Ecological preservation
campaigns:
Another corporate spearhead?
16th June, 2003
Picture seven million square kilometres
of densely woven, deep, breathing, living jungle, pulsating with a myriad
of manifestations of life, an enchanting wonderland streaked with sparkling,
silver blue veins - the king and queen of all rivers, the Amazonas and
Orinoco, almost infinite in length and immensely abundant in the amounts
of water they carry! Picture self-sustaining Amazonia, the land of the rushing waters,
the green lungs of the blue planet earth, the eternal, overflowing cycle
of life, nature's very crown jewel!
Enter the economic interests of
nine Latin American countries, each of which encloses part of Amazonia
within its borders, and also enter corporatism, the highest stage of capitalism,
and the beauties, wonders and vital function of the "earth's lungs" translate
into a somewhat cruder language, into oil, gas, minerals, precious stones,
wood, water, biogenetic resources - in one word, profits. Given
this potentially threatening panorama to one of the earth's remaining,
more or less intact natural reservoirs, you may sigh with relief when
thinking of the existence of international organizations that advocate
environmental protection and that promote the noble case of preservation
of life and nature in all its forms. You may think it's an outright brilliant
idea to promote the "internationalization" of a region as vital to planetary
life as Amazonia and declare it natural heritage of the whole of humanity.
- Think again.
Environmental protection has become
a cynical pretext for the envisaged "internationalization" of Amazonia,
a region covering a third of the entire territory of South America and
home to 20 million inhabitants, internationalization which would be equivalent
to the non-acknowledgement of the national sovereignty of nine Latin American
countries that share its vast territory (Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador,
Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, and French Guayana).
In yesterday's "Aló Presidente",
transmitted from Manaus / Brazil, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías
sounded the alarm bell for all "Amazonians" when pointing out to foreign
interests, which, far from being concerned about environmental preservation
for the sake of human survival, seem hell-bent to take advantage of the
immense natural resources the region has to offer. Chávez referred to remarks
of ex US vice-president Al Gore, made in 1989, who stated that contrary
to what Brazilians thought, Amazonia was not theirs, but belonged to "all
of us". Chávez went on to warn that, in the same year, a similar observation
was made by then French president Francois Mitterand, who said it would
be adequate if Brazil accepted a "relative sovereignty" concerning Amazonia.
Likewise, in 1992, ex Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev expressed he wished
to see Brazil delegate part of its rights over Amazonia to "competent international
organizations", whereas in the same year, then British prime minister John
Major stated quite openly that the developed nations should extend their
legal dominion over what is regarded "common good" to the whole world.
Major said, the international ecological campaigns
which suggested there should be limitations with regard to the respective
national sovereignties over the Amazonia region, were gradually being
left behind as the propagandistic phase of what would take on
the shape of an operational phase which could definitely come to include
military interventions in that region.
With regard to the proposed "internationalization"
of Amazonia under a false ecological concern, Venezuelan president Chávez
counterproposed the true internationalization of the world's big financial
corporations, of Manhattan Island, of the "eternal city of Rome", of the
reserves of the biosphere in other parts of the planet, and the proclamation
as "heritage of humanity" of the world's poor, undernourished, sick and
dying children.
What nobody has explained so far,
however, is, that in the end, it's Hobson's choice: whether committed in
the name of national sovereignty and endogenous development or in the name
of transnational corporatism and neoliberal rapaciousness, the devastation
will be just the same in a region of utmost ecological and climatological
vulnerability. And this is, where the true alarm bell should start ringing.
In the
name of labour, they said nature they tame
Yet whatever
they touched, a corpse became
The open secret
and what they never would know
Their own body
received the deadliest blow.