Third Lemann Dialogue
Agricultural and Environmental
Issues in Brazil
November 7-8, 2013
University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign
Photo: Murilo Mello – Suape, 1975
Development and SocioEnvironmental Conflicts: the
Suape Project, Belo Monte, and
the S. Francisco River Diversion
Clóvis Cavalcanti
clovati@fundaj.gov.br
Clóvis Cavalcanti
clovati@fundaj.gov.br
Introductory Remarks
Ecological economics: analytical reference for the presentation.
A transdisplinary field of study attracting systems ecologists and
dissident economists.
Inspiration in N. Georgescu-Roegen (1906-1994) together with work
from, among others, ecologist H. T. Odum (1924-2002) and economist
K. Boulding (1910-1993).
Ecological economics sees the economy as a subsystem
of a larger finite global ecosystem.
What makes one believe that the extra ecological and social costs
of growth are not already larger than the extra production
benefits?
Herman Daly’s suggestion:
The development process in Brazil has provoked a series of grave,
well-known ecological problems:
biodiversity loss with deforestation (subsidized cattle-raising) and
large-scale agricultural projects;
large dams built at any cost to produce subsidized electricity;
desertification processes mainly in the Northeast, but even in
Amazonia;
ecosystem destruction such as in the case of mangroves;
a lack of observance of environment protection laws and rules.
The process of development has not taken fully into account its
ecological and social costs.
The traditional model of exploitation of natural resources in Brazil is
extractivist, predatory and colonialist:
high-energy content (and impact), low value added
As J. A. Drummond says, the economy of Brazil since the 1930s
has been submitted to a process “amply dominated by the
developmental belief that it is worth incurring any costs to grow
economically”.
Faith in the indispensability of growth can explain the waste of
resources in Amazonia as if they had no limits, according to Mary
Allegretti. It has also dominated the orientation of all
administrations since 1930.
Short-run considerations determine what is undertaken, especially
in connection with economic decisions and their (neglected)
socio-environmental consequences
Access to information of relevance in relation to big projects
subject to environmental licencing 
opportunity to adjust the interest of economic iniciatives to the
needs of the protection of nature and people
Experience shows that inadequate permissions are given
The licencing process fails in its function of evaluation instrument
of the social and ecological sustainability of great undertakings
(the proper occasion to assess mega-projects’ full implications; an
opportunity to apply the rules of good environmental governance)
Concession of unjustified permits to projects assessed on the basis
of insufficient data and reasonings which disrespect legal
restrictions, and face strong movements of protest and resistance
from affected populations
Perception of a hidden reality
Joan Martínez Alier: “the resistance (local and global) expressed in many idioms to
the abuse of natural environments and the loss of livelihoods” 
against the belief that to defend nature is a “luxury” of the rich, typical of a postmaterialist age (or the prejudice that “The poor are too poor to be green”).
Socio-environmental conflicts express a survival strategy of the poor, who
become aware of the necessity to conserve natural resources, such as water and the
forest.
This “awareness is often hard to identify because it does not use the language of
scientific ecology, but local languages such as the territorial rights of indigenous
peoples or the religious language”
It comprises the incommensurability, or weak comparability of values, in front
of the modern primacy of the economic over any other dimension of life
 values at stake, beyond the economic, are: ecological, cultural, subsistence of
the populations, sacred, human
Photo: Murilo Mello
Suape, 1975
A village of artisan fishermen
Abundance of fishes, shellfish, crustaceans  ample
mangrove area, great local fish nursery
Small, organic subsistence farms (diversity of fruits: cashew,
coconut, mangaba, cajá, mango, jackfruit, sirigüela, starfruit, Malay apple, sapodilla, etc.)
Communities existing there in some cases for over 200 years
(case of the Tatuoca islet, now the site of shipyards)
Suape area, 1975
Suape (PE):
Source of a reaction along the lines of the environmentalism of the poor
The official, imposed perspective: “The search for adequate areas to build ports that live
up to future requirements, unfortunately, does not find in our territory an ample range of
alternatives […] The choice thus amounts to exploit nature’s gifts, molding them
according to our needs and awakening them to fruitful activity”
Lafayette Prado, 1974. Complexo Portuário Industrial de Suape. Recife, 11/8/1974.
Suape port and industries
2005 photo
Questions that arise:
environmental (in)justice, environmental racism, ecological distributive
conflicts, ecologically unequal exchange, ​non-economic values 
problems resulting from the monopoly of the economic dimension over the
other.
“Who has the power to impose the economic language as the supreme language
in a socio-environmental discussion? Who has the power to simplify
complexity, disqualifying other points of view?” (Martínez Alier)
Ecological distributive conflicts manifest the confrontation in the social
metabolism of nature between nature and the economy, with ups and downs,
vicissitudes, new frontiers, urgencies and uncertainties  indication of
directions for a truly – not a neoliberal – green economy
The economic perspective over Suape–
Francisco Cunha, a consultant (2012)
“Suape is the crown jewel of Pernambuco. A marvel of logistics.
Savings of the people of Pernambuco done for over 30 years without
interruption and at the right place. As a collective savings, Suape
confirms the quip attributed to Albert Einstein that ‘the greatest force
in the universe is compound interest.’ We are beginning to benefit
from the compounding of applications made ​in Suape [...]
[It] is a great opportunity of development [...] the greatest in the last
50 years and for the next generation.”
Government intervention through the Suape companhy has been
characterized by violence in the removal of families living there,
without fair compensation, and without new homes made available.
Those families have become homeless, settling precariously in cities
located around the project.
The environment has also suffered from the predatory occupation of
the territory. Where there were mangroves, rainforest and marshes big
structures appear. At the same time, constituted powers (executive,
legislative and judiciary) wink at the violation of the rights of those
populations invisible to society.
Communities removed from their spaces, whose culture and habits, fostered by the
tradition of fishing activities and the small family farms, gave meaning to their lives,
face a kind of extinction.
Believing in the official discourse, the general population expects Suape to be their
redemption.
In the case of communities forced to leave their land, whose possession comes from
grandparents, and passes from parents to children, the strategy employed be the
project is expulsion, with promises of new a place to live, as if this futuristic
adventure could be free from suffering and erase from people’s minds all the vital
energy used to build a life. This strategy is typical of a policy of modernization and
development imposing new structures of production at all costs.
In Pernambuco – and other parts of
Brazil with grave socio-environmental
conflicts –, what is at stake is the rule of
law. Simply, the Constitution is ignored
as much as possible
Destroyed farm houses of small
landowners ejected violently at Tiriri
(Suape) in 2012
BELO MONTE case
6th Biennial Meeting of the Brazilian Association of Graduate and Research
Programs on the Environment and Society (ANPPAS), Belém, Pará, Sept. 2012
Discussion on Conflicts in the Context of the Great Hydroeletric Dams in Amazonia
After hearing the young Indian Juma Xipaya, member of the panel, speak, I thought:
“Syria is here”. There seems to be what people in Amazonia is calling
PDA (Plano de Destruição da Amazônia)
Juma Xipaya
who breastfed her baby
during the panel
New articulation of the peoples of the rivers where the government intends to
implement large hydroelectric complexes – and, with them, violent works in the
field of mining, deforestation and social chaos.
“Every problem interacts with other problems and is therefore part of a set
of interrelated problems, a system of problems… I choose to call such a
system a mess” – Russell L. Ackoff (1919-2009), systems thinker
The occupation movement in Belo Monte in May 2013 demanded the
suspension of works, and studies of dams in their territories, requiring prior
consultation – with veto power – to be performed.
The definitive Belo Monte license was granted without requiring the observance
of the constraints established in the previous phase (preliminary license) –
statement of the Public Office of the Prosecution in Oct. 2013.
Invasion of the building site by protesting indigenous peoples. Court of Appeals
determined the expulsion of invaders and the works to go on (Oct. 31, 2013,
after a week of occupation)
A continuous conflict between different valuation languages marches toward the
victory of the economic perspective
Diversion of the São Francisco River
Canal digging
Photos: José Alves Siqueira
Life in the river
Fotos: André Fossati
Social reality
Photos: José Alves Siqueira
Environmental problems
Threatened species
(Araripe marakin, e.g.)
Extinction
(ararinha azul
de lear)
Desertification
“The inexorable end of the São Francisco”: the repetition of disastrous public policies
in the river basin. Serious consequences of the construction of big works without efforts
to minimize their impact along the river – José Alves Siqueira (2012)
Today, in the traditional Fish Square in Petrolina (PE), just 700 m from the São
Francisco left bank (the river had 158 different fish species), Amazon species from the
state of Pará are among the most commercialized  disappearance of local ones
Fotos: André Fossati
“The [development] story starts with the ancient dream of utopia,
and then mutates into the historical project of creating paradise on
earth […] On the way, the idea of moral limits to human ambition,
which underpinned all pre-modern conceptions of the good life,
was lost and dormant energies of creativity and destructiveness
were set free […] At various stages on this journey, the greatest
thinkers of the age tried to envisage an end state, a point at which
humanity could say ‘enough’, only to find that the machine it had
created was out of control, a Frankenstein’s monster which now
programmed the game of progress according to its own insane
logic. This is the story of how it happened – how we came to be
ensnared by the dream of progress without purpose, riches without
end.” - Robert Skidelsky & Edward Skidelsky, How Much Is
Enough? The Love of Money, and the Case for the Good Life
(2012)
Thank you!