The best protection
Having sex might seem an unlikely way of saving the rainforest, but if you use a Brazil-made condom, you may be doing exactly that. In April last year, a condom factory opened in the Amazon that will supply the Brazilian government with 100 million condoms a year. The factory is unique in that it uses natural latex collected by rubber tappers, or seringueiros. Unlike in Asia, the trees aren’t cultivated but grow naturally in the forest.
The condom company, Natex, is a joint venture between the local state of Acre and the Brazilian Ministry of Health. It’s a manifestation of Acre’s so-called Florestania or ‘citizens’ forestry’ policy, an attempt to protect the local rainforest while raising the living standards of its inhabitants by adding value to the products extracted from the forest.
At the opening of the factory, Marina Silva, Brazil’s environment minister at the time, was in no doubt of the factory’s significance. ‘This is a project where high technology will help to preserve the soul of the forest,’ she said. ‘The forest will remain the forest and the seringueiros will remain seringueiros through a new way of working and producing.’
The factory is located in the town of Xapuri, the birthplace of Chico Mendes, the revered environmentalist and rubber tapper who was also assassinated there 20 years ago, and represents a direct legacy of his life’s work.
Rubber resistance
The rubber boom that took place at the end of the 19th century brought a wave of immigration from the impoverished northeast, as poor farmers came to work as seringueiros. The boom ended in 1910, when rubber seeds smuggled out of Brazil proved to be easier to cultivate in Asia, but the work continued, as the industry contracted, rather than disappearing altogether.
In the 1970s, the government embarked on a programme to develop the Amazon. Ranchers from the south were encouraged to buy and clear land, and the seringueiros believed that this time, their livelihood was being threatened with destruction. They began to resist. Mendes, a seringueiro leader, promoted a non-violent strategy of empates or ‘standoffs’, where groups of seringueiros formed human blockades to prevent clearance.
Mendes’s great achievement was to forge an alliance between the seringueiros and the environmentalists. He saw the seringueiros as the natural custodians of the forest; before, environmentalists claimed the Amazon could only be saved by leaving it free of all human development.
In 1985, Mendes organised the first national seringueiro congress, where the idea for creating extractive reserves originated. Those living in the forest would be able to earn a wage extracting products from it while protecting it from clearance for agriculture.
Two years latter, cattle rancher Darcy Alves bought the rubber estate where Mendes was born. Mendes organised resistance to the clearance. On 22 December the following year, Mendes was murdered by Alves’s son.
This proved to be a turning point, as Mendes’s international fame meant that his assassination brought worldwide attention; his death couldn’t be swept under the carpet like those of so many others. Alves and his son were convicted. A year later, four areas were turned into extractive reserves.
Cachoeira is one of these areas, and its 24,000 hectares are inhabited by 87 seringueiros and their families. When the government first outlined plans for the reserve, it offered to let the seringueiros clear half of the land. They put the idea to a vote, but decided this would result in too much damage and voted to clear only ten per cent instead.
One of Mendes’s many cousins, Sebastiao Mendes, guides me around the reserve. There is roughly one rubber tree per hectare growing naturally in the reserve, and each seringueiro taps around 150 trees a day. It’s hard, solitary work. The tappers leave for the forest at 5am and return during the late afternoon. As they work, they occasionally communicate with each other by whistling.
Sebastiao tells me of the dark days when the ranchers arrived. ‘I was scared for my life the whole time; it was dangerous to be a friend of Chico, let alone a relative involved with the resistance,’ he says. ‘They thought that destroying Mendes would destroy the resistance, but they were wrong.’ He sees the seringueiros as soldiers, ‘preserving and patrolling the forest’.
During the wet season, when the seringueiros stop tapping rubber – the heavy rain rendering the process impossible – their main income comes from collecting brazil nuts from the forest floor. One particular tree has been painted with an X, signifying that it can be felled. The tree has stopped producing nuts, and under Acre’s managed-forestry policy, trees can be felled if they are at the end of their life and another young tree of the same species is nearby.
Brazil nut trees are protected under Brazilian law, so when the forest was cleared, they were left standing alone and forlorn. But it soon became clear that the trees only produce nuts under the canopy of the forest. Attempts to cultivate the tree have largely failed, so if Brazil nuts are to be harvested, the forest has to remain intact.
Citizens’ forestry
A whole generation of activists were radicalised by Mendes, among them the two most recent governors of Acre, who both spent time alongside Mendes resisting the ranchers, not to mention the former environment minister Marina Silva – herself the daughter of seringueros.
In 1999, the charismatic Jorge Viana came to power as the Workers’ Party governor. A forester by training, he embarked on a policy of ‘citizens’ forestry’. Acre has the largest proportion of virgin forest of any
state in Brazil – 90 per cent – and timber accounts for most of its earnings. Viana saw the forest as the capital of the state, which needed to be protected if Acre was to develop.
With many of Acre’s inhabitants living in the forest in abject poverty, his government set about exploring new ways of increasing the value of products extracted from the forest. Like-minded people were brought in from other parts of the country, such as the secretary of forestry, Carlos Ovidio Duarte Rocha. Rocha believes that the key issue facing Acre is that the ‘monetary value of the forest is not high enough; someone buying land can make more money from selling the timber than the value of the land. The forest has much more intrinsic value than the same land used for agriculture – what with carbon offsetting and the products that can be extracted from the forest. If we can increase the economic value of the forest, then there will not be the temptation to clear the land.’ He admits, however, that it’s ‘very
difficult to preserve and extract from the forest without extinguishing it’.
The condom factory is the flagship of the state’s Florestania policy, itself the culmination of years of research. And there’s no doubt Chico Mendes would have approved. ‘Chico once said that technology must be put at the service of the small people without intermediaries,’ says Jose Maria Barbosa de Aquino, president of the National Council of Rubber Tappers. ‘This project is a great example of this and it needs the forest to be preserved to make it viable.’
The factory provides direct employment for 100 people and is supplied by 700 seringueiros, who receive a guaranteed income for their latex at higher than market rates. In addition, they also receive a fee for ‘environmental services’, in recognition of the role that rubber tapping plays in helping to preserve the forest. The seringueiros refer to the factory as the ‘love factory’, alluding not only to what it produces, but also to the effect it’s having on the local community.
WWF’s representative in Acre, Alberto Tavares, believes that the state’s Florestania policy has ‘great magnification potential’ for other regions in the Amazon, and agrees that the seringueiros have a vital role to play. ‘As their income depends on the integrity of the natural resources, they become suppliers of environmental services, thereby contributing to the conservation of the forest,’ he says.
But he also urges caution. Despite the successes, there are still projects that ‘support the survival of peasants with unsustainable agriculture that contributes to a high percentage of deforestation in Acre’, Tavares says.
Brazil faces a constant struggle between the demands of development and of environmentalism. A month after the opening of the condom factory, Silva resigned as environment minister – a move interpreted as a protest at the Brazilian government’s favouring of the interests of agribusiness over the preservation of the Amazon.
The Florestania policy could be a model for sustainable development throughout the Amazon, where the seemingly irreconcilable demands for development and preservation of the forest could be combined to save Brazil’s greatest natural asset, which would be a truly great memorial to the vision of Chico Mendes.
July 2009
The condom company, Natex, is a joint venture between the local state of Acre and the Brazilian Ministry of Health. It’s a manifestation of Acre’s so-called Florestania or ‘citizens’ forestry’ policy, an attempt to protect the local rainforest while raising the living standards of its inhabitants by adding value to the products extracted from the forest.
At the opening of the factory, Marina Silva, Brazil’s environment minister at the time, was in no doubt of the factory’s significance. ‘This is a project where high technology will help to preserve the soul of the forest,’ she said. ‘The forest will remain the forest and the seringueiros will remain seringueiros through a new way of working and producing.’
The factory is located in the town of Xapuri, the birthplace of Chico Mendes, the revered environmentalist and rubber tapper who was also assassinated there 20 years ago, and represents a direct legacy of his life’s work.
Rubber resistance
The rubber boom that took place at the end of the 19th century brought a wave of immigration from the impoverished northeast, as poor farmers came to work as seringueiros. The boom ended in 1910, when rubber seeds smuggled out of Brazil proved to be easier to cultivate in Asia, but the work continued, as the industry contracted, rather than disappearing altogether.
In the 1970s, the government embarked on a programme to develop the Amazon. Ranchers from the south were encouraged to buy and clear land, and the seringueiros believed that this time, their livelihood was being threatened with destruction. They began to resist. Mendes, a seringueiro leader, promoted a non-violent strategy of empates or ‘standoffs’, where groups of seringueiros formed human blockades to prevent clearance.
Mendes’s great achievement was to forge an alliance between the seringueiros and the environmentalists. He saw the seringueiros as the natural custodians of the forest; before, environmentalists claimed the Amazon could only be saved by leaving it free of all human development.
In 1985, Mendes organised the first national seringueiro congress, where the idea for creating extractive reserves originated. Those living in the forest would be able to earn a wage extracting products from it while protecting it from clearance for agriculture.
Two years latter, cattle rancher Darcy Alves bought the rubber estate where Mendes was born. Mendes organised resistance to the clearance. On 22 December the following year, Mendes was murdered by Alves’s son.
This proved to be a turning point, as Mendes’s international fame meant that his assassination brought worldwide attention; his death couldn’t be swept under the carpet like those of so many others. Alves and his son were convicted. A year later, four areas were turned into extractive reserves.
Cachoeira is one of these areas, and its 24,000 hectares are inhabited by 87 seringueiros and their families. When the government first outlined plans for the reserve, it offered to let the seringueiros clear half of the land. They put the idea to a vote, but decided this would result in too much damage and voted to clear only ten per cent instead.
One of Mendes’s many cousins, Sebastiao Mendes, guides me around the reserve. There is roughly one rubber tree per hectare growing naturally in the reserve, and each seringueiro taps around 150 trees a day. It’s hard, solitary work. The tappers leave for the forest at 5am and return during the late afternoon. As they work, they occasionally communicate with each other by whistling.
Sebastiao tells me of the dark days when the ranchers arrived. ‘I was scared for my life the whole time; it was dangerous to be a friend of Chico, let alone a relative involved with the resistance,’ he says. ‘They thought that destroying Mendes would destroy the resistance, but they were wrong.’ He sees the seringueiros as soldiers, ‘preserving and patrolling the forest’.
During the wet season, when the seringueiros stop tapping rubber – the heavy rain rendering the process impossible – their main income comes from collecting brazil nuts from the forest floor. One particular tree has been painted with an X, signifying that it can be felled. The tree has stopped producing nuts, and under Acre’s managed-forestry policy, trees can be felled if they are at the end of their life and another young tree of the same species is nearby.
Brazil nut trees are protected under Brazilian law, so when the forest was cleared, they were left standing alone and forlorn. But it soon became clear that the trees only produce nuts under the canopy of the forest. Attempts to cultivate the tree have largely failed, so if Brazil nuts are to be harvested, the forest has to remain intact.
Citizens’ forestry
A whole generation of activists were radicalised by Mendes, among them the two most recent governors of Acre, who both spent time alongside Mendes resisting the ranchers, not to mention the former environment minister Marina Silva – herself the daughter of seringueros.
In 1999, the charismatic Jorge Viana came to power as the Workers’ Party governor. A forester by training, he embarked on a policy of ‘citizens’ forestry’. Acre has the largest proportion of virgin forest of any
state in Brazil – 90 per cent – and timber accounts for most of its earnings. Viana saw the forest as the capital of the state, which needed to be protected if Acre was to develop.
With many of Acre’s inhabitants living in the forest in abject poverty, his government set about exploring new ways of increasing the value of products extracted from the forest. Like-minded people were brought in from other parts of the country, such as the secretary of forestry, Carlos Ovidio Duarte Rocha. Rocha believes that the key issue facing Acre is that the ‘monetary value of the forest is not high enough; someone buying land can make more money from selling the timber than the value of the land. The forest has much more intrinsic value than the same land used for agriculture – what with carbon offsetting and the products that can be extracted from the forest. If we can increase the economic value of the forest, then there will not be the temptation to clear the land.’ He admits, however, that it’s ‘very
difficult to preserve and extract from the forest without extinguishing it’.
The condom factory is the flagship of the state’s Florestania policy, itself the culmination of years of research. And there’s no doubt Chico Mendes would have approved. ‘Chico once said that technology must be put at the service of the small people without intermediaries,’ says Jose Maria Barbosa de Aquino, president of the National Council of Rubber Tappers. ‘This project is a great example of this and it needs the forest to be preserved to make it viable.’
The factory provides direct employment for 100 people and is supplied by 700 seringueiros, who receive a guaranteed income for their latex at higher than market rates. In addition, they also receive a fee for ‘environmental services’, in recognition of the role that rubber tapping plays in helping to preserve the forest. The seringueiros refer to the factory as the ‘love factory’, alluding not only to what it produces, but also to the effect it’s having on the local community.
WWF’s representative in Acre, Alberto Tavares, believes that the state’s Florestania policy has ‘great magnification potential’ for other regions in the Amazon, and agrees that the seringueiros have a vital role to play. ‘As their income depends on the integrity of the natural resources, they become suppliers of environmental services, thereby contributing to the conservation of the forest,’ he says.
But he also urges caution. Despite the successes, there are still projects that ‘support the survival of peasants with unsustainable agriculture that contributes to a high percentage of deforestation in Acre’, Tavares says.
Brazil faces a constant struggle between the demands of development and of environmentalism. A month after the opening of the condom factory, Silva resigned as environment minister – a move interpreted as a protest at the Brazilian government’s favouring of the interests of agribusiness over the preservation of the Amazon.
The Florestania policy could be a model for sustainable development throughout the Amazon, where the seemingly irreconcilable demands for development and preservation of the forest could be combined to save Brazil’s greatest natural asset, which would be a truly great memorial to the vision of Chico Mendes.
July 2009
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