Tropical Forests and the total economic value

Mode-indigenous peasant life has a perspective and ancient wisdom to care for your natural and spiritual wealth. But capitalism has imposed, economic and political, technological models to "preserve" and exploit indigenous territories promoting plantations, management plans, identification and trade in land, property records of water sources, biopiracy, GM seeds and ecotourism. All these ways to rearrange the area are homogenizing, isolate and fragment the peoples' relationship with their environment and the ecological base that sustains it (José Godoy-2005) In the late 60's, the Club of Rome, created by a group of entrepreneurs and executives of transnational corporations (Xerox, IBM, Fiat, Remington Rand, Olivetti, etc.), opened the debate on demands for nonrenewable resources. Appearing MEADOWS Report, called: "The Limits to Growth? document signals a time for the depletion of natural resources. The Meadows report Limits to Growth is the shift of the environmental issue in terms of culture and politics, and its uptake by techno-scientific logic, it was being criticized. The model of human action or instrumental rationality forged in Western Europe from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the world expands endangering the planet, the state monopoly capitalism, liberal cutting and privatization, and state capitalism monopoly, with the advent of environmentalism in the 60's, promoted awareness of the overall risk to the environmental challenge, risk to the whole planet and for humanity in the exact measure, especially of a commercial nature which has in itself the inequality by being soaked in the coloniality of power.

20% of the world's richest residents consume nearly 80% of raw materials and energy produced annually (model-limit). Five planets would be required to offer to all inhabitants of the Earth the lifestyle lived by the rich of the rich and poor. It is the poor who is threatening the planet and humanity, as is implied. We lived through the crisis of scarcity (pollution) in the air and water shortage (limits) of minerals and energy, loss of soils (limits) need a time, not least, geomorphological (geological), for training, elements ( air, water, fire, earth) were given and that Western culture and westernized estimated to be without. The greenhouse effect, the hole in the ozone layer, global climate change, toxic waste, and garbage that we generate ourselves daily, are the clearest evidence of these limits on a global scale. There is a culture or a people who risk their very existence. Globalization of rationality, driven by economic logic leads inexorably to an economy that ignores that is embedded in the earth, air, water, soil, underground (minerals), the cycles vital food chains, carbon, oxygen ... all mankind, unevenly, is subject to the risks arising from actions undertaken by some for the benefit of some.

The struggle for the appropriation of biodiversity for the enjoyment of its benefits clearly stated interests among nations. The rationality of the market and sustainable development is manifested in the re-appropriation to maintain, enhance and enjoy the greatest earthly "Biological and Cultural Diversity?. Biodiversity be understood as the sum total of living organisms that exist on earth, being the result of millions of years of evolution. Where the human species and their cultures have emerged from their adaptations, their knowledge of their use. Biodiversity has two inseparable dimensions: the biological and cultural. Thus a property of living things and makes them different cultural and unique. 50 to 80% of the planet's biodiversity is found in tropical countries (Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Zaire, Madagascar and Indonesia), who have suffered in the past 100 years, huge loss of rainforests and the disappearance of her indigenous population at the rate of one tribe every year. 6.000 Half the native languages ​​spoken in the world today are in danger of disappearing in the next 100 years, with her knowledge and skills disappear management of the biodiversity of the earth (UNL, IUCN, UNEP-1992) 200 000 000 Native (5% of the population of the earth) maintain levels of biodiversity, they are custodians of biological diversity on earth.

The struggle for their natural habitats is of survival. The loss of ecosystems means the disappearance of the biological culture. The importance of the Amazon forest is not simply the effect of heavy rain or intense sunlight or the forest soils rich consume. No. The forest part of the weather, shaped through evapotranspiration, carbon fixation (average, seventy tons per hectare), redefining the relationship of incidence of solar radiation with refraction of that energy (albedo). Involved not only in the water balance of the region with the thermal equilibrium evapotranspiration, but contributes to the dynamic equilibrium of the global climate. The critical areas are located in endangered rain forests (Mittermier-1992), occupy 1% of the planet's surface and represent 12% of tropical forests still exist (its disappearance is expected in 40 years), housing between 30% and 40% of the biodiversity of the earth. Life also is responsible for the dynamic equilibrium of the planet. -The Industrial Revolution. Started using solar energy stored in mineral form, such as fossil energy, produced in geological time of millions of years. Again, biological life, through a man-made artifact interferes with the conditions of dynamic equilibrium of the planet.

(Greenhouse effect, ozone layer) testing their limits. Business logic, private, at odds with these principles in so far as the atmosphere is convivial place than it is diverse, where nature and culture are complex and contradictory a structured whole. Meanwhile, if the market shows business to find ways to reward investments according to their potential risk, not so with regard to environmental risks. The atmosphere, qualified in its materiality, is not reducible to logic quantitative monetary-financial considerations and time needed to replenish the eroded soil is beyond the time of human history, it is impossible to revive extinct species (extinction is forever) or dispose of radioactive waste, whose lifetime is of thousands or millions of years, or recover mineral resources that are themselves non-renewable.

Nothing seems to make sense not to be from market economy. The environmental field is not immune to this illusion a diffusion of the notion of sustainable development, the transformation imposed in the 90's, especially after Rio-92, the economic intervention of most sectoral policies promoted by environmental multilateral organizations (prominently, the World Bank). We are not surprised, therefore, when we face the sad spectacle of misery and devastation, they try to impose a single logical generalized commodification. A forest is not the same for a people who have lived with it thousands of years for a timber that, rather than wood, are interested in transforming them into something abstract money in the life of a community, for whom a mineral wealth has not any sense, can become a nightmare if oil is discovered lands, gold or other mineral of interest to any employer or any state eager to make concessions to companies and also to collect more taxes. The environmental challenge confronts us with the need to build new theories that take as their basis of wealth, not scarcity.

The nature, converted into private property, will be buying and selling absolute commodification. In the 70's and 80 developed a critical movement related to the dynamics of the Revolution (in the relations of power through technology) Verde. In this movement originated a movement of alternative agriculture, organic agriculture, agro-ecology, which established terms such as: agro-toxic and put a negative to all agrochemical. Beyond the measures intended to improve the image and watch a healthier environment, at least on the rich side of the planet, agrochemical companies are trying to improve the environmental efficiency of their own practices, recognizing in practice, the strength of the arguments of his critics. The new biotechnologies, such as GM-can provide genetic mixtures that reduce the ecological impact of use of inputs. The differences between the new phase of development of relations of power through biotechnology and old are natural breaks the barrier of producing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to produce transgenic organisms modified (OTMs) and occurs a disposal / disqualification the traditional knowledge / actual in February 2001, Cancun (Mexico), was formed the Group of Countries-Mega several of which are currently part Bolivia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Philippines, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Venezuela, which has been systematically consulted by international organizations like the WTO and the World Bank, but in which everything is being decided at the level of government, without consulting concern the population, which means 45% of the world's cultural diversity (present in those countries), to know what you think of the current proposals.

The big oil corporations in the world, multilateral institutions that support them, as the World Bank and large NGOs. They are responsible for endangering the fate of the planet, especially when it comes to light what happens to the populations of places and regions where these oil corporations more directly exert their action and on which leave their particular brand of oil spills and blood. The World Bank (year 2000) approved loans worth about $ 200 million for the project the Chad-Cameroon, an area where they are present ExxonMobil and Chevron (Friends of the Earth, 2001). The World Bank supported while these big, giant projects, criticized by environmentalists in the 70 and 80 for supporting the construction of large dams, roads and other infrastructure for the expansion of development. The greatest success of the Small Projects Program of the World Bank may be cooling the contradictions generated by the projects of development, which, on the other end, with the Bank's support through its Major Projects Program (PGP ).

In the case of environmental issues, specifically, much of the resources for environmental policies in poor countries comes from the World Bank and other multilateral institutions. A study in Funbio, a nongovernmental organization stimulated by the World Bank (which gives institutional and financial support), whose objective was to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity in different countries, here in Brazil. Noteworthy is the institutional form and power of that NGO, was one of the most pathetic of these societies. Something similar happened in Ecuador when (where you can find indigenous Huaorani,) gave the Italian Agip Oil transnational, permission to build an oil platform, extending a pipeline and extract oil from the northeastern province of Pastaza in exchange for the company delivers : (...) to each of the six communities Huaorani, a classroom, a health course, a radio, a battery with solar panel, 50 kilos of rice, 50 of sugar, two cubes of fat, a bag salt, a whistle judge and two soccer balls, 15 plates, 15 cups and a wardrobe with 200 dollars in medicines, in a single game? (Marin, 2003).

In the early 90's, those same 22 Huaorani communities fighting transnational oil companies, which also had military protection of the Ecuadorian state and, at that time, the Huaorani of Ecuador (...) succeeded in mobilizing national environmental organizations and international against the planned oil exploitation DuPont-Conoco Oil Company in Indian Territory. The Huaorani organizing campaign, had the support of the international indigenous organization SAIIC (Oakland, California) and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund (EUA), was successful and canceled oil company operations in Indian territory. The Peruvian Amazonian indigenous organizations gained a similar success with the announcement of the cancellation, in September 1991 the contract of Texas Crude Oil Company, Houston, Texas, with the Peruvian government for the exploitation of the region in Pacaya Samiria Amazon Indians (Varèse-1991) All this complex web of conflicting interests was captured by the natives organized around the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA). In its resolutions declare: "Faced with the incursion of extractive industries on indigenous ancestral territories, COICA declares peace and development space for the survival of indigenous peoples?.

Requires governments to reinforce the demarcation and legalization of these territories, declaring some areas untouched, to review contracts with these companies, to develop policies and strategies that respect the collective rights of indigenous peoples? (COICA, 2003). Another dispute is already starting to see is the ownership and control of water, which has been accentuated in recent years, particularly in the second half of the 90's. If we take as "Our Common Future?, Brundtland Commission report and the various documents and treaties that emerged from the Rio-92 meeting, including the Agenda XXI and the Earth Charter as the most important references of the field environment in the last twenty years, become so timid amazing treatment it deserves the water, when compared with the highlight has been the subject in the last decade, the point of being marketed as a potential generating future wars The nearly 8 million square kilometers of tropical forest relatively continuous, largely closed, in Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela, are holders of 460 tons of biomass per hectare on average, are 70% water, becoming a true "green ocean? evapotranspiration depends whose climate, and people living in vast areas of Central and South America, the Caribbean, North America and worldwide.

Today, with a diesel engine for underground water (aquifers) and surface waters, as water tables are not sufficient, at least at the time and at the desired location. An increasing exploitation of groundwater and, thus, introduces a new component in the overall environmental injustice in the world (and country). Criticism of the very idea of ​​development, as environmentalists had made in the 60-70 years, went over to eco-development and, later, sustainable development, and for those winding roads their own idea of ​​development was revived, the Stockholm Conference and Rio de Janeiro, not only have increased the rates of exploitation and transformation of resources, new strategies have also emerged on the nature of intervention and new manifestations of their impacts and ecological risks. No longer frightened when we hear that the water and biodiversity should be treated as a world heritage site there and then identify the interests of rich countries in the Amazon. The Italian Ricardo Petrella (2001) warned that exactly heritage of mankind, water, air or knowledge are resources that can not be privatized, either by national or transnational corporations.

As we conclude that part of the welfare of the human population depends directly or indirectly, of biodiversity, either through the use of many species or through the enjoyment of intangible services resulting from systemic economic processes. The emergence of indigenous and peasant struggles for natural resources is the struggle for conservation of biodiversity, the fight for life. The indigenous and peasant communities in Latin America and the world are carriers of an ancient knowledge on biodiversity, plants, animals, water and climate. Research has shown that three-quarters of all prescription drugs of plant origin that are in the world market is about 43.000 million dollars, according to Rural Advancement Foundation International, (year 95) were discovered because of its previous use in indigenous medicine. They are so vital that companies have based their civilizing process material and energy in biomass and biodiversity, with a specific way of conceiving the relationship between nature and society. Authors such as Bawa and Gadgil (1997) recognized the Indians as people who make up the ecosystem for millennia-natural cultural landscapes. Then capital is in a great dilemma on the one hand needs to "steal" indigenous knowledge and the other dealing with the process of exclusion and extermination of the indigenous cultures of the world, a phenomenon that is already proving contradictory.

ANNA BERMEO periodismointernacional.ning.com TURCHI 3504 CPP / 06/06/2009 Carlos Walter Porto Gonçalves - Environmental Challenge: United Nations Program for Environment-2004 Ana Patricia Noguera de Echeverri-enchantment of the world: United Nations Middle United Alejandro Toledo Colombia 2004 Economics of biodiversity: United Nations Program for Environment-Mexico 1998