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How recognizing the Amazon rainforest as non-human helps counter human-driven ‘sustainable development’ interventions

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Projects introduced in the Amazon rainforest to ‘protect’ it from harm hardly ever follow this objective; instead, they represent human interests while negating the interests of non-humans. But the rainforest as non-human also deserves the right to be represented. Luciana dos Santos Duarte in this article draws on developments in three academic fields to show how non-humans can become recognized in such projects.

Known as the Green Hell , the western part of the Amazon rainforest stretching across Brazil has been a stage for many projects that claim to save the world in the name of ‘sustainable development’. These projects are often conceived using the problematic paradigms of ‘new’ and ‘modern’ (for example introducing ‘new ways to…’), and other buzzwords like ‘Forest 4.0’, where technology is always the presumed answer to sustainable development issues because it ensures the making of profits while saving the forest.

Although we are living in the Anthropocene[1], slowly pushing the button of self-destruction, entrepreneurs motivated to ‘save the world’ are not an endangered species. They create projects connecting a company (buyer), an NGO (to provide technical assistance and credibility in the forest), some cooperatives (workforce of rural farmers), multilateral banks (investors), and the Brazilian government (subsidies). All these actors (called stakeholders) are humans, as are their creations (e.g. corporations). They constitute culture and are Culture.

 

Dichotomous thinking

But what about the Amazon rainforest? The forest, or the ‘stage’ that these actors occupy, is seen as ‘just Nature’, assumed to be separate from ‘Culture’ – something we can literally step on, extract, and reshape based on our will. These binaries – culture/nature, human/non-human – feed the paradigms mentioned above, allowing them to permanently exist in the forest and enabling them to come and go. Like waves, the projects go to the Amazon in accordance with anticipated opportunities for profit. Then, they go away. They incorporate ‘new’ ideas, but do not maintain previous ideas.

There is a key difference between humans and non-humans according to French anthropologist Philippe Descola (author of Beyond Nature and Culture, 2005), “Humans are subjects who have rights on account of their condition as men, while nonhumans are natural or artificial objects that do not have rights in their own right”. Therefore, exercising authority over a certain domain of affairs is considered exclusively human. We humans think from the top down, representing our Culture, and are not so diplomatic with Nature.

 

Diplomacy for non-humans

As part of Culture – because it is a human invention – diplomacy mediates between different interests, traditionally benefiting humans, but not non-humans[2]. However, the complexity of this mediation between the interests of hundreds of cultures and nations around the world, which we can see on daily news (wars, terrorism, etc.) becomes overshadowed by the need to mediate between human interference in nature and the right of existence of the thousands of animal and plant species (to highlight just two categories of non-humans) that are dying due to deforestation, pollution, etc.. Due to humans, non-humans are disappearing.

The lack of representation of Nature in ‘sustainable development’ projects leads to the core question: How can we think about diplomacy for non-humans in Nature?

My positionality allows me to answer this question not as a diplomat, but as a product designer pursuing a double-degree PhD in Production Engineering and Development Studies, inspired by the outputs of my research in the Amazon. In saying that, and recalling a famous quote on creativity by Albert Einstein, “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”, I offer three different paths that could possibly inspire a more concrete answer to diplomacy for non-humans: Law, Anthropology, and Industrial Design.

 

The right to representation

In 1972, Christopher D. Stone wrote the breakthrough article; “Should trees have standing?”, launching a worldwide debate on the basic nature of legal rights that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. He based his argument on the reasons why nature should be represented in court, for instance remembering that children in the past were seen as objects without rights or just an extension of their parents until their rights became recognized. Also, if non-humans like corporations can be represented by lawyers, why not trees and rivers?

Indeed, half a century after this seminal article was published, Whanganui River in New Zealand became the first river in the world to finally be represented in court [4]. The Maori people had been fighting for over 160 years to get it recognized as a legal entity. The river’s interest is now represented by one member from the Maori tribe and one from the government.

Regarding the field of anthropology, some scholars have been placing non-humans at the same epistemological level as humans, for instance, making science from what is the form of life of indigenous peoples, creating ideas like pluriverse[6]. However, our indigenous brothers and sisters do not know that their thinking-feeling can be framed in such fragmented terms. They do not see or live the Nature/Culture division. They are Nature.

Likewise, we as humans can be Nature, too, in our rational thinking and our creation of science and projects. As a lecturer in the field of Design, I am teaching my students to represent the voices of non-humans in their designs and to consider their positionalities in the design process. I believe that the agency of a lawyer should start at the embryonic stage of a project, amplifying the agency of the designer. In other words, the designer can represent Nature and non-humans through design inasmuch as they can do this for humans, mediating between the two as diplomats do. We become Nature by allying with Nature in our human activities.

 

The way forward

Once a project is in the Amazon, where we find thousands of non-human species (animals, plants, spirits), there is a lot of work to do – for anyone who can recreate their agency and their positionalities in projects, either for an entrepreneur, a scientist, a policy maker, or a designer – before we can go to court or march on to the apocalypse.

 

References

DESCOLA, Philippe. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013, p. 488.

ESCOBAR, Arturo. Sustainability: Design for the Pluriverse. Development, 2011, 54(2), pp. 137-140.

LATOUR, Bruno. Telling Friends from Foes in the Time of the Anthropocene. In Clive Hamilton, Christophe Bonneuil & François Gemenne (editors). The Anthropocene and the Global Environment Crisis – Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch, London, Routledge, 2015, pp.145-155.

HARAWAY, Donna. Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantatiocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin. Environmental Humanities, vol. 6, 2015, pp. 159-165.

HUTCHISON, Abigail. The Whanganui River as Legal Person. Alternative Law Journal, vol 39, 3 2014, pp. 179-182.

ROBINSON, Kim Stanley. The Ministry for the Future. London: Orbit, 2020, p. 576.

STONE, Christopher D. Should Trees Have Standing?–Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects. Southern California Law Review 45, 1972, pp. 450-501.

STONE, Christopher D. Should Trees Have Standing? Law, Morality, and the Environment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 264.

VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, Eduardo. From the Enemy’s Point of View: Humanity and Aivinity in an Amazonian Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 428.

WALSH, Catherine. Development as Buen Vivir: Institutional Arrangements and (De)colonial Entanglements. Development, 53(1), 2010, pp. 15-21.

[1] The Anthropocene is a concept proposed as a geological epoch to mark the impact of humans on Earth, like changing the climate and causing irreversible damage. According to Latour (2015, p. 2), the Anthropocene is “the best alternative we have to usher us out of the notion of modernization. […] Like the concept of Gaia, the risk of using such an unstable notion is worth taking. […] The use of this hybrid term made up of geology, philosophy, theology and social science is a wakeup call. What I want to do is to probe here in what sort of time and in what sort of space we do find ourselves when we accept the idea of living in the Anthropocene.”

[2] The recent launched science fiction, or climate fiction, book ‘The Ministry for the Future’ (ROBINSON, 2020) provides some insights in breaking this tradition. In the plot, a body stablished in the Paris Agreement acts as an advocate for the world’s future generations of citizens as if their rights were as valid as the present generation’s – humans considering their own non-humans.

[3] The status of legal personhood has been broadened in the course of history. For instance, slaves were once treated as property; however, with the abolition of slavery – a process, not a single event, in many countries – slaves were no longer regarded as property but as legal persons (HUTCHISON, 2014). Likewise, the status of legal personhood for nature – Stone’s idea – has been impacting courts, the academe, and society, which can be read in his book launched almost fifty years after the original article (STONE, 2010).

[4] In practical terms, it means the river can be represented at legal proceedings with two lawyers protecting its interests – one from the Maori, the other from the government. The Maori also received a NZD 80 million (USD 56 million) settlement from the government after their marathon legal battle, as well as NZD 30 million to improve the river’s health.

[5] Viveiros de Castro (1992) had proposed the term ‘perspectivism’ for a mode that could not possibly hold inside the narrow structures of nature versus culture. By studying indigenous people in Brazil and their shamanic practices, he saw that “human culture is what binds all beings together – animals and plants included – whereas they are divided by their different natures, that is, their bodies” (Latour, 2009, p. 1).

[6] According to Escobar (2011, p. 139) “the modern ontology presumes the existence of One World – a universe. This assumption is undermined by discussions in transition discourses, like the buen vivir” (in Spanish, or suma qamaña, a concept from the indigenous people Aymara, in South America), and the rights of Nature. For Walsh (2010, p. 18), the concept of buen vivir “denotes, organizes, and constructs a system of knowledge and living based on the communion of humans and nature and on the spatial-temporal-harmonious totality of existence”. Coming back to Escobar (idem), “in emphasizing the profound relationality of all life, these newer tendencies show that there are indeed relational worldviews or ontologies for which the world is always multiple – a pluriverse”.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Luciana dos Santos Duarte is doing a double-degree PhD in Production Engineering (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil) and Development Studies (International Institute of Social Studies). She holds a master’s degree in Production Engineering, and a Bachelor degree in Product Design. She is a lecturer in Industrial Design Engineering at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. Part of her research is shared on her website ethicalfashionbrazil.com

 

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The effect of Bolsonaro’s rhetoric on Brazil’s indigenous peoples by Dorothea Hilhorst

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Newly elected Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has immediately started making work of his animosity towards indigenous peoples by transferring the mandate to deal with indigenous land issues to the Ministry of Agriculture that aims to put these lands to commercial use. To justify his policies, Dorothea Hilhorst argues, Bolsonaro uses rhetorical tricks that turn reality upside down.

Immediately after he resumed office on the 1st of January, Bolsolnaro set to turning his hostile attitude towards indigenous peoples into policy. In the prelude to elections, Bolsonaro made no secret of his animosity. One of his quotes was that “[o]ur Amazon is like a child with chickenpox; every dot you see is an indigenous reservation”.

Indigenous people in Brazil have a long history of asserting their right to self-determination. Their territories are in the Amazon, and they can be seen to protect the vast forests against destruction. Bolsonaro, at one occasion, said that “[t]he Indians do not speak our language, they don’t have money, or culture. They are just natives. How they ended up having a 13% of the national territory?” He rhetorically turns the table: instead of recognising that the colonizers of Brazil usurped 87% of indigenous territories, he makes it sound as if indigenous peoples invaded the country.

Bolsonaro’s messages about indigenous peoples are two-layered. Bolsonaro’s tweets about the topic emphasise the need to integrate indigenous peoples into Brazilian society, pointing out that they live in isolated territories rich in natural resources that need to serve economic purposes. He couches this calculating economic attitude in patronising language. The New York Times quoted him saying: “[I]ndigenous people want to rent out the land, they want to be able to do business, they want electricity, a dentist to remove the stumps of teeth from their mouths … indigenous people are human beings like us. They don’t want to be used for political purposes.”

Moving away from international norms

The patronising language with regards to indigenous peoples disregards the internationally agreed-on norms on indigenous rights that Brazil also recognised and ratified. These are in particular international human rights laws and standards: the ILO [International Labor Organization] Convention No. 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Both pieces of international law strongly affirm that indigenous peoples have the right to determine whether they would like to be integrated into the dominant society or maintain their own cultures and identities.

Bolsonaro’s war against NGOs

But Bolsonaro (see the above quote) turns this around by claiming that he knows what indigenous people really want, whereas other entities according to him use indigenous peoples for political purposes. So, who would be using indigenous peoples for political purposes? Well, those are the development organisations, or the NGOs, that were another target of Bolsonaro’s miserable campaign slogans. On January 2nd, his second day in office, he issued a temporary decree (to be ratified within 120 days) that mandates the office of the Secretary of Government (a close collaborator to Bolsonaro) to “supervise, coordinate, monitor and accompany the activities and actions of international organizations and non-governmental organizations in the national territory.” In the eyes of the new president, NGOs exploit indigenous peoples for their own political gain. NGOs, in his view, like to keep indigenous people poor and primitive.

Development organisations and social movements have the tide turned against them. When Bob Dylan sang that the times are changing, this was a hopeful statement, signalling an era where the agenda of social movements was going to make the day. Today’s changing times move in an opposite direction, and social movements and NGOs face increasing opposition. The recent vicious campaign against Soros, culminating in a bomb attack on his house, is just one of the many manifestations of this trend, as Soros has been a major financer of organisations that advocate for democracy and human rights. The State of Civil Society Report 2018 of CIVICUS showed that 109 countries further curtailed the space for civil society in 2017. Social movements continue to celebrate successes, but on the whole are increasingly cornered by legal and financial restrictions.

The transfer of land

But back to Brazil, where Bolsonaro plays a blame game and accuses NGOs of exploiting indigenous peoples. At the same time, his actions point out that his economic interest in the exploitation of the 13% of Brazil’s land that is now reserved for indigenous peoples overrides his concern for their dental condition (see quote above) and lifestyles.

In the first week in the office, he issued an executive order placing the power to decide over indigenous lands in the hands of the Ministry of Agriculture, instead of the specialised government agency FUNAI (National Indian Foundation) that was responsible for indigenous affairs and has the mandate to protect their rights. According to Victoria Tauli Corpuz, quoted by Deutsche Welle, this is a regressive move, because the Agriculture Ministry is the agency that supports the expansion of the areas for the production of crops for export and for cattle ranching.

The protection of indigenous lands is not a concern for indigenous peoples alone. Joan Carling, an indigenous leader that was recently awarded by the United Nations Environmental Agency as a champion of the earth, said in her award video:  “When our lands are being taken away for mining, dams or agribusiness, of course we will defend it. We are trying to protect the environment, not just for ourselves. We are protecting it for humanity”. The Amazon is dubbed as the lungs of the world, and the fight to save it from further destruction is gaining momentum[1]. Let’s hope that the indigenous peoples of the Amazon can continue to resist Bolsonaro. Not just for their sake, but also for the sake of the climate and the quality of life on earth.

[1] For example, an international consortium comprised of indigenous organisations, international NGOs, and universities that includes the ISS was recently awarded 14.8 million euros to strengthen community-based environmental monitoring in Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador. See: https://www.hivos.org/program/all-eyes-on-the-amazon/#all-eyes-on-the-amazon

Image Credit: Agência Brasil

Thea
About the author:

Dorothea Hilhorst is Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam.

She is a regular author for Bliss. Read all her posts here.