The Legacy of Chico Mendes: successes and obstacles in the Extractive Reserves

Abstract

The idea of Extractive Reserves is a creation of Amazonian forest dwellers, and Chico Mendes, with the support of urban allies who gave visibility to the rubber tapper´s program on a national and international scale, promoting the idea within the forest communities. Extractive Reserves were proposed to recognize the rights of forest dwellers to traditionally occupied territories and to maintain the forests that are the basis of their way of life (Allegretti, 1990). With this program, seringueiros, caboclos and riparinos, previously invisible and residual inhabitants of the Amazon (Parker, 1985; Allegretti, 1979; Teixeira, 1980; Barbosa de Almeida, 1990; Nugent, 1993; Adams et al., 2006), gained a face and, in a turnaround of history, began to have a voice about their destinies (Carneiro da Cunha & Barbosa de Almeida, 2000). The program for which Chico Mendes fought made a difference. Thirty years after its assassination, there are in Brazil 94 Extractive Reserves that integrate the National System of Conservation Units, covering a total territory of 15 million and 500 thousand hectares, and 381 Extractivist Settlements under the Agrarian Reform program, covering 10, 8 million hectares. In these 26 million hectares (260,000 km2) there are rubber tappers and Brazil nut collectors, maroons, mollusc collectors, artisanal fishermen and other peasants who have in common extremely low environmental impact, conserving and expanding the diversity of cultures and techniques of the country. Extractive Reserves are forests (and other biomes) with high biodiversity inhabited by populations with low demographic density that use low intensity techniques. Extractive Reserves aim to reconcile territorial rights and cultural diversity with the conservation and increase of biodiversity.