Amazon Indigenous Agenda RETURNING TO THE “MALOCA” COICA

2.1.2 Sustainable Development: A Discourse of the elites and a concept to trap everything

Economic globalization, the consequence of market policies that extend throughout the planet, have imposed and continue to apply processes of cruel environmental and human exploitation, whose consequences are progressive inequity, violence and war. Latin American governments justify the introduction of exploitation-inspired measures, which are excluding on the social, political and economic areas, with the argument that they are absolutely necessary to reach development and democracy.

As a result of this process, the structural changes concern us, especially when we’ve verified that the sovereignty of States is each time weaker over our territories and economies, and for the disappearance of values and principles, both human and spiritual, that have guaranteed equilibrium and the respect to nature.

As a general model and policy, the so-called “Sustainable Development”, has been applied in almost all the societies with just one formula, vision and discourse (speech). Therefore, sustainable development includes: “the economic development, with social justice and the conservation of the environment”; three variables that are unable to reconcile amongst themselves, according to the current resource concentration and income model and to the level of consumption of the countries of the North and of some social elites of the South; regarding to the opportunities of certain social groups of the North and of the South. The current economic system that prevails throughout the world promotes economic development without considering the rest of the existing variables. With a false viewpoint and speech, it has tried to sell as something true, that within “Social Development”, the participation and distribution of benefits is included, without moving not even a comma from the capitalist development model, which is now called “sustainable”.

The “sustainable” part however, does not pass from a speech that confuses people. A speech is not an objective description of reality, but rather it is in the words of Arturo Escobar, a reflection of the struggle to define the reality in a certain form and not another. Therefore, it is always strictly linked to power, since it produces the “truth effect” (…) and enters to participate in the production of reality. Consequently, the perceptions and definitions that are part of it produce policies and interventions that have impacts and concrete effect in the life of actual people and the social reality (11). This is what is happening with the Amazon and its people, since sustainable development projects being held in the region and sometimes withour participation, can have a good intention, from their viewpoints. However, they apply “recipes” that do not respect our reality and end up generating results such as those found in the book of “The Monkey and the Fish” (12) .

We are without a doubt talking of an empty and ambiguous concept, maybe that is why the so-called “Sustainable Development” was welcomed by all economic and social sectors, even by us. Therefore, any kind of activities that hold the adjective or tag of “sustainable”, which is equal to “good for consumption”, have barely found any resistance or questioning against them, although, throughout times, it has been demonstrated that most of them are harmful for the environmental and human preservation.

Moreover, these “sustainable development” activities have been raised to now being “true” statements, as all the mythologies of the age of the science. The new world “Vulgata” stands in a series of oppositions and equivalences that support and respond in favor of it, so as to fade current transformations of developed societies, as the des-activation of the economic commitment of the State and the strengthening of its penal and policy components. The uncontrolled financial flows and the misadjustment of the employment market, the reduction of social protections and the moralizing celebration of “individual responsibility” (13). Thus, they have generated a whole network of justification discourses that are used only to serve the interests of the system and its faithful defenders, including the progressists, which the system calls the development or third world countries.

The tail or story of “sustainable development” distributes in an equal way, the responsibility to save the planet; which is a big mistake and a huge irresponsibility. During thousands of years, we’ve made use of natural resources and our social and economic systems, without exploiting the environment in a disorganized way and only for the individual benefit. The use was and is determined by collective needs. However, it is probable that, as members of this hydrocarbon and capitalist society, we must have some responsibility in what we the “experts” call the “environmental deterioration problem”.

Statistics show that there are societies, such as the North American, the European and some elites of the South and East, which together account as less than 20% of world population, who consume 80% of the energy generated in the world. Many of these energies are originated in the Amazon, as well as all its socio bio-diverse potential. For us, it is clear and evident that the social inequities, accumulation and the unequal access to goods and services generated within societies, are the responsible for the socio environmental problems and the worsening of the situation. Unfortunately, these problems have tried to be hidden from all of us and it has been also said that we all are responsible for deterioration processes and for the environmental collapse. We, in the Amazon are making an effort to say to the world that the exploitation of our ecosystems, in addition to being predatory, has generated nothing more than contradictions. In other words, we live in a region where the there exiting resources are of great commercial value, which offer the greater comparative advantage in the international market and even for some countries, they are today their greatest sources of income generation as States. In opposition, Amazon indigenous peoples in all the countries, suffer the greatest shortages, especially in the area of services. The social sector is the most punished one, with a precarious attention on health, education, and communication and energy areas.

After two decades, COICA, having felt on its own flesh the failure of “sustainable” projects applied without any criteria within our territories, as well as the risks of our physical and cultural continuance, places now a greater emphasis on its criticism to the development model dependant on the world booms and especially on South American countries. At the same time, COICA proposes the re-building of the broken thread with the application of the “sustainable development” model, which did not bring the results that we were expecting: increase in welfare, respect to our identity, protection for our cultures and for the environment where we live, application of our right. In reality, we have seen that the opposite has happened.

Therefore, COICA proposes the concept of Human Sustainability, which needs to be included in the speeches and daily practices of member organizations and all of those that are developing activities with us. This term replaces the concept of Sustainable Development, due to the incapacity of this latter one to generate responses over our sustainability and our territories.