C - THE STATE OF THE NATURAL HABITATS OCCUPIED BY INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS AND THE DIFFERENT AGGRESSIONS
THEY ARE SUBJECTED TO.

• 1) ADVANCED PROJECTS
• 2) MODERATE ATTACKS ON THE ENVIRONMENT
• 3) MAJOR THREATS
• 4) CONCLUSION

Diagram 4: The types of vegetation in Greater Amazonia

a - Lowland rainforest	b - Lowland rainforest rich in palm trees

c - Deciduous dry forest	d - Flooded forest type mangrove

e - Flooded forest type "igapó" and "várzea"	f - Dense scrub woodland type "cerradão"

g - Scrub woodland with trees or "cerrado"	Scrub woodland with herbs, dry or flooded

The purpose of this chapter will be to put forward a simple picture of the state of the various habitats and of the aggressions they are subjected to (see map 4, `The various attacks on the Amazonian environment'¹⁶).

The attacks on the environment can be investigated for example on the basis of what the aggression affects : the subsoil is affected by mines and oil ; the trees by activities ranging from plain selective felling to complete clear felling for the purposes of animal husbandry ; the rivers from fishing for sport to hydroelectric dams. So as to provide a better understanding of the accompanying human factors, aggressions will be presented in decreasing order of the importance of their impact.

All the data is brought together in table 7, 'Ethnic groups, their habitat and the state of their environment'. The table is the result of an original attempt at presenting a general overview on the basis of the available data provided in the bibliography to which we have referred. The table gives an account of the state of the environment ; there are four categories and the size of the area affected has been taken into account :

* no degradation : 95 % of the natural environment remains intact. Only traditional activities are carried out. Though various pressures are at work, there is at present no actual evidence of it.

* little degradation : over 85 % of the environment is intact. The area occupied by native Amarican Indians is hardly affected. Threats remain on the periphery and there are only minor attacks.

* average degradation : the destruction of the environment has begun and affects between 35 to 50 % of the land occupied by indigenous populations. There are major aggressions.

* high degradation : over 50 % of the natural habitat has deteriorated. Attacks are important and often irreversible. Land occupied by indigenous populations is even sometimes preserved, but only as a small island surrounded by destruction on every side.

Map 4 : The various attacks on the Amazonian environment

number referring to table 7	type of environment
1	lowland rain forest ; port. : <<mata de terra firme>>, fr. : <<forêt tropicale ombrophile de terre ferme>>. It includes evergreen and semi-evergreen vegetation cover.
2	deciduous dry forest; fr. <<forêt tropicale décidue>>.
3	flooded forest ; fr. : <<forêts inondables>>. This includes the mangroves (sea water) and fresh water flooded forests, port. : <<igapó>> et <<várzea>>.
4	montane forest ; fr. : <<forêt tropicale d'altitude>>; esp. <<montanha>>.
5	edaphic forests. Low forest growing in white sands, port. : <<campina>>. Forests of lianas, port. : <<mata de cipó>> and bamboo forests, port. : <<mata aberta de bambu>>.
6	scrub woodland, fr. : <<milieux ouverts ou semi-ouverts>>; port. : <<cerrado>> ; savannah, fr. : <<savane herbeuse>>, esp. <<llanos>>, port. : <<campos>>.

1) ADVANCED PROJECTS

Included in this category are all the projects for new roads, hydroelectric dams, applications for oil drilling, mining or oil concessions. Depending on how advanced they are, these projects are all major threats to the environment, including projects for new roads which, by definition, open the way for everything else.

Some projects have only been outlined and others are never actually implemented. Still others are abandonned along the way, leaving scars that do occasionally disappear. But so many of these projects have actually been carried out that they must be taken into account as a major danger for the environment.

Some the most threatening projects today : the new impulse that has been given to the work carried out on the Périmétrale Nord highway which plans to cover the distance between Macapá (Atlantic coast) and the Columbian border ; the Transacreana which is to run further south, parallel to the Transamazonian road, and connect Brazil with Peru ; finally, Brazil has major projects for new dams of which two at least out of 18, Belo Monte on the Xingu river and Cachoeira Porteira on the Trombetas, are about to be carried out and thus threaten the livelihood of 9 indigenous populations (RICARDO, 1991 ; As hidrelétricas do Xingu e os povos indígenas, 1988).

2) MODERATE ATTACKS ON THE ENVIRONMENT

This category includes encroachments on the environment whose process could be reversed in the short or medium term, i.e. amended by adequate economic policies and environmental legislations.

This type of activity follows on from a much more intensive form of 'extrativism' which took place during the two preceding centuries. It was expressed in terms of massacres and slavery for indigenous populations and extreme misery for imported populations. In its present form, it is carried out by mestizos or detribalized communities that have often accumulated debts and have few means ; but it does produce some results (LESCURE et al., 1992). In the Brazilian Amazon, this economy affects mainly 20 plant products representing 712 885 million cruzeros in 1985 (Anuário Estatístico do Brasil, 1986). There is strong pressure on the native American Indians themselves to participate in this economy and they do not always oppose it. They may participate for example by collecting Brazil nuts (Bertholletia excelsa Humb. and Bonpl.), catching tropical fish for aquariums, or picking medicinal plants. The exploitation of hevea is now residual and carried out as much on wild as on cultivated trees.

Four countries only are concerned by activities of 'extrativism' (Brazil, Peru, Columbia, Bolivia). For the last 15 years it has become a complementary activity within an impoverished economy tending towards self-subsistence. In areas such as Acre, it is more and more often presented as a form of gentle exploitation of the Amazonian environment : the 'Alliance of Forest Peoples' itself was concluded in this region between the mestizos and the native American Indians, and zones reserved for extractive activities were set up. However, the balance of such a consensus is threatened by projects for massive colonization, deforestation for animal husbandry and the opening or tarmacking of road networks financed by the IBD (International Development Bank (AQUINO, 1991).

Small settlements along rivers need not have drastic effects on the environment. Mestizos live in much the same way as their Indian neighbours, at least as far as their technology is concerned, if not their ideology.

There are however two important limiting factors : settlers from a very different background (the Andes, the Caribbean coast or the south of Brazil) find it difficult to adapt to the new environment and this inability can lead to their squandering local natural resources ; their concentration in patches, clinging to survival, can be the starting point for new pionnering fronts, as in Ecuadorian Amazon (TORAL & CRESPO, 1989).

Extensive forest exploitation is only carried out in areas where the wood can be floated down the rivers, i.e. in western Amazonia. It can be considered only moderately threatening for the environment as long as the 'extrativism' of only those species that have been selected does not dramatically alter the landscape.

But it does contribute to depleting some plant species, particularly cedro (Cedrela odorata L.) and aguano (Swietenia macrophylla King). This type of activity is controlled by local entrepreneurs and requires major funds to start a business. Indigenous territories are true reserves for the much sought after species, hence the violent conflicts between loggers and native American Indians, a typical example being the Javari area in Brazil (Povos indígenas do Vale do Javari, 1986).

Commercial fishing with nets is quite a bit more destructive. It is carried out by whole fleets based in the big towns along the Amazon : Belem, Santarém, Manaus, Iquitos (51 740 t. in 1985 for three Brazilian states : Amazonas, Acre and Rondonia).

Indigenous populations have disappeared from along the Amazon and can only be found in the river's upper reaches. Large-scale fishing has been going on for a long time and the most coveted species have reduced in quantity and size. Professional fishermen therefore now go further and further upriver, along the tributaries of the white-water rivers, and this brings them to exploit indigenous territory (Madeira and Purus valleys in Brazil, Ucayali valley in Peru). At least one species, the pirarucu fish (Arapaima gigas Cuvier) is endangered (SAINT PAUL & BAYLEY, 1979).

Roads that are along the edge of territories occupied by native American Indians provide privileged access to these areas. Roads as such do not necessarily destroy the environment but they provide an ideal spring-board for further stages of colonization leading to the control of Amazonian land by outsiders.

Gold-seekers, for example, may travel along these roads ; whether diffuse or infringing slightly on the territory, small-scale gold-seeking is nothing more than a form of prospection, and any major discovery is immediately taken up by big companies. Opening a new road, a gold-rush and colonization are often the three successive stages leading to permanent settlements in areas that had until then only been occupied by native American Indians. An example of this is the south of the Department of Madre de Dios in Peru (CHIRIF, 1989).

The network of roads is still loose, ill-defined, often interrupted and in bad repair. However, in the south and the east of Greater Amazonia (Brazil) and in the north-west (Venezuelan and Columbian llanos), the network is increasingly dense. This is emphasized by the emergence of a parallel network to the official roads : a private network which is being developed all over the area (forest tracks for the transport of timber, cattle paths, etc). One can easily imagine that in some places these private initiatives must necessarily cut through indigenous territories illegally, territories that have sometimes already been well defined. It can also lead to brutal encounters with groups that have had no contact with the outside.

Quarries, if restricted, and diamond mines can also be said to be only moderately threatening for the environment.

There are relatively few diamond mines nowadays and only in two areas : Mount Roraima (Guyana, Venezuela, Brazil) and Mato Grosso (Brazil). But more and more quarries have been dug to provide for the needs of urban expansion and the construction of roads and dams. However, very few of them actually affect indigenous land.

3) MAJOR THREATS

Extensive animal husbandry is by definition constantly hungry for new land, but it is one of the lesser threats to the environment if restricted to the savannah land of the Amazonia.

But what with the fences imposing spatial divisions, the social structure it requires and the ideology it implies, there is a blatant contradiction between animal husbandry and the native American Indian way of life, as can be seen in the case of the Makushi and Wapishana in Roraima (Povos Indígenas no Brasil, 1991).

In several peripheral areas, these circumstances were established a long time ago with all the violence it entailed. But the conflicts that we observe today are not so much due to the further degradation of the system as to the fact that native American Indians are increasingly aware of being isolated and trapped into this situation. They are no longer submissive and are getting organized to claim their rights. This phenomenon can be observed in the cerrados of Maranhão and Goias and in the savannah of Roraine. The llanos of Venezuela and of Colombia.

Agricultural colonization is not simply an additional threat to the environment and its indigenous inhabitants, it actually alters the scale of the aggression. In most cases, it is the product of the policy of local states whose constant concern is to master the remaining unexplored areas.

The areas affected by agricultural colonization are indicated on map 4, `The various attacks on the Amazonian environment'. The map shows how this development is converging from the fringe areas towards the centre of Greater Amazonia, this being due to the fact that settlers come in from the more populous periphery, the Andes and north-east Brazil which, incidentally, are also consumer markets (LéNA & OLIVEIRA, 1991).

Colonization moves forward in patches or along a pioneer frontier starting at the roads. It is usually linked to agricultural development projects (such as the Grão Carajas or Polonoroeste in Brazil), often funded by the World Bank (GOODLAND, 1982 ; RIBEIRO, 1990) and implemented through a distribution of plots of land. Forest clearing is carried out on a massive scale. The techniques of land use aim at being intensive and therefore rapidly lead to sterility. This in turn implies a constant demand for new land which usually precedes new projects for colonization. The presence of a cheap and abundant workforce encourages the establishment of large-scale farming and forestry companies. They take over the land, buying it off settlers, or opening up new areas to extract wood, establishing ranches or developing oil palm plantations or sugar cane plantations to produce alcohol for engine combustion. Development therefore starts with a pioneering phase of cash crops on a small scale which turns into unbridled capitalism, but, either way, indigenous populations are a nuisance. The extension of coca cultivation is a more complex phenomenon, associating profit and illegality to the native American Indians' know-how, traffickers usually attempting to implicate whole communities.

The amount of pressure on the environment and its inhabitants is yet stronger when one includes the oil fields or hydroelectric dams.

But here again, opposing big companies to small individual miners makes little sense. All the more so as the latter are manipulated by powerful political and financial lobbies (RICARDO & ROCHA, 1990). The most critical degradations of the environment, the most significant impacts on traditional indigenous way of life and the lethal epidemics are usually a consequence of the presence of thousands of labourers working for their own account or for a small-scale entrepreneur. This was the case for the Yanomami, for example, between 1986 and 1991 (Povos Indígenas no Brasil, 1991). The environmentally-conscious image put forward by big companies, their aid programmes in help of indigenous societies and their various foundations for the protection of the Amazonian forest and its inhabitants, do not actually give an accurate picture of the role they play in this part of the world. In Brazil in particular, it is they who have been holding up for the last 20 years the process of demarcating indigenous land.

As for the impact of hydroelectric dams, one need only look at examples of dams that have been completed, such as the Tucurui and Balbina, and which encroach on indigenous land : the usual consequences are floods, pollution, whole villages forced to move. This was the case for the Gavaião, Parakanã and Waimiri-Atroari (SANTOS & NACKE, 1990).

The picture one is left with thus seems to be one in which the land of native American Indians is what remains as preserved patches, the surrounding primeval environment having been eroded, ripped open, degraded, divided. These isolated areas are in turn threatened by destruction (BALéE, 1990).

There are many applications for prospection on indigenous land that has already been demarcated but not as yet ratified. For Brazil only, the report by the CEDI/CONAGE quotes for 1988 560 prospection permits and 1685 applications for prospection on indigenous land.

4) CONCLUSION

This gloomy presentation brightens up somewhat when one looks at the final results put together in diagram 5 : as far as the degradation of the environment is concerned, the process could be reversed.

[15] Source : Projeto Radambrasil, vol. 8 : 322 ,325 and 326, Rio de Janeiro, 1974.

¹⁶ Sources : Recherches amérindiennes au Québec, vol. XX/2, 1990. Populações humanas e desenvolvimento amazônico, Belém, 1989. Cahier des Sciences Humaines, ORSTOM, vol. 22/3-4, 1986. National Geographic Magazine, August 1992.