Amazon Rainforest, a heritage for all

After the huge march at the start of the World Social Forum, Wednesday saw the beginning of the more than two thousand debate sessions that make up the program, spread out by major thematic areas which point out the main claims of the world's social movements.

Such aggregative goals range from the demand for peace to fighting against militarism and all types of discrimination, standing up for self-determination and the rights of all peoples, or for the protection of nature and ecosystems, as well as upholding a democratic, emancipating, sustainable and solidary economy. Discussions on economic and social democracy are divided into six large areas, including freeing the world from capital's domination; wide and sustainable access to the shared property of humankind and nature; knowledge, culture and media democratization; upholding the rights to food, health, education, housing, employment, decent work and media; and building and spreading democratic and participatory political and economic structures and institutions.

The economic world crises and the protection of the Amazon Rainforest are, in the end, the two main topics discussed, in a forum where nothing is easy: the tropical wet heat makes everybody sweat from 8 am on, the access routes to the activities are all jammed and it takes hours to get anywhere, and poor information regarding where the debates are taking place forces everybody into a painful merry-go-round in the precinct. To make things up, one cannot help being charmed by Amazonian delicacies (today I risked tacapa, a kind of limy soup I would refuse to eat in any other circumstances, and I refrain from going into further detail...) and come across new Amazonian fruit juices daily (today I tasted the wonderful cupuaçu and tabereba).

On the first day, the debates focused mainly on the Amazon Rainforest. Protecting and valuing it is the aim of a large number of organizations, and the protection of the ecosystem and its biodiversity is just one of their claims, for they also include defending public services or the right to health, education and social care. The concept of socio-diversity is winning ground in most debates, which tend to focus on the need to uphold traditional knowledge and awareness about resources and how to use them. Social life in the Amazon Rainforest is structured around these resources, but they are increasingly falling prey to private appropriation, supported by the complex mechanisms protecting intellectual and industrial property, in the hands of large corporations and miles away from the lives of indigenous peoples.

One activist from the Ecuadorian Amazon summed up the problem in this obvious usurpation, on a debate about bio-piracy: «we cannot understand how something we have used for generations suddenly becomes private property and we can no longer use it». Indeed, large corporations, mostly from the USA, have been granted patents on the use of thousands of Amazonian plants. The products thus obtained are massively sold with no benefits at all for the peoples who really developed their use.

Close to Belém do Pará, Icoaraci city is known as the centre of craft production of traditional Amazonian pottery. It is a city in the depths of utter misery, with substandard housing, built on concrete and wood structures, where painting is seldom seem and the sewers flow openly on the smelly streets. Basic sanitation is available to only about 10% of houses in Belém and it gets much worse in the remaining areas of the Pará state. The World Social Forum is taking place in one of the poorest areas on Earth.