Does the Amazon belong to everyone?
The text below will talk about the internationalization of the Amazon , which is a fact that has been discussed since the mid-1980s, when some politicians from first world countries, discussing the payment of Brazil’s external debt, thought about paying with natural reserves, industries, etc.
It was most strongly discussed in the late 1990s, including by former US President Geore W. Bush, who spoke about the Internationalization of the Amazon in some of his presidential speeches. We are going through a case that many think is incorrect, as Brazilians, but others have the opposite opinion, that the Amazon is the patrimony of everyone, that everyone should lead it.
As the Amazon was being revealed to Brazil through countless inventories and surveys of its natural , mineral and energy resources, the 1980s and 1990s saw the entry into operation of countless impact projects in the mining and electricity sector.
According to proexchangerates, the Trombetas project, by Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, for the exploration of bauxite; Grande Carajás, for the exploitation of iron ore; Albrás-Alunorte, in Vila do Conde, for the production of alumina and metallic aluminum; from Tucuruí, on the Tocantins River, for the production of about 4 million kilowatts; and the hydroelectric plants of Balbina, on the Uatumã river, and Samuel, on the Jamari river.
This panorama, which contributed to the demographic and agricultural, livestock, mineral and industrial frontier expansion, also gave rise to social tensions, land conflicts, tenure disputes and invasions of indigenous areas.
The situation also generated, due to the delay of a national preservation policy, the current situation characterized by the performance of predatory loggers, river pollution, illegal miners, false missionaries, smuggling the riches of forest biodiversity and drug trafficking , favored by the 1600 km of frontier. an imaginary line, with an insignificant civil or military presence – the frontier open to guerrillas, drug trafficking, arms smuggling and biopiracy .
This last topic was the subject of the Ministerial Defense Conference of the Americas, which ended with a statement in support of combating illicit drugs and criminal activities across borders. Despite not being included on the agenda of the meeting, the controversial Plan Colombia to combat drug trafficking, with the support of the United States, was discussed when addressing issues of international threats to the security of participating countries.
The security of the Brazilian Amazon is at the top of the Brazilian government’s agenda. With the worsening of the crisis between the government and the internationalization of the civil war in Colombia, associated with drug trafficking, Brazil intends to invest up to US $ 10 billion dollars in the modernization of the Armed Forces, seeking to guarantee the integrity of the Amazon.
Military personnel in Rio de Janeiro are over 44 thousand men; in the continental Amazon region, which spreads over two thirds of our territory, only 22 thousand. The proportion is reversed. From Manaus to Tabatinga it is three and a half hours in a direct flight in Boeing. Seven states in the South and Northeast fit into the Amazon.
A few years ago, an electronic message network shared by an Internet group retracted, in the virtual environment, for having broadcast what would later be proven to be a completely unfounded rumor. The rumor was about the existence of North American school maps in which the Brazilian Amazon would be shown as an “international preservation area” and highlighted from the Brazilian territory.
However, the federal government built a possibility of indirect internationalization, under the concession of environmental management of areas of the national territory, when Law 9,985 was enacted. Under such law, Environmental Conservation Units , Integral Protection or Sustained Use Units would be created – by law.
In Units for Sustainable Use, categories of continental dimensions are established: these are the so-called “Environmental Protection Areas”, which, according to the law itself, in its article 15, “generally extensive area, with a certain degree of human occupation, abiotic, biotic, aesthetic or cultural attributes, especially important for the quality of life and well-being of human populations ”, with the objective of“ protecting biological diversity, disciplining the occupation process and ensuring the sustainable use of resources natural ”.
But the law, in its article 30, establishing that “the Conservation Units may be managed by civil society organizations of public interest with objectives similar to those of the unit, by means of an instrument to be signed with the agency responsible for its management”, opens, according to Dr. Luiz Augusto Germani, legal director of the Sociedade Rural Brasileira, an unconstitutional condition that enables the materialization of the hitherto fantastical internationalization to materialize: that the public power may transfer functions to a non-governmental organization, national or international their own, which are the mainstays of their sovereignty over that area.
History – Does the Plateau Surrender and Deliver to the Amazon?
BRASÍLIA – Made of a boa constrictor in a new calf, the privatizing sang started over Furnas, foreshadowing what will happen to what remains of the national hydroelectric system. The monopolies of oil, piped gas, telecommunications and coastal shipping are gone, as has been the case for the privatization of the subsoil, telephony, satellites, petrochemicals, steel, the financial system.
Everything to reduce the external debt, which has multiplied, and to improve services, which have worsened. Petrobras is missing, already cut into watertight units, swallowed like hot porridge, by the edges; Banco do Brasil and Caixa Econômica, which, according to foreign advisory companies, will suffer losses starting in 2003. Then, it will be the turn of the Amazon. Later? They covet the region as a foreign woman.
