By Alberto Acosta on April 26, 2023
photo: Christian Braga
“The jungle, for the indigenous peoples living in the Amazon, is life. The whole world of the kawsak sacha (living jungle) has energy and symbolizes the human spirit both for its strength and its greatness, inner thought where the soul and life are one with Pachamama and that is part of our formation from the very moment we are conceived.” –Patricia Gualinga, Kechwa indigenous leader of Sarayaku
The “economic discovery” of the Amazon region crystallized just a century after Francisco de Orellana’s trip down the Amazon River. The Jesuit Cristóbal de Acuña, special envoy of the King of Spain, informed the crown about the riches existing in the “discovered” territories. In his report, in addition to describing the diverse peoples and cultures he encountered along the way, he mentioned timber, cacao, sugar, tobacco, minerals… resources that still encourage the exploitation of the diverse interests of national and transnational accumulation in the Amazon.
After the colonial era, in the republican stage, the race after “El Dorado” continues. It is enough to see how the predominant style of “development” is based on extracting more and more natural resources from this region, privileged by its biodiversity and the multiplicity of its original cultures. Although in many cases the technologies change, a pattern is repeated that dates back to colonial times: most of the resources are brutally appropriated for export. And this is accelerating at the pace of ever-increasing demand, especially from the centers of metropolitan capitalism. The distressing thing is that, from the national and international centers of power, the Amazon is assumed to be an “empty” or wasteland, there to be conquered and developed.
The Amazon region is treated, in practice, as a periphery in all Amazonian countries, which are in turn the periphery of the world political and economic system.
On the other hand, the discourse on the global importance of the Amazon, so often repeated in multiple international forums, collapses in the face of the reality of a system that, by revaluing its resources in terms of capital accumulation, puts life itself at risk in that region and on the entire planet. Let us bear in mind that the internal rates of return of capital -whether they are extractivist activities or not- are much higher than the capacity of Nature to recover.
In this context, the ruthless extractivism of oil, mining, forestry or agro-exports is accompanied by “modern” forms of increasing commodification of Nature, such as biopiracy or the various carbon markets, typical of the much-publicized “green economy”. By taking forest conservation into the realm of business, air, trees, biodiversity, soil and even water are commodified and privatized. This expands the frontier of colonization. This, in practice, even increases the massive and predatory extraction of natural resources, causing not only the impoverishment of its inhabitants, but also the disappearance of many cultures. It is also distressing to note that people continue to naively trust in science and technology as tools capable of changing the course of this history of death. The truth is that, by destroying the Amazon rainforests, the capitalist serpent continues to devour its own tail.
However, this same Amazon, which is not characterized by its homogeneity, contains much hope. In the face of so many abuses, multiple struggles of resistance emerge that are at the same time actions of re-existence. There, too, powerful visions of the world emerge, loaded with vigorous alternative proposals. The peoples of the region, in practice, constitute the true vanguard of the struggle against ecological collapse. By protecting the forests, they guarantee ecological balance and biodiversity much more than any national or international action. And not only that, these peoples are bearers of other ways of life oriented by harmonious relationships in their communities and with Nature, typical of what we know as good living: sumak kawsay, kawsak sacha, pénker pujústin….
A first step to understand and protect the Amazon, then, demands a realistic approach. Its wealth is definitely not in its negotiable natural resources, but in its cultural and ecological diversity.
Let us go one step further. The relations of the native peoples with their territories are cultural and not simply “natural” as a sort of naïve urban imaginary pretends to see; their forests are the result of a complex weave of permanent and changing reciprocities between human and non-human beings, including the world of spiritual beings. Mother Earth or Pachamama, in short, is not a simple metaphor, for the native peoples it is a reality from which we have much to learn.
The Amazon, without being the much talked about lungs of the world, functions as a great carbon dioxide filter whose global importance is indisputable. In addition, its jungle mass acts as one of the most important regulators of the world’s climate. Therefore, due to its magnitude and the volume of its biodiversity, the increasing destruction of the Amazon has repercussions that affect the global ecological balance. And its rivers, true sacred basins of life, which cannot be pigeonholed in the artificial borders of the Amazon countries, make up a complex network that ensures the existence of human and non-human beings, even outside its geographical area.
Therefore, the commitment to the Amazon is also a commitment to the world. However, those who must assume the leadership and control of the actions to protect it are its inhabitants -especially the native peoples-, as the managers of any transformation process, without external interference, no matter how well-intentioned it may seem. The task, in short, demands reversing the long, painful and disastrous path of conquest and colonization.
Alberto Acosta is an Ecuadorian economist. President of the Constituent Assembly (2007-2008). Judge of the International Tribunal for the Rights of Nature.
Source: Le Monde Diplomatique, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English