“Thousands of people demonstrated last Thursday September 22nd in 17 countries around the world, following protests in 15 Brazilian cities the Saturday before, to urge the administration of President Dilma Rouseff to end its assault on the forests and the people of the Amazon.” says the press release of Amazon Watch regarding the organized protests to stop a project that would deliver more than 11,000 MW of low-emissions energy to a country whose power surplus will run out by 2014, but also displace as many as 40,000 people and flood 200 square miles of forest.
On the other hand, the worldwide “web-tivism” organization Avaaz is collecting signatures around the world and calling on Bolivia’s President Evo Morales to “stop the crackdown against the indigenous people of the TIPNIS and to release all marchers detained by the Police. We urge you to immediately enter full and binding consultation with the indigenous communities holding rights over the TIPNIS territory, as is the law, and to reject all permits to build the highway through the natural park and reconsider alternative routes. Across the world we have been encouraged by your stand for mother earth and for indigenous people. Now we call on you to protect these communities and this precious forest.” (UPDATE: Bolivia has suspended construction of the Amazon highway amid protests)
As of today, Avaaz has collected 326,116 signers to their petition, and Amazon Watch claims that thousands joined the protests around the world to defend the Amazon.
Both projects will displace indigenous people and affect their ancestral lands. But they will also bring benefits for the majority of the populations of these two Latin American countries. So, the dilemma would be: Is it valid to affect a minority to improve the life of the majority?
When we think on this kind of subjects in the abstract, it's easy to get on the indigenous/nature side, as the majority of Brazilians and Bolivians are not directly involved in the conflict, and we can only identify the short-term benefiters from the conflict: the contractors in charge of making these costly infrastructure projects.
But, if we analyze the issue closely, we might find that we love to enjoy the benefits that electricity brings to our lives. We also love traveling around our country in a fast, well-constructed highway that is part of a communications network that allows the development of commerce (as in the developed countries).
So, the issue gets a bit tricky. The Amazon rainforest, with its rivers and all its resources, is a world asset, we all need it to survive, if we understand how our planet works. But it is also a Brazilian asset, and they have the right to exploit it in their way to progress and development, as any other country does with their own resources.
cc MacJewell
A cynic could say that developed countries, where most of the activism is made (as they have the time and resources to care about something other than just surviving), are lucky of reaching these stages of development before the proliferation of NGO’s. If there had been something like Avaaz or Amazon Watch, back in the days of the American Indian Wars or the colonization of Australia for instance, the development would have faced many more obstacles than it did.
Is this to say that the only way to progress is to take away lands from their original settlers, displacing them and creating natural havoc in the process? Of course not, but the point is that it is a bit hypocritical to criticize development projects overseas, when at home we enjoy the benefits of progress, and have never complained about the displacement of our own indigenous peoples, or about the abuse of the natural resources of our own communities.
Nations have the right to pursue progress, but we now know that it comes with a price. Should that price be enough to deny developing countries of their right to progress?
This is the conflict of today, but it is also the conflict of the future, it won't go away till we find a new way to development, or we define a new kind of development as our goal.
Related news:
- Peru Approves Indigenous Laws as Wikileaks Exposes US Concerns
- Bolivia Set to Pass Historic "Law of Mother Earth" Wich Will Grant Nature Equal Rights to Humans
