The (un)sustainability of the rural environment against foreign capital: impacts of the sugar-energy sector in the northeast area of São Paulo State

• Grant number: 17/18815-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2017
• End date: November 30, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Law - Public Law
• Principal Investigator: Raquel Santos Sant Ana
• Grantee: Amanda Dias Verrone
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The land concentration, the environmental devastation and the human rights violations of those who exercises their citizenship and humanity in the Brazilian countryside are current expressions of the historical reality marked by injustices in national rural areas. The sustainable development model, which should express itself through a rational, dialectic and emancipatory relation between individuals and the environment, has been used as an instrument in the service of big capital and showing itself as a real falsifying of the inherent contradictions from the capitalist mode of production. The recent mergers and acquisitions of companies in the sugar-energy sector, the State's flexibility in preserving the agro-exporting estates, the growing acquisitions of national lands, and the omission of the Agrarian Law to guarantee the fulfillment of the social function of the property, are great evidences that the policies employed from the point of view of international capital, although it appears mitigating the effects of socio-environmental problems, however, they can not overcome the fundamental contradiction of a system which tends to take ownership of the Brazilian lands, of the natural resources and the fundamental human rights. The current project proposes, through the transdisciplinary methodology of analysis, an investigation with primary and secondary sources, in order to show the impacts generated by the presence of international capital in the sugar-energy sector in the northeastern region of the state of São Paulo and demonstrating, therefore, how the logic of foreign capital actually contributes to making the various dimensions of Brazilian country lands existence (un)sustainable. (AU)