Amazônia como microcosmo do Antropoceno: a história das pesquisas transnacionais em ecologia amazônica e os impactos ambientais da Grande Aceleração (1952-2002)

SUMMARY

Due to the Amazon's role in climate and hydrological regulation and biodiversity, the escalation of the forest devastation since 2019 has been causing concern among specialists and the public sphere. The acceleration of this devastation and the expectations for the future it establishes make the region an "Anthropocene microcosm," catalyzing the transformations, dilemmas, and challenges of this new geological epoch characterized by the global impact of human actions on the planet. The unprecedented changes that have taken place in the Amazon in the last 70 years relate to the Great Acceleration, a set of socioeconomic and biogeochemical processes that characterize the Anthropocene's beginning. This research project aims to analyze the role of the Amazon in the Great Acceleration between 1952 and 2002 from three aspects: 1) the history of national and transnational scientific networks devoted to the study of the Amazon ecology and its function in climate and hydrological regulation and biodiversity, focusing on the cooperation of Brazilian institutions with German, French, and US partners; 2) the environmental interventions carried out by projects of exploitation of primary resources destined to attend the global demands of the Great Acceleration and national development projects, whether agricultural commodities, minerals or energy resources; 3) the process of political globalization through which the Amazon forest turned into an icon of the contemporary international environmental movement, becoming synonymous with the tropical forest and an avatar of the future of humanity on the planet. Science and technology permeate these three aspects as they give visibility and meaning to the transformations of anthropic actions on ecological dynamics. They support, shape, and legitimize the tropes of the environmentalist discourse. In addition, they plan and make feasible interventions aimed at exploiting resources: they feed the demands of global chains required by industrialization and economic growth; and they meet the political and economic objectives of the Brazilian national State, engaged in integrating the Amazon region into the national territory through projects inspired by development ideas. They also sought to anticipate risks and mitigate the environmental impacts of modernizing interventions in the biome. The intention, in this way, is to highlight the ambivalent role that expertise, scientific knowledge, and technologies play in the Anthropocene, recognizing the centrality of science and technology in the new geological epoch by characterizing a state of socio-natural relations as well as by their function as an epistemic tool.

The project's period of analysis - from 1952 to 2002 - corresponds to the Great Acceleration and the "age of development," nationally and globally. It largely overlaps with the Cold War, when scientific research organized itself according to the Big Science model. The so-called "Earth System Sciences" also emerged in this time through broad transnational scientific cooperation endeavors based on highly complex instruments, operations, and methodologies, framing global climate change and the Anthropocene as scientific discourses in the late 20th-century. This project intends to investigate the place of the Amazon in the historical development of such knowledge and practices, arguing that the region also underwent changes in its meaning - from a regional landscape to be occupied, integrated, and explored through modernization projects of the Brazilian State, it became a biome of global relevance.

This research project entails articulating the history of science, social studies of science, and environmental history, still infrequent in studies about the Amazon in Brazilian and international historiography. It requires the collection of historical sources in European and US archives and testimonies through oral history. The proposal's framework bases on the principles of transnational and connected history. The project also employs the Anthropocene/ Great Acceleration concepts as heuristic tools for the historical analysis of the deep intertwining of human societies in the web of life and the materiality of shifting ecologies.

The project corresponds to the aims of this Call by addressing one of the main challenges of the contemporary socio-ecological and political debate in Brazil - the future of the Amazon region, the role of the forest in the regional and global processes of the Anthropocene, and sustainable development. In this sense, the project strengthens Casa de Oswaldo Cruz and Fiocruz's engagement in the debate on sustainability, climate change, and the place of science and health in the elaboration of public policies and the discussion of projects for the country's future. It also integrates the goals of the Oswaldo Cruz Chair at Unesco.

The research team brings together researchers and students from different Brazilian and foreign institutions, people with prior experience and knowledge related to the themes they will develop in the project. A predominant part of the team is already integrated through previous partnerships established in former projects or through dialogues in academic meetings. Many of such researchers and students belong to a research group certified by CNPq, whose coordinator is the proponent of this project.

This proposal involves producing historical knowledge and its dissemination in academic journals, books, and meetings. It also includes activities of public communication of science, public history, and education both on the web and in museums and schools. The project's initiatives contribute to the formation of human resources specialized in science and environmental history at the graduate and undergraduate levels. They also strengthen the learning and formation at the school level through environmental education activities referred to the Amazon and the Anthropocene in the perspective of history and environmental humanities.