral resources. The density of the infrastructural interventions planned for Brazil, Peru and Bolivia will soon erase the differences between this and other regions in this country. Many of these projects, as is well known, are only justified by the fact that they would be satisfying geopolitical and company interests (especially in finances and civil construction areas).
A green Amazon? Is it possible to manage the natural Amazonian forest cover in a sustainable manner?
About 60 years ago, with the help of the UN’s FAO Forestry Department, experiments were initiated in Brazil and other countries in the region for the sustainable management of natural forests. This was a response to the predominant truths surrounding the Amazon based on the evidence that it was covered by exuberant forests.
Slogans were coined such as “forest country” and the idea was sold that this was the Amazon’s greatest wealth, that it would generate a sustainable income for all eternity. Sadly, after many decades of heavy investments in the formation of foresters, research projects, forest inventories and management plants that were never carried out, one can say that there is no forestry management in the Amazon and that its great wealth and sustainability were nothing but an illusion. Today, the remaining forests are degraded and many are still being exploited anarchically and in an unsustainable manner, while not offering any significant benefits to the national economy and even less to society.
What happened? The answer is simply that the natural Amazonian forests are not as valuable in terms of lumber as they may seem and that, above all, the governments have never been able to impose a shred of order in its exploitation, something that hasn’t even been solved through the voluntary certification experiments. The reason is that it’s not possible to conduct forestry management, in other words a complex business, on the long term and also requiring large investments, while all neighbors of the serious forestry investor exploit lumber however and whenever they want, with complete disregard for the law, and when a guarantee is not even offered that their forest will not be invaded by farmers or loggers. It’s even worse when the government, instead of helping serious investors, dedicates itself to torturing them with the toughest bureaucracy, all while it fails or willfully neglects to notice the illegality that rules over 95% or more of forest exploitation.
Besides that, it’s necessary to acknowledge that to manage natural tropical forests while fulfilling the requirements, some of them quite extravagant, imposed by international bodies and replicated here by national forestry services, is an impossible task if any profit is to be desired. Not even Malaysia, who was for eight decades the worldwide role model of forestry management, was able to pass the filtering tests known as “sustainability indicating criteria” that, as they are now, serve as yet another encouraging factor for illegality. Proof of this is that forest enterprises in Brazil, for example, prefer to focus on reforesting or silviculture, working with domesticated tree species such as eucalyptus or pine. It is a well known fact that in this they have been quite successful.
| “Natural tropical forests are not a renewable natural resource. If they are tapped, they are destroyed.” |
Well known personalities from 30 years ago had already anticipated this evolution. They were highly criticized for daring to speak up, even by the author of this work, who did not share this vision then. But the proof is there. Natural tropical forests are not a renewable natural resource. If they are tapped, they are destroyed. To perform a sustainable management it would be necessary first to rebuild the states of tropical countries, transforming them into true democracies ruled by law and order. But everything indicates that when we achieve this goal there will be no more natural forests.
New geopolitics
A lot has also changed in the vision of those who make international policies for the Amazon. Though the legend still lives, because it serves some cheap politicians, that the US or another power wants to invade, annex or internationalize the Amazon, but nobody seriously believes that this could be true or possible anymore. The new argument to sell fear of this risk is based on the importance of the Amazon as a carbon reserve that could aggravate the climate change process. This importance is real, but, for a thousand scientific and economic reasons, no single power or all of them together would need to internationalize the Amazon for this reason. To solve the problems, it would suffice if the rich countries would pay what is fair to the current owners. Another argument that politicians like to bring about is that the rich countries wish to possess the Amazon because “the governments of Amazonian countries show incompetence or lack of will to take care of it”. This, as we know, is also true. But it doesn’t justify spending the fortune that an intervention would cost and suffering the indescribable conflicts that this move would imply, when there are other ecosystems such as in seas and oceans that perform the same function and should also be protected. In the end, this is nothing but stupidity.
Brazil takes up more than half of the Amazon. This was accomplished slowly, but with large steps and not always peacefully. All Amazonian countries have developed frontier occupation policies (“live frontiers”) to stop this advance. But the country who most developed this type of strategy was Brazil. The height of this policy was reached during the military governments who created a network of frontier pathways across all of Brazilian Amazon. So, logically, the Amazonian countries never doubted the dominant role of Brazil in this region. But, through prudence and sheer lack of resources, governments of Andean countries never made any serious efforts to communicate with Brazil. Until a decade ago, Peru, the country with the largest Amazonian territory after Brazil, only communicated with its neighbor by airplane or from small boats navigating for days through the Amazon River. For this reason, in spite of all, Brazil did not play an important role in the Amazon neighboring countries.
| “Brazil studies, finances, builds, operates and “buys” everything or nearly so from Peru, leaving it to pay for a skyrocketing debt and an environmental liability that will soon become incalculable.” |
Everything changed in the last decade. Not so much because Brazil changed its behavior, but because it changed its tactics owing to several factors, among which the following stands out: the favorable economic moment and the rapidly growing energy needs for supporting its growth, a need that was helped by the ascendance to power of governments very favorable to visible development and careless with their national heritage, especially Peru.
Peruvian presidents Fujimori and, especially, Toledo and García unconditionally opened the doors to Brazilian economic expansion that currently forges ahead with its own development plan in Peruvian Amazon, catering to its own market, mineral and energy needs. Brazil studies, finances, builds, operates and “buys” everything or nearly so from Peru, leaving it to pay for a skyrocketing debt and an environmental liability that will soon become incalculable. Brazil also applies this behavior to its own vast Amazon, and to other Amazonian countries as well, be they Andean or from northeast South America. In every country, infrastructures and exploitation of natural resources serve, increasingly, to fulfill Brazil’s demands and to satiate the greed of its companies while, decreasingly, to help them prosper in a sustainable way. Gone is the time when it was true that the Amazon was predominantly prospected to serve developed nations from other corners of the planet.
A region that does not contribute to the gross domestic product?
Except during the sad days of rubber extraction, the Amazon has always been considered a region that contributed only marginally to the country’s GDP. This was felt especially on the Andean-Amazonian countries and it has partially justified the nation’s contempt for this remote and “useless” region. The situation changed when known oil reserves started being tapped during the 70’s and the 80’s, but more importantly when the international price of oil and fresh new discoveries allowed the expansion of operations to heretofore unimagined levels before the 90’s. Today, oil, gas and legalized mining, not counting illegal activities such as those connected to drug trafficking and irregular mining operations, are generating more wealth and contributing increasingly more to the country’s economy. In Brazil, aside from large scale mining, the contribution to the economy comes from farm expansion, based on extensive livestock breeding and very intensive agriculture, both activities which already occupy a great part of this country’s Amazon, especially in the states of Mato Grosso and Pará. The exploitation of hydroelectric plants and oil reserves in the Brazilian Amazon is elevating its contribution to the GDP.
One of the permanent problems when estimating the contribution towards the Amazon’s GDP lies in the criteria employed to define this region, especially in the Andean countries. In fact, if instead of defining it through political criteria or, if only by the existence of forests, a basin criterion was employed, the Amazon would probably be the region that most contributes to the national economy. This way, in Peru’s case for instance, the majority of the great mines and hydroelectric power plants are located in this basin, which they contaminate. But their contributions to the economy are computed in their respective districts (states of Peru) or directly in Lima, due to criteria that mask their origin.
Conclusion
The passage of time implies neverending changes. But some regions change faster than others. There exists in the Amazonian countries no other region that has suffered as rapid and radical changes as this one. It’s due to the speed of all these changes that so much confusion still exists to so many people and sadly, also among decision makers, over what it really is, both currently and in the foreseeable future.
The author of this article admits that his perceptions are disputable and, obviously, recognizes that those knowledgeable of Amazonian subjects already know all that’s been said and much more. This article was not written for them. It was written aiming at the majorities whose votes determine the future of their countries. Its pretentious goal is to help the next heads of state to think before making decisions that will pave the future of the Amazon.
Read the first part of this article:
The Amazon Rainforest: Truths that change – Part 1 
