Profound structural changes have been occurring in the Amazon, but they are perceived differently according to dominant motivations and interests at the global, national, and regional levels. New actors, always present in the region, are now taking on a more active role, such as civil society, whose level of organization had never been achieved before, state governments, and international cooperation. Conflicts of interest and the resulting actions maintain obsolete images of the region, hindering the development of public policies appropriate for its development.

Four hypotheses are discussed regarding the Amazon today: at the global level, its configuration as a frontier of natural capital and as a transnational, South American Amazon; at the national level, its tendency toward depletion as a mobile frontier of economic and demographic expansion; at the regional level, its establishment as an effective region, endowed with its own dynamics and a new geography; and finally, the need to replace the policy of regional occupation with a policy of development consolidation in which regionalization is a basic strategy, even envisioned in the Sustainable Amazon Plan (2003).

The Amazon poses a major challenge for national science and technology: how to understand and implement economic growth with social justice and non-predatory use of its natural heritage.

Speaker: Professor Bertha Becker, Institute of Geosciences, UFRJ.
Discussant: Professor Maria das Graças Lins Brandão, School of Pharmacy, UFMG.