The Controversial question of the Internationalization of the Amazon

Foreword

I believe that everyone at some point in life had a classmate who was prematurely involved with politics; one who always made smart comments in History class and who always participated in the student council to promote “change.” My classmate went a little further: everyday, as I entered my classroom*, I would find “Che” Guevara quotations on the blackboard. The author of the quotations in your class may have been different, but like me, you probably wanted to prove your classmate wrong, or to confirm what he or she was saying.

As I grew up, I learned from such companions about an international “scheme” to steal the natural resources from Brazil. The developed countries would be the ones planning this “scheme," and the general Brazilian public was not aware of it. Though not significant enough to influence my opinion, but frequent enough not to escape my attention, rumors of this international desire for governance upon the Amazon forest and its riparian resources was manifested in the media and by word of mouth. It was as if there were voices whispering, “Stay alert,” while confirmation or factual data was not provided.

As I started this course on Water Government, I thought about introducing the nationalist view represented by such “voices” in opposition to this movement for the internationalization of the Amazon, as if presenting a debate to the reader. I wanted to allow the reader the ability to develop his or her own opinion about this matter. However, as I started reading the material for this class, the online sessions, and the text by Conca, I decided to change slightly the course of this analysis: while the problem presented is the same, I will analyze the different allegations to this problem. Was there ever a movement for internationalization? If so, when and where has it been manifested in the international gatherings, treaties and publications? Are the arguments by the Brazilian media and politicians against this internationalization truthful, and to what extent?

I now live abroad, ridden of all my personal biases, and I am glad for the chance to examine this question under a new light. Embark with me on this journey for the exposure of a myth, or the discovery of the truth!

Arnaldo Angelo Machado

International Management Undergraduate

University of Massachusetts - Boston

January 17, 2009

*In Brazil, the students stay in a classroom assigned to them, while the teachers are the ones moving from class to class. This does not apply to P.E., for obvious reasons.

Water: is it a Human right or an economic commodity?

“Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.”

Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997)

“Water is the blood in our veins.”

Levi Eshkol, Israeli Prime Minister, 1962

Water is essential for the existence of life. Even the simplest cellular function requires water. There are scholars who call it the “elixir of life” for, without water, life, as we know it would not exist. That includes human life. Water constitutes 70% of the human body; therefore, water is a human need for survival.

Many ancient civilizations developed in regions surrounding freshwater, be it in the form of rivers, lakes, or watersheds. We can cite amongst those, the civilizations of the Egypt, China, and Mesopotamia. These civilizations relied on agriculture as their main economic activity. Therefore, the utilization of water was not only necessary to tend one’s basic needs but also to produce food through the irrigation of crops. Water gained a new value that surpassed that of basic human needs. Countries and civilizations with an abundance of water were prosperous, while those that faced continuous drought were condemned to extinction unless they relocated to areas with more favorable conditions. Water was now an economic commodity as well as a vital human need.

With the passing of years and with the birth of Capitalism, the aspect of water as an economic commodity became predominant. States implemented international regimes for water government to ensure the efficient use of water, to regulate the use of international rivers, and to ensure the equal allocation of water among riparian states. It was not until recently, in the last half of the twentieth century, that the world started to look at the distribution of water with a different perspective. The continuous advancement and innovations made by Science have allowed for the discovery of the results of human interaction with the natural ecosystems.

The pollution of oceans, rivers, and the atmosphere in addition to the damage to the ozone layer and the decline of the earth’s biodiversity are the headlines of newspapers around the world. A movement for sustainable development has risen, both among the civil population, and among the higher ranks of the administrative and diplomatic bodies of states.

In the first session of this Global Water class, Robert Weiner wrote, “Sustainable development is based on the notion that economic development should take place in a manner that will not jeopardize the use of the environment by the future generations.” This idea evokes the assistance that needs to be given to the developing countries so that their process of industrialization and economic growth would not mean loss for the world and humankind in general. We would not be far from the truth if we described sustainable development as an effort to avoid errors committed in the past by developed countries.

Growth in environmental awareness caused a shift in the perception of water as an economic commodity. Now states started to perceive water as a human right. Water is now seen as “an integral component of the right to an adequate standard of living and indeed the right of life”, said Mr. Sergio Vieira de Mello, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (The Right to Water). While the right to water is not explicit in the Declaration of Human Rights, it is the basis and the foundation needed in order for all other rights to exist. For example, we would not have enough food without water to irrigate the crops, and the necessary conditions for us to stay healthy would not be attainable without water.

“An estimated 1.3 billion people lacks access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion lack access to adequate sanitation” (Conca, 1). In the whole world, around 10 million people die every year due to the pollution in the cities and the lack of access to appropriate supplies of water and sewage systems. This allows for the appearance and the spreading of diseases transmittable through dirty water and lower sanitary conditions, such as diarrhea, which is the main cause of death for children less than 5 years of age (Livreto da Exposição Água Brasilis).

Based on the horrific proportions of these statistics, the international community has attempted to look for new solutions to the freshwater problem. One of the appointed solutions is the implementation of international regimes. However, the effectiveness and the repercussion of such regimes are questionable due to the limited territorial and enforcement power they have.

While regimes can be very effective when dealing with problems of a more “global” nature, which affect the international “commons” such as the pollution to the atmosphere or the damages to the ozone layer, it is difficult for them to address issues of a more domestic nature, such as the freshwater problem. That form of international government would not be attainable without putting in question a state’s sovereignty. Since rivers are located within the boundaries of states, under a realist and nationalist view they are possessions of the state whose territory they occupy. This is where my research comes into place: a country’s population, government, and military can perceive the international influence upon its rivers, lakes, and watersheds as a threat to their sovereignty and cultural national identity.

Unquestionably, water is a human need and a human right. However, is the internationalization of the basins of a specific country the only way to ensure the equal access to those rights by the global population? Over the next few pages, I will discuss the impact of such discussions on the sense of security of a country’s population and on their perception of the international interests related to their natural resources.

How does the Amazon fit into the Freshwater Problem?

The geographic Explanation

“Brazil’s Amazon basin, some 360 hectares cleaved by the world’s largest river, the Amazon River, whose 80,000 kilometers in length is equal to the distance between New York and Berlin, holds the planet’s greatest biodiversity reserve. This unique, complex, exceptional ecosystem is a colossal Patrimony of Humanity. Should it be internationalized?”

Cristovam Buarque

Image extracted from Wikipidea.com

One of the biggest problems in the study and the understanding of the Amazon are the contradictory facts and information caused not only by the individual methodology used by different authors but also because of the complexity and the difficulty in obtaining such information. For example, there is controversy regarding the precise number of the indigenous population in the area, varying from 150 to 250 thousand. The same happens with the estimates of the deforested areas, CO2 emissions among other sorts of data. It is true that in some cases, these numeric discrepancies reflect distinct economic and social interests. Sometimes, the data published about the Amazon come from speculators, deemed as experts, who never stepped on Amazon ground.

The Amazon forest occupies an area corresponding to 5 million square kilometers, 60% of the Brazilian territory, inhabited by 13 million people, with a demographic density of 2.6 inhabitants per square kilometer (Bezerra, Internacionalização da Amazonia). The Amazon River’s total flow into the ocean during the raining seasons can amount to 190 km3/s. Its volume of water is equivalent to 60 times that of the Nile River (Wikipedia).

The Amazon River is the source of 20% of the freshwater discharged into the ocean. This river has become an invaluable source of freshwater to a world that fights for water. We can take the examples of the conflict for water in the Middle East where 30, out of 37 conflicts for water, are located (Weiner, Session 8). The prospects of water scarcity in a near future urge the international community to protect whatever water we have left. That, in addition to the plans from the Brazilian government for the damming of the Amazon River, the constant deforestation, and the privatization of large parts of the forest makes the world question how capable the Brazilian government is of protecting the natural riches of the Amazon.

In the next chapter, we will see a brief history of the facts that demonstrate the international interest for the Amazon. We will also see the facts that have often been interpreted as an invasion of a country’s sovereignty and as a threat to its national security.

* Latin countries refer to freshwater as “sweet water”, as opposed to the salty water from the oceans.

The Birth of the Controversy – A Historical View

To trace the history of a river or a raindrop . . . is also to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body. In both, we constantly seek and stumble upon divinity, which like feeding the lake, and the spring becoming a waterfall, feeds, spills, falls, and feeds itself all over again. —

Gretel Ehrlich, Islands, The Universe, Home

Boundaries don't protect rivers, people do.

Brad Arrowsmith, Landowner along the Niobrara National Scenic River, Nebraska

Shortly after the discovery of the forest, international interest started driven by curiosity. There were mentions of the immense “Mar Dulce”* in the letter of the Spanish navigator Vicente Pinzon to El Rei and of “the land of cinnamon and El Dorado,” sought by the expeditions conducted by Orellana and Gonzallo Pizarro, brother of the Peruvian conquistador. Such legends filled the minds of European adventurers in the XVI century. In the XVII and XVIII centuries, famous scientists and naturalists, European and North American, came to study the forest. In the first years of the XX century, Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt visited the Amazon. His reports of the visit attracted the international attention to the Amazon (CEPEN, see web links reference).

After this period of initial curiosity, many international events with the main purpose of annexation or the conquering of the Amazon territory took place. These events have been used as examples by the Brazilian population, military, and some representatives of the state to back up the fear for the internationalization of the Amazon. I have listed a brief description of them in chronological order:

1832 – Created in London the Brazilian Commercial Enterprise for Colonization, Agriculture, Cattle, Fabrication of salt and Minerals, to act in the North of Brazil.

1850 – The Campaign for the Exploration of the Natural Resources of the Amazon Matheus E. Maury, articulated by the Hydrographic Superintendent of the USA, which wanted to establish free international navigation in the Amazon River, comparing its volume of water to that of the ocean and defending that the rules applicable to international navigation should be applied to the river.

1853 – The American diplomat W. Trousdale attempted to persuade the Brazilian government that the Amazon River should be opened to the commerce of other nations (Trousdale, 1).

1945 – UNESCO proposed the creation of the International Institute of Hylean Amazon (IIHA), for the development of scientific researches, controlled by a Supranational Counsel in which Brazil would only have one vote. The IIHA project should gather the countries of the region: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and the three Guyana: French, English, and Dutch. It was the first proposal for an international research institute that was based on the ideas of evolutionism and cultural diversity, both synthesizing in the idea of scientific humanism by Huxley. It had the ecology as background as well as the human ecology, and anthropology among its scientific objectives. However, it did not succeed due to very strong political problems, involving geopolitics and nationalism (the region was considered as a national security region), and economical interests in the region then (UNESCO, First Annual Report, 1947).

1964 – The formulation of the Theory of the Great Lakes by the Hudson Institute for the production of energy and improvement of the access to water. A citation from the web says the following about the project, “I have always been fascinated by the persistence of references in Brazil to a proposal by the Hudson Institute in 1965 suggesting a scheme of “great lakes” in the Amazon as a solution to the energy needs of the hemisphere. (…) Over the past decade, I had kept a lookout for references to it, but until I finally decided several months ago to put in the time necessary to track it down, I had never seen either the paper itself, or even a footnote to it. Although I have still not found the paper, I have finally tracked down the reference, through another paper by the same author called “Some Aspects of the Amazon Basin.” The latter appears to exist outside the Hudson Institute only in the library of the New York Botanical Garden, where (according to a handwritten marginal note) it was deposited on January 19, 1978 by Dr. Robert Goodland. The original paper was apparently entitled “A South American Great Lakes System,” and was, like its successor, written by Robert Panero. Both are Hudson Institute papers, with circulation limited to the Institute staff and with no formal review procedures. Multiple disclaimers insist that it represents the views of the author alone and not of the Institute, its staff, its members, or its contracting agencies” (Keck, 47).

1966 – The Jari Project, from the American entrepreneur Daniel Ludwig, who intended to aggregate 3 million hectares under his possession.

1991 – The Minutes of the Pan American Cultural Survival, written by the American senators, making any accord related to the international debt to the conditions of living of the indigenous populations.

It is important to emphasize that the description of the facts above is not intended as a complete historic view of the question of the internationalization of the Amazon, nor does it describe facts that necessarily connect with such a view. My only intention in describing such facts is to enlighten the reader as to why such a strong opposition to the internationalization exists in Brazil.

Added to the number of historical facts that justify the fear of the internalization of the Amazon, we find the influence of the means of communication, more noticeable through the Internet. An example of that was a group of Brazilians who developed an extremist website and created the “news” that an American geography textbook was being used by middle, junior and high school. The “book” showed a map of Brazil that indicated the Amazon as an international territory. If that was not enough, they sent hundreds of emails containing the message and picture below:

“There are those who say this is a lie, but this absurd is already confirmed. The next Iraq is here!”

Two Brazilian newspapers received multiple letters from irate members of the community and published an article about the “book”. The staff from the Newspapers discovered the fraud only after their readers started to ask them what was source of the map. The newspapers issue articles rectifying the information and reporting the fraud to the community. Despite that, that email is still circulating in the Internet and grasping the attention of many unadvised readers. It is important to mention that such a gross alteration of the truth would not escape the eyes of the American departments of Education (Novak, see web links reference). Another common idea in extremist articles is the comparison of the internationalization of the Amazon to the Vietnamese War (CMI Brasil, see web links reference).

By reading the brief review of historical facts that have pointed in some way to the internationalization of the Amazon, we can see a link in the past to that idea. After taking in consideration fraudulent communication, especially over the Internet, we can understand why this idea lasts until today. However, the intensity with which this issue is brought to mind in Brazil is not justifiable only by internal facts. I will present next external factors that may influence the opinion of the Brazilian community today.

What does the World Say about the Issue

Despite the false alerts by the left-winged, extremist media or historical facts that may show a succession of events for the internationalization of the Amazon, nothing is as damaging to the public opinion of the Brazilian population than the repeated, maybe unadvised, quotes from various prominent personalities around the world. Among them (CMI Brasil, web links)*:

“Contrary to what the Brazilian people think the Amazon is not theirs, it is of all of us”

Al GoreAl Gore, 1989, United States Vice President

“Brazil should delegate part of its rights upon the Amazon to the respective international organizations”

Mikhail GorbachevMikhail Gorbachev, 1992, ex-dictator of the extinct Soviet Union

“Brazil needs to accept a relative sovereignty over the Amazon”

François Mitterrand, 1989, President of France at the time

“If the developing countries cannot pay for their external debt, let them sell their riches, their territory, and their factories.”

Margareth Tatcher, 1983, England’s Prime Minister at the time.

“The Amazon is a Patrimony of the Humanity. The possession of this immense area by the already mentioned countries (Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador) is purely circumstantial”

World Council of the Christian Churches gathered in Geneva, 1992

“Only internationalization can save the Amazon”

Group of the Hundred, 1989, City of Mexico

*Please, note that these are approximate translations of what was actually said.

Recently, on May18, 2008, The New York Times printed the article Whose Rain Forest is This Anyway?, which caused great commotion in Brazil. The article stated, “A chorus of international leaders has declared the Amazon part of a patrimony far larger than that of the nations that share its territory” (BarrioNuevo, see web links). The article criticizes the decision of the Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to require permission for entrance into the rain forest by Brazilian and foreign visitors alike. It criticizes the fear of biopiracy and foreign scientific research in the forest as “paranoid.”

While the point of view of individuals or a newspaper will not reflect the opinion of the international community as a whole, the impact it has on the minds of the Brazilian public is enormous. Having gone over the historical data and the media arguments for internationalization, I will move on to the main subject of this analysis: the nationalist answer to the threat, real or not, of the internationalization of the Amazon.

The Nationalist Point of View – State’s Sovereignty at Risk

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

Frederic Bastiat

Just what is it that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another it is for the sovereignty of self-governing people”

Woodrow T. Wilson, American 28th President of the United States 1856-1924

In response to the article in the New Your Times, the magazine Veja, of national repercussion in Brazil published a series of questions and answers about the internationalization of the Amazon in May 2008. In the article, the question of the internationalization was treated as something that should not be feared by the Brazilian community, given there are no plans being made for its implementation. Nonetheless, the article states that 72.7% of the civilian population fears that. In fact, no serious international organization has claimed any sovereign rights over the forest. Whenever a person in a position of authority made any unfortunate comments about the subject, the respective diplomatic body refuted the comment as being of personal nature, not reflecting the point on view of the country in question. The same article mentions Lula’s response to the article in the New York Times, which was that the Amazon belongs to the Brazilian people.

Tarso Genro, Minister of Justice, said “There are different points of view in the international community that treat the Amazon as a territory of the Humanity, not as Brazilian territory. This claim hides the economic interests over the Amazon as a reserve for planetary multinational corporations for the territory control of other states over Brazil.” Despite the criticism received in the New York Times’ article, the government will move...