Through Amazonian Eyes: The Human Ecology of Amazonian Populations

1. Amazonia: People and Environment

Amazonia: People and Environment The Amazon's ecosystems and their native populations are threatened with extinction today. Deforestation, epidemic diseases, inappropriate development policies, and a lack of regard for the quality of life on our planet can be listed among the forces responsible for the current situation. The changes that deforestation of the greatest rain forest on earth might bring about in the planet's hydrologic cycle and climate, while not fully established, can easily be guessed: drying of areas to the south of the basin that currently produce the second largest crop of soybeans in the world; desiccation of the moist forests in the eastern Amazon, an area with some of the best soils; increased flooding along productive areas of the seasonally flooded valley-not to speak of carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere exacerbating global warming. The decimation of native peoples is serious not only because of the loss of their knowledge of the Amazon but because it shows so little regard for fellow human beings. The destruction of the forest and its native peoples constitutes not only a reduction in biotic and cultural diversity but the effective impoverishment of every single person still to be born. It is not easy to define the Amazon or Amazonia. At times it is defined simply as the drainage basin, or the Amazon Valley, with all its affluents -an area of about 4 million square kilometers in Brazil alone (fig. I). This biogeographical region is, if anything, too big to discuss meaningfully in its entirety. Rather than divide it into smaller, more coherent units, the tendency has been to make it even larger. Other commonly used definitions have added political-economic criteria, such as that used in Brazil when referring to the "Legal Amazon." According to the latter, large areas of the Brazilian Plateau are also considered part of the Amazon-with the objective of giving access to special tax exemptions-expanding rather than restricting the scope of the Amazon to a region of over 5 million square kilometers (fig. I). Whichever definition is used, each one embodies a reality which is not only that of a physical environment but also a human environment with a social, political, and economic history. The recent tendency to rely on political-economic definitions rather than on hydrographic ones serves to remind us that any solution to the environmental crisis of Amazonia must deal with the social, political, and economic dimensions of that cnSlS. Brazil's Legal Amazon includes an area I million square kilometers larger than the drainage basin (Benchimol 1989: 15), an area roughly half of Brazil 's total territory. The total drainage basin is about 6 million square kilometers . In comparative terms, the area occupied by the Amazon is equiva2 Jmh AMAZONIA: PEOPLE AND ENVIRONMENT 3 ......., Amazon basin boundary // ~ Legal Amazon o 600 kilometers Figure 1. Map of the Legal Amazon and the Amazon Basin. lent to the continental United States or to both Eastern and Western Europe combined (without the former Soviet Union). The Amazon is a region not only of rain forests. It also has seasonal forests, flooded forests, savannas of various types, montane forests, and palm forests. The rivers have very distinct qualities, some with clear, limpid waters and others with a muddy appearance, reflecting important differences in the amount of alluvium they transport. Contemporary governments act as if the Amazon was all about the same, forgetting the importance of adjusting human activity to the limitations and opportunities presented by the physical environment-or overlooking the need to be ready to spend inordinate levels of resources to get around those conditions. Policy makers have forgotten the physical environment as well as the people who had a prior claim to those lands and who have a long-term familiarity with the Amazonian environment. Current evidence suggests that the ancestors of contemporary indigenous peoples have inhabited the Amazon Basin for at least 12,000 years (Roosevelt 1989: 3). They may be among the first to have produced ceramics in the New World 6,000 to 8,000 years before the present (Roosevelt 1987). By 5,000 years ago they seem to have had a set of domesticated crops and art forms very similar to those of contemporary indigenous populations. By 2,000 years ago there is evidence of the rise of larger settlements with more complex political organization and art forms such as polychrome pottery. 4 AMAZONIA: PEOPLE AND...