The Scramble for the Amazon and the "Lost Paradise" of Euclides da Cunha

Hecht, Susanna B.

doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226322834.001.0001

Cited by 83 publications

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“…Individual land titles facilitate this dynamic, although land is also sold without them. For many smallholders, settling at an agricultural frontier and selling land after a while has become part of their livelihood strategy (Hecht 2011). But also settlers with holdings on fertile soils and better market access transform their forests into other land uses economically more attractive to them, and this is independent from the specific legal land status (Pokorny in press).…”

Section: Recognition Of Local Rightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

REDD+ for the poor or the poor for REDD+? About the limitations of environmental policies in the Amazon and the potential of achieving environmental goals through pro-poor policies

Pokorny¹,

Scholz²,

Jong³

2013

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Once again, the international community focuses on the preservation of Amazonian forests, in particular through a bundle of initiatives grouped under the term of REDD+. Initially focusing on reducing carbon emissions, the REDD+ process became increasingly linked with developmental goals that represent the primary interest of all Amazon countries. In consequence, REDD+ can be seen as another attempt to achieve the twin goals of environmental protection and rural development, and consequently, relies on the strategies and tools of past efforts. Against this background, we explore past experiences with key strategies for environmental protection and poverty alleviation in the Amazon to critically reflect about the potential of REDD+ to contribute to sustainable local development in the region. The analysis demonstrates that initiatives that pursued environmental goals mostly led to more restrictions and bureaucratic barriers to local forest users, while the prevailing approaches to promote rural dwellers showed ambivalent environmental outcomes. Reasons for these unsatisfactory results include the sectoral alignment of the measures and the poor coordination and lack of coherence with decisive policy areas. Most critically, the environmental and social initiatives themselves rely on the classic development approach widely disregarding smallholders' capacities to contribute to local development. The manifold pilot activities emerging under the new REDD+ framework tend to repeat these shortcomings, thereby further accelerating the replacement of local socio-productive schemes with unsustainable land uses. In view of the growing consensus about the ecological incompatibility, social limitations and economic risks of classic development, an alternative vision of development is needed, which more consciously takes into account the immense social and environmental potential of the region. Considering that REDD+ is still at the start, there might be possibilities to re-adjust the framework and thereby turn it into a real contribution to the sustainable development of rural Amazon.

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Section: Recognition Of Local Rightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

REDD+ for the poor or the poor for REDD+? About the limitations of environmental policies in the Amazon and the potential of achieving environmental goals through pro-poor policies

Pokorny¹,

Scholz²,

Jong³

2013

E&S

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“…National borders in South America are often situated in geographically remote areas, following watersheds or river systems far from urban centres. Many indigenous groups were indeed first documented and contacted during expeditions by boundary commissions, such as those of Euclides da Cunha and General Rondôn for Brazil (Hecht 2013) and Robert Schomburgk for what was at the time British Guiana (Rivière 2006). Yet at the same time they are subject to particular kinds of political claims, not only on an international level, but perhaps more importantly on a national level.…”

Section: Isolation and Contact In Guianamentioning

confidence: 99%

Hunter-gatherers in a Changing World

Reyes‐García

Pyhälä

2017

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The periodic emergence of indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation in Amazonia have given rise to sensational media reports and heated academic debate. In this chapter we describe briefly the historical and contemporary relations between indigenous peoples in and out of isolation in the Guiana Shield region of North-eastern South America and discuss the role of indigenous missionaries in histories of contact. After considering these facts in relation to some of the general debates about isolated peoples and policy, we assess the ethical dimensions of the question of emergence from isolation.

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“…Archeologists also found millennia-old ceramics in the lowlands, a two thousand year old 'Amazonian Stonehenge' in the Caribbean Amazon, and the ruins of a three thousands years old house in the Andean foothills. At the time of the European arrival, Amazonia was home to developed societies that used astronomical observatories (Hecht 2013). If Europeans who first ventured down the Amazon River described large settlements, it is because the region was indeed well populated.…”

Section: Worldly Amazonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Susanna Hecht (2013) has retraced the scramble for the Amazon because, in spite of its apparent remoteness, the Amazon is a highly cosmopolitan place at the heart of state-making. The Caribbean Amazon, which Europeans referred to as the Wild Coast, was at the intersection of a tropical 'great game' between France, England, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, native Amazonians, and maroon communities called quilombos.…”

Section: Worldly Amazonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking IR from the Amazon

Picq

2016

Rev. bras. polít. int.

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This article proposes Amazonia as a site to think world politics. The Amazon is invisible in the study International Relations (IR), yet its experiences are deeply global. I present the international dynamics at play in Amazonia at different historical moments to posit that this periphery has contributed to forging the political-economy of what is refer to as the core. The Amazon's absence from the study of IR speaks about the larger inequality in processes of knowledge production. Serious engagements with Amazonia are one way to invite a plurality of worlds in the production of theories, disrupting global divisions of labor in knowledge production ally.Keywords: International relations; Amazonia; core-periphery relations; Global South; knowledge production. Received: November 5, 2015Accepted: April 19, 2016Introduction I n popular discourse, as well as in the discipline of International Relations (IR), the Amazon is not exactly the first place one looks for global politics. It exists, in popular imagination, as a land without history, wild and remote. In this depiction of the Amazon, there are pristine rainforests inhabited by isolated tribes in need of preservation from global forces. Many accounts lead readers to imagine adventurers navigating legendary uncharted waters in search of uncontacted peoples, failing to realize that the Amazon rivers were subject to systematic human manipulation, and that it is Brazil's most rapidly urbanizing region. It is portrayed as a pure source of nature capable of containing global warming, rarely recalling that the Amazon rubber enabled the automobile revolution, which fueled today's climate crisis in the first place. There is a profound gap between what is (un)told about the Amazon and the international interactions at play on the ground. Copyright:• This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original author and source are credited.• Este é um artigo publicado em acesso aberto e distribuído sob os termos da Licença de Atribuição Creative Commons, que permite uso irrestrito, distribuição e reprodução em qualquer meio, desde que o autor e a fonte originais sejam creditados.

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The Scramble for the Amazon and the "Lost Paradise" of Euclides da Cunha

Cited by 83 publications

References 0 publications

REDD+ for the poor or the poor for REDD+? About the limitations of environmental policies in the Amazon and the potential of achieving environmental goals through pro-poor policies

REDD+ for the poor or the poor for REDD+? About the limitations of environmental policies in the Amazon and the potential of achieving environmental goals through pro-poor policies

Hunter-gatherers in a Changing World

Rethinking IR from the Amazon

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