Paper details
| Paper authors | Marcel Hazeu |
| In panel on | Beyond Trust: Rethinking Humanitarian Legitimacy in Times of Grassroots Power |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
The surviving of the Amazon depends of the surviving of its people, and vice versa. The effects in the Amazon of the global climate crises sum with the expanding exploitation by mining, agribusiness, water-dams, export harbors, lodging and cutting roads and railroads. The local and national government consider the Amazon as source for industry and export of commodities. The local population is seen as obstacle for the exploitation to feed the capitalist world system and the geopolitical interests. For the sake of this, the Brazilian Amazon is sacrificed with a necropolicy which decides who may live and who has to die. In this state of exception, the traditional communities affirm their (forms of) existence as an act of resistance and to guarantee the survival of the complex socioecosystem called Amazon. Facing the state of exception, the communities have their own norms and organization forms, elaborating collectively protocols that define how they take decisions and how they have to be consulted about any project or legislation that can impact on their community. Those are based on their history and customs and have as legal base the ILO Convention 169 on tribal rights. Communities affirm their rules to protect their lives and that of the Amazon creating spaces of negotiating with the national state about policies of life versus policies of death.
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