Questioning poverty at the frontiers of development: Brazilian and Bolivian Amazon

Abstract

This article examines how contemporary socionatural interactions in the Amazon region carry the imprint of old and new forms of injustice and inequality. Amazonian ecosystems end up playing host to inequalities and asymmetries reaching from local to regional and international scales. In this context, poverty and affluence come about through the appropriation and transformation of forest ecosystems. Poverty is a condition of unfulfilled needs, both material and socio-political, caused by combined mechanisms of exploitation, alienation and exclusion. It is a direct product of the prevailing models of development and environmental management that systematically reinforce hardship and destitution. Governmental instruments and infrastructure investment have attracted different contingents of people to the Amazon, most of whom have benefitted only minimally from the development process. This article focuses on two geographical areas in Bolivia and Brazil, and the empirical results demonstrate that the politics of development and the perpetuation of poverty in the Amazon region happen not around or outside the forest, but with and through the forest. The main conclusions of the research are that development is based on anti-commons strategies, that poverty is the outcome of political hegemonies exercised over socionature and the systematic failure of poverty alleviation schemes, and that close interaction with forest ecosystems is central to the generation of knowledge and political resistance.