Unfoldings of Environmental Racism: Are They Reaching Rhodolith Beds and Related Sociobiodiversities?

Abstract

Environmental racism may be among the explanations for why we are facing the worst socioenvironmental crisis in the history of humanity, led by a state of climate emergency that could result in an ecocidal genocide of planetary dimensions. Unfoldings of environmental racism even reach towards nature when it is considered subject of rights. Among the marine ecosystems less considered in these discussions are rhodolith beds—reef habitats of red coralline algae, also called maerl beds. When dealing with the feasibility of oil exploration in the Amazon mouth region, an area dominated by extensive rhodolith beds, the Brazilian Association of Petroleum Geologists broadcast live a geologist quoted as saying (transcript follows) ‘… what there is (at the mouth of the Amazon) are coralline algae called rhodoliths, which are common, anywhere in Brazil, and are things, errrrr (with hand gestures and facial expression with negative or pejorative sense), ugly like that, they're not nice at all, (…) and even the rhodolith reefs are dead reefs, dead’. As a result, now, the region is facing the real possibility of extensive oil exploitation. This opinion of a limited aesthetical perspective of which nature is important demands urgent public recognition. Policies that foster rhodolith bed conservation needs, explaining their wealth of valuable contributions to society, must be introduced in formal education, dialoguing with children, young people and adults. Multilateral United Nation forums, during the Ocean Decade, can provide ways to speed up this process, combating different forms of environmental racism and speciesism, buying some time and creating opportunities to establish rhodolith bed conservation as a natural world heritage.