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Socioeconomic and socioecological issues of the pandemic crisis in the Amazon

Les enjeux socio-économiques et socioécologiques de la pandémie en Amazonie
Los desafíos socioeconómicos y sociológicos de la pandemia en Amazonas
Lise Tupiassu, Ana Elizabeth Neirão Reymão et Jean-Raphaël Gros-Désormeaux

Résumés

La diffusion du covid-19 dans la région amazonienne a rendu nécessaire une réflexion sur l’interrelation possible entre la pandémie et les formes d’appropriation des ressources naturelles de l’Amazonie par les chaînes de valeur mondiales. Cet article cherche à examiner comment la pandémie de covid-19 a mis en évidence les vulnérabilités résultant de l’insertion de l’Amazonie dans le capitalisme mondial. Quelle que soit leur dépendance aux dynamiques économiques intra- ou extraterritoriales, aucun secteur d’activité, ni aucune communauté ne semble être épargné par le covid-19. La pandémie a montré que, bien que les activités économiques en Amazonie soient intégrées dans des circuits économiques solides, de portée internationale, les revenus générés coexistent avec le non-respect des différents droits des populations locales. Il est donc nécessaire de chercher des alternatives à certaines formes d’exploitation non durable de la nature et de reconsidérer le modèle de développement de la région. La pandémie révèle que les revenus générés par les activités économiques en Amazonie dépendent profondément de la portée internationale de leurs circuits économiques et, en même temps, du non-respect d’un certain nombre de droits fondamentaux des peuples autochtones.

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The authors cordially acknowledge the financial support provided by Investments for the Future of the French National Research Agency (Ceba, ref. ANR-10-LABX-25-01) and by the CAPES-COFECUB Program.

1. Introduction

1When considering the Amazon region, where the largest tropical forest in the world is located, climate change and biodiversity are usually the main topics of debate. In the middle of the pandemic resulting from the spread of covid-19, in some areas, the social isolation measures taken by the public authorities have helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improved air and water quality and have led to less human pressure on wild species (Corlett et al., 2020; Hiscott et al., 2020; Chauhan & Singh, 2020; Gross, 2020; Nakada & Urban, 2020). However, the socioecological adaptation and resilience of the Amazon are still important causes of concern. In addition to its huge natural resources, the region has many economic resources of global importance, which are also essential to sustain the way of life of the millions of people who live there, including 420 different indigenous peoples and tribes (OTCA, 2020).

2More than 60% of the Amazon Forest is in Brazil, in an area which has traditionally witnessed economic interventions which have led to institutional and social tensions. The Amazon’s geodiversity and biodiversity is an abundant source of ores and agricultural products, such as soya, palm oil, açaí and cocoa, which form part of important global value chains. In the light of both the covid-19 pandemic and rising global environmental problems, the conflicts involving products from the Amazon Forest and the region’s indigenous people prompt further analysis of the conditions which underpin the insertion the Amazon into global capitalism.

3Studies made at the beginning of the pandemic indicated the great vulnerability of the North and Northeast regions of Brazil to covid-19 (Coelho et al., 2020), but this awareness was not enough to avoid very high numbers of deaths. At the time of writing, the region where the major Amazonian states are located has the highest rate of deaths from covid-19 in Brazil: 176.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (Ministério da Saúde, 2021), which is 15% higher than the national average. The spread of covid-19 in the region with such high number of cases and official deaths urges us to reflect on how this can be related to forms of appropriation of the Amazon’s natural resources by global value chains. It is important to analyse the impacts borne by indigenous people, who have been mobilised repeatedly to serve the needs of international commodity markets, without their own specific needs ever being taken into account.

4In this context, facing the biggest health crisis of the 21st century, this article aims at discussing how the coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the vulnerabilities resulting from the Amazon’s insertion into global capitalism. The ideas presented here do not seek to be definitive. This study will begin by briefly summarising the history of how the Amazon adapted to globalised capitalism. Then, it will question the resilience of the Amazonian socio-ecosystem in the context of the pandemic. We will follow by highlighting the region’s social and economic vulnerabilities, before drawing some lessons in the conclusion.

2. Critical analysis of the Amazon’s adaptation to global capitalism

5The story of the occupation of the Brazilian Amazon is one of income concentration and social exclusion, a result of the subordinate and peripheral condition of its insertion into global capitalism. The economic exploitation of the resources of the Amazon and its integration into the national and international economy was the logical conclusion of an attitude which regarded the forest as the perfect space for the generation of wealth and unfettered exploitation, ignoring any local and socio-ecological considerations.

6Although considered by many to be a region full of resources which could be freely exploited by Europeans, the Brazilian Amazon was in fact always densely populated by indigenous people. Its insertion into what later came to be called global value chains first lay on the supply of indigenous people for the slave systems, which persisted until the 19th century (Loureiro, 2009). From then onwards, the insertion of the Brazilian Amazon into global value chains has been based on the export of raw materials and semi-finished products. Between the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the rubber trade propelled the regional dynamic. This period saw high levels of migration of poor Brazilians to the Amazon, supplying the labour needed for the integration of the region into the industrialised and globalised world economy. The Amazon thus witnessed an expansion of settlements into new areas from a shifting frontier, driven by the rubber-tappers and businessmen looking for latex in remote areas.

7While the rubber trade helped define the region and made Brazil the biggest supplier of rubber in the world (Becker, 2009), the second half of the 19th century saw Belém and Manaus – the major capitals in the Amazon – undergoing great urbanisation projects with increases in revenue and profit and the opening up of the Amazon River to foreign ships. This urbanisation and integration of the region into the global economy was part of a dynamic marked by intense social and territorial inequality, with a few “fat cats” rapidly becoming rich, while the indigenous peoples and other traditional inhabitants were expelled to the upper reaches of the rivers and distant territories deep in the bush. At the same time, tucked away in the forest, a huge army of indebted workers lived in slave-like conditions (Santos, 1980) – a strategy still used today.

8Despite the increase in demand, production was not successful in domesticating the rubber-producing trees nor in becoming competitive on the international markets (Trindade & Oliveira, 2012). The rubber economy lost its monopoly and entered a period of decline, resulting in a long period of regional stagnation. However, the original socio-ecological structure of the region had adapted to the dynamic of being integrated into the global market and was thus changed forever.

9The insertion of the Amazon into global capitalism fits well into the idea of a circle of adaptation described by Lance Gunderson and Crawford Holling (2002). A system resulting from a slow process of colonisation based on the exploitation of natural and human resources is established and, after a period of stability, reaches its zenith. It then accumulates vulnerabilities and fragilities until it falls into ruin, destroyed by the upheavals it has suffered for so long.

10Much like Nietzsche’s eternal return, the pattern of the region’s insertion into global capitalism keeps being repeated despite the drastic consequences of the Amazon’s adaptation to the world-dominant mode of production. In the second half of the 20th century, the choice of the import-substitution model for the Brazilian economy included the setting up of regional development policies, which aimed at overcoming existing inequalities between various parts of the country (Loureiro, 2009; Becker, 2009). This strategy was based on the idea that the Amazon was a great empty space which needed to be occupied (Marques, 2012).

11Between 1975 and 1979, as part of the II National Development Plan, the economic potential of the Amazon’s natural resources came to be regarded as strategic for the Brazilian political economy and the importance of its resources began to permeate the developmentalist policy that was drawn up for the region (Castro, Moura & Maia, 1995). This started a new cycle of “productive occupation”. The logic was to support large initiatives taken for the production and export of minerals, wood and beef on a large scale. Among the projects established by the federal government, those concerned with mining were given priority in terms of investment and still now account for the largest part of mineral production in Brazil. This model intensified income concentration and poverty, as little diversification existed in terms of economic activities and production processes (Costa, 2000; Cruz, 2019). The Amazon population began to live in denser concentrations, particularly along the sides of the roads, their settlements separated by huge expanses of forest. With the higher rates of population density along the roads on the edge of the forest, a great “arc of deforestation” took place in direction of the forest itself.

12Given the opportunities for economic exploitation of the newly cleared areas, stemming from the roads which had been built, there was great speculative greed, leading to agrarian conflict and the appropriation of the Amazonian land through fraud. Plots of land with false title deeds were sold to both Brazilian and overseas mining and timber companies and this led to resistance struggles and conflicts linked to the intense private appropriation of the land in the Amazon. This revealed the inability of the Brazilian State to change its model of insertion of the region into global value chains, a model which had very low levels of inclusivity (Loureiro, 2009).

13Although it is of crucial importance for the region, “productive occupation” has had a very high impact on the indigenous people and settlements. In this process, called by David Harvey (2013) “accumulation by dispossession”, the indigenous people have been seriously affected. It leads to population displacement and accelerated demographic concentration, a reduction in the opportunities for economic, social and cultural subsistence, and it creates liabilities in the form of different degrees of contamination and environmental degradation. Furthermore, the impact of mining and other activities on deforestation, together with its low economic interactivity with the regional systems of production, paints a very dismal picture, pointing towards the destruction of social and environmental rights in the region (Trindade, 2019). Some projects have ended up supplanting the socio-ecosystem’s ability to adapt.

14One example of the dispossession of indigenous people by big business working in conjunction with the state is the Tucuruí transmission line, which destroyed the indigenous settlement of Gavião, whose former inhabitants are still waiting to be compensated for the land they lost (Tupiassu & Sales, 2019). José Trindade (2019) highlights the fact that the only concern of the people designing these projects is the profitability of the company. It is totally paradoxical, for example, that many local people living near the Amazonian hydroelectric plant have no access to electricity, even though the dams that have been built have made the locals sacrifice their way of life and their conditions of social reproduction.

15It was the same story at Lago do Batata, in Rio Trombetas, with the exploitation of bauxite in the 1980s. The lake was one of the main sources of income and food for the people living along the banks of the lake and river and in the quilombos (communities set up by former slaves), but the constant dumping of clay from the mines meant it silted up and the water was contaminated. Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam is another example of these dispossession contexts, blocking the Xingu River and displacing approximately 25,000 people in the city of Altamira and 18,000 traditional riverside dwellers (ribeirinhos), destroying their indigenous livelihoods that depend on this area to survive. Environmental impacts were great and many legal and ethical arguments were cast aside to complete the construction of the dam, which threatened to flood indigenous lands (Fearnside, 2017).

From this perspective, the consequences of many economic activities in the Amazon, inserted into global value chains, are seen to be a great liability, in social and environmental terms, given the low capacity of these projects to advance a conjuncture of activities which would be capable of reversing the region’s social exclusion.

3. Risks for socio-ecological resilience revealed by the covid-19 pandemic

16We just saw that the insertion of the Brazilian Amazon into global value chains has had a huge impact on the socioecological characteristics of the region in the last centuries. At the same time, the development of abilities to act in an uncertain world (Callon et al., 2014) become the leitmotiv of a consumer economy. This consumerism reduces socio-ecological and evolutionary processes to mechanisms designed solely for the production of goods and services that respond to needs which are perceived, experienced and represented in accordance with value chains.

17In the case of the Amazon, however, its insertion into a global reality requires the value chain to be structured according to the need to manage natural resources, which involves various stages. These range from the organisation of production itself to policies and practices regarding the sustainability of the sector, the adjudication of contracts and licences, the collection of receipts for tax purposes, and the connection between revenue and the management of public investment, among other things (Barma et al., 2012). Even though this value chain approach might bring social benefits in the short to medium term, the question of its sustainability within the socio-ecological system continues to be an unknown factor.

18A burgeoning literature on the concept of a socio-ecological system (Moran- Ordóñez et al., 2013; De Aranzabal et al., 2008; Bourgeron, Humphries & Riboli-Sasco, 2009) offers an opportunity to approach the processes of adaptation and resilience as a conceptual hybrid which embraces both the social and the ecosystem, rather than from a perspective which is exclusively social or ecological. While the concept of socio-ecological system might offer an optimistic and comforting view of a possible complementarity between two systemic constructions (Janssen, 2011), one anthropocentric and the other ecocentric, the global health crisis resulting from covid-19 questions their (im)possible convergence. The first, the social, might just be a word which hides capitalist practices which are less and less popular, and the second, the ecosystem, might just be an idea mobilised by parties interested in defending nature as long as it is the kind of nature which transports goods and services to the market.

19A clear example of this is the way in which deforestation is affected by global value chains. Deforestation of the Amazon reached 10,129 square kilometres in 2019 and 11,088 square kilometres in 2020. This represents an increase of 9,5% between 2019 and 2020 (INPE, 2021). In the first two months of 2021, the total deforestation was 179 square kilometres, an increase of 74% in relation to the same period in 2020 (Fonseca et al., 2021). Indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon have recently been the target of a huge increase in deforestation (INPE, 2021), which rose by 64% there from 2019 (Greenpeace Brasil, 2020a; 2020b).

20This deforestation is harmful in the context of the global pandemic, as it intensifies the vulnerability of the indigenous people by increasing the probability of contact with lumberjacks and timber merchants. A long time before the current pandemic, a great number of articles discussed the links between deforestation and the proliferation of diseases and infections whose pathogens are transmitted naturally between vertebrates and humans (Afelt, Frutos & Devaux, 2018, Rebaudo et al., 2014; Ajesh, Nagaraja & Sreejith, 2017; Nava et al., 2017; Ellwanger et al., 2020). Several studies highlight the association between deforestation and viruses, such as Ebola, in Africa, and Nipah, in Asia (Olivero et al., 2017; Rulli et al., 2017; Singh et al., 2019; Jones et al., 2008). Undoubtedly, the relationship between these zoonoses and deforestation is complex (Silvain et al., 2020). One study carried out by Juliana Castilho and her collegues (2010) shows, however, that in the year 2004-2005 in just one sector of the Brazilian eastern Amazon – a region where the highest levels of deforestation have occurred – 64 cases of rabies in humans that had been transmitted from bloodsucking bats were identified, showing that the threat from zoonoses linked to the transformation of socio-ecological systems is real. Considering the inter-relationship between human health and the management of environmental resources (Kethan, 2020), as well as the impact of the loss of biodiversity on the appearance and transmission of infectious diseases (Keesing et al., 2010), it is therefore clear that the high levels of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon and the increase in the destruction of biodiversity in indigenous lands and other protected areas (Fonseca et al., 2021) puts the region at high risk of being the starting point of future epidemics.

21In addition to this intrinsic risk, the mode of insertion of the Amazon into current capitalism brings other paradoxes. The destruction of the ecosystem, the landscapes, and the ways of life associated with it not only favours an anthroposystem linked to global value chains; it also depends on the extraction of non-renewable (and therefore, exhaustible) resources. This leads inexorably to a decrease, or even complete loss, of the capacity for adaptation and resilience on the part of the territory and the indigenous people who live in it. The most affected are Yanomami, Wytoto, Kokama and Kanamari communities. The indigenous people isolated on Javari’s indigenous land – such as the Matis, Marubos and Matsés – also have been affected and they do not have immunological defence nor easy access to the health public care. Moreover, some indigenous people must deal with the intensification of land conflicts as the case of some Mebengokrê (Kayapó) communities in the Amazon (Menton et al., 2021).

22Furthermore, in the context of the pandemic caused by covid-19, the anthroposystem has experienced weaknesses. Unlike previous crises, there has been a loss of supply, disrupting the value chains (Steen, 2020). The exponential increase in confirmed cases and deaths in the region has affected many workers and led authorities to impose severe restrictions on movement, interrupting supply and limiting production.

Since it is a region which is integrated into global value chains as a supplier of primary products, its economy has been seriously affected. This ultimately prompts the following question: at what point could the accumulation of vulnerabilities potentially reach the limits of resilience?

4. The Amazon at a crossroads between economic and social vulnerabilities

23The covid-19 pandemic has therefore revealed compelling social and economic vulnerabilities in the Amazon. As in most other regions of the world, logistical restrictions and scarcity of labour due to the pandemic have disrupted some agricultural chains, limiting access to animal feed, decreasing the output capacity at meat-processing plants and reducing the supply of inputs in general (FAO, 2020).

24In Brazil, it is thought that the logistical restrictions may have put the supply of fertilisers at risk, leading to unsatisfactory harvests of soya, maize, sugarcane and coffee. The participation of Brazil in these chains is extremely important, making the country one of the most seriously affected by the closure of borders and restrictions on international trade (Seleiman et al., 2020). Equally important are hunger, insecurity and the scarcity of food that affect the Brazilian population. Some projections for the end of the year 2020 in Brazil shows an increase of more than 5 to 6 million people in extreme poverty (misery), which reintroduces the country in the FAO’s Hunger map (Azerêdo, 2020). The marked vulnerability of food supply, which has been reflected in the process of food inflation, has severely punished vulnerable populations. Between January and April 2020, the official price index (IPCA) increased by 0.22% and that of food at home, 3.94%, that is, 18 times more than the general index. This weighted result, however, “covers” the sharp rise in prices of some essential foods in the diet of Brazilians. Excluding seasonal factors, average carrot prices increased by 97% (441 times above the general IPCA); those for tomatoes, 52%; onion, 49%; potato, 42%; beans, 23%; banana, 20%; etc. (id.).

25However, in addition to broader economic vulnerability, the impact of the pandemic market on agricultural commodities, such as palm oil and soya, has had huge socio-environmental consequences for the insertion of the Amazon in global value chains. The fall in global consumption of palm oil in 2020 could negatively affect the income of many family producers in the eastern Amazon who depend on its production. Many of them even abandoned their farming of traditional crops, such as cassava, beans and rice, in order to dedicate themselves to the cultivation of oil palms, taking on debts which will be difficult to pay back now that prices have dropped (Santos, 2017). In the case of soya, more restrictive regulations with regard to loading and unloading imposed by buyers such as China in order to avoid contamination by covid-19 tend to affect exports, as this increases the time spent in the port (Tisdell, 2020). Furthermore, the production and the logistics of moving these products out of the region have been affected by high levels of infection among workers and by the restrictions imposed by local governments on public health grounds.

26The pandemic unleashed an unprecedented combined fall of both supply and demand, characterised by a global recession, by the collapse of transportation and by the disruptions to supply chains. Unlike other international crises, such as that of 2008, the covid-19 crisis resulted in a significant drop in supply too. Commodity markets on which the Amazon depends are thus vulnerable not only to the laws of supply and demand, the behaviour of macroeconomic variables – such as exchange rates and inflation – and political events, but also to factors related to the pandemic itself (Mensi et al., 2020).

Another important example is mining. In the southern part of Pará, the biggest state in the eastern Amazon, mining towns, such as Parauapebas, Marabá, Canaã dos Carajás and Curionópolis, sites of great mines which supply the world market with copper and iron, have had high numbers of people infected with covid-19 (Vale, 2020). On 21st June 2020, Parauapebas had the second highest number of cases in Pará, fewer only than in Belém, the capital. On April 16, 2021, the municipality remained in the same position, with 39,591 cases (Sespa, 2020). This town exported more than seven billion dollars’ worth of iron ore in 2019 (Ministério da Economia, 2020). The international market is therefore affected by many uncertainties regarding the ability of the ore production to meet demand.

27As regards gold mining, the effects of covid-19 have been equally worrying. To see how the pandemic has clearly affected the commodity markets, we just need to look at the substantial rise of the price of gold in 2020. This is because it is thought of as a hedge and gives safety at times of uncertainty and economic crisis. (Corbet, Larkin & Lucey, 2020). In the Amazon, this led to an important mining rush, with many of such mines being illegal, located in Conservation Units and indigenous lands. This not only resulted in a high number of cases in the region; it also led to an increase in deforestation and pressure on indigenous territory (Calvimontes et al., 2020).

Against such background, the way the region is inserted in global value chains is a matter of great concerns, since the problems are not confined to world economy issues, but also affect, more seriously, small farmers, residents of the quilombos, and indigenous people – i.e. the traditional communities in the Amazon.

28In theory, looking at the question superficially, the traditional way of life of Amerindian populations, for example, could be regarded as a positive factor in the fight against covid-19. Unlike the anxiety and suffering felt by a large number of people in the world when constrained to lockdown in order to slow down the propagation of the virus, isolation is, for many indigenous people in the Amazon, considered to be a voluntary choice, forming part of an expression of self-determination (Alves, 2019). It could also be said that the indigenous way of life stands out as having one great advantage if health systems fail, in that there is a strong relationship between nature and ancestral knowledge about the use of traditional medicine, and that this increases the people’s ability to live in autonomy and maintain social distancing from infected areas.

29However, it is important to note that this vision corresponds to a quasi-romantic idea about the reality of life among the indigenous people. The description of voluntary isolation used to describe their lives coincides with a contemporary phenomenon related to the steps taken and decisions made by some communities seeking physical and cultural integrity as a reaction to the invasion of their territory (Arisi, 2007). Many communities have been urging people to take measures like this as an attempt to stop contamination by covid-19 (Rosha, 2020; Huertas & Cueva, 2020; Kaplan et al., 2020; Collyns et al., 2020).

30However, historical (Cook, 1998; Mann, 2006) and more recent (Smith, 2018; Sousa et al., 1997; Coimbra & Basta, 2007; Coimbra Júnior, 2014) evidence emphasises the immunological susceptibility of indigenous people to diseases that were unknown to them. Covid-19 does not only threaten the survival of individual members of the community, but also specifically targets the cultural heritage of the indigenous people since the older members, considered to be the wisest, are the most vulnerable to the virus (Gimenes, 2020).

31The danger that covid-19 represents to indigenous people was, by and large, known in advance (Zavaleta, 2020). In the first 90 days after the virus first appeared in Brazil, approximately 1,500 had been infected and 50 had died, mostly in the remote areas of the Amazon. By 24th August 2020, six months after the first case in Brazil had been detected, the number of indigenous people living in rural areas who had been infected was 28,815, and there had been more than 750 deaths (ISA, 2020). On April 16, 2021, the total number of infected indigenous people was 46,597, with 639 deaths (Ministério da Saúde, 2020).

32The intrinsic vulnerability of indigenous people is also aggravated by demographic and infrastructural weaknesses that Azevedo et al. (2020) identified, which means that the Amazon region, which has a large share of the traditional and indigenous lands within Brazil, also has higher levels of vulnerability to covid-19. The following contribute to this sad state of affairs: the percentage of elderly people in those areas, the average number of residents per house, the existence of a bathroom or toilet for a family’s exclusive use, mains water, access to towns with health centres or intensive care beds and the regularisation of indigenous lands. In all these cases, there are great deficiencies.

In addition to demographic and structural problems, institutional issues contribute to the increased vulnerability of the indigenous people in the Amazon. The severity of covid-19 for those communities has been made worse due to neglect and marginalisation on the part of the federal government of Brazil (Ferrante & Fearnside, 2020).

33Infections of Amazonian indigenous people are also believed to be the result of a lack of monitoring on the part of federal institutions of illegal miners, timber merchants, loggers, and fraudsters who invade indigenous land (Phillips, 2020; Fraser, 2018). Above all, the increase in the movement of gold prospectors, garimpeiros, in the wake of the goldrush has made it crucial that the federal judiciary should intervene and take measures to remove the thousands of people who, right in the middle of a pandemic, have invaded the region, traffic commodities, and illegally occupy indigenous land in search of the precious metal (Araújo & Oliveira, 2020). These facts demonstrate that the nature of the insertion of the Amazon into global capitalism is placing indigenous people at severe risk and that they are on the brink of collapse in the face of the pandemic.

5. Conclusion

34Analysing the pandemic and its consequences in all their complexity allows us to highlight the totality and the diversity of measures, both local and global, which should be taken into account when considering the (re)adaptation of the Amazon to the need for socioecological resilience, within the inescapable context of the globalisation of the trajectory of capitalist development. Whether dependent on domestic or extraterritorial economic dynamics, no sector of activity, no community and no social class appears to be untouched by covid-19. This challenge for a world which has become subject to interterritorial dependence instead of maintaining its capacity for socio-ecological resilience shows the growing importance of reconciling the spatial and the temporal dimensions in which social and ecological phenomena occur.

35The analysis put forward here demonstrates that one of the specificities of this pandemic is the understanding that interruptions in production or in transportation, or changes to the conditions in which people live, cause disruption to supply chains. Even if countries wish to resume economic activity, the fact they depend on global supply chains means that their capacity to do this is limited because international suppliers of commodities, such as the Amazon, cannot meet their demand. An important contribution of the analysis is precisely to put forward other factors more deeply rooted in the long history of Amazon’s insertions into global capitalism. In the context of the pandemic, it has become even more difficult to imagine a socio-ecosystem based on sustainable value chains which venture to reconcile the unreconcilable or make it (im)possible, reconciling the short-term of the social with the long-term of the ecosystem, added to the convergences between global and local needs.

36Ultimately, the pandemic shows that revenues generated by economic activities such as mining and cattle breeding in the Amazon deeply depend on the international reach of their economic circuits, at the same time as on the non-observance of a number of fundamental rights of indigenous people. This clearly implies looking for alternatives to the unsustainable exploitation of nature and reconsidering the development model of the Amazon.

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Lise Tupiassu, Ana Elizabeth Neirão Reymão et Jean-Raphaël Gros-Désormeaux, « Socioeconomic and socioecological issues of the pandemic crisis in the Amazon »Revue de la régulation [En ligne], 29 | 2021, mis en ligne le 21 juillet 2021, consulté le 19 mars 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/regulation/20158 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/regulation.20158

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Lise Tupiassu

Professor of Law, Institut de recherche en sciences sociales sur la biodiversité Caraïbe-Amériques (Ircab), Federal University of Pará, Rua Augusto Corrêa, 01 - Guamá, Belém - PA, 66075-110, Brazil; lise@ufpa.br

Ana Elizabeth Neirão Reymão

Professor of Law, Federal University of Pará, Brazil; bethrey@uol.com.br

Jean-Raphaël Gros-Désormeaux

Researcher, Laboratoire caribéen de sciences sociales (LC2S), French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France; jean-raphael.gros-desormeaux@cnrs.fr

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