Abstract
This article intends to unveil some of the main theoretical backgrounds and current tendencies of environmental sociology in Brazil. But we are mainly interested in providing a historical reconstruction of the societal internalization of environmental concerns in Brazil, on both state and civic levels, with an emphasis on the transformations that took place over the 1970–1990s period. We argue that environmental civil associations do not find either a legal idiom or public forums by means of which they could turn their demands and moral concerns into a binding juridical code. This is so because, on the one hand, their moral concerns, even when based on de-traditionalized and abstract principles, are not paralleled with an autonomous legal framework, strong enough to set limits to the functioning of both the political-administrative apparatus as well as to economic actors. As we contend, this helps to explain why the environmental legislation in Brazil is rhetorically manipulated on a regular basis—and, hence, set aside whenever it contradicts other priorities. On the other hand, environmental concerns have always met with difficulties to become a priority in the Brazilian polity. Ultimately, our main goal is to carry out a critical consideration of the theoretical links that are widely set in the field of sociological theory between environmental concerns and modernity.
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Notes
Hannigan (1997) believes in two explanations for the fact that sociologists downplayed the environmental question in their theoretical undertakings. One of them refers to the faults of geographic and biological determinisms and their conservative biases implicit in the understanding of social conflicts and transformations. The other explanation has to do with the epistemological framework that prevailed up to the mid-twentieth century, whereby themes related to modernization stood out unchallenged.
Buttel (1987) draws attention to the ambiguous relationship between sociology and the natural sciences during the formers’ initial stages. At the same time that the sociological concepts received a great deal of influence from the natural sciences, the very need to legitimate social scientific research as a separate and unique field very often prompted radical reactions against the alleged dangers of biological and geographical determinisms.
This is not to say that previous efforts towards the institutionalization of environmental concerns had not taken place. See, for instance, Pádua (1997, 2004), for whom the roots of environmentalism in Brazil can be found back in the early nineteenth century. See also Drummond (1997), who draws attention to the mobilization of some civil associations around environmental quality in the early 1930s as well as to a thrust of institutionalization of an essentially conservationist legislation in Brazil from then on.
Brazilians lived under a military authoritarian regime from 1964 through 1985. It was under this 21-year period that Brazil experienced the highest rates of economic growth in its modern history (around 11% per year from 1969 to 1973).
SEMA was officially institutionalized in October 1973, by Decree No. 73.030, and placed under the coordination of the Ministry of the Interior (Guimarães 1991).
Roberto Guimarães (1991), for instance, argues that SEMA was a response to the increasing levels of environmental contamination in urban centers in the aftermath of already 20 years of heavy industrialization. Otherwise, Laymert (1994), Pádua (1991), Viola (1987), and Viola and Leis (1995) prefer to say that it resulted from international pressures, especially by financing agencies pressured by the international public opinion, following Brazil’s arguments in Stockholm.
Neder (1996) contends that the legal-institutional framework then created was so complex and full of practical implications that very few states and local administrations were fully able to comply with it.
The transition to democracy was a gradual and negotiated process, which had started back in 1974 (under President Geisel).
President Collor faced an impeachment process on charges of administrative improbity and corruption.
José Lutzemberger was among the founders of AGAPAN.
It is interesting to notice that the contemporary Brazilian environmental movement itself considers the creation of AGAPAN a sort of milestone that set the ground for other environmental associations and civic campaigns all over the country. See Fundação Francisco (1995).
As was the case of the Fundação Brasileira para Conservação da Natureza (Brazilian Foundation for the Protection of Nature), founded in 1958 in Rio de Janeiro (Viola 1987).
Interestingly enough, Catholic church organizations (the “Comunidades Eclesiais de Base”) were pivotal in popular leaderships’ ability to get organized and to muster public support in their struggle vis-à-vis a state-apparatus that, by the mid-1970s (under an authoritarian military regime), was all but open to popular demands (Jacobi 1989).
The SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation is a good case in point, indeed. After being founded in 1986, it gained nationwide reputation by striving to raise people’s consciousness regarding the importance of Mata Atlântica, a quite diverse ecosystem that used to cover the entire extension of Brazil’s coastal areas (from North to South). As of now, only 7% of the original vegetation remains in place, most of which under considerable and continuous threat despite all campaigns and public support around it.
Eventually, the Green Party allied with PT (Workers’ Party) and launched Fernando Gabeira’s candidacy to Rio’s governorship in that same year. Even though Gabeira’s victory was all but expected, the idea was taking the first bold steps into this new political terrain. To be sure, Gabeira would soon gain prominence in the national political arena as he would later be elected for both the Chamber of Federal Deputies and the Senate.
This is why, at that time, most of the litigating parties were different organs of the state apparatus: citizens strategically preferred addressing their environmental complaints to the “Ministério Público” (at the expense of environmental NGOs) believing that this institutional channel would be the most effective way of demanding responsibility by those who committed crimes against the environment (Fuks 1996). The “Ministério Público” (on both state and federal levels) consists of a judiciary organ that works as an agency of “external control” on all litigations against the State apparatus. Ultimately, it is supposed to ensure that the rights of citizens are respected in accordance to the Constitution.
According to Viola (1987), from 1974 to 1981 Brazilian environmental associations consisted mainly of two types: on the one side, those whose primary target was denouncing the environmental deterioration of the sprawling urban centers (that had escalated after four decades of fast and “unplanned” waves of growth) and, on the other, those that laid claim to alternative ways of life detached from the urban/consuming-oriented lifestyle characteristic of middle-classes (which, in their turn, had become more numerous in the wake of rampant rates of economic growth – averaging 11% per year from 1969 through 1973).
It is also quite remarkable that in 1987, SEMA counted 510 civil environmental associations in its records, 66% of them settled in the Southeast region and 18% in the South region (SEMA 1987).
In current figures, these values correspond to something spanning from around US$ 5,000 (R$10.000) to US$ 50,000 (R$100.000).
In fact, as Leis and Viola (1995) point out, the effervescence of Rio-92 ended up making several environmental associations to overestimate their actual strength, which soon after turned out to be a misleading self-perception.
For example, Guimarães (1991) draws attention to the fact that in June 1986, the amount of revenues assigned to the so-called “ecological package” by the Sarney administration was less than one-sixth of the budget of CETESB (São Paulo’s environmental agency).
According to Neder (1996), from the 70s on, a complex and detailed legal-normative framework dealing with environmental issues started to be designed by the federal administrative level at odds with the actual capacity of the state and local levels to put them into practice. Their incapacity was due to: (1) budgeting problems by the inferior levels of administration, even worse than the limitations faced by the federal level; (2) the marginal position that environmental concerns continued to occupy in those lower administrative levels (as a result of other priorities that often dissociated economic development and welfare policies from environmental quality); (3) the lack of articulation between environmental agencies and other administrative agencies; (4) the incapacity of the public power to enforce the law and to make the larger population and economic entrepreneurs abide by environmental regulations.
This also holds for what Leila Ferreira considers to be the most positive experiences in terms of environmental public management, namely those involving local administrations from the second half of the 80s on. As her research has demonstrated, with few exceptions, even when there was a great deal of political willingness to tackle environmental problems, policies were not efficiently articulated with one another (FERREIRA 1998). Maybe the most astonishing example is the case of São Paulo City, the largest city in Brazil and, certainly, one of the most degraded urban sites in Latin America. Between 1988 and 1992, when a leftist administration was in power (the Luíza Erundina administration), environmental concerns never had a secretariat for their own. Environmental issues were rather directly linked to the executive wing, managed by a very small contingent of public employees who usually found themselves insulated from the main policies of the administration. Moreover, during major Erundina’s term, the city never had a CONDEMA (Municipal Committee for the Environment), which was expected to gather together civil society, the executive as well as the legislative branch of the local administration to decide upon environmental issues affecting the city.
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Sergio B. F. Tavolaro is the author of Movimento Ambientalista e Modernidade: Sociabilidade, risco e moral (2001).
Leila da Costa Ferreira is the author of Idéias para uma sociologia da questão ambiental no Brasil (2006).
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da Costa Ferreira, L., Tavolaro, S.B.F. Environmental Concerns in Contemporary Brazil: An Insight into Some Theoretical and Societal Backgrounds (1970s–1990s). Int J Polit Cult Soc 19, 161–177 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-008-9021-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-008-9021-0