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Margot MESNARD 05/15/2012

#620046072

GOVT 6067 / Government and Politics of Selected Regions: Latin America

Lecturer: Dr Jessica BYRON

Coursework Essay

The Political Culture of the

Environment in Brazil

Exploring the culture of the environment and the power relations that underline the crafting of environmental policies in Brazil.

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SUMMARY

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………….3

I- The strong legacy of the historical political economy on the culture of

the environment………………………………………………………………....6

A) The developmental economic model under the Patrimonial state……..….6

1- The inexistence of environmental policies until the 30s………..………….6

2- The military dictatorship and the industrial era……………………………8

B) The difficulty in implementing State environmental policies………...…..10

1- The lack of coordination between the federal and local levels……….......10

2- The power of the industrial and agribusiness interest groups………….…12

II- The current paradox of the Brazilian sustainable development

discourse and action………………………………………………………...…14

A) The dilemma between development and environmental protection……..14

1- The State’s conception of sustainable development…………………….....14

2- The importance of the political image vis-a-vis environmental protection..17

B) The redefinition of sustainable development: the way forward?...............19

1- The urgency of changing the economic model………………………….…19

2- The need to understand the human benefits of sustainable development….20

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………22

References…………………………………………………………………………………….23

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INTRODUCTION

Brazil is a giant in Latin America in many ways. It is the largest country of the region,

counting almost 200 million people who are Portuguese speaking. Its economy is diversified

with a high growth rate of around 7.5% in 2010 after the economic crisis of 2008 (CIA

factbook, 2012). This economic growth is largely due to the exploitation of its natural

resources which are diversified thanks to a plethora of different climates and ecosystems. The

majority of its superficies is covered by forests, mainly by the Amazonian rain forest. It also

comprises many different climates and ecosystems, from the coastal forests bordering the long

Atlantic coast called the Mâta Atlantica to the rich and wild Amazonian region and including

wetlands such as the Pantanal which is the largest wetland in the world (Luna Klein, 2006:

132). Until the 30s, the Brazilian economic model has been based on the direct exploitation

and export of its natural resources, mainly mineral and agricultural resources. Brazil is the 4th

mining country in the world in value, extracting iron, ore, bauxite, copper, lead, zinc, nickel,

uranium, diamonds, gold and gems, and accounts for 1.5% of the GDP (Klein and Luna,

2006: 154). Brazil developed principally thanks to its large agriculture, with exportation of

cotton, coffee, sugar, tobacco and cocoa up to the 20th

century. Nowadays the sector of the

agribusiness accounts for one third of Brazil’s GDP (Klein Luna, 2006: 127).

Klein and Luna note that: ‘Brazil like all developing countries initially had little

interest in preserving these natural resources which to many Brazilian seemed limitless’ (Luna

Klein, 2006: 132). I would have added that developed countries used exactly the same

strategy and reliance on natural resources in order to pursue development, but that is not the

topic of the essay. What happened is that this economic model and culture of resources

abundance provided by the environment led to severe environmental destruction through the

years, in an irreversible process. The first affected and visible area of environmental impact is

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on the forest with deforestation ongoing at a rapid pace. The Amazonian forest is heavily

affected and is shrinking years by years, but other environmental problems occur such as the

deforestation of the Atlantic coastal forests, rivers and beaches being polluted by solid sewage

and chemical products, acid rains and global warming (Luna Klein, 2006: 134). In effect, the

environment has many uses and is a natural regulator for carbon emissions, water cycle, soil

erosion and the food chain (Fearnside, 2009: 14).. Preserving the environment and its

ecosystems is crucial for the sustainability of human life and as one component is affected it

has consequences on the overall system of regulation. For example, deforestation leads to soil

erosion, damages the water cycle and causes global warming as trees can no longer absorb

carbon emissions. It also leads to a loss of biodiversity that has an impact on the global

ecosystem and on human life.

Deforestation also leads to interethnic relations problem as Brazil counts more than 345000

indigenous Indians. They more and more actively claim their rights on their native land but

nowadays they are only entitled 0.02% of the total superficies of Brazil of which only half is

properly demarcated (Luna Klein, 2006: 131).

In this essay, I want to show which actors in Brazil have in mind the need to protect the

environment by studying the political culture of the environment in Brazil. According to

Robertson, the political culture is ‘the totality of ideas and attitudes towards authority,

discipline, governmental responsibilities and entitlements, patterns of cultural transmission all

help to determine people’s positions on political issues’ (Robertson, 1993).

I will try to answer to the following questions: What is the culture of the environment

prevailing in Brazil at the government level, business level and civil society level? To what

extent are the environmental policies related to this political culture?

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In the first part, I will show how the economic development model have since colonial time

used natural resources and export led-growth with only little consideration for environmental

issues, making that until the 80s there was no State culture of the environment despite some

attempts to implement environmental policies. I will also show how the heritage of the

Patrimonial state contributes to making weak environmental policies combined with an

inefficient implementation due to centralized governance and powerful interest groups.

In the second part, I will explore the concept of sustainable development concept as a means

to reconcile economic development with human well-being in a sustainable way for the future

generations. I will show that despite the growing awareness around this concept, there is no

common definition shared by all the actors which leads to paradoxes and lack of coordination.

To finish I will provide some recommendations in order to strengthen the culture of

sustainable development in Brazil.

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I- The strong legacy of the historical political economy on

the culture of the environment

The political culture of the environment in Brazil is weak and inherited from the

developmental economic model and of the Patrimonial State in which the protection of the

environment is not a State priority. When they exist, environmental policies are difficult to

implement effectively because of the same heritage in which governance is centralized and in

which powerful interest groups have a considerable political influence.

A) The developmental economic model under the

Patrimonial state

From the colonization of Brazil to the re-democratization process of the 80s, the

environment was used for economic purposes which made that there was no culture of

preserving the environment until that time despite some laws being passed.

1- The inexistence of environmental policies until the 30s

Nascimiento notes that the very name of Brazil comes from a ‘clear environmental

problem’, the extraction of the brazilwood which is now almost extinct (Nascimiento, 2010:

3). Indeed, the environment has always been seen under from an economic perspective and

when the first environmental policies were crafted in the 30s it was to serve the interest of the

State and promote economic growth.

Brazil was discovered by Cabral in 1500. At that time, conquistadores were looking for

precious metals under the dream of El Dorado in order to assert the power of the Portuguese

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Crown in the world. The environment was seen as hostile as the climate was hard to

accommodate to, dangerous fauna and flora populated the forest along with unwelcoming

indigenous communities. The aim was to deforest as much as possible to reach the inland and

find the gold and silver mines but also to start productive activities such as sugar cane,

tobacco, cotton, cacao and coffee production. The slash-and-burn technique was often used

and transmitted from generations to generations of settlers, leading in a continuous poor land

management. 5 million slaves from Africa were brought to Brazil in order to work in the

plantations and a racial society emerged based on the economic value of primary commodities

which were exported to Europe under the exclusive regime.

At the independence time in 1822, this pattern did not change much as the country became an

empire under the reign of Dom Pedro II from the Portuguese royal family. No special policy

on land was made and the status quo remained which means that occupation of land meant to

have title over it and the Crown only distributed land to the elites. The first Land Act was

passed in 1850 for private ownership of land and benefitted to already powerful land-owners.

The main losers were the indigenous communities with who violent conflict arose giving the

victory to the colons most of the time.

Under the Old Republic from 1889 to 1930, the power of the plantation elites was represented

by the dual hegemony of the Sao Paulo state producing coffee and the Minas Gerais state

producing beef and dairy products. They were the main political and economic forces of the

country, and it is mostly their economic superiority that gave them legitimacy.

Vargas in 1930 institutionalized the developmental economic model under the Novo Estado

theory, in order to modernize the country through the State’s dirigiste hand. Several

‘environmental policies’ such as the Forest Code, Mining Code, Water Code and Fishing

Code were passed but only in order to protect the interests of the State instead of protecting

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the environment. For example, the Mining Code consisted in giving the control of mining to

the federal government and make the subsoil a State’s property (Klein, Luna, 2006: 153). In

that sense, the ‘environmental policies’ passed were more economic policies. In parallel, the

first national park was created in 1937 reflecting the conservationist philosophy regarding the

environment in order to preserve nature and biodiversity for the sake of it (Nascimiento, 2010:

3).

Vargas initiated the industrial era under the Import Substitution Industrialization model and it

continued until the 60s with the emergence of an automobile, telecom, energy, steel and air

transport industrial sectors along with the building of massive infrastructures in the country.

All those industrial sectors were and still are heavily dependent on the extraction and

exploitation of the rich natural resources of the Brazilian environment.

From the colonization time no culture of protecting the environment was brought by the

conquistadores or by the Monarchy or economic elites. On the contrary, the environment was

seen as providing an ‘endless ability’ for land title and economic opportunities, especially in

the Amazon (Intrator, 2011: 181).

2- The military dictatorship and the industrial era

The military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985 was a decisive phase in the economic

development of Brazil, and in its correlated environmental destruction. The military based

their legitimacy on the theories of grandeza and National Security Doctrine. The aim was for

Brazil to become a geopolitical superpower and to ensure a strong economic development in

order to be self-reliant and be able to ensure its own national security and was developed

under the rule of Costa e Silva. Rapid industrialization took place and bore its fruits thanks to

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the previous work of the ruling politicians since the 30s. Under the rule of Medeci, the darkest

episode of the military dictatorship regarding the human rights abuses, economic growth

peaked to 11% and was called the economic miracle (Luna Klein, 2006: 42). Massive

infrastructure projects were State-led and decided by a ‘handful of generals in Brasilia’

through private contractors or by directly sending the army like in the construction of the BR-

139 highway (Fearnside, 2009: 1). The conquest and settlement in the Amazon really began at

that time with the government’s expansion efforts (Intrator, 2011 : 231). Hence, the protection

of the environment was not a point of focus and almost anything was good to ensure

economic development and industrialization thanks to the reliance on natural resources.

The military dictatorship only consolidated the ideas of economic developmentalism

that existed since the colonization time as I have shown and of the Patrimonial state.

Raymundo Faoro coined the term of Patrimonial state to express the concentration of the

powers in the Brazilian state, meaning the predominance of the public power and state-led

economic policies and growth, the role of the bureaucracy and the formation of elite groups

such as the military and large landowners (Roett, 1992). The influence of the State in the

economy was particularly strong and regarding environmental matters the military only

requested the advice of the FBCN, a group of conservationist environmentalists really tied to

the political elite. Basically, the military were free to pursue their will of economic growth

while damaging the environment without any opposition.

This situation changed slightly in the mid-70s with the progressive trasition back to

the civilian rule and due to international changes in environmental protection lobbying.

Indeed, the 70s were a period of emergence of environmental movments in the world with the

creation for example of the Friends of the Earth in 1967, of Greenpeace in 1971 and of the

first green political party in New Zealand in 1972. Moreover, 1972 was the date of the first

global environmental summit in Stockholm in which Brazil participated. Although they

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advocated for their right to development, sovereignty over their natural resources and insisted

on the burden of environmental protection for developing countries (Cole and Liverman,

2011), the protection of the environment issue was put on the international agenda and opened

a window of opportunity for discussing environmental matters in Brazil. That is why a Special

Secretariat for the Environment was created in 73 but was never a major political force

(Fearnside, 1999: 8).

To sum up, from the colonization in 1500 to the 80s, there was no culture of

preservation of the environment in Brazil. The economic developmentalist model and the

Patrimonial state formed a political economy matrix in which the preservation of the

environment was completely absent and the exploration and exploitation of natural resources

the dominant pattern.

B) The difficulty in implementing State environmental policies

The legacy of the developmentalist economic model and of the Patrimonial state is

that the political and economic power relations do not allow the effective implementation of

environmental policies in Brazil, mostly because of a lack of coordination between the federal

and local levels and because of the power of interest groups which are closely tied to the

government.

1- The lack of coordination between the federal and local levels

The laws regarding the environment that are passed often face an implementation gap

because of a lack of clarity of the laws and because of the lack of coordination between the

federal and local levels.

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The fact that the laws are flawed since the beginning do not help for an efficient

protection of the environment mechanism. For instance, a major issue in Brazil is linked to

land titles. Since the colonization time, occupation of land meant to have the title on it and

under the Patrimonial State the land elite is the group that concentrates the majority of the

land available for a handful of rich land-owners. That is why even thought a Brazilian Forest

Service exists to monitor and protect the forest, it is inefficient to deal with the areas in which

the land use is ‘undefined’ (Fearnside, 2009: 3).

The lack of coordination between the different governance levels adds to the weakness of

environmental policies enforcement. As Brazil is a huge country, the remoteness of the capital

Brasilia compared to regions in the Amazon makes the State control difficult. Some parts of

the Amazon have become ‘no man’s lands’ with few policemen, prostitutes, drug dealers,

guns and knives battles (Itrator, 2011: 188). Many deaths occurred because of land dispute at

the rate of between 50 and 300 a year in the 80s (Intrator, 2011: 190). For example, the Terra

Do Meio is an area of the size of Switzerland which is completely out of control of the

government and ruled by illegal actors (Fearnside, 2009: 11). When local governments do

exist, they are ineffective in applying environmental policies because of lack of funding and

also lack of political will. Many mayors in the Amazon region tend to ignore illegal activities

in order to gain votes and just close their eyes on the illegal practices occurring (Balakrishnan,

2008). Fraud and corruption are common features in local offices, making that policies

decided at the federal level are never implemented in this case. That is why Marina da Silva

the Ministry of the Environment under Lula until 2008 said that the best solution for

monitoring environmental policies was direct inspection on the ground (Intrator, 2011: 199).

However, as Brazil is a large country, the implementation and initiatives regarding

environmental protection differ from the regions. For instance, the Amazonian State is much

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more pro-active than the federal government in climate negotiations to obtain international

funding to protect the Amazon (Fearnside, 1999: 5).

2- The power of the industrial and agribusiness interest groups

Due to the specific history of Brazil, the industrial and agribusiness groups are powerful

actors that influence the decision-making regarding economic and environmental matters in

order to reflect their own interest.

Under the military dictatorship, the modernization of agriculture occurred in order to create

abundant food supply at a low cost and find new export markets (Luna Klein, 2006: 103). In

order to do so, land was needed but a land reform never happened. An unequal distribution of

land prevails with 1% of the population controlling 47% of the total land in Brazil (Intrator,

2011: 186).

The scheme of land occupation legally or illegally continued despite the attempts to define the

legal areas of land from the illegal. It led to the creation of the Landless Movement, originally

farmers from the South of Brazil that lost their land and were forced to migrate to other

regions (Nascimiento, 2010: 5). The culture of the land was to use the land for an economic

productive purpose and it was the dominant vision at the State level, and encouraged this kind

of practice. In rural states, large land-owners have settled their political power thanks to the

State’s economic development strategy. They are able to influence the local government and

to influence law enforcement in their favour (Intrator, 2011 : 225). In fact, Vanden and

Prevost note that they are able to block any legislation that the government wants to pass

through Congress (Vanden and Prevost, 2002: 506). Their legitimacy comes from their

economic power as the agribusiness sector represented 40% country total exports in 2003 and

the sector in which the foreign trade balance surpassed the trade balance surplus for the nation

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(Luna Klein, 2006: 128). In the Matto Grosso the soy industry boomed recently, and the

owner of the largest soy company called the ‘King of Soy’ in Brazil.

At the government level, this power reflects in the power relation between the Ministry of

Agriculture and the Ministry of the Environment. In fact, there is no link between the two

Ministries which take decisions separately with no coordination which can lead to conflicts of

interest. However in the end, the Ministry of Agriculture often wins as the question of the

environment is not taken seriously by the government (Intrator, 2011: 197). Moreover, the

budget system is not favourable to the Ministry of the Environment as the budget is approved

before the start of the fiscal year and the funds are given out little by little (Fearnside, 2009:

7). If the government realizes that there is a lack of budget to meet all the issues, a fight

among Ministries occur in order to decide which project is the most important. Most of the

time, the Ministry of the Environment is put aside when the Ministry of Agriculture is

favoured (Fearnside, 2009: 8).

The industrial lobby is also extremely powerful like the FISPS - Federation Industry Sao

Paulo State - which represents more than 150 000 companies and can influence the legislation

at the national level (Vanden and Prevost, 2002: 194).

To sum up, the history of Brazil makes that there is no culture of preservation of the

environment at the State level. The wideness of the country makes monitoring of

environmental policies difficult and corruption occurs frequently resulting in the continuation

of illegal practices. Furthermore, the questions related to the environment often come second

after industrial and agricultural development issues.

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II- The current paradox of the Brazilian sustainable development

discourse and action

With the re-democratization era, an environmental consciousness emerged in the civil

society but is confronted to the power dynamics described above. As a result, the government

actually tries to pursue a sustainable development approach but with an emphasis on the

development side rather than on the sustainable side. I will then propose some

recommendations regarding sustainable development in Brazil starting by the necessity for all

the actors to agree on the terms and principles of sustainable development.

A) The dilemma between development and environmental protection

The State since the 80s tries to find a balance between economic development and

environmental protection. Nonetheless, the strong historic legacy makes that colossal

infrastructural projects are continued under the cover of sustainable development because of

the will to preserve a positive political image and because of the international pressure on the

concept of sustainable development.

1- The State’s conception of sustainable development

Since the military era, the aim of the government was to achieve development.

Development was viewed under the prism of the Modernization theory, which means for a

country to shift its economy from an agricultural oriented to industrial oriented economy in

order to achieve economic growth in terms of GDP. Thanks to this entry of money in the

country, the government can provide for the people and lift its people out of poverty.

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That is why since the military all the successive governments have stressed the importance of

the need for development. In Brazil, there are still millions of poor people with no basic

access to running water, decent sanitation and electricity.

The government of Cardoso acted exactly in this perspective in order to put back the country

on track economically. Large infrastructure building was seen as the key for development,

which is true but only if considering the environmental impact first. For example, after the

power shortages of 2001 Cardoso said that it was an imperative to build more dams.

Nowadays, the governments of Lula and of Dilma Roussef face the public opinion for the

building of large hydro-electric dams in the Amazon. The idea is certainly good for poverty

alleviation and on the paper a hydro-electric dam seems to be a more sustainable option than

petroleum-based electric system. In reality, activists denounce the short-term impact on the

environment and the displacement of thousands of indigenous people living in the Amazonian

region.

This development ‘need’ prevails over the environmental protection, and the sustainable

development discourse allow the politicians and the business sector to state that the effects

will be on the long-term, hence minimizing the immediate impact on the environment. It is

true that the bio-ethanol industry and hydro-electric dams are elements for carbon control and

fit in a strategy of sustainable development (Cole and Liverman, 2011: 1). The problem is that

in reality the conditions under which these projects are done are not sustainable and look like

the same infrastructural projects than in the military era. In fact, the fact that the vocabulary is

based on ‘growth’ means an increase in size but not in quality of the economic projects

(Fearnside, 2009: 1). Between 1990 and 2009 with the emergence of the sustainable

development concept, 304,800 square kilometers of land were deforested that is to say the

equivalent of Spain and Portugal together (Fearnside, 2009: 6).

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There is not really a culture of what is sustainable development and it can be used as to cover

the status quo. Let’s examine the emergence of the bio-ethanol sector in Brazil. Klein and

Luna show that its emergence was due to the oil shocks of the 70s and the will of the

government to be less dependent and economically powerful (Luna Klein, 2006: 111). The

motives of the bio-ethanol industry are not issued from the sustainable development concept

and that is why in practice the deforestation linked to the bio-ethanol industry questions the

sustainability of the project. Moreover at the same time, Lula went on a pro-petroleum

extraction economic path, announcing that it was the ‘second independence of Brazil’

(Rodrigues, 2009).

The projects are not sustainable because the government does not put the means for them to

be sustainable. The main example is the weakness of the environmental assessment of

projects which is a ‘last-minute hurdle’ and a ‘token exercise for bureaucratic approval of the

projects’ (Feanside, 2009: 14). It is ineffective because it is not a transparent and independent

process. In fact, the projects can go on even after the submission of a negative report as it is

the same company that is in charge of a project that pays and supervises the study. Moreover,

the timing of the study is not adequate as the environmental assessment is made after the

project was politically decided and almost entirely paid with the contractors already on the

ground (Fearnside, 2009: 6). It is the major reason why Marina da Silva the Minister of the

Environment under Lula quit her functions in 2008.

The culture of sustainable development is not clearly defined and can be interpreted in a

number of ways. Even worst, the concept of sustainable development is used for projects

which are not sustainable at all because of the lack of environmental assessment. The

environmental factor is still not really taken into account in the Brazilian economy, with the

economic and social factors coming first, but because of a question of image the environment

is an integral part of the discourse of the government.

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2- The importance of the political image vis-a-vis environmental protection

The environment is always present in the discourse of the government and officials for

a question of political image.

During the re-democratization period, social movements including environmental movements

emerged with claims for the protection of the environment. The difficulty was for them to find

a common ground but their voice became more and more powerful in Brazil. Tragic events

often mobilized the public opinion and led the government to act, like the assassination of the

famous activist and rubber trapper Chico Mendes in 1988 (Vanden and Prevost: 508). The

Constitution of 1988 includes environmental policies but the implementation gap problem still

prevails.

There is a general idea in the government that ‘past disasters are the fault of the dictatorship’

and it serves as a cover for present environmental problems (Fearnside, 2009: 1). It is true that

the government after the 80s faced an enormous task of improving and crafting environmental

policies based on the existing system. For example, Dilma Roussef is currently criticized for

approving the new Forest Code in which there is a post-hoc legitimation for the claims on

land and provides amnesty for illegal uses before July 2008. She faced a blank sheet regarding

land reform and this Code was an attempt to do so by privileging the small farmers who

occupied land for ever but never had a title. The perverse effect of this law is that as Marina

da Silva calls it is a ‘free pass’ for occupying land now and claiming it later thanks to the

retroactive law of title on it in a couple of years. This law was in stand by for several months

but eventually was passed despite the criticism of a part of the public opinion. In the same

way, the Belo Monte dam project was a serious challenge for Dilma Roussef’s political image

with a large mobilization of the public opinion in Brazil and abroad.

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Nowadays, Brazil faces both internal and external pressure for doing more sustainable

projects than currently. In 2010, it was a shock on the political scene to see that Marina da

Silva representing the green party had 10% of the total votes, leading to another turn in the

elections which had never happened before. The Green party and environmental activists are

now a new force of the Brazilian political scene and they have to be taken into account for the

consolidation of the democracy.

The pressure also comes from the international community and the rising global concern

about climate change and global warming. Globalization made governments realize that

developed and developing countries are all concerned by it and that carbon emissions must be

cut off to mitigate its negative impact. As Brazil is mainly covered in forests and that the

Amazon is one of the largest forests in the world, the international community begs Brazil to

stop deforestation in order to act like a carbon sink and oxygen provider for the planet.

However, for this issue very few countries seem to be willing to take the lead to cut off their

emissions and the current UN REDD system of carbon credits is inefficient with developed

countries preferring to pay developing countries for carbon credit instead of undergoing a

sustainable transformation of their economy and way of life (Intrator, 2011: 202).

To sum up, the environment is becoming a more and more inescapable feature of the

discourses on Brazilian development because of a question of political image. However the

discourse on sustainable development tends to reproduce the same patterns as the traditional

destruction of the environment for economic and social purposes.

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B) The redefinition of sustainable development: the way

forward?

I propose that the term of sustainable development needs to be redefined for the

political class to have a common culture on the economic and social benefits of environmental

protection and sustainable development.

1- The urgency of changing the economic model

Sustainable development is a different way of making the economy function while

taking into account the environmental factor.

The current model of development in Brazil seems to be strong as Brazil resisted well to the

2008 economic crisis but does not seem sustainable on the long term. In fact, the loss of

ecosystem due to deforestation could outweigh the gains from economic development (trapper

to timber). Sustainable development is according to the Bruntland report of 1987 about

meeting the current needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of the

future generation to meet their own needs. Consequently, the current industry might benefit

on the short-term of the natural resources exploitation but the question of the future economic

growth is not the priority. If the timber industry contributed to reforest areas it would benefit

for them in the future, but they have in mind the infinite presence of natural resources. Some

areas of the Amazon are reforested with eucalypt that is resistant, grows fast and can be used

for different purposes, from paper to clothing and furnitures (Luna Klein, 2006: 126).

Underexploited ecosystems could be productive in a sustainable way like the Pantanal

wetland region that could become an ecotourism hotspot (Klein Luna, 2006: 134).

What really needs to be changed is the culture of the protection of the environment. The

economic actors need to understand the benefit of the environment and change their

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entreprenarial model for sustainable development and include social responsibility for the

entreprises. The government should invest un research and development and increase the

budget for the Ministry of the Environment. For example, Brazil’s conservation areas provide

more than R$4 billion ($1.6 billion) to the government through the legal extraction of wood

and rubber, as well as tourism in national parks and forests but the budget allocated to the

conservation areas is less than the quarter of this sum. Also, the environmental assessment of

projects needs to be made independent and accountable in order to be effective and anticipate

the effects of placebo sustainable projects on the environment and avoid a ‘business-as-usual-

scenario (Fearnside, 2009: 11).

2- The need to understand the human benefits of sustainable development

Sustainable development benefits for poverty alleviation, equality and participation in

a society. The culture of the environment people have need to change so that they can become

involved actors of the development of their country.

Civil society has elements to bring to the debate on sustainable development, both

intellectual and practical skills. A collaboration of the government with the indigenous

community of the Suiri for reforestation worked more effectively than government programs

on their own, as they have a good knowledge of the nature and of the forest.

Nonetheless, every citizen can contribute daily to sustainable development by

individual and collective simple actions like the consumption pattern. People need to

understand the importance of the environment for their daily life, such as oxygen and water

provision as a start. Times are changing and this link is mainly made through education and

environmental awareness programs. Back in 1993, the social scientists Crespo and Leitao

showed that the Brazilian conception of the environment was the idea of ‘paradise’ as a

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postcard of virgin nature (Nascimiento, 2010: 8). However the benefit of the environment is

not only aesthetic and impacts the lives daily. With the improvements in education access and

technology, every citizen can be part of the sustainable development and for example can

report themselves deforestation and prove it using tools such as Google (Fearnside, 2009: 10).

Preserving the environment is also a way to reinforce the democracy, by promoting

community-based organizations and the equal opportunity for indigenous people and women

to act for sustainable development in a democratic participatory process.

The culture of the environment should become the main feature of the Brazilian

identity, a country with such a rich biodiversity. If people are proud of their asset instead of

seeing it as a burden for development, action can occur and the government can be made

accountable. Environmental lobbying can be made both in the cities by the emergent middle

class and in the country side by the small farmers supported by the Church. The poorest

people should be included in the sustainable development process that should not be reserved

to the elites, as everybody is impacted in the long-term. It is only by changing the culture that

collective action can occur.

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To conclude, there is an emergent culture of the environment in Brazil since the 80s.

Before this decade and since colonization in 1500, the environment was only viewed as an

economic opportunity and an endless possibility. With the re-democratization process, people

are more aware of the importance of preserving the environment but the government’s

strategy remains more or less the same, based on large infrastructural and agricultural projects

in order to ensure development. The alleviation of poverty is the main feature that guides the

government, but several interest groups have conflicting interests and see only short-term

profits like large land-owners and the industrial sector. After a heavy legacy of economic

developmentalism and patrimonial state, the protection of the environment is still a fragile

notion and the implementation of policies is difficult. However, protecting the environment

has become an inescapable topic in Brazil and the government discourse on sustainable

development flourished since the 80s but not in a homogeneous way. In practice, the result is

that the same developentalist pattern continues under the cover of sustainable development

projects.

The culture of the environment in Brazil is thus very ambiguous as there is an increasing

internal and external pressure since the 80s for the country to protect its most valuable asset:

the environment. The government is torn apart between the inherited structure of the economy

and political power relations and the completion of an effective sustainable development

pattern. I propose that the solution is to redefine for all the actors what sustainable

development is so that a common culture can emerge. It can be done through the

understanding of both the economic and social benefits of sustainable development, in order

to ensure development for the future generations in Brazil, start now an economic

diversification before the resources are extinct, and be beneficial for the planet as a whole by

agreeing to keep its forests for the benefit of mankind.

23

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