Movements and the Network of Environmental Justice in Brazil

Introduction: The Beginning of EJ Discussions in Brazil

The debate surrounding environmental challenges emerged in Brazil mostly by the end of the 1980s. In 1985, after a long period of military dictatorship, Brazil was experiencing the rise of democracy in simultaneity with a harsh economic crisis and the spread of globalization. But the concept of environmental justice (EJ) first appeared in Brazil in academic texts by the end of the 90s, and it was only widespread during the last decade, after the creation of the Brazilian Network of Environmental Justice (RBJA) in 2002. At the same time, the concept of environmental racism appeared, although the debate of racism in Brazil and its singularities had some tradition in the social sciences and anti-racism movements.1 Before the appearance of EJ in Brazil, connected issues were published in Portuguese, regarding some fields and specific themes such as environmental sociology, democracy, and conflicts;2 political ecology and ecological economics;3 social inequalities, vulnerability, and public health.4 Specially during and after the Rio Summit in 1992, some important social movements and organizations of the civil society, like political parties, labor unions, rural landless, indigenous, anti-racism, and urban local community movements, incorporated environmental issues to their political agendas, but without mentioning the concept of EJ.

In Brazil, the emergence of the EJ debate contributed to link environmental problems with public health, human rights, and justice. However, there are some differences between the process that lead to the development and the usage of the EJ concept in the U.S. and in Brazil. In the U.S., EJ movements were strongly organized by local communities and specific ethnic groups (“people of color”),5 but in Latin America and Brazil, since the very beginning, EJ discussions leveled criticism against the capitalistic “development” model and the unfair regional role within the context of international trade. Apart from singular and historical patterns of social inequality and ethnic discrimination, environmental conflicts in Latin America have a strong relationship with its insertion in the international economy. Another significant aspect in Brazil is the relevance of traditional communities—indigenous, quilombolas (African slaves' descendants established in country areas), and other native people who live from forest gathering, agriculture, and fishing—inhabiting territories disputed by powerful economic groups from the industries of agribusiness, mining, and construction of hydroelectric dams.

Understanding Environmental Conflicts and EJ in Brazil: A Political Ecology Perspective

As mentioned before, in Brazil social sciences and political ecology have served as a critical theoretical framework for distinct environmental movements, and this is also important when considering EJ in distribution conflicts arising from economic, social, and ecological phenomena that place the burdens of development squarely on the poorer, the most discriminated and excluded areas and populations.6

In a sense, several types of dilemmas, inequalities, and conflicts that can be found in a broad international setting are portrayed in Brazil, in a dynamic society characterized by the simultaneous presence of different technologies and the unequal distribution of the risks and benefits posed by economic and technological development. The private appropriation of natural resources and services in several economic sectors, including associated infrastructures—such as energy and transport—pollution-related damage and precarious and authoritarian work relations define what several political ecology authors, such as Martinez-Alier7 and Porto,8 describe as environmental or ecological distribution conflicts.

The perspective gained by political ecology shows how the main environmental conflicts in countries such as Brazil are intimately related to the patterns of production and trade, while simultaneously allowing the analysis of concepts such as (un)sustainability and development through the logic of international trading and global economy price setting paradigms. These prices result largely from the way natural resources and labor are valued through externalization mechanisms that either minimize or do not consider impacts on the population and environment. Therefore, an unavoidable link may be established between goods imported by the U.S., Europe, or Japan and the subsequent high levels of pollution, environmental degradation, and poor working conditions in the countries where they were extracted or produced.9 Thus, when comparing “competitiveness” in different agricultural and mineral commodity-exporting economies, we must include the “advantage” of reducing prices by externalizing negative impacts, which will end up being paid collectively, and in a discriminatory fashion, by affected populations and societies. Different types of conflicts materialize in disputes that attempt to modify asymmetries at the national or international level, be it in terms of political and commercial relationships, in institutional, political, and decision-making settings, or geographically, by defining insalubrious and dangerous sacrificial areas10 with no basic infrastructure or services, usually in the poor peripheries, and, above all, isolated from healthier rich areas.

Returning to the Brazilian context, an important environmental conflict relates to unequal land distribution and pressures caused by export monocultures in vast areas of the country. The ultimate impacts of this conflict are varied and can be considered from different vantage points, including the perspective of ecosystem degradation, erosion, and loss of topsoil, intensive use of pesticides—since 2008, Brazil has been the greatest global consumer11—as well as clashing with political projects to reform the agricultural legislation, to protect family-based agriculture and agro-ecology. There is an exacerbation of preexisting conflicts involving traditional lands and values, such as those related to the so-called forest people, indigenous populations, quilombolas (people who live in settlements called quilombos) and gatherers, as we can see in the results of the Map of Environmental Injustice and Health in Brazil, a project coordinated by FIOCRUZ and FASE, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that acted as Executive Secretary of the RBJA between 2002 and 2011.12

The expansion of agribusiness and soy plantations has been particularly important in generating these types of conflicts, and in degrading traditional landscapes, including the Amazon rainforest. One can similarly consider plantations that are not real forests, since they consist of tree monocultures (eucalyptus, pine, acacia) used for fuel or paper production, the latter with a high export quota. The Brazilian Network Against the Green Desert has acted against the negative impacts of eucalyptus monoculture, especially in the states of Espírito Santo and Bahia, articulating the participation of environmental movements, indigenous populations, farmers, and quilombolas. Other examples of appropriation and degradation of natural resources include, for example, the expansion of shrimp farms that have destroyed mangrove areas and caused organized reactions from environmentalists and traditional farming and fishing communities.

Other noteworthy conflicts involve water, notably the construction of great dams for irrigation or power generation, or even the changing of riverbeds, such as the ongoing discussion about the São Francisco River in the Northeast. MAB, a Brazilian movement rallying those affected by dams, is an example of resistance, and has been an important player in discussions on agricultural reform and alternative energy policies.

It is interesting to note that urban problems were not so important for the beginning of EJ movements in Brazil in comparison to the former ones.13 The radical urbanization process in the last decades—current urbanization rates are almost 90%, compared to approximately 25% in 1940—added the permanence or even worsening of income concentration, and is the source of important environmental, sanitary, and health problems in Brazil. In spite of that, many environmental conflicts within urban areas still remain not named as environmental injustice problems. An expressive portion of the urban population lives in slums and places without appropriate urban infrastructure, frequently in risk areas of flooding, garbage sites, industrial pollution, and major accidents. However the social movements for sanitation and for human rights related to home and violence in Brazilian slums, as well as the creation of associations organized by residents around waste and hazardous sites or by workers contaminated by chemicals (e.g., asbestos and POPs—persistent organic pollutants) are present in different cities. They are classic examples of EJ movements and their voices tend to grow up.

The Declaration of Principles of Environmental Justice in Brazil

As a consequence of prior social, environmental, and academic groups which were articulating a common agenda, in September 2001 representatives of social movements, trade unions, NGOs, environmental entities, associations of Afro-Brazilian descendants, indigenous people, academic researchers from Brazil, the United States, Chile, and Uruguay participated at the International Colloquium on Environmental Justice, Labor and Citizenship, held in the city of Niteroi.14 A very important aspect of this meeting was to join people to discuss the concept and movements for EJ, and at the end a Declaration of Principles of Environmental Justice in Brazil was written. Another important decision was to organize the Brazilian Network of Environmental Justice, launched in the World Social Forum of Porto Alegre in January 2002.

The Brazilian Declaration was based in the U.S. experience of 1991 when the EJ “17 principles” were established at the People of Color Summit for Environmental Justice. The document expressed a central idea that environmental injustice cases in Brazil result mostly from a historical model of development dominant in Brazil which concentrates economic and political power and, simultaneously, produces social and territorial exclusion, rendering socially and discriminated groups more exposed and vulnerable to different environmental and hazardous risks. Ethnic discrimination and racism complete the frame of environmental injustice.15

In urban spaces this takes the form of placing the mass of workers in the neglected peripheries of the cities, mainly slums without sewage sanitation and basic human rights. Meanwhile, in the countryside, the lack of possibilities to achieve better life conditions encourages, or forces, peasants and small farmers to flee to large urban centers. Traditional populations, including miners and small rural producers who live in regions near the continually spreading borders of expanded capitalist activities, are those who mostly suffer from the pressures of compulsory displacement. They are displaced by huge projects such as dams and highways, as well as by settlements for the exploitation of mineral, timber, agrarian, and cattle resources. As a consequence, many people leave their homes and workplaces and lose access to the natural resources provided by land, forests, and rivers. But many of them, especially traditional populations, resist in their territories.

Thus, the Declaration defines “environmental injustice” as

the mechanisms by which societies, whose members are unequal from economic and social perspectives, place the biggest burden of the environmental harms accompanying development on disempowered lower income populations, poor urban zones, racially discriminated, traditional ethnic groups, and blue-collar groups. In a few words, the burdens are placed on the most vulnerable and marginalized populations.16

On the other side, “environmental justice” is understood by the set of principles and practices that:

a. guarantees that no social group, be it ethnic, racial or class oriented, should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences of economic operations, policy decisions and federal, regional and local programs as well as the lack of such programs or the neglect of their enforcement;

The Creation and Development of the Brazilian Network of Environmental Justice

Following the idea that environmental justice issues represent a conceptual approach to bring together into the same dynamics the popular struggles for human and social rights, a collective good quality of life, and environmental sustainability, the Brazilian Network of Environmental Justice (RBJA—Rede Brasileira de Justiça Ambiental)18 was founded in 2002.

Its basic aims were, among others: to develop tools to promote EJ; to denounce cases of environmental injustice and organize campaigns in order to face them; to encourage dialogue among multiple actors in EJ struggles with an interchange of experiences, ideas, data, and strategies of actions; to democratize access to information and organize a databank with reports of concrete cases, legal disputes, lists of institutional mechanisms available, and other relevant matters; identify and bring together experts from different specialties who are willing to support and advise the environmental social movements; to sensitize the media, opinion makers and public opinion in general; to put pressure on politicians and governmental agencies in order to develop and implement public policies concerned to EJ, as well as to publicize and give public accessibility to information concerning risk assessment and environmental hazards; to develop and strengthen strategies of international articulation on EJ, including workshops on environmental justice during the World Social Forums; and last but not least to contribute to the settlement of a new agenda of science and technology within an EJ perspective.

Since 2002, the RBJA has organized its activities mainly through: (i) virtual lists of discussions to exchange experiences, circulate campaigns and information on meetings etc.; (ii) general meetings, where the Network itself, principles, organization, and praxis is discussed, and a work agenda for the next years is developed. There were four general meetings between 2004 and 2010; (iii) workgroups—three took shape in the last years, one engaging groups on discussions about chemical pollutants, another against environmental racism, and the latter to join organizations and populations about the impacts of mining, metallurgy and steel industry; and (iv) specific workshops developed by the Network, its workgroups, or participating in events organized by specific organizations engaged with EJ issues, e.g., climate justice.

All these activities have the support of its members and a executive secretary, based in Rio de Janeiro at a NGO (FASE). The last meeting in 2010 decided to change the secretary from FASE (there is a moving to Ceará, a Northeast State) and to create a political council with eight organizations. There are 96 different organizations that are members of RBJA at the moment and they represent the universe of social groups and movements which are engaged in EJ struggles and movements, such as environmentalists, grassroots movements of residents, traditional populations and anti-racism groups, trade unions, small agricultures, scientists, and groups affected by different hazards and risks (like asbestos and POPs).

It is possible to find out more information—most of the texts are in Portuguese—by accessing the Web site <www.justicaambiental.org.br>. Besides general information about its history, principles, campaigns, and news, the site makes available texts about EJ in a virtual library and also in a databank of about 3,000 texts on EJ which circulated in the virtual list between 2002 and 2009, the so-called “thematic databank” (banco temático). The databank project was developed by FIOCRUZ (an academic public health institute) and the NGO FASE, and the search tool allows the user to localize documents organized by different categories such as population, generating activities of environmental injustices, etc. Another interesting source of information about environmental conflicts in Brazil is found by accessing the results of the Map of Environmental Injustice and Health in Brazil,19 where we can find out about 400 cases that have been discussed by EJ organizations and networks since 2006.

Final Considerations: Current Trends in RBJA

In November 2010, during the last RBJA meeting held in Rio de Janeiro, some important trends were discussed, as well as issues and projects that are currently mobilizing its members and organizations. Twelve ongoing processes were pointed out, including the use of the Map of Environmental Injustices and Health in Brazil20 to disseminate the concept of EJ and current conflicts; the Rapporteur for the Human Right to Environment, coordinated by the Brazilian Platform of Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Human Rights (Plataforma Dhesca Brazil21), as a result of some local missions conducted annually in response to the denouncement of environmental injustices; mobilizations related to the RBJA workgroup “Articulation Mining, Metallurgy and Steel Industry,” engaged with environmental conflicts in these economic sectors; the creation of the Evaluation of Environmental Equity, a tool developed by an academic group (IPPUR/UFRJ) for the strengthening of social and local EJ movements during the processes of environmental licensing and territorial planning;22 mobilizations of the workgroup “Combat to the Environmental Racism”;23 the perspective to organize awareness campaigns and create a workgroup inside the RBJA to study the impacts of uranium mining and nuclear activities in Brazil; the organization of a new workgroup dedicated to climatic justice issues; the participation of RBJA and the introduction of EJ topics in the so called “Rio+20” Meeting which will take place in Rio de Janeiro in 2012; the meeting “Convergence and Dialogues among Networks,” led by the National Articulation of Agroecology (ANA)24 and linked with several movements and networks which are working on different issues like EJ, solidarity economy, food safety and sovereignty, and public health.25

There are two other processes that can be taken as good examples of how EJ Brazilian movements, often in articulation with international networks and organizations, are trying to connect social and ethical dimensions of sustainability and justice in order to influence public policies and the development model. The first of these examples is the struggle against pesticides that have increased since 2008, when Brazil became the biggest pesticide consumer in the world, combined with campaigns. The campaign Against pesticides: In defense of life26 is organized by several organizations engaged in agroecology and agrarian reform. The documents that are circulating due to this campaign were mostly created by activists and scientists who are members of the RBJA. The arguments are based on political ecology concepts and point out that agrochemicals are consumed by an industrial agriculture oriented to the production of rural commodities for export and not to the production of local-regional safety food. This agrosystem is based on great-scale plantations and monocultures which are chemical-dependent, needing industrial fertilizers and pesticides. Often the analysis recognizes local cases of pollution and contamination with pesticides as environmental injustice situations connected to an international unfair trade, the need of land reform, and the development of agroecological solutions.

The second example is the mobilizing debate and the actions conducted within the RBJA regarding the Brazilian energy policy and the construction of major dams and hydroelectric plants in the Amazon. For instance, the paradigmatic case of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam27 is uniting environmental, indigenous, and scientific organizations against this project in the Amazon. The denouncers show the gap between the official discourse based on the need of more energy for industrial and urban growth and the threat to the welfare of indigenous and riverine communities living in the Xingu River basin, where the damages of hydroelectric dams are being hidden and minimized. Again, possible environmental injustices are linked to international unfair trade, since the energy produced by this dam will be used largely for the production of rural and metal commodities which will destroy biological and cultural diversity. These two examples show that EJ can mobilize stakeholders and engage them in social struggles that are critical for sustainability, social equality, and community health. These are the greatest challenges that the Brazilian society and its development model are facing at this time.