Ecologia - Leonardo Boff

Ecologia Ambiental

Esta primeira vertente se preocupa com o meio ambiente, para que não sofra excessiva desfiguração, com qualidade de vida e com a preservação das espécies em extinção. Ela vê a natureza fora do ser humano e da sociedade. Procura tecnologias novas, menos poluentes, privilegiando soluções técnicas. Ela é importante porque procura corrigir os excessos da voracidade do projeto industrialista mundial, que implica sempre custos ecológicos altos.



Se não cuidarmos do planeta como um todo, podemos submetê-lo a graves riscos de destruição de partes da biosfera e, no seu termo, inviabilizar a própria vida no planeta.





Ecologia Social

A segunda _a ecologia social_ não quer apenas o meio ambiente. Quer o ambiente inteiro. Insere o ser humano e a sociedade dentro da natureza. Preocupa-se não apenas com o embelezamento da cidade, com melhores avenidas, com praças ou praias mais atrativas. Mas prioriza o saneamento básico, uma boa rede escolar e um serviço de saúde decente. A injustiça social significa uma violência contra o ser mais complexo e singular da criação que é o ser humano, homem e mulher. Ele é parte e parcela da natureza.



A ecologia social propugna por um desenvolvimento sustentável. É aquele em que se atende às carências básicas dos seres humanos hoje sem sacrificar o capital natural da Terra e se considera também as necessidades das gerações futuras que têm direito à sua satisfação e de herdarem uma Terra habitável com relações humanas minimamente justas.



Mas o tipo de sociedade construída nos últimos 400 anos impede que se realize um desenvolvimento sustentável. É energívora, montou um modelo de desenvolvimento que pratica sistematicamente a pilhagem dos recursos da Terra e explora a força de trabalho.



No imaginário dos pais fundadores da sociedade moderna, o desenvolvimento se movia dentro de dois infinitos: o infinito dos recursos naturais e o infinito do desenvolvimento rumo ao futuro. Esta pressuposição se revelou ilusória. Os recursos não são infinitos. A maioria está se acabando, principalmente a água potável e os combustíveis fósseis. E o tipo de desenvolvimento linear e crescente para o futuro não é universalizável. Não é, portanto, infinito. Se as famílias chinesas quisessem ter os automóveis que as famílias americanas têm, a China viraria um imenso estacionamento. Não haveria combustível suficiente e ninguém se moveria.



Carecemos de uma sociedade sustentável que encontra para si o desenvolvimento viável para as necessidades de todos. O bem-estar não pode ser apenas social, mas tem de ser também sociocósmico. Ele tem que atender aos demais seres da natureza, como as águas, as plantas, os animais, os microorganismos, pois todos juntos constituem a comunidade planetária, na qual estamos inseridos, e sem os quais nós mesmos não viveríamos.





Ecologia Mental

A terceira, a ecologia mental, chamada também de ecologia profunda, sustenta que as causas do déficit da Terra não se encontram apenas no tipo de sociedade que atualmente temos. Mas também no tipo de mentalidade que vigora, cujas raízes alcançam épocas anteriores à nossa história moderna, incluindo a profundidade da vida psíquica humana consciente e inconsciente, pessoal e arquetípica.



Há em nós instintos de violência, vontade de dominação, arquétipos sombrios que nos afastam da benevolência em relação à vida e à natureza. Aí dentro da mente humana se iniciam os mecanismos que nos levam a uma guerra contra a Terra. Eles se expressam por uma categoria: a nossa cultura antropocêntrica. O antropocentrismo considera o ser humano rei/rainha do universo. Pensa que os demais seres só têm sentido quando ordenados ao ser humano; eles estão aí disponíveis ao seu bel-prazer. Esta estrutura quebra com a lei mais universal do universo: a solidariedade cósmica. Todos os seres são interdependentes e vivem dentro de uma teia intrincadíssima de relações. Todos são importantes.



Não há isso de alguém ser rei/rainha e considerar-se independente sem precisar dos demais. A moderna cosmologia nos ensina que tudo tem a ver com tudo em todos os momentos e em todas as circunstâncias. O ser humano esquece esta realidade. Afasta-se e se coloca sobre as coisas em vez de sentir-se junto e com elas, numa imensa comunidade planetária e cósmica. Importa recuperarmos atitudes de respeito e veneração para com a Terra.



Isso somente se consegue se antes for resgatada a dimensão do feminino no homem e na mulher. Pelo feminino o ser humano se abre ao cuidado, se sensibiliza pela profundidade misteriosa da vida e recupera sua capacidade de maravilhamento. O feminino ajuda a resgatar a dimensão do sagrado. O sagrado impõe sempre limites à manipulação do mundo, pois ele dá origem à veneração e ao respeito, fundamentais para a salvaguarda da Terra. Cria a capacidade de re-ligar todas as coisas à sua fonte criadora que é o Criador e o Ordenador do universo. Desta capacidade re-ligadora nascem todas as religiões. Precisamos hoje revitalizar as religiões para que cumpram sua função religadora.





Ecologia Integral

Por fim, a quarta - a ecologia integral - parte de uma nova visão da Terra. É a visão inaugurada pelos astronautas a partir dos anos 60 quando se lançaram os primeiros foguetes tripulados. Eles vêem a Terra de fora da Terra. De lá, de sua nave espacial ou da Lua, como testemunharam vários deles, a Terra aparece como resplandecente planeta azul e branco que cabe na palma da mão e que pode ser escondido pelo polegar humano.



Daquela perspectiva, Terra e seres humanos emergem como uma única entidade. O ser humano é a própria Terra enquanto sente, pensa, ama, chora e venera. A Terra emerge como o terceiro planeta de um Sol que é apenas um entre 100 bilhões de outros de nossa galáxia, que, por sua vez, é uma entre 100 bilhões de outras do universo, universo que, possivelmente, é apenas um entre outros milhões paralelos e diversos do nosso. E tudo caminhou com tal calibragem que permitiu a nossa existência aqui e agora. Caso contrário não estaríamos aqui. Os cosmólogos, vindos da astrofísica, da física quântica, da biologia molecular, numa palavra, das ciências da Terra, nos advertem que o inteiro universo se encontra em cosmogênese. Isto significa: ele está em gênese, se constituindo e nascendo, formando um sistema aberto, sempre capaz de novas aquisições e novas expressões. Portanto ninguém está pronto. Por isso, temos que ter paciência com o processo global, uns com os outros e também conosco mesmo, pois nós, humanos, estamos igualmente em processo de antropogênese, de constituição e de nascimento.



Três grandes emergências ocorrem na cosmogênese e antropogênese: (1) a complexidade/diferenciação, (2) a auto-organização/consciência e (3) a religação / relação de tudo com tudo. A partir de seu primeiro momento, após o Big-Bang, a evolução está criando mais e mais seres diferentes e complexos (1). Quanto mais complexos mais se auto-organizam, mais mostram interioridade e possuem mais e mais níveis de consciência (2) até chegaram à consciência reflexa no ser humano. O universo, pois, como um todo possui uma profundidade espiritual. Para estar no ser humano, o espírito estava antes no universo. Agora ele emerge em nós na forma da consciência reflexa e da amorização. E, quanto mais complexo e consciente, mais se relaciona e se religa (3) com todas as coisas, fazendo com que o universo seja realmente uni-verso, uma totalidade orgânica, dinâmica, diversa, tensa e harmônica, um cosmos e não um caos.



As quatro interações existentes, a gravitacional, a eletromagnética e a nuclear fraca e forte, constituem os princípios diretores do universo, de todos os seres, também dos seres humanos. A galáxia mais distante se encontra sob a ação destas quatro energias primordiais, bem como a formiga que caminha sobre minha mesa e os neurônios do cérebro humano com os quais faço estas reflexões. Tudo se mantém religado num equilíbrio dinâmico, aberto, passando pelo caos que é sempre generativo, pois propicia um novo equilíbrio mais alto e complexo, desembocando numa ordem, rica de novas potencialidades.

Gentle rottweiler: Laurie Taylor interviews Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins' attack on religion has been hailed, revered and derided. He talks to Laurie Taylor about the mixed reception of The God Delusion
Laurie Taylor
Before I went to talk to Richard Dawkins in his Oxford home about the critical reactions to his best-selling book The God Delusion, I sat down and watched a quite extraordinary video of one episode from his promotional tour of the States. In this short film we see Dawkins reading extracts from his book and answering questions before an audience in Lynchburg, Virginia. This is already sensational enough: a no-holds-barred atheist standing up and strutting his evolutionary stuff in a town principally famous for the existence of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, a university which proudly announces in its prospectus that “Liberty’s professors integrate a Christian worldview into every subject area… They join Liberty only after completing a rigorous interview process that confirms a born-again relationship with Christ.”

But what is truly extraordinary about this video is that although Dawkins is repeatedly confronted by students and academics from Liberty University, he never seems in any danger of losing the sympathy of most of his large audience. There are even moments when his replies attract not just generous applause but what sound awfully like enthusiastic cheers. As an exercise in consciousness-raising it may hardly be analogous to Stokely Carmichael arousing a black audience with the declaration that “black is beautiful”, but it does suggest that Dawkins was very astute when he described his new book as an invitation to atheists to come out of the closet and publicly declare their disbelief.

He greeted me with his customary friendliness, proposed coffee, and then settled down to answer my questions with quite enough eagerness to allow me to forget that he had been through scores of rather similar interviews in recent months. I reminded him that last time we had met, during an IPPR/New Humanist debate at the 2006 Labour Party Conference, I’d expressed anxiety about the reception he might receive from god-loving Americans during his forthcoming publicity tour.

“Well, let me tell you, it was quite an agreeable surprise. Everywhere I went, including Kansas and Lynchburg, I got rapturous responses. Obviously I was preaching to the choir but I hadn’t realised that the choir was going to be quite so big or so enthusiastic. In Lynchburg they’d obviously bussed them in from Liberty University and so they tended to dominate the questions. They were asking what they thought were testing questions, but the home crowd really were roaring their applause each time I knocked them down. It was rather like a wrestling match.”

“You felt that there was a sense of relief that at last somebody was speaking out. Your analogy with raising consciousness really seemed to hold?”

“Oh yes. I think it really does hold. It was what everybody said in the book signing queues. Time after time, people would say, often in a whisper, ‘Thank you. Thank you.’ And I now get so many letters from people in America who say that they were afraid to come clean and say that they really didn’t believe. Sometimes they are afraid of their family, their parents, or their fiancée. Others are afraid of being victimised at work or passed over for promotion.”

I’d decided to start with what I knew was the unexpectedly generous response he’d received in the States because I wanted the main part of my interview to concentrate on the far more critical reaction to his book from a large range of popular and academic reviewers. Had he been ready for this barrage of hostility?

“It was quite a shock to me. All my previous books have been pretty favourably reviewed on the whole. But this one is the exception. It got off to a good start with Joan Bakewell in the Guardian and an anonymous one in the Economist but not elsewhere. I think that because the book has the word ‘God’ in the title they get religious people to review it. So what do you expect?”

“But”, I suggested, opening my file of quotations, “there were some interesting consistencies in this criticism. As far as I can see nobody strongly objected to the way in which you used evolutionary theory to challenge the idea of an initial creator, but there was real concern about your subscription to the idea of moral evolution. Some reviewers quite clearly regarded your belief in the progressive nature of what you call the liberal zeitgeist as a serious departure from strict rationality. Although you admit that there might be temporary setbacks to this progression, the movement is always forward. Contrast that with the views of someone like John Gray, professor of political science at LSE and author of Straw Dogs, who is every bit as Darwinian as yourself but nevertheless reaches deeply pessimistic conclusions about the possibility of human progress.”

“Well, in fact, I could be very wrong about this. But I thought that the illustrations I gave of the moving zeitgeist were fairly convincing. I feel that you can more or less judge the decade in which a piece of prejudice was written by the nature of the prejudice. One can say that this or that piece of prejudice dates from, say, the 1930s. There’s a kind of time signature to social attitudes.”

But wasn’t this to ignore the evidence of the past? I reminded him of the rush of books in the 19th century, like Hobhouse’s Morals in Evolution, which had appropriated Darwinian theory in order to argue that the world was becoming incrementally more moral and that such a movement could only continue in the future. But then, of course, Hobhouse and the other moral evolutionists had been entirely confounded in the first half of the 20th century by the arrival upon the scene of Stalin and Hitler and their organised campaigns of mass extermination.

As I knew from our previous meetings, and from attending his lectures, he always pays close and almost flattering attention to someone else’s arguments. He never rushes in with a response but carefully acknowledges the point before gently countering. His tenacity is only evident in the manner in which he pursues the argument. This was no exception. He was happy to admit that fascism and soviet communism created problems for his moving zeitgeist but still wanted to stick by his thesis.

“We have to consider the advancing technology that made it so much more possible for a Hitler or a Stalin to do the horrible things they did. If you planted Hitler or Stalin back in the middle ages, would they have stood out as they do to us now, or would they have seemed par for the course in terms of their nastiness? I would still suggest that they were temporary setbacks. There is general progress. We don’t now have slavery. We have equal respect for women. A universal revulsion against Hitler. Nobody can now say what Hitler once said without being instantly shouted down.”

Was he really happy to describe a planned policy to exterminate an entire race of people as “a temporary setback”?

“But that belief in the extermination of an entire race, you can say that it was a last gasp.”
But wasn’t this, as his critics insisted, not so much a rational argument as a personal belief? Not so much science as good old-fashioned optimism, a readiness to admit to what could only be called a belief in moral progress, to an ideological optimism?

“Well, I hope that someone in your field is giving proper attention to this because the idea of progress seems to me to be plausible but I wouldn’t be able to argue it for very long. But, yes, I think that is a fair cop. I am an optimist.”

It’s this sort of readiness to concede which causes some of the ambivalence one finds among both Dawkins’ friends and enemies. Anyone who reads The God Delusion can hardly doubt that they are often in the presence of an out-and-out dogmatist. Religious beliefs are mocked, subverted and finally dispatched with an almost chilling logic. There are almost no concessions to agnostics or deists or even the gentler proponents of intelligent design. All deviations from thoroughgoing atheism are ruthlessly sacrificed on the altar of experimental science.

But Dawkins in debate or conversation almost seems apologetic about the hard-nosed impression that he so assiduously invites in print. One radio producer recently told me of his astonishment at finding that in the flesh Dawkins did not so much resemble an ideologue as “a gentle country vicar”. It was, said the producer, a combination of his gentle voice and manner as well as his occasional admissions of uncertainty.

I drew upon the remarks of one of his great friends and admirers in an attempt to resolve this apparent contradiction. “Why,” I asked, “do so many of your critics complain about your dogmatism in The God Delusion? Even the philosopher Daniel Dennett, who describes himself as your ally and friend in his review, goes on to say, “some readers will probably come away from the book more impressed by Dawkins’s disrespect than persuaded by his arguments.”

“I think it’s almost a tactical point. You can see it starkly in the evolution debates. In America and elsewhere I am continually and very possibly rightly accused of providing real fodder for the creationists because in America atheism is such a no-no. If anyone stands up and says ‘I am an atheist because I am a Darwinian,’ which I sort of do, they think their birthday has arrived. It is wonderful for them. I had a meeting with Eric Rothschild, who was a lead lawyer in the Pennsylvania evolution case, and he said, ‘Thank goodness we didn’t call you as a witness.’ I would have handed the case to the other side. I don’t know what the answer is to this. There is such a double standard. If you use the same kind of language about religion that anyone else would use about politics, economics, architecture or the theatre, it would be seen as ordinary robust critical language. Yet the moment the same language is used against religion, it suddenly becomes obnoxious, intemperate and offensive. And that is so common among my critics. I don’t know whether I should moderate my language to woo the other side. Do I want to woo the bishops, people like the bishop of Oxford? He’s a terribly nice man and we have collaborated on more than one occasion.”

I suggested that perhaps his ambivalence arose because whilst he was more or less ready to concede, at least in conversation, that he might be mistaken about the role that evolution played in the development of morality, there could be absolutely no concessions when the issue at hand conflicted with the hard science upon which his reputation rested.

“Yes, that’s right. As a scientist I am only interested in the simple scientific question: ‘Is there a God?’ If someone wants to say that God started off evolution then that seems to me to be a total denial of everything that we have learnt.”

But was he always as true to science as he believed? Several of his reviewers had complained that he was too soft on bad science. Whereas his book was filled with examples of bad religion, what many believers would regard as deviations from true religion, he ignored examples of so-called scientific findings which had eventually proved to be quite unfounded but had led to quite disastrous consequences. Why, for example, had he not addressed such “bad science” as eugenics?

“Well, eugenics was a very fashionable science in the 1930s and nowadays it isn’t. Post Hitler there are people who say not only that eugenics is morally wrong but also that it doesn’t work scientifically. That is bollocks. It works with horses, cows and pigs and ducks. Of course it would work with humans. It’s quite another matter to say that it would be a good thing to do. It comes down to a moral and political choice. Just as the H-bomb. As for only giving examples of bad religion, that is not what I wanted to do even if I seem to have done it. I think I could have been accused of that not so much in the book but in the television programme I did for Channel 4 called The Root of All Evil. But a television programme does not have a single author. It was a kind of ‘over my dead body’ title, for example.”

But how would he answer those critics who attacked his persistent use of the loaded word “indoctrination” to describe religious education. As Terry Eagleton wrote in the London Review of Books, “Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that. For mainstream Christianity, reason, argument and honest doubt have always played an integral role in belief.”

“Of course, I recognise that it doesn’t always work. And that’s fine. I think it’s the labelling more than the indoctrination. I think the parallel with the feminists is extremely good. You can’t now say something like ‘one man – one vote’ without flinching. You should also flinch when someone says that here is a four-year-old Catholic. I fully accept that the child may not be made to say its prayers, it may not be indoctrinated in that sense, but society still labels that child a Catholic child and I would be content if we could just get rid of that labelling.”

This, I realised, was the awkward moment when I had to confront him with what one or two of my agnostic friends regarded as the most compelling part of Terry Eagleton’s scathing review of the book. How, I asked, did he respond to Eagleton’s taunt that reading Dawkins on theology gave one a rough idea of what it would be like to listen to someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject was derived from the Book of British Birds. “What, one wonders,” Eagleton continued, “are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them? Or does he imagine like a bumptious young barrister that you can defeat the opposition while being complacently ignorant of its toughest case?”

I could tell from his reaction while I read from the review that Richard had been stung by the ferocity of Eagleton’s attack but his response was positively cavalier.

“Look, somebody who thinks the way I do doesn’t think theology is a subject at all. So to me it is like someone saying they don’t believe in fairies and then being asked how they know if they haven’t studied fairy-ology. I think it is as simple as that. I’m all for professors of theology who write about little-known religious texts and study biblical history, but when theology turns to the study of the trinity, then I think it’s a non-subject”

“But isn’t Eagleton complaining that because you don’t know any theology, your account of God is necessarily naïve and simplistic? It doesn’t do justice to the more sophisticated ways of conceptualising God, to such matters as his transcendence and invisibility.”

Richard clearly had no intention of going down that path. With what was the first hint of acerbity, he simply repeated himself. “I think that my point about fairy-ology entirely disposes of that.”

It had, I now began to think, seemed like an excellent idea to confront Dawkins with his critics in the pages of New Humanist. After all, NH readers were probably all familiar with many of the arguments for atheism in The God Delusion even if they had rarely found them made with such force and authority. But I could sense that my litany of reviewers’ objections to his thesis was creating a slightly melancholy atmosphere. During our opening small talk I’d congratulated him on the runaway success of his book and mentioned my delight at having already seen two people on the underground reading it with the sort of attention normally reserved for best-selling potboilers. In the thick of so many critiques, though, this was now beginning to seem like a rather token form of appreciation. I decided to introduce some gentler objections.

What, I wondered, did he make of those reviewers who had gone along with most of his scientific arguments for atheism but queried his ubiquitous references to reason? Some had wanted to argue that reason and science were not at all the same thing and could not be conflated. Others had suggested that his dismissal of faith overlooked its part in everyday life.

“I don’t see that at all. I don’t know what it would mean to say that we live by faith in our daily life. There is, I suppose, a sense that we are sometimes too busy to reason everything out but otherwise I don’t know what it means.”

I reminded him of the very personal moments in The God Delusion: the moving thanks to his wife, Lalla Ward, and the touching references to his deceased friend and collaborator, Douglas Adams. No one could doubt that these were expressions of deeply felt emotions. Would he want to say these emotions were entirely prompted by reason?

“Let me turn it around and say why I believe that somebody loves me. This might look like faith because I can’t really prove it. But I think it would ultimately be based on evidence. It would be based on subtle little signs, on certain catches in the voice, on particular looks in the eyes. And I know where this argument is going. I’ve met it before. It suggests that the reason we believe someone loves us is analogous to God’s love. It isn’t based on evidence. It is not subject to simple experimental verification. Nevertheless it does use real evidence that comes in through the senses.”

“You don’t think that by reducing love to experimental evidence you are losing something of its essence?”

“I’m happy to be governed by feelings and I suppose, in a sense, by faith. But that doesn’t mean that I ultimately believe there is something other than the material world that is causing those feelings.”

“But if you were to tell your wife that you loved her but didn’t have the time to write down all the reasons, would she not be a mite dissatisfied?”

“Life would be intolerable if you wrote down detailed reasons for everything. So I don’t have a problem with faith in that sense. But that is so different from going on from there to declare that there must be something supernatural about it.”

My list was nearly at an end. But I noticed with slight alarm that the next entry simply read in capital letters: RAISE THE SOCIOLOGICAL OBJECTIONS. Richard noticed my pause and looked as though he might be on the edge of devising an escape route. I pressed ahead quickly.

Wasn’t there a danger, I suggested, that his thesis might be playing into the hands of the conservatives in America? Couldn’t his book be misread as an attack upon fundamentalism, and therefore as a contribution to the current climate of Islamophobia? Perhaps some of his American applause was elicited by the sense in the audience that he was attacking an alien and hostile religion.

“That might be true for this country but America is not short of Christian fundamentalists. There are those that kill abortion doctors and those who use the rhetoric of all fags roasting in hell. There are people who believe that they are going to be raptured up to heaven any time now. People who believe that the battle of Armageddon will be a nuclear war in Israel and that this is to be welcomed. One of the main criticisms I get in this country is ‘What are you going on about?’ People need to go to America and see what is going on there.”

I entered my very last objection. “In the language of experimental science, isn’t there a danger that your attack upon religion suggests that it is the independent variable, the cause of all our troubles? But might it not be that the advance of fundamentalism, the revival of religious belief, is dependent upon another sociological development, upon globalisation, upon the spread of a materialist consumer ethic? In such circumstances religion provides a way of resistance, a way of affirming values other than those derived from capitalism and the market place. By alienating the religious we risk losing allies in that fight.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose it fits with people like EO Wilson. He’s an atheist and what you might call more of a religious appeaser than Dennett. But the reason for that is that he is terrified about the imminence of the planet’s self-destruction and wants all people of good will to join together to save the world. But I think you have made a very good point. That’s not what my book is about but perhaps it should be.”

It was too generous a concession to go unrewarded. I closed my objections file and thanked Richard for his time. Thanked him for sitting through so much criticism. Thanked him for his patience and good humour. Thanked him for his book. I forgot only one thing. Standing outside on the pavement waiting for my taxi, I realised that I had not thanked him for perhaps the most valuable thing of all. I had not thanked him for his courage. ■

Queremos uma justiça social que combine com a justiça ecológica.
- Leonard Boff

‘The final stages of a genocide’
The Akuntsu tribe in the Brazilian Amazon has lost its oldest member, Ururú, leaving the tribe with only five surviving members.
Ururú was the oldest member of this close-knit, tiny group and an integral part of it.
Altair Algayer, head of FUNAI’s (Brazilian government Indian affairs department) team which protects the Akuntsu’s land said, ‘She was a fighter, strong, and resisted until the last moment.’ In addition, the oldest-surviving Akuntsu, Ururú’s brother Konibú, is seriously ill.
Ururú witnessed the genocide of her people and the destruction of their rainforest home, as cattle ranchers and their gunmen moved on to indigenous lands in Rondônia state. Rondônia was opened up by government colonisation projects and the infamous BR 364 highway in the 1960s and 70s.
With Ururú dies a large part of the historical memory of this people. While we shall perhaps never know the full horrors inflicted on the Akuntsu in the last half century, today’s survivors say their family members were killed when ranchers bulldozed their houses and opened fire on them. The two surviving men, Konibú and Pupak, have marks on their bodies where bullets entered as they fled.
FUNAI found the remains of houses which had been destroyed by ranchers who were clearing the forest for cattle pasture. The ranchers attempted to hide evidence of the crime, but wooden poles, arrows, axes and broken pottery were discovered.
When the Akuntsu were contacted by FUNAI in 1995 they numbered seven. The youngest, Konibú’s daughter, died in January 2000 when a tree fell on her house.
Today they live in a territory officially recognised by the Brazilian government, where FUNAI protects their land from invasion by surrounding ranchers.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘With Ururú’s death we are seeing the final stages of a 21st century genocide. Unlike mass killings in Nazi Germany or Rwanda, the genocides of indigenous people are played out in hidden corners of the world, and escape public scrutiny and condemnation. Although their numbers are small, the result is just as final. Only when this persecution is seen as akin to slavery or apartheid will tribal peoples begin to be safe.’
The story of the Akuntsu, their neighbours the Kanoê, and the elusive ‘Man of the Hole’ is graphically told in a new film, Corumbiara. The Akuntsu also feature in Survival’s short film, Uncontacted Tribes.
Act now to help the Akuntsu
The Akuntsu continue to live in fear of the threats that surround them. Please act to have their lands secured.
• Writing a letter to the Brazilian Government is a quick and simple way to let them know of your concern.
• Donate to the campaign for the Akuntsu (and other Survival campaigns).
• Write to your MP or MEP (UK) or Senators and members of Congress (US).
• Write to your local Brazilian high commission or embassy.
• If you want to get more involved, contact Survival…



http://www.survivalinternational.org/films/bloodisflowing

Se repararem bem, verão que este urutau mãe-de-lua, que é uma ave mestre do mimetismo, tem uma pequena protuberância à altura da barriga. Não é que esteja contente por me ver, nem se trata de uma hérnia inguinal; trata-se do bico da sua cria que aflora sob a densa plumagem da progenitora.

IS THIS THE FOURTH WORLD WAR?
James Woolsey and Subcommander Marcos Say Yes

by Bill Weinberg

On September 13, 2001, the New York Times’ Tom Friedman wrote: "Does my country really understand that this is World War III? And if this attack was the Pearl Harbor of World War III, it means there is a long, long war ahead."

More sophisticated minds have since challenged this declaration as numerically incorrect. While sharing the pro-war consensus, former CIA Director James Woolsey is on the lecture circuit asserting that the global crusade against terrorism is World War IV--the Cold War having been III. "This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us," Woolsey told a group of UCLA students in April. "Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War."

Woolsey’s mathematics are shared by the unlikeliest of intellectual allies--Subcommander Marcos, verbose spokesman for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas. Marcos issued his communique asserting that the planet is in a "Fourth World War" in 1997--well before the 9-11 attacks. But his analysis illuminates why the new hawks prominently include those such as Friedman, who has made a career of boosting globalization as a boon and inevitability. For Marcos, the Fourth World War is indistinguishable from corporate global integration: "Globalization, neoliberalism as a global system, should be understood as a new war of conquest for territories... A world order returned to the old epochs of the conquests of America, Africa and Oceania. This is a strange modernity that moves forward by going backward. The dusk of the twentieth century has more similarities with previous brutal centuries than with the placid and rational future of some science-fiction novel. In the world of the post-Cold War, vast territories, wealth, and above all, a qualified labor force, await a new owner."

Significantly, the Maya Indian rebels of the Zapatistas launched their revolt on Jan. 1, 1994, the precise moment that NAFTA took effect. The changes to the Mexican constitution calling for privatization of communal indigenous and peasant lands as a condition of the trade pact were declared a "death sentence" for Mexico’s Indians. These lands--protected as traditional village holdings as a gain of Emilianio Zapata’s peasant insurgency in the Mexican Revolution of 1910-7--now stand to be delivered to the highest multinational bidder. This is the most obvious example of "reconquest of territory" via the legalistic and bureaucratic means of "free trade" policy--or "neoliberalism" by its Latin American moniker.

If war is an extension of policy by other means, then it is axiomatic that Marcos’ "Fourth World War" and Woolsey’s "World War IV" are one and the same. Since 9-11, the war of reconquest has become, to a far greater degree, an actual shooting war.

In the Cold War ("World War III"), "communism" was the official target, but the real targets were often indigenous peoples fighting for their land and resources. The renewed Cold War of the 1980s saw actual genocide against the Maya Indians of Guatemala--as UN investigations have now confirmed. The bloodletting was an effort (largely successful) to force the Indians back into submission before the communist guerillas they had come to support could threaten Guatemala’s landed oligarchy. In World War IV, a "dirty war" has this time come to the Maya lands on the Mexican side of the border, in Chiapas. But the new Zapatista guerillas are proudly indigenist--not communist. And their movement was largely launched to protect their reduced and impoverished landbase from reconquest by triumphalist post-Cold War capital.

There is a double sense in which this is the Fourth World War. The "Fourth World" is a term coined by defenders of indigenous peoples to denote land-based, stateless ethnicities, distinct from the "First," "Third" or (now non-existent) "Second" worlds. The Center for World Indigenous Studies in Olympia, WA, has been publishing a "Fourth World Journal" that reports on indigenous land struggles worldwide since 1984. In their fourth issue, at the height of the grueling Reagan-era wars for Central America, they published an essay by UC Berkeley geographer (and specialist on Nicaragua’s Miskito Indians) Bernard Nietschmann, who posited a universally overlooked essence to the crisis on the isthmus. Rather than left-versus-right, East-versus-West, communism versus the "Free World," Nietschmann saw the Central American conflict as primarily one of nations versus states.

In Nietschmann’s eyes, states--whether right-wing like the Guatemalan military dictatorship, or left-wing like the Nicaraguan revolutionary regime--were claiming the land and resources of stateless but distinct nations within their official borders. When these native nations fought back, the offensives launched against them sometimes reached the point of genocide.

Criticizing Henry Kissinger’s 1983 report to the Reagan administration that mapped the White House policy of rolling back Central America’s revolutionary movements, Nietschmann (who died in 1999) wrote: "Not included in the Kissinger Report is mention much less analysis of Maya peoples (more than one-half of Guatemala’s claimed population and territory), who are being invaded and occupied under the guise of economic development. No mention is made of the Miskito, Sumo and Rama nations which have fielded the Americas’ only Indian army and who are fighting Central America’s largest army over Indian control of one-third of Nicaragua’s claimed territory. The report ignores [Panama’s] Kuna who have their own autonomous nation run by the Kunas’ own political, economic and social systems. These are different and distinct from those of Panama, and of the East or West, North of South. Not only does the Kissinger Report overlook the Maya, Miskito or Kuna, it only refers indirectly to indigenous peoples by mentioning Indians three times."

Like Stalinism in the Cold War, the threat of terrorism is real--and not only to those things in the West which are genuinely worth defending (pluralism, secularism, basic rights for women), but also to indigenous peoples, who are invariably targeted by religious fundamentalists as heathens, much as they are relegated "backward" or "primitive" by globophiles. But the anti-terrorist states of World War IV have a paradoxically incestuous relationship with the Islamic terrorists, which they groomed to fight Communism in the Cold War from Egypt to Palestine to Afghanistan. And the actual targets of the global anti-terror campaign are more frequently indigenous peoples defending their lands from corporate resource plunder than actual terrorists.

The Zapatistas have played their cards very well, fastidiously avoiding targeting civilians, even for the brief period in 1994 when they were "at war" with the Mexican state. They are still perceived as occupying the moral high ground virtually across Mexico’s political spectrum--so it has been impossible for either the US or Mexican governments to effectively label them "terrorists." But throughout the hemisphere, militarization in the name of counter-terrorism is now used to disenfranchise indigenous peoples.

Most US military aid to Mexico is still in the name of the War on Drugs, which can be seen as a 1990s transition war between the Third and the Fourth, especially in the western hemisphere. In Colombia, the transition has been made from the Drug War to the Terror War--yet the military (supported by the US to the tune of $2 billion since 1996) has been used against U’wa Indians protecting their lands from exploitation by Occidental Petroleum. Under the Andean Initiative (as Bush has dubbed his expanded version of Clinton’s Plan Colombia), military aid is also being distributed to Ecuador--where Shuar and Quichua Indians are resisting Occidental’s new trans-Andean pipeline. Also included is Bolivia--where the Huarani and Aymara Indians are resisting new pipelines being built by Shell and Enron.

In Eurasia and Africa as well, the US-led War on Terror is being unleashed on native peoples who are themselves targets of terror. The Indonesian military is let slip on the native people of Aceh, whose lands are coveted and exploited by Exxon. The Nigerian military defends Chevron and Shell from Ijaw and Itsekiri tribespeople asserting control over their own homelands. In Algeria, the latest recipient of US counter-terrorism aid, the indigenous Berbers are caught between the military dictatorship and the jihadis, both equally hostile to their autonomy demands--while Halliburton and BP-Amoco are assured of security for their oil and gas operations.

In Iraq, Kurds in the north and Ma’adan ("Marsh Arabs") in the south--as well as Turkomans and Assyrians--are grateful to see the last of Saddam Hussein, who bitterly persecuted them, but pledge to resist the US occupation if they are denied local autonomy in the new order. And the lands of these ethnic minorities include some of the most oil-rich in Iraq.

In the Central Asian heartland now encircled by US and allied troops based in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, some of the most remote land-based cultures on Earth stand to be expropriated by the final thrust of corporate capitalism. The US Energy Department is even funding oil exploration in Siberia--where indigenous peoples such as the Evenks are making a last stand to save their culture from extinction, demanding rights to their ancestral lands from an intransigent Russian government.

And within the United States, the Navajo, Shoshone, Inuit and other native nations who faced the prospect of their lands becoming "National Sacrifice Areas" in the Cold War, to be plundered for their strategic coal and uranium, now face a renewed corporate threat in the atmosphere of economic "liberalization" and emphasis on "energy independence" given war and fear in the Middle East.

This may be the Fourth World War not only by the math of global conflicts since 1914, but because, even more so than the Cold War, it is a war on the Fourth World.

###

Center for World Indigenous Studies

Patisa, toma lá os teus bichinhos favoritos.

“O mundo não vai superar a crise actual usando o mesmo pensamento que criou esta situação insustentável.” – Albert Einstein

Biodiversity in the Amazon:
Promoting Indigenous Stewardship as Policy
by Jordan E. Erdos
February 1998
Home | South America | SA Travel | SA Books | SA News | Amazon | Biodiversity



There are 1.7 million known plant and animal species on the Earth. This is only a small fraction of the many species believed to exist -- estimated to total somewhere between 10 to 12 million distinct species. Studies have demonstrated greater productivity, resistance to disturbance, resilience and rate of recovery in ecosystems with high biological diversity. Much has been written in recent years about the threat of destruction to this biological diversity, or biodiversity as it is often called. Areas of highly concentrated biodiversity, such as the Amazon rainforest, have experienced increasing deforestation as developing countries seek to utilize their natural resources for economic gain.

It is not only biodiversity that is lost with the destruction of the Amazon forests, but cultural diversity as well. Many of the world's original peoples, the indigenous tribes, also face extinction as resources become more scarce. When first discovered by Europeans in the late fifteenth century, the Amazon had an indigenous population of approximately 6 million people; there are currently an estimated 250,000 remaining. Ethnocide, introduction of Western diseases, depletion of important resources for survival, relocation, and acculturation into modern Western society have contributed to this loss.

With the disappearance of indigenous cultures, the world loses the original stewards of the Amazon. Historical evidence demonstrates that the great Amazon biodiversity is, in fact, anthropogenic in nature. Evidence links plant species diversity to indigenous agricultural practices. University of Berkeley geographer Bernard Nietschmann has further accentuated the connection with his Rule of Indigenous Environments: Where there are indigenous peoples with a homeland there are still biologically-rich environments.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that, in order to preserve biodiversity, policies must involve the participation of the indigenous and address the preservation of cultural diversity as well. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first section, I will seek to strengthen Nietschmann's argument through an exploration of indigenous plant use and specific examples from different indigenous societies. Next, I will look at the current threats to biodiversity and cultural diversity. In the third section I will explore some of the efforts that have been made, both public and private, to address these issues and involve indigenous societies in preservation. Finally, the last section will examine potential policy directions which may be taken to preserve biodiversity through strengthening indigenous institutions.

The First Caretakers

Bepkororoti, an ancient shaman unjustly killed by fellow Mêbêngôkre tribesmen while seeking his heriditary share of tapir meat after a hunt, returns in the form of dangerous storms which threaten the tribe and its crops. To appease his spirit, natives, acknowledging his fondness for honey, leave honey and pollen in disturbed hives. The result is re-colonization of these hives by certain species of bees. From the fear of phantasmagorical retribution comes the reintroduction of species to once-barren hives. The story of Bepkororoti is just one example of the way in which indigenous mythology contributes to biodiversity.

For many indigenous tribes, it is a human obligation to maintain the balance and health of the natural world. Nature is inclusive; human beings are merely a part of the greater whole. In indigenous cultures, rituals and ceremonies serve to prevent overconsumption of natural resources; to these populations, environmental ethics are discernible in the very structure and organization of the natural world.

The native inhabitants use the forest's products, among other things, for construction materials, food and alcoholic beverages, fuel, oral hygiene, and crafts. For those who live deep in the jungles of the Amazon basin and other areas of great biodiversity, the forest acts not only as a home, but as a pharmacy and general store as well.

Studies have consistently demonstrated the importance of a diverse ecosystem to indigenous tribes. The Chacobo of Bolivia employ 82% of species found in a measured area; the Quijos Quichua of Ecuador use more than 90% of a measured plot. The Shuar use at least 245 medicinal species in their pharmacoepeia. The indigenous peoples' subsistence comes primarily from those resources found within their general vicinity. Given the limits of these resources, they operate efficiently. An example is the Kayapo, who create trails in the woods and carry seeds and tubers to plant along the trails when they defecate.

They are dependent upon their local ecosystem, and have derived a great understanding of their surroundings from long-term cyclical observation over many years in which they have been able to observe seasonally reoccurring phenomena. In fact, often the indigenous understanding exceeds that of the Western scientist. Ethnobotanists -- scientists who study the relationship between people and plants -- have encountered native classifications of strains of wild species which, to their trained eye, offered no tangible differences. For example, the Barasana Indians of Amazonian Colombia can identify all tree species in their territory without having to refer to the fruit or flowers. Richard Evans Schultes calls this the indigenous ability to recognize "hidden" diversity in plant species.

It is through necessity that the natives make such recognitions. Different species serve different uses. With no written language, the indigenous orally transfer this knowledge from the elders to their students. One ethnobotanist has determined that it is this very nonliterate tradition which influences processes in which rationalistic knowledge is acquired about ecological associations. The forest serves not only as a home, but as a laboratory and school as well; it is the universe from which arises all indigenous social institutions and sacred rites. "The Indians often tell me that the difference between a colonist [a non-indigenous settler] and an Indian," notes Martin von Hildebrand, Colombian anthropologist, "is that the colonist wants to leave money for his children and that the Indians want to leave forests for their children."

This is precisely what the indigenous have done for generations. In "The Pristine Myth," University of Wisconsin geographer William Denevan explores the history of the American landscape since 1492, concluding that the first peoples of the America had, in fact, modified forest extent and composition; created and expanded grass lands; and engaged in agricultural practices which had local impacts on soil, microclimate, hydrology and wildlife.

Today, indigenous agricultural and gathering practices continue to transform the landscape in manners which often encourage biodiversity and sustainable use. Studies have shown the effect of indigenous soil management and in situ plant management on biodiversity: Gathering strategies such as rotation of gathering areas prevent the decrease or loss of some resources; enhancement strategies, such as sowing seeds in areas occupied by populations of wild plants or weeds and of course, protection of plants through the elimination of competitors and predators also serve to transform the landscape.

As subsistence farmers, most indigenous engage in sustainable practices. Problems arise when economic pressures force tribes to engage in the growing of cash crops or when local resources have been plundered by outsiders of the community. Then, as with most societies in similar circumstances, the indigenous are prone to overuse resources, overhunt game, and fell forests for timber.

Non-sustainable practices arise from differences between societies resulting in conflicts between the Western economic system and its demand for products and the indigenous ethos of humankind as nature's steward. The relationship between these conflicting interests is best understood through the concept of "ecosystem people" and "biosphere people." The former are those who live mostly on those resources which have been gathered or produced within their immediate vicinity, whereas the latter are characterized as those who have access to resources from all over the world and are able to transport themselves to locations in which these resources are found.

While ecosystem people are at risk to local catastrophes which could eliminate their resource base, the same catastrophe has a minimum impact upon the biosphere people, who can simply draw more heavily upon a different ecosystem. Because of their lack of integration and a feeling of independence from the environment, biosphere people may never develop the strong cultural ethics necessary for wise resource management. The next section of this paper explores the consequences of these conflicting world views.

The Price of Progress

Each year, an estimated 170,000 km2 (approximately 65,637 square miles) of tropical forest is felled, often to satisfy the world market for tropical woods or to provide space for cattle ranching. In Eco Travels in Brazil alone, the forests are disappearing by an alarming rate of nearly 30,000 km2 (approximately 11,583 square miles) per year. Between 1991 and 1994, forest clearing in Brazil increased almost 34% and according to a recent study by the Environmental Defense Fund, during the last two years forest destruction has further increased by another 28%.

Often the destruction has been the result of government policies promoting cattle ranching and logging through tax incentives. Addressing the House Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs in July 1993, Luciano Pizzatto, representing the Special Commission on Indigenous Rights of the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil, testified: ". . . in some municipalities it is still even considered that only deforestation proves that land is used." In economically-depressed Brazil, in which many landless peasants pressure the government for land reform, the idea of unexploited land is counter to what many believe are the country's economic needs.

For this reason, loggers and miners continue to infiltrate demarcated indigenous territories, in spite of the 1988 Constitution, which explicitly expresses Brazil's commitment to ensure that the lands traditionally occupied by the indigenous population are intended for their permanent possession and that they have exclusive rights to use and benefit of the resources found therein. Return of traditional land to the natives spawns great resentment in a country in which 45 percent of the land belongs to 1 percent of the population. It seems unreasonable to some of Brazil's landless that approximately 217.5 million acres are given to about 250,000 individuals.

Lacking resources and the desire to enforce the law, the Brazilian government has stood by and allowed continued infiltration and exploitation of these demarcated lands. In October 1988, 14 Ticunas were killed in an ambush by loggers. The Gorotire have experienced mercury poisoning due to its use in mining operations. Between 1988 and 1996, 14 Macuxí have been killed in the state of Roraima and not a single case has ended in a conviction.

But it is not only those in search of riches who have negatively impacted the indigenous. For a long time, poorly-conceived development projects overseen by multilateral lending institutions such as the World Bank were responsible for the displacement and deaths of many indigenous peoples. Indigenous lands have been described as a type of 'no-mans-land' when it comes to finding sites for development projects; it is the native lands which are always the first option for mining, hydroelectric projects, and land reform.

. In this century alone, some 80 entire societies have vanished in Brazil. Yet extinction is only an extreme of other ongoing problems. In addition to loss of land and population decreases, many indigenous tribes face the loss of their very identity. Acculturation has long detracted from cultural identity. Now, the threat is even greater as generations of knowledge may be lost with the passing of elders who have no students interested in continuing the ancient traditions. "Of all the shamans with whom I have lived and worked in the northeast Amazon," writes ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin, "not a single one had an apprentice." With the growth of Western medicine use, many no longer feel it necessary to practice shamanism. Yet, often it is the shaman who harbors the greatest knowledge of the forest and its products. As one old Amazonian shaman said, "It is true the youngsters do not want to learn. One day the medicines that the missionaries send from the city will no longer arrive. The people will come to me to relieve their pains, to conquer the evil spirits that kill their children. But I will be gone, and I will have taken my plants with me."

Recent Efforts

With the growing concern regarding the depletion of the world's resources, international organizations, national governments and private industry are taking action to protect the remaining biodiversity and encourage its sustainable use.

International Efforts

In the 1970s, the idea for creating protected areas in the world's most diverse ecosystems first gained attention. Eventually this idea evolved into the UNESCO Man in the Biosphere (MAB) program.

The concept of a protected biosphere reserve is simple. Scientists determine areas in need of preservation which have not encountered too much exploitation. The area is divided into zones, with a core area, a delineated "inner buffer zone," and an undelineated "outer buffer zone," known as the "transition area".

The core areas are strictly protected according to conservation objectives. They are made up of ecosystems which have experienced the least disturbance. Surrounding the core area is a buffer zone in which only activities compatible with the protection of the core areas may take place. These include particular research (R), environmental education and training (E), and tourism and recreation (T). Encompassing the core area and buffer zone is the transition area -- a multiple-use area. Here, efforts are made to develop cooperative activities between researchers, managers and the local population, aiming to ensure appropriate physical planning and sustainable resources development in the region.

One example underway is the Beni Biosphere Reserve in northern Bolivia. Working in local villages, Chimane natives, park personnel and non-indigenous locals are making an inventory of plants which are used in agriculture, traditional medicine, crafts manufacturing and other aspects of community life. The park staff is coordinating the project with the Gran Consejo Chimane, an indigenous organization, to develop Chimane settlements within the boundaries of the reserve. Working together with the indigenous should encourage greater opportunities for the indigenous to maintain control of their traditional resources.

International conferences have also addressed many issues important to biodiversity and the indigenous. In 1992, representatives from 179 states met in Rio de Janeiro to convene the U.N. Conference on the Environment and Development, which has since come to be known as the Earth Summit. The Conference was called in response to a growing concern over the environmental degradation of developing countries, vividly illustrated in the influential 1987 U.N. report, Our Common Future, commonly known as the Brundtland report in honor of the chair of the special U.N. commission, Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland.

Both the Brundtland report and the Earth Summit served to focus greater attention on the Earth's rapidly depleting resources and the need to change the manner in which development is approached, focusing upon sustainable resource use. Two important documents resulting from the Earth Summit were Agenda 21 and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Both include specific sections addressing the role of indigenous peoples in the promotion of sustainable development.

Agenda 21 emerged from the Earth Summit as the blueprint for reaching the many goals set forth in Rio. Included among the forty-chapter document for economic, social and environmental change was Chapter 26, "Recognizing and Strengthening the Role of Indigenous People and their Communities". In this chapter, indigenous people are recognized as having practiced sustainable development for generations, and it is recommended that international development agencies and governments commit resources to educate and train indigenous people, with particular attention to strengthening the role of indigenous women. The inclusion of the indigenous in this document is a monumental step forward in recognizing the impact indigenous people have had on biodiversity. Agenda 21, however, is not a binding agreement, but rather, suggestions and guidelines for participating countries.

The Convention on Biological Diversity, the other major accomplishment of the Earth Summit, arose out of a growing concern for the rapid acceleration of species extinction which has occurred over the past few decades. It has been estimated that if all of the currently threatened species become extinct over the next century, the extinction rate will multiply ten-fold. The CBD was written to be a binding treaty which could provide a multinational framework for coordinated action. It is the first global approach to biodiversity through protection of ecosystems, rather than individual species.

It would appear natural that such an approach would include those we have called "ecosystems people," and, in fact, Article 8(j) provides expressly for participating nations to, ". . . respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and promote their wider application with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices." This in situ approach to promoting biodiversity is complemented by Article 9, which calls for additional, ex-situ species management.

An essential component of the treaty is the call for nations to control their own resources. While this is written with the understanding that biodiversity is better managed at the national, rather than international, level, it nevertheless endorses the continuation of resource control by biosphere people. Indigenous organizations have expressed concerns that this offers a carte blanche sanction allowing for continued environmentally destructive practices within national territories.

The CBD does, however, explicitly address the importance of the indigenous in creating biodiversity and conversely, the importance of biodiversity to the indigenous way of life. The Preamble to the Convention recognizes the necessity of biological resources to the traditional lifestyle and the need for those who utilize native resources to return benefits to the indigenous. Determining how to return benefits, however, is a question which arises again and again.

National Efforts

The CBD alone is not enough to halt deforestation and save biological and cultural diversity. Most of the work falls upon the individual countries, whose interests often appear to contradict the intent of the convention. The nations of the Amazon river basin are some of the poorer nations of the world. Exploitation of natural resources appeals to these economically-deprived lands.

In Brazil, years of ill-conceived policy which promoted the clearing of land for cattle ranching and provided incentives for heavy logging of mahogany have been re-evaluated and altered. Yet, as the previous section demonstrates, this has not been enough to deter continued exploitation by miners and loggers. With the new 1988 Constitution, Brazil began an ambitious program of demarcation of indigenous lands. Lacking the financial resources and political will, the government has yet to fulfill its promise, leaving 259 undemarcated territories.

Evidence has demonstrated that the government has used demarcation in a political manner; in 1981, the Kayapo of Gorotire took action against illegal gold miners who were trying to establish themselves in the Kayapo's undemarcated territory. The government bargained with the tribe, promising them the land would be demarcated if they allowed the miners to work. The agreement was accepted. While this may be a loss for the promotion of biodiversity, it is a victory for the indigenous tribe, who may now control land in a country in which 1 percent of the landowners control half of the agricultural land and half of the landowners occupy about 3 percent of the land.

In spite of discouraging progress, a rise in awareness and a strengthening of indigenous political power have resulted in positive steps toward remedying the crisis. In the state of Amazonas, the government has created a new reserve, which will be the world's largest contiguous block of protected rainforest. It is called the Ama a Sustainable Development Reserve, and is the third of a network of protected areas in the Central Amazon Basin that together make up over 22,000 square miles of unbroken habitat. The reserve will be managed like the adjacent Mamirau Reserve, which, based on a legal category created in 1996, permits residence in protected areas and encourages local participation in their conservation.

Some national indigenous parks have been successful as well. The Xingu reserve, a positive example of demarcation, has experienced few problems with invading loggers or miners. FUNAI, the Brazilian government agency responsible for indigenous land issues, helps guard the frontiers of the reserve, and the State has given money to the establishment of guard posts along the frontiers. Xingu is an example of what can be accomplished when resources are available.

Brazil is not alone in addressing indigenous issues. Following the lead of the Biodiversity Convention, Ecuadorian Parliament approved the Law for the Protection of Biodiversity in Ecuador on September 2, 1996. In addition to recognizing the State as the holder of property rights over the country's biodiversity, the legislation guarantees both the ancestral rights of local campesinos and indigenous communities regarding the knowledge and intangible components of biodiversity. Additionally, with this recognition, the law gives them the right to decide on the use of these components. This sort of indigenous empowerment will pave the way for future self-determination of Ecuador's indigenous peoples. With autonomy, the indigenous should be able to continue practice of sustainable methods of resource use.

Private Efforts

The nature of rewarding the indigenous for use of their biological resources has been a controversial issue for some time. Nowhere is it more controversial than in the search for new medicines. In the 1990s, the costs of assessing plants for their medicinal value has fallen dramatically; processes which once costed upwards of $6 million ten years ago can now be performed for $150,000. Diminished costs coupled with concern over the loss of biodiversity and indigenous knowledge have inspired a resurgence of interest in ethnobotany.

As mentioned previously, ethnobotany is the study of the relationship between human beings and plants. It is a multi-disciplinary science whose practitioners are often trained in anthropology, biology and chemistry. Ethnobotanists perform field research in indigenous lands, frequently spending prolonged periods of time with their subjects in order to develop relationships allowing them access to the traditional knowledge. Through their research, ethnobotanists may learn about important medicinal plants which could provide information for cures to diseases such as AIDS and cancer. In the United States and Canada, at least 25 percent of prescription drugs contain bioactive compounds derived from or modelled after plant products and total annual sales of plant-derived pharmaceuticals world wide have totaled over $20 billion.

With the potential for enormous profits comes an equal amount of responsibility to those with whom the ethnobotanists work -- the indigenous. Some private companies have begun to tie ethnobotanical research to biodiversity protection, working with national governments to set up protective reserves and arranging for some profits to be returned to the local populations. Research has demonstrated the economic potential of ethnobotanical exploration. According to one study, two plots of rainforest yielded herbal remedies with values of $726/hectare and $3,327/hectare based on sustainable yields, while the same plots, if cleared for agriculture, would be worth about $288/hectare. Advocates argue that the promotion of ethnobotanical studies can provide greater incentives for sustainable use of the forests' products.

Two of the best-known practitioners of bioprospecting, as the practice is called, are Merck & Company, Inc., the largest pharmaceutical firm in the world, and Shaman Pharmaceuticals, founded upon the premise of returning benefits to local populations.

Shaman Pharmaceuticals was established in 1988, dedicated entirely to the ethnobotanical search for new medicines. The company works with native healers to determine active plants with possible uses. Shaman provides benefits to local people, communities and countries with which the company has worked. Additionally, Shaman has created a non-profit organization, The Healing Forest Conservancy, which is involved in a number of programs aimed at benefitting local communities, including: the promotion of sustainable development by local harvesting of natural products; provision of resources to survey, demarcate and deed historic territories to indigenous communities; training of local individuals (especially women) in methods for species collection, identification and inventory. To date, Shaman has tested more than one hundred plants; half have demonstrated potential, and three have led to patents pending.

The nature of the Merck arrangement is somewhat distinct. On November 1, 1991, Merck signed an agreement with the Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio) with the purpose of "collaborating . . . to obtain plant, insect and environmental samples for evaluation for pharmaceutical and agricultural applications." INBio, a non-profit, private, scientific organization, was founded in 1989, according to recommendations by the Costa Rican government. It is based on a partnership of cooperative support and guidance with the Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy and Mines (MIRENEM). Its mission is to inventory Costa Rica's biodiversity, to determine potential biodiversity prospecting and to manage and disseminate information on the country's biodiversity in accordance with the existing legal framework.

The arrangement calls for Merck to provide research funding of $1 million during the first two years of the agreement. INBio, in turn, collects plant, insect and environmental samples and provides them to Merck; the samples are processed in laboratory facilities at INBio, which has received equipment and materials for operation from Merck. Through the agreement, Merck recieves the right to all samples provided by INBio. In return, Merck will pay a royalty to INBio on any pharmaceutical product which is produced as a result of the samples. While no new products have yet emerged from the deal, the agreement has been renewed twice: in July 1994 and August 1996, each for an additional two years.

Both Shaman and Merck demonstrate manners in which economic incentive can contribute to biodiversity protection. Ecologist Walter V. Reid has called such agreements a "win-win situation." Others do not necessarily share the enthusiasm. One concern regarding the growing ethnobotanical presence in areas of high biodiversity is the fear of overexploitation. As the demand for certain plants grows, the overcultivating of monotypes and overharvesting of individual species threatens to disrupt the balance of the ecosystem. Some drugs may be chemically-synthesized in the laboratory, but others require vast amounts of the primary plant matter.

While the Merck/INBio deal appears to benefit all parties involved, the agreeement included collections on lands of eight indigenous peoples, none of which was ever consulted or named as a beneficiary. The argument most often encountered against bioprospecting, however, is not a question of economic resources, but of cultural resources. Indigenous knowledge is not protected under existing intellectual property rights (IPR) systems. The Convention on Biological Diversity has determined that countries are the owners of their natural resources. Yet the nations do not always act in the best interest of their indigenous peoples, who we have already determined are responsible for much of the biodiversity found within these nations.

Implementation of indigenous intellectual property rights, however, encounters even greater problems. For example: IPR systems do not account for collectively-owned property, such as the biological and cultural resources of the indigenous; exclusion of some while others control is foreign to many indigenous communities; some objects can not be possessed, such as those things which belonged to the ancestors or are sacred; patents cannot protect information that does not result from a specific historic act of discovery.

These are only a few of the problems encountered in attempts to apply Western laws aimed at individuals to collective indigenous societies. Numerous other ethical questions arise as decisions are made regarding who speaks for the indigenous populations, how participating societies or members of societies should be remunerated, and whether it is even appropriate to introduce economic measures into native societies.

Positive Directions

The efforts outlined in the previous section all demonstrate a willingness to begin compensating for a tragic past, in which resources are exploited without consideration for the delicate ecosystems or the indigenous caretakers who have produced them. With the Earth Summit, the 1988 Constitution of Brazil and the efforts of Shaman Pharmaceuticals, it is apparent that the world is heading in new directions with regard to the protection of its biological and cultural diversity. Unfortunately, as the continued rapid deforestation of the Amazon demonstrates, this is not enough. Specific policy actions will have to be taken, specifically at the national level, to prevent further destruction. Such must address not only the depleting biodiversity, but the disappearing tribes who have been caretakers of the world's biological resources long before national governments existed.

Much of the growing interest and concern over biodiversity in the past decade is owed to concern for the depletion of the Earth's resources. Promoting biodiversity is no longer a question of intrinsic value, so much as economic value. Americans, as biosphere people, have long enjoyed the fruits of ecoystems peoples' labor. The United States, the top consumer nation in the world, is responsible for taking action to prevent the irreversible loss of the rainforests and all other threatened regions of the world.

U.S. policy should follow a two-fold strategy: first, work to ensure that present adverse practices are discouraged, and second, to encourage national governments to pursue rational resource use and pro-indigenous policies.

The United States is the second largest Brazilian mahogany consumer in the world. Numerous other products also have their origins in the tropical forests of the Amazon. Illegal logging and other illegal practices exist because of high demand for the forest's products. In order to reduce demand, it is necessary to inform consumers of the products' origins. Originally proposed in 1991, the Tropical Forest Consumer Information and Protection Act suggested the labelling of tropical hardwoods by species and country of origin. This way informed consumers could avoid contributing to the problem. This sort of policy, seeking to create an educated consumer, is vital, not only to prevent overexploitation, but to promote universal environmental awareness among the biosphere people.

As the primary funder of multinational lending instituitons such as the World Bank, the United States Congress has oversight to promote reforms which would prevent future development project disasters. Congress has already been instrumental in persuading lending institutions to adopt the use of environmental impact assessment procedures. It is time now to exercise influence in the adoption of indigenous impact procedures, noting which tribes exist in a proposed site, how many individuals would be affected by the development project, whether the proposed project would create divisions in indigenous tribes, and so on. These territories must no longer be considered "no-mans land".

Additionally, the U.S. is in a position to pass legislation allowing banks to renogotiate debts with foreign borrowers. In the 1980s, "debt-for-nature" swaps were a common manner of encouraging the preservation of threatened lands. Banks were allowed to receive a tax write-off for 40 percent of the face value of the debt as long as the debt was offered to private voluntary organizations, which would purchase the debt in hard currency, with a commitment from the indebted countries that they would invest an equal sum of the national currency in environmental programs. Unfortunately, this system drew many complaints, as national governments set aside nature reserves on indigenous lands and continued to exploit the buffer zones. However, the idea of a "debt-for-indigenous stewardship" swap has been suggested in which the state debt would be exchanged with state territorial assertions for the demarcation and conservation of indigenous homelands. This may fair better if, as with all indigenous policy, the relevant tribes are consulted and participate in the process of determining the details of the swap.

Based upon evidence of a strong connection between areas of high biodiversity and independent indigenous populations, U.S. policy aimed at meeting the goals of the CBD should focus upon ways of assisting the indigenous populations in their quest for self-determination. Through USAID, and other relevant government agencies, the United States should provide financial support to national government agencies dealing with indigenous issues, such as FUNAI in Brazil or CONAE in Ecuador. These agencies are often sorely underfunded and unable to implement policies which would benefit not only the indigenous populations, but the promotion of sustainable resource use as practiced by those populations. Additional support should be targeted at helping fund non-governmental organizations (NGOs), environmental groups, Indian rights groups and human rights groups which are active in bottom-up efforts to promote sustainable resource use and indigenous autonomy.

There are many other manners in which the current threat of deforestation can be halted, but the responsibility lies outside of the U.S. domain. Biosphere reserve programs, private initiatives such as the agreements between Shaman and local communities, and national conservation programs all offer the opportunity to address the joint issues of biodiversity and cultural diversity and determine what must be done. However, no programs will be successful if they alienate the indigneous peoples from their traditional homelands. For this reason, the most important policy decision that can be made is to include indigenous participation in the preliminary discussion and all subsequent decisions. This decade has seen a great strengthening of indigenous political participation, culminating in the United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which recognizes the urgent need to respect and promote the inherent indigenous rights to their lands, territories and resources.

The United States, and all other nations interested in saving the Earth's disappearing species, should make indigenous empowerment their first priority. If the world's political powers fail to act now, centuries of knowledge and genetic resources will be lost, and the vicious cycle of ecosystem destruction will continue.