Who Shapes Sustainable Development?

Two of the key questions in sustainable development namely "What does progress look like?", and "Who gets to decide?" came to the surface violently on Thursday May 19th when several dozen indigenous tribesmen clashed with security members outside of the House of Representatives in the Brazilian Capitol Building.

The conflict stemmed from the belief held by many indigenous Brazilians: that their voices are not being heard in current governance structures and that their rights to self govern and to live as they choose are being usurped by needs that are not their own.

Based on historical track record, their anger does not seem to be misplaced.

Last year Brazil's National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) - the Brazilian government body that establishes and carries out policies relating to indigenous peoples - was restructured by congress without the legal consent of the indigenous people.

And neither protests, nor an injunction from Brazil's Highest Court has stopped the Brazilian government from moving forward with plans to develop the huge Belo Monte dam. The 11,000 megawatt dam, which indigenous groups and environmentalists say will displace thousands of people and damage the Amazon ecosystem, would be the third largest in the world after the Three Gorges dam in China and the Itapa damn run by Brazil and Paraguay.

Points out Amazon Watch, one of the groups leading the charge against the damn

Over 20,000 people will be relocated from the municipalities of Altamira and Vitoria do XinguFor the Xingu's poor farmers, temporary employment created by the dam is not a viable replacement for lost agricultural lands and the river's fish supply. Considered an 'obstacle' to business interests, indigenous peoples are particularly vulnerable. Mega-projects typically confront indigenous communities with disease, loss of food and clean water sources, cultural disintegration and human rights abuses by lumber cutters, migrant workers and land speculators.

What's even more insulting is that this project will only benefit a handful of people. Amazon Watch goes on to state that [though]:

The government claims that Belo Monte's cheap energy will power the houses of the poor across Brazil. The reality is that energy exported from Belo Monte would be consumed at the Carajs, Jurut, and Alumar aluminum smelting mines in Par and Maranho before traveling through transmission lines to So Paulo and the Southeast. The state of Par is Brazil's leading producer of bauxite, the raw material for the production of aluminum.

The cost to indigenous people is only worth the benefit to so-called 'normal' Brazilian society because mainstream development does not see value in the ways that they live. It does not respect that although given a true choice - that is a choice not made because their own way of life has become impossible - between living a 'traditional' or a 'modern life' many of these people would prefer to stick with their traditional ways. This is a story that has played out repeatedly- in North America, on the African continent, in Asia. Yet, as the wave of so-called modernization sweeps across a continent leaving the scattered corpses of literal and cultural genocide in its wake, the idea that perhaps we should stop this train has not seemed to permeate into general consciousness.

The question of whether or not we can learn from the past and find a way to have diverse cultures successfully, peacefully, coexist is one that remains to be seen.

What has been shown, and this recent kerfuffle is an excellent example, is that indigenous groups and their supporters are increasingly unwilling to lie down and play dead as their culture and their rights are ripped out from beneath them.