From the conservation of natural resources and pollution control to a sustainable development: an ideological and organizational challenge presented to the Brazilian environmentalist movement

Abstract

The Brazilian environmentalist movement has started in the early 70s as a social and political innovative reaction opposed to the evergrowing destructive impacts of the "economic miracle" of Brazil. Its strategic target was simply restricted to make public opinion sensitive to the effects of pollution and of devastation of the natural ecosystems. As from 1987, a process of increasing organizational complexity developed itself, in the general framework of a difficult transition to democracy (without social citizenship). Some important groups are turned into professional organizations with national influence and international linkage. As the level of ideological commitments, there is a change in the awareness of the environmental theme: the initial approach. Directed towards pollution control and the conservation of natural resources, is shifted to the coverage of an active quest for alternative patterns for use of such resources. On the eve of the Unced-1992 (the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development), the ideological platform of the Brazilian environmentalism seems to be faced by a fundamental challenge of the most profound roots: the critical discussion of the dominant style of development incorporates a solid (albeit predominantly ambiguous) reference to sustainable development approach - and what is at stake is the pursuit of a new focus of political identity for the movement, in harmony with the nexus between development and environment.