materiality and ecology of the rubber from the Amazon rainforest
2.4 Significance of the rubber activity
The environmental importance of the rubber tapper is historically circumstantial. Due to difficulties in harvesting the Hevea in the Amazon rainforest, the rubber production in the Amazon remained wild instead of in plantations. This unique aspect of
production justifies the ecological importance of the economic activity of the rubber tappers. At the same time it represents an economic limitation. Rubber trees are spread throughout the rainforest and linked by invisible trails that only the indigenous people know. This coexistence with the rainforest is a resource of vast knowledge embedded in the culture of the local people, and in their tacit and empiric knowledge about the use of the natural resources. The geographic location strongly defines the culture and livelihood linked to that location, with its natural resources and climate.
2.4.1 Productive conservation
Productive conservation characterizes the economic use of natural resources of the rainforest alongside its preservation (Hall, 1997: 2). Regarding this concept, the ecological sustainability of the rainforest can be understood as the ability of a certain population to occupy and explore natural resources of a certain area without
threatening its ecological integrity over time (Lima and Pozzobon, 2005: 45). This harmonious way of living has only a limited impact on the rainforest (Lima and
Pozzobon, 2005: 61; Hall, 1997: 239) and characterizes the model of productive conservation of the rubber-‐tapping activity.
Rubber tappers became politically important to the Amazon rainforest after a series of popular movements to stop rainforest destruction for logging during the 1970s and 1980s. Small traditional producers gathered together against large-‐scale livestock rearing, crop growing, timber extraction and industrialization (Hall, 1997; Schmink, 2011). The political pressure exerted by the rubber tappers in defence of the rainforest culminated in the murder of the main leader of the movement, Chico Mendes (Figure 2.18 below):
Figure 2.18: Rubber tapper, environmentalist and political leader Chico Mendes.6
This led to the demarcation of protected areas in the 1990’s called Reservas Extrativistas Chico Mendes (RESEX) (Figure 2.19 and Figure 2.20). These protected areas legalized the occupation of the rainforest by traditional populations whose sustenance was generated through ‘productive conservation’ (Hall, 1997).
6 Available at: http://ecoredesocial.com.br/2015/07/quem-‐foi-‐chico-‐mendes (Accessed: 12/07/15).
Figure 2.19 and Figure 2.20: Chico Mendes RESEX, a protected area for productive conservation, 2011. Several such reserves were created in the Amazon rainforest as a consequence of the political activism of the small-‐scale
producers living in the rainforest.
Hall argues that the traditional populations from the Amazon only succeeded in their cause because of the outcome of their individual and collective interests, which encouraged collaboration between natural resource-‐users in common-‐pool situations (1997: XXV). The rubber tappers, already settled, organized themselves to defend the rainforest in a long political battle against deforestation caused by farmers and
woodcutters between 1975 and the 1990s, when the Extractive Reserves (RESEX) were created (panel below, Figure 2.21, Memorial Chico Mendes, 2011; Gomes et al., 2014).
Figure 2.21: Panel at the Memorial Chico Mendes displaying a historic moment of the political movement of the rubber tappers. Rio Branco, 17th December 2011.
These communities always had a subordinate position relative to that of explorers, politicians and farmers. According to Hall (1997: 239), the political movements stimulated by them engendered reasonable solutions, and national and international visibility, mainly in the environmental field:
Despite many inherited problems, local communities have a decisive role to play in the sustainable management of local resources. It has also been demonstrated that grassroots action may act as a catalyst for broader policy innovation
2.4.2 Challenges of the rubber productive conservation
The rubber tapper is familiar with large areas of rainforest. He taps the tree trunks to bleed the sap, called latex, into cups attached to the trees. Rubber tapping is a predominantly male activity, as it requires long walks in the depth of the rainforest (Panel 2.6) and traditionally it is the rubber tapper who does the processing of the latex into rubber. Patterns traced on the trunks over generations reveal scars from the past that the rubber tapper recognizes. After four to seven hours’ walking and tapping the trees in the depth of the rainforest, he makes his way back, collecting the liquid from the cups in an impermeable bag. American science and environmental writer Andrew Revkin (1990: 71) describes the way rubber tappers instinctively communicate with the forest:
Tappers feel strongly the relation with the trees. Many agree that the trees come to know the touch of individuals. ‘Every time a new tapper starts cutting a rubber tree, the tree has to get used to the guy, otherwise, the tree doesn’t produce very well. The tree feels who is doing the cutting. Every tapper has his own style, his own way of softening the seringa7’.
7 Seringa refers to rubber trees. Seringueira or seringa became the popular name of the rubber trees due to the application of latex in the manufacture of bottles named ‘seringa’.
In this context, the attainment of sustainability depends upon meeting a number of complementary and mutually interdependent goals, such as biophysical preservation, economic feasibility, organizational competence and socio-‐political solidarity (Hall, 1997: 95). Hall argues that in the case of the Amazon rainforest sustainability can be defined as ‘the productive use of natural resources for economic growth and livelihood strengthening, while simultaneously conserving the biodiversity and socio diversity, which form an integral and indispensable part of this process’ (Hall, 1997: 95).
Brazilian anthropologists Lima and Pozzobon (2005: 60-‐61) comment that traditional knowledge and practices of low environmental impact are not always rationalized as know-‐how, but they are often immersed in a semantic field that extends beyond economic practice. The deep relationship between the local people and the flora and fauna of vast areas integrates a cosmology composed of a vast ecological knowledge. A series of taboos, myths and sanctions regulate the interactions between those peoples and nature. However, although the rubber tappers became known as the ‘guardians of the rainforest’, the reality is that economic challenges have put their livelihood at risk.
Due to the lack of market opportunities added to the difficulties of earning a living from the natural products, those populations tend to migrate to the urban centres, abandoning areas vulnerable to deforestation – and forgetting their deep knowledge of the natural resources.
Panel 2.6: Tapping wild rubber trees
Figure 2.22: A rubber tapper collecting latex in the surroundings of his house in the rainforest at RESEX Chico Mendes, 2011.
There are a series of challenges that put the sustainability of productive conservation at risk. On one hand, the production of rubber promotes livelihood in the rainforest, suggesting an ecological and cultural significance for the rubber tappers. On the other hand, this material cannot compete with natural rubber harvested in plantations, nationally or internationally. So the traditional techniques of processing the material do not generate a viable income for the local families, and the consequent low return prevents the continuation of the activity. The lack of market opportunities and
competitiveness of the wild rubber generates serious socio-‐economic and environmental consequences. Many local people, desperate, have changed their activities to predatory practices in order to get immediate returns – clearing areas of rainforest for timber, plantations and cattle, or working as cheap labour for big farmers or timber loggers – or as a last resort migrating to urban centres. For them, poverty is imminent and inescapable. Amaral and Samonek (2006: 5-‐8) suggest that the doubtful politics relating to the economic development of the region has assumed the natural resources to be inexhaustible. But in fact the biome can be and is being destroyed – and that means the destruction of the indigenous practices, knowledge and cultures. The photos in Figure 2.23 show the replacement of the productive conservation by a growing rural lifestyle.
The continuation of the traditional communities in balance with the ecosystem is closely related to the productive activity of the rubber and its integration with other local products, such as wild fruit and fish – as discussed in a meeting with different stakeholders working in the region, the integration of the different economic activities is important for the generation of economic income throughout the year, as those depend on seasonality (Sky Rainforest Rescue meeting on 16th September 2015). In contrast to the situation described above, these families, who are enabled to make a living from native products, have demonstrated a degree of wellbeing that is linked to satisfaction with their work, identity and livelihood in the rainforest (WWF-‐Brazil, 2015; Lelis, 2013).
A number of studies defend the hypothesis that there is still potential for the productive conservation of wild rubber by local rubber tappers, which can be sustainable and can enable the reorganization of the work in the rainforest without damaging the natural environment or the way of life and culture of traditional
populations (Pastore and Pierozan, 2007; Amaral and Samonek, 2006; Hall, 1997: 119).
The rubber trees integrate into the ecosystem of the rainforest, spread out as they are throughout its length and breadth. This means there is plenty of potential for the rubber production that has not been explored (Amaral and Samonek, 2006: 22–23).
In the face of assumptions that populations from the rainforest live apart from a global market, the productive conservation of the rubber in fact demonstrates the opposite.
The diagram in Figure 2.24 summarizes a relation of influences, of multiple causes and consequences, which interconnects local communities and the rainforest to the global
market. The production of rubber has helped create in the rainforest hundreds of communities whose economic activity aims to supply an industrial and global market.
This relationship has changed over time, however, the rubber-‐tapping communities becoming more autonomous but also more dependent on demand for the commodity that has unfortunately decreased. Rubber is still an economic element that maintains populations that are living in and connected to the rainforest, but for whom viability is crucial. This interdependence is essential for the sustainability of the local
communities in the rainforest. Thus, the creation of new ways of stimulating the local economy through the productive conservation of the rubber is of great importance to those peoples.
Figure 2.24: Multiple influences and interdependences inside and outside the rainforest.