ABSTRACT
Brazil’s economic policy that prioritizes development based on the production and export of commodities, accelerates the destruction of ecosystems and the marginalization of indigenous peoples, traditional communities and sectors of the peasantry, which see their rights to the environment and to their own future denied and are trapped and even exterminated by the expansion of cattle ranching, mining and large infrastructure projects in their territory. These activities are politically and economically supported by the federal government and carried out by the legislature that seeks to reverse the recognition of these people’s rights. In the end, the socioenvironmental issue that should be central is concealed or captured by private interests. We are miles away from realizing that these populations are part of the solution not only to the problems brought on by economic growth that cannot absorb the available labour or provide decent living conditions in the cities but also in terms of managing ecosystems through the traditional common use of their territory, which they have historically preserved. In the context of the commodication and privatization of nature, and in the face of the huge environmental and social crisis, the academic and political debate on common goods and the study of its underlying practices are, as such, at the top of the agenda. Is there any possibility that alternatives to the current catastrophe can be imposed or at least considered? Is a movement for the ‘common goods’ credible? Is there still time to consolidate the Commons (goods) of indigenous peoples, traditional communities and the peasantry? These are some of the questions addressed in this chapter.
