Ruptura metabólica, desenvolvimento capitalista e aviltamento da natureza: o avanço do capital na Amazônia nos anos recentes

Abstract

This work focused on the environmental problem faced by the Amazon, which involves burning and indiscriminate deforestation, in order to understand how capitalist development influenced the reality of Amazonian society. Since the main incentive for carrying out this study was the increase in fires from the Temer government on, and particularly under the Bolsonaro government, this work analyzes how the development of capitalism took place during each of the different administrations of the Brazilian federal government. Dialectical materialism and expository-argumentative discourse, carried out through a bibliographical review, the writing of research reports, and the analysis of books, legislation and websites dedicated to the subject, were used as method. Geotechnologies were also used to collect data for the study. In the first chapter, I present a historical approach to the reasons for the environmental disaster, the characteristics of the fire in the region, the ineffectiveness of the measures taken during the Bolsonaro administration to fight environmental degradation, the importance of Indigenous Lands and Conservation Units for the environmental preservation, the application of geotechnologies in forest monitoring, and also clarify the central role of the Amazon Forest in mitigating the effects of climate change. In the second chapter, which has a theoretical nature, I explain the need of maintaining the metabolism between society and nature through the preservation of the Amazon Forest, also discussing Lefebvre’s approach to ecological criticism, which shows that capital tends to the destruction of nature as well as its own intrinsic conditions. I begin chapter three with the debate on the Latin American scenario and its conflicting aspects, seeking to demonstrate that the political transformations that occurred in the region took place in a scenario of continuous primary-export specialization. Ecosocialism was the theme of chapter four, addressing the relationship between metabolism and socialism, as well as the possibility of the Marxist critique of capital enabling the break with the ecological critique of productivism. Chapter five deals with the inquire on the spatiality of hot spots in the state of Amazonas and seeks to present, in relation to each administration of the federal government, their total amount, establishing a timeline from January 1999 to December 2019. At the conclusion of the thesis, it is evident that the contempt of the national power for the Brazilian Amazon, associated to the harmful effects of the capitalist system, made possible the beginning and aggravation of the process of environmental degradation in the region.