The Amazon Rainforest plays a crucial role in global sustainability due to its unparalleled socio-biodiversity and role in climate regulation. But deforestation, illegal mining, unregulated agriculture and other challenges threaten both its ecosystems and the well-being of its peoples. A working paper authored by Mariana Mazzucato (Founding Director and Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value | UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose) and João Pedro Braga (PhD Candidate | UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose | Member of the Youth Advisory Committee for the Science Panel for the Amazon (YAC-SPA)) aims to present a framework for addressing the Pan-Amazon’s interconnected challenges and for realising its economic potential in a way that benefits the planet and the people living in the region. It proposes a mission-oriented approach to turn the region’s challenges into opportunities for innovation and investment, implemented according to the principles of the common good to align all stakeholders, including local communities, around shared goals and that produce shared value. In this sense, it wants to lay out a new development pathway that prioritises ecological preservation, sustainable development, and justice for local populations.
However, water activists from the region see this publication very critical. Eduardo Gudynas, Uruguayan biologist and author specializing in environmental issues, a member of the Latin American Center for Social Ecology and the first Latin American person to obtain the Arne Næss Chair in Global Justice and the Environment) comments on the Elon Musk channel, formerly known as Twitter:
1) striking superficial, incomplete and disconnected from Amazonian reality, with generic proposals, invokes local knowledge but imposes “green industries”
2) History is missing: Mazzucato‘s proposals presented as “new”, like, state-owned companies, public financing and more, have been around for almost a century (from state-owned oil companies to the BNDES funds), so there are no innovations (and no learning from past mistakes)
3) Lastly: the proposal is NOT a transition, nor is it just. Amazing that it is taken seriously by some academics, several governments and even citizen organizations. Its content reminds me of 19th century British recipes explaining India how it should develop.
Others join in with Meera Karunananthan from the Blue Planet Project commenting:
Not surprising. Her proposals to address the “global water crisis” via the Global Commission on the Economics of Water are top-down, oblivious to the historical harms of market-based instruments and ignore critiques from movements in the global South.
Download “A just transition for the Amazon: A mission-oriented framework” as PDF
