Brazil:
A private sector rationale in forestry training at Viçosa Federal
University
Concern over the destruction of forests
was already documented
at the end of the seventeenth century. Since then,
some studies
argued that
it was necessary to develop knowledge
regarding forest use
adapted to the situation of tropical forests
considering that the way it was being carried out –as well as the
slavery-based approach- were destructive and degenerated national
morale. However, these remained as references of historic possibilities
that were initiated but never had any effective long-term continuity
as Brazilian aristocratic and patriarchal society chose extensive
monoculture plantations and an agro-exporting, large landowning
and slavery-based economy. This social and economic way of life
imposed a utilitarian, immediate and predatory type of relationship
between society and nature.
Regarding
forestry matters, this rationale was promoted particularly through
public bodies seized by a private rationale, such as the Forestry
Service which in 1911 became a major producer and disseminator of
Eucaliptus to the detriment of research endeavouring to establish
other species for the most diverse purposes. One of the consequences
was that in 1935, the forest cover of Sao Paulo had already shrunk
to 26.2%.
Following
the same rationale as the Green Revolution, as from the seventies
the “forestry sector” ceased being solely the object of specific
actions and, in addition to medium and long-term planning, became
the object of political actions and programmes involving massive
public non-recoverable investments and tax incentives.
This reveals that Brazilian private “forestry” companies
were in fact set up with public money, in return leaving a scourge
for thousands of families, in particular for the so-called traditional
peoples.
As a result
of this policy, Fanzeres stresses that: “As from that time, a series
of conflicts and disputes started, now considered as having a socio-environmental
nature. However, until the return and consolidation of political
freedom in Brazil which started in 1985, disputes were maintained
of a local and isolated nature. The memory of those who lived
through those times reconstructs the action of the companies or
of their intermediaries as being clad in moral or physical violence,
even causing the death of many people. Today’s so-called social
disputes basically happen because of land appropriation at no cost
or at a symbolic price. Indigenous and Quilombola* groups, even
less empowered than the rural workers who also occupied these lands
without ownership deeds, were also evicted or enclosed by vast expanses
of tree plantations. Environmental problems started almost immediately
due to felling to replace the native forest, unsuitable for the
industrial purposes aimed at, and to the use of chemicals to fight
ants and other creatures that attack monoculture tree plantations.
The impacts related to water resources clearly showing the socio-environmental
combination of damage to human survival and to the native biodiversity,
only appeared following the establishment of these plantations.
Presently this is one of the most important issues to be discussed
and solved regarding these vast tree plantations.”
It is within
an international “cold war” climate, an hegemonic conception of
the country with a clearly developmental approach - of a technical
nature in the case of agrarian sciences - and within the great agitation
of the political disputes that subsequently ended in the military,
pro-capitalist coup in Brazil, that came recognition of the need
for professional training aimed at forestry production issues in
the country.
In their works,
Ladeira and Ehlers tell us that: “The research institutes and agronomy
schools established at the beginning of the twentieth century suffered
from the influence of various agreements, for instance, MEC/USAID.
Other examples are agreements such as those with the Ford Foundation,
the Rockefeller Foundation, and the US-led Alliance for Progress.
These agreements resulted in the donation of scientific equipment,
literature, human resources [there were many exchanges between US
and Brazilian academics] and financial resources. The main
Brazilian schools of agronomy (ENA, ESALQ, UFP, UFRGS and UFV),
under the influence of the North American Purdue, Ohio, Wisconsin
and North Carolina schools, reformulated their curricula, structures
and teaching, extension and research methodologies and started favouring
areas and disciplines directly and indirectly related with the adaptation
and validation of the emerging agricultural model, already conventional
in the US and Europe. The professional forestry study programme,
set up in 1960, is placed in this context.”
This description
reaffirms what is being set out here and what a professional forester,
trained in 1976, and interviewed by France Coelho states on depicting
the conception of forestry study programmes: “At that time,
there was what was known as a silviculturist-agronomist. That is
to say forestry was pure silviculture. Forest management was completely
out of the question. It means that they did not work on forests,
they worked on reforestation. Silviculture as “THE ART OF MAKING
FORESTS,” but they didn’t work with the forest itself, they did
not work with native, natural forests.”
From the start
and given the intrinsic and growing relationship with the private
sector, the Forestry study programme at Viçosa Federal University
has inherited even today all the concepts set out above. In
order to have an idea of what goes on with research at the Department
of Forestry at UFV, we have analyzed the participation of each sector
in the funding of research recorded by the Department. Out
of the almost twelve million reais [Brazilian currency] invested
over the period, 83% originated from some public body and the remaining
17% from private institutions, which is very significant.
However, the private companies also appropriated 53% of the public
money allocated to research in the Department. And it should be
remembered that what is most expensive is the infrastructure, the
payment of salaries and all the investment in training up to a degree,
which is not accounted for and is paid out from public money.
Among the
lines of research in the areas of knowledge, we find that that of
the environment as a whole, is the only one that does not have most
of its resources geared mainly to the private needs of corporate
groups. It is not by chance that the smallest amount of resources
is allocated to this area, a scant 13% of all the funds entering
the Department for research.
Regarding
the subject of research, although Brazil is a tropical country,
44% of the research projects gather 55% of the resources entering
the Department for science and technology development and are allocated
to the study of a single species: Eucalyptus sp. It may
also be affirmed that there is a direct relationship between investigating
technology related to eucalyptus and mainly benefiting private initiative,
because out of the 213 research works on the above-mentioned species,
76% of them, that is to say 80% of the resources allocated to this
research, give primacy to the private sector’s productive progress.
Within such
context, much confrontation, willpower and courage is necessary,
as is being shown by the student movement and other peoples’ social
movements, which carry out
activist work day by day in the building up and strengthening
of their representative bodies at all levels, through assemblies,
congresses and various other actions, such as marches, cultural
demonstrations adopting the most diverse forms such as occupation
of the dean’s office, struggles around the extinction of foundations
in universities and attempts to prevent agreements between the universities
and these corporations. Furthermore, in a positive struggle, demanding
research that effectively benefits traditional and peasant peoples.
These clashes
are inevitable. According to sociologist Francisco de Oliveira this
process of privatizing what is public involves the destitution of
speech through the demoralization of discourse and disqualification
of opponents with the aim of annulling political discussion, “the
imposition of a consensus in the way of dictatorships.” And
this is easy to be seen within the Department and within the UFV
as a whole, when groups opposing this privatizing policy or the
hegemonic production model are pejoratively stigmatized as the “eco-bores”
or “neo-hippies.” And, when this is not sufficient, with guardianship
– through the creation of means to lessen student autonomy – and/or
psychological and often physical violence entering on the scene.
Even so, the
struggle for a Democratic and Peoples’ University still continues,
particularly in the hearts and minds of combative students organized
in their several representative organizations.
By Professional
Forester Vladimir Oganauskas Filho, e-mail:
florestavladimir@yahoo.com.br.
NOTE: The complete
text (in Portuguese) with graphics, tables, bibliographic references
and sources may be downloaded from the WRM webpage:
http://www.wrm.org.uy/paises/Brasil/ThesisVladimir_2008.pdf
*Quilombo
= Remote places of difficult access where runaway slaves sought
refuge. Quilombola people are their descendents.
