ENVIRONMENTALISM AND CONCEPTIONS OF RESEX, EXTRACTIVISM AND KNOWLODGE IN THE ICMBIO IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON

Abstract

The paper discusses the positioning of high level technicians the "Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade (ICMBIO)", acting in the Brazilian Amazon, in relation to environmentalism and identifies possible relationships between the positioning and views on knowledge, conception of Extractive Reserve (RESEX) and extractivism. According to the theoretical discussion, we make the following types for the studied categories: environmentalist slope: preservationist, sustainabilist and socio-environmentalist; views of knowledge: anarchist, dialogic (or environmental knowledge), interdisciplinary and pure science; views of RESEX: RESEX as Conservation Unit (UC) for sustainable use, RESEX serving the agrarian reform and opportunist RESEX; views on extractivism: legitimate extractivism, legitimate extractivism and opportunistic extractivism. The method used was a comparative cross-partition, checking similarities and dissimilarities of respondents groups. To survey the positions of the respondents was made a questionnaire available to all staff with statements representing different views, using Likert scale. It was done a classification into categories of technicians, using cluster analysis by the agglomerative hierarchical method, having as parameter the proximity of placement. It was found that no single view about environmentalism in the Chico Mendes in the Legal Amazon and there are not pure environmentalist lines, but composed of several strands of ideas. The views on RESEXs and extractivism are related concepts socio- environmentalism, reinforcing the argument that this type of conservation is a part this line of thought.