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NATURE UNDER CAPITALISM: NEIL SMITH'S PROPOSAL OF THE

PRODUCTION OF NATURE

Conference Paper · September 2015

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 NATURE UNDER CAPITALISM: NEIL SMITH’S PROPOSAL OF THE

PRODUCTION OF NATURE

Pietra Cepero Rua Perez1

Abstract: Neil Smith from the materialist dialectic reinserts the discussion of
Nature and Society-Nature relationship in Geography and Social Sciences. His
work shows that the concept of Nature has been since the beginning of the
institutionalization of Geography, as so the readings of Marxists, who through the
work of Karl Marx sought to understand of Nature. However, by proposing the
concept of Production of Nature in his papers he brought Nature to the center of
discussion of the elements of capitalism and its forms of accumulation. The
insertion of the concept and the role of Nature under capitalism in the discussion
of Marxist Geography aims to reveal that society does not only interact with
nature, or alter it, but produces nature, and it is a dialect relationship, because it
also produces a new “human nature”. Smith also brings to the debate the idea
that the appropriation of nature is not only its transformation into means of
production, but also as an accumulation strategy. According to Smith, the past
three decades have shown various policies under neoliberalism that has
promoted a whole “new generation of ecological commodities”. The aim of this
presentation is to take Neil Smith’s contribution to show the effectiveness of his
writings to comprehend the elements of capitalist accumulation and the role of
nature in this process as a strategy by showing examples of the Brazilian Amazon
region, which has been duly analyzed in a master degree research.

Key-words: Neil Smith; Production of Nature; Capitalism; Brazilian Amazon

region.

Introduction

Since the institutionalization of Geography in the nineteenth century, the

Nature and the relationship between Society and Nature have been one of the
main objects of analysis. Until the 1960s, the Positivist and Historicist traditions
were hegemonic in Geography. However, from that decade on and with the
spread of the Marxist theory, it opened up a new horizon of understanding of the
social processes. In the United States and Great Britain, the inclusion of Marxist

1Master’s degree student at the University of São Paulo, Department of Geography. E-mail:
pietracepero@hotmail.com.

1
theory in Geography became known as Radical Geography, in France,
“Géographie Actif” and in Brazil, “Geografia Crítica”2.

Subjects close to Geography began to be reviewed from a reading that

would show the contradictions between of society and capitalist accumulation. It
sought to overcome a fragmented understanding of social phenomena
comprehended as a distribution and rearrangement of the objects in a
geographical space. The work of Neil Smith was fundamental to build a new
horizon of explanation of social processes. In 1984, Smith launched the book
"Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space", which
sought to open up a path of understanding that since the 1970s, during the world
financial crisis, under capitalism, the changes were increasingly more dramatic.
In addition, he showed the uneven geographical space restructuring process
would prove a contradiction and a need for the process of capitalist reproduction.

In particular, this present paper aims to expose Neil Smith’s contribution

by reintroducing Nature and Society-Nature relationship, not only in Geography
but also in the Social Sciences, based on a materialist dialectic approach and the
concept of "production of nature". Moreover, according his comprehension of
nature under capitalism as an accumulation strategy, especially within the last
three decades, the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve (RESEX) can be taken as
an example of the contemporary process of production of nature and its
contradictions under capitalism.

The purpose of a radical approach: the production of nature

Neil Smith (1998; 2007; 2008), when formulating the concept of

"production of nature", points out the theoretical path in the light of materialist
dialectic to include nature in the totality of the social context, therefore nature is
social. According to the author (ibid), the relationship and separation society-
nature has to be reformulated. Since human existence and production of life, the
relationship with nature resulted in a two way lane that does not separate nature
from society. Smith points out that the production of nature at different times in

2For further development on the Marxist debate on Geography, please see MOREIRA, R. Assim
se passaram dez anos – a renovação da Geografia no Brasil no período de 1978 a 1998. In:
Geographia – Revista da Pós-Graduação em Geografia do Departamento de Geografia da
Universidade Federal Fluminense, year II, number 3, Niterói, 2000.

2
history presents specific contents3. The production of life, production and
appropriation of nature according to Neil Smith is regulated and institutionalized
by society:

The production of material life is therefore not just a natural

activity in which nature provides the subject, object, and
instrument of labor. In an exchange economy, the appropriation
of nature is increasingly regulated by social forms and
institutions, and in this way, human beings to produce more than
just the immediate nature of their existence (SMITH, 2008, p.60).

Under capitalism, nature becomes mediated and subsumed by the use

value and exchange value. This means that apart from nature being included in
the overall process of capitalist accumulation as means of production, such as
raw material for the production of goods, the nature per se4 becomes a
commodity. Smith draws attention to the fact that under capitalism, the production
of nature on a global scale is uneven, and that human beings produce not only
their immediate existence, but would also produce the totality. Inserted into a
global process, nature and production of nature would also expose the
contradictions of society and capitalism5.

Smith (2007) mentions that apart from time and space, nature, especially
in the last thirty years, has become more and more an accumulation strategy. In
a given context of crisis from the 1970s onwards, the production of nature
appears, not as overcoming internal contradictions of capitalism, but as a
possibility to capitalist accumulation.

It is necessary, for example, to note that the 1973 oil crisis revealed the
limits between nature and the exploitation of capitalist development. However,

3 The production concept formulated by Karl Marx (2011) allows us to understand the logic and
the determinations of the production of the material bases of life and (re)production of social
relations inserted at a particular mode of production. For Smith (2008, p. 52): "The place to begin
with production in general, since this is the most basic relation between materials Human Beings
and nature. Production in general is an abstraction, but a rational abstraction in so far as the really
brings out and fixes the common element' in all epochs of production. Some determinations
belong all epochs, others only to a few".
4 Neil Smith (ibid) points out that the so-called "first nature" which would not have a social content,

rather than this, for the geographer since the existence of humanity the “first nature” is also a
social product.
5 “The production of the nature is the means by which these contradictions are made concrete.

Under capitalism, social crises still focus on the production process but now lie at the heart of a
complex social system. The production of nature is universal but the internal contradictions in this
process are made equally universal” (SMITH, ibid, p.84).

3
the system itself would develop strategies to subsume nature in the capitalist
reproduction:

With decolonization and the environmental movements of the

1960s and the 1970s coupled with the oil shock of 1973, the
utilitarian presumptions that undergirded so much of the
relationship to nature under capitalism hit their limits. Capitalist
actors could no longer be sure that “natural resources” would be
everywhere and eternally available to them. The very grounds of
capitalism’s global ambition – environmental as much as spatial
– had been altered. Yet at the same moment that recognition of
environmental exploitation increasingly scripted capitalists as the
enemy of nature, those exploitative practices, indeed nature
itself, was remade for capitalism. In less than two decades,
corporate capitalism reversed its dismissive opposition to
environmentalism as its own. In the course of this shift, and
central to it, nature became an accumulation strategy for capital
(KATZ, 1998, p.46).

In this same record, Katz (ibid) reports that under the neoliberal context
different strategies will be formulated; for example, companies will undergo an
internal restructuring so that they fit into a pattern of less degradation or
"compensation" of the environment, as well the production of a new range of
“green” products6. The state will play a central role at this moment, as it will
formulate policies that will enable different strategies, from mitigation
mechanisms, to incentives for the reduction of environmental impacts, and
identification and creation of areas for environmental conservation. Nevertheless,
all these strategies will co-exist with the traditional forms of exploitation and
production of nature.

Therefore, the intensification of commodification and financialization of

nature, especially in the neoliberal context, as means to subsume and to produce
nature is to be observed. Smith (2007, p.6) suggests that we are still in the
"infancy" of this process:

This intensified commodification, marketization and

financialization of nature is of course an integral element of a
much larger project of neoliberalism. […] The power of this
bundling of nature into a tradable bits of capital should not be

6
For Katz (1998, p.51), image of promoting "green" businesses is very much a market strategy:
"Environmentalism is more the pillar of establishment orthodoxy, its own cash cow [. ..] large
Corporation have discovered the currency of environmentalism [...] most corporations have more
than camouflaged changed Their environmentally destructive practice”.

4
 underestimated, but nor should be exaggerated. The
neoliberalization of nature is far from complete, not without its
obstacles, and anything but a smooth process.

The creation of Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve (RESEX) falls within the
context reported of the production of nature under capitalism. Environmental
conservation is one of the new forms of production of nature and capitalist
accumulation. For Katz (ibid) the conservation and privatization of nature are two
sides of the same process7. The state, by its planning institutions responsible for
conservation areas, as well as private companies, through land use, will promote
new rules for the local populations, in order to facilitate the privatization of nature,
so that it reinforces a series of restrictions on everyday life practices and
encourage the action of new financing and world players such as corporations,
foundations and NGOs.

Therefore, most of the capitalist unexploited or less exploited areas are

located in non-central countries, with a concentration of poor and native
populations, which, due to its longtime practices and relations with nature, in other
words, its production of nature, enabled the conservation of the environment. In
the contemporary context, the uneven relations between the central and non-
central capitalist countries is being reaffirmed. Due to this, in the case of RESEX
Chico Mendes, the international demands are overlapping the local demand,
appropriating and thus altering a political project of social justice and
environmental conservation.

The production of nature under capitalism: The Chico Mendes Extractive

Reserve (Brazil)

In 1990 with three days before the end of the term of office of the first
civilian president after the military dictatorship, José Sarney, a law that permitted
the creation of extractive reserves8 was signed, and in the same year the creation

7 “[...] contemporary preserves are immediately recognized as productive sites. Indeed, that is
why many of them selected for preservation initiatives. Putting such properties aside in the name
of some global citizenship is actually a form of luxury consumption requiring considerable
reserves of money and power. In an era ascendant neo-liberalism, preservation and privatization
are mutually implicated” (KATZ, 1998, p.49).
8
Decree No. 98897 of 30 January 1990. Provides for the extractive reserves and other provisions.
Available in: http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/decreto/Antigos/D98897.htm. Accessed on
03/05/2015.

5
of the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve9, in Acre, was ratified (Image 1). After
the military dictatorship and with a new constitution in place, social movements
after decades repression saw in the horizon the possibility to accomplish historic
political change, including much needed land reform and environmental
protection10.

Image 1: The Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, is located in the municipalities of

Xapuri, Assis Brasil, Brasileia, Sena Madureira, Rio Branco, Capixaba and
Epitaciolândia on the state of Acre, Brazil. Images from Google Earth.

Rubber tappers depend on the existence of the forest, therefore, the

contemporary scene of devastation caused by the advance of pastures for cattle
raising made the coexistence impossible. The only way to establish a political
struggle for continued residence in the territory was to fight for land reform. But
not along the lines of agrarian reform settlements or along the lines of colonization
projects currently taking place in the Amazon region11.

RESEX’s proposal contemplated the territoriality and the (re)production of

the rubber tapper family allied with environmental conservation. Each rubber
tapper family would be grounded of 300 ha to 500 ha, which would ensure
continued and varied practices, strategies, and the material conditions for the

9 Decree No. 99144 of 12 March 1990. It creates the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve. Available
in: http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/decreto/1990-1994/D99144.htm. Accessed on
03/05/2015.
10 On the office of José Sarney (1985-1990), there was a great social demand from social

movements. One of the main issues was the land reform. The I PNRA (First National Plan of
Agrarian Reform) was prepared as a response, although their goals for land reform has not been
really achieved. It is important to mention that 1988 was the year of the constituent assembly and
the project of RESEX could be legally justified from the Article 225, which gives the public
authorities a duty to "set in all federation units, spaces territorial and their components to be
specially protected, and the alteration and suppression allowed by the law "(BRAZIL, 1988).
11 For further reading of the colonization and land reform in the Brazilian Amazon region during

the dictatorship, please consult: IANNI, Octavio. Colonização e contra-reforma agrária na

Amazônia. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes, 1979.

6
(re)production of life. Also, there would be no ownership deeds issued to the
tappers, as the land would remain Union propriety, but the only the right of use.
RESEX is managed on a self-managed basis (GONÇALVES, 2003). One of the
main demands was greater extractive activity protection, so that the state would
ensure fairer selling prices and a credit system (MENDES, 1989).

The rubber tapper struggle emerged between the 1970s and 1980s, during
the military dictatorship. At that time, the development project for the Amazon
was based on the alliance of the state and the national and international
monopoly capital. A credit system was then created to stimulate large land
proprieties, mineral extraction projects, energy production and industrial
complexes. In the case of the state of Acre, rubber tappers were expropriated
from the lands they occupied for over a century, so that the forest could be cleared
to enable the sale of timber and the production of livestock. The rubber extraction
activity has been dragging on since the end of World War II in a decadent process
and loss of state funding (DUARTE, 1987; GONÇALVES, 2003; AMANCIO,
2005).

Image 2: Francisco Alves Mendes Filho, better known as Chico Mendes (December
15, 1944 – December 22, 1988). Image from:
http://img.r7.com/images/2013/12/22/16an53wxpe_4ucw5wgyie_file.jpg?dimension
s=780x340

Chico Mendes (image 2) , the political leader and president of the Union
of Rural Workers of Xapuri, made known locally and internationally the harsh daily
lives of rubber tappers families. In 1987, Mendes in his union speech at the
meeting of the IDB (Interamerican Development Bank) and the United States
Senate, he denounced the social problems and environmental impacts generated
by the implementation of the economic development model for the Amazon
highway, known as BR 364 (Cuiabá - Porto Velho - Rio Branco). The highway

7
was part of the Amazon modernization process and was accompanied by land
grabbing, the advance of landlordism, and deforestation. This project was
financed by the World Bank and the IDB12.

The international scenario signaled the emergence of a local and global

environmental crisis. The occurrence of acid rain, air pollution and the discovery
of the ozone layer hole are events that became part of international concerns. In
this context, the increase in the Amazon deforestation rates and the importance
of conservation become an international issue (MCCORMICK, 1992, RIBEIRO,
2001; GONÇALVES, 2004). As a result of this the environmentalists and rubber
tappers took a common voice defending the importance of preserving the
rainforest. Nevertheless, the way to preserve the forest was not a general
consensus (AMANCIO, 2005).

From an international point of view, the question of limits of natural

resources and the environment were first brought to light in debates concerning
global policies decisions in the second half of the twentieth century onwards. The
environmental issue aroused increasing attention from politicians, scientists,
NGOs, social movements in the 1960s, with a continued projection in the 1980s
and 1990s. Among the main issues regarded in major meetings was the paradigm
of how to reconcile the needs of economic development in the process of
capitalist accumulation and environmental conservation. Up to that moment, the
conservation of nature was conceived as a hindrance to economic development.
The exploitation of nature, especially resource management, and the
implementation of the concept of "sustainable development" integrated nature
conservation in the flow of capital accumulation (ELLIOT, 2006; SACHS, 2007;
MARTINEZ-ALIER, 2009).

Another paradigm was the previous model of environmental conservation

based on the expulsion of resident populations and the isolation of areas. The
preservationist model of Yellowstone National Park (USA) was a pioneer in the
history of environmental conservation, which resulted in the removal of
indigenous groups in order to guarantee the environmental biophysical

12For futher reading of the modernization process on the Brazilian Amazon region we recommend
to consult: MORAN, E. Developing the Amazon. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981.

8
processes. Over the years, in various locations, the preservationist model proved
to be extremely conflicting with local populations thus causing the expropriation
and displacement of families (DIEGUES, 1994; KATZ, 1998).

In 1988, Chico Mendes was brutally murdered and in the following year
the creation of RESEX was approved. In reviewing the law, we note that the self-
managed project was not made official, and the management of the RESEX was
assigned to the State body, in this case, IBAMA (Brazilian Institute of
Environment and Natural Resources), and from 2007 onwards by ICMbio (Chico
Mendes Institute for Biodiversity). The legal instrument to guide its management
will be the utilization plan, which allowed at first the participation of residents of
the protected area. It is interesting to note, that the role of conservation of natural
resources and their exploration are to be carried out by extractive populations,
through a grant of use, however, the law of the extractive reserves points out that
the concession contract may be the terminated upon cases of proven damages
to the environment. In order to have the RESEX institutionalized, the social
movement had to strike and make concessions to the State13.

In Brazil a series of changes are undergoing and a neoliberal government

is installed. At the same time, the environmental issue arises as a new
accumulation strategy in the economy and in the international politics. Protected
areas in Brazil become an important investment strategy to the international
investor (CUNHA, 2010).

The renegotiation of the Brazilian foreign debt, according to the

Washington Consensus rules, enabled the possibility of environmental
conservation projects to be financed by institutions such as the WB and the IMF
(International Monetary Fund). Neil Smith (2007) and Cindi Katz (1998) suggest
that the mechanism "debt-for-nature" swaps enabled to reset the unequal
relationship between the southern and northern countries thus facilitating
commodification of nature and the formation of new areas of investment in
southern countries and a new path of "imperialism redux via nature":

13Please consult the law: Decree No. 99144 of 12 March 1990. It creates the Chico Mendes
Extractive Reserve. Available in: http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/decreto/1990-
1994/D99144.htm. Accessed on 03/05/2015.

9
 Yet these policies and practices betoken a whole new regime of
imperial exploitation camouflaged as environmentalism. There is
big money to be made from “preserving” nature, and current
transnational political ecological relations by and large ensure
that eventual profits will flow north (Katz, 1998, p.50):

In 1989, the UN ratified the UNEP (United Nations Environment Program),

and set up a target of about 10% of the earth’s surface to be transformed into
protected areas. In addition, between 1990 and 1992, the Group of Seven (G-7)
created the Pilot Program of Tropical Forests (PPG7) to finance environmental
conservation projects through technical assistance to local populations. In
ECORio92 general guidelines of environmental conservation, from the concept
of sustainable development were outlined, so as to guarantee all economic return
conditions to lenders (MELLO, 2006; DIEGUES, 2008; CUNHA, 2010). One of
the approved conditions for such projects would be the presence of NGOs as
members of the construction process, implementation and management of
projects14.

In order to receive funding, the RESEX initial process underwent

significant changes. The rubber tapper demands were therefore dampened in
favor of the possibility of capitalist accumulation articulated by the State. The
demands of investors and the State's interest redesigned the project to create a
new RESEX.

In 1992, inserted in the PPG7, the state institutionalizes the RESEX

Project, which provided for the creation of extractive reserves based on a specific
model of protected areas, among them was RESEX Chico Mendes. For this, a
number of conditions were imposed, between the most important ones we can
mention the presence of NGOs as service providers and the need to create
associations for the structuring of a productive extractive chain economy, so that
it become an example of economic viable protected area (AMANCIO, 2005;

14 For better understanding how NGOs work with the local communities, we recommend:
ALCORN, J. B. Dances around the fire: conservation organization and community-based natural
resource management. IN: BROSIUS, TSING e ZERNER (orgs.). Communities and
Conservation: history and politics of community- based natural resource management.
California: Alta Mira Press, 2005.

10
CUNHA, 2010). We note that under the neoliberal context the market and the
State will play a central role in the environmental conservation.

The RESEX Chico Mendes has progressively inserted itself in

environmental conservation policies and deforestation reduction. We note that
the issue of the extractivism will be one of alibis for the establishment of another
project, which identifies nature as a commodity. The community forest
management plan inside of RESEX will serve to counter the logic of appropriation
of nature and agro-extractive rubber tappers' practices. In the market, there is an
increasing offer of "green products". In addition, the emergence of certified
products, especially timber15.

Since 2013, a great conflict within RESEX Chico Mendes has been caused
by the implementation of the community forest management plan, by which the
state allows the entry of companies for the removal of timber, which go directly
for sale in the international market. And the rubber tapper is coerced to join this
process, due to the impossibility to guarantee the material conditions for
(re)production of his family. However, the removal of timber to build their houses
is forbidden, as well as a series of agroextractivist practices that have been at the
foundation of rubber tapper's life production for over a century. We emphasize
that the production of nature from the rubber tappers has its genesis under
capitalism and that its reproduction was also integrated into the process of
capitalist accumulation. However, we also understand that the production of
nature by the rubber tappers allowed the forest to exist, and a number of their
practices were essential to promote biodiversity16.

15 Since the Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores – PT) won the elections for the
government of Acre in 1999, the Vianna family have named themselves as the “government of
the forest”. The rubber tappers struggle contents was incorporated into public policies in
contradictory ways, especially in environmental policies. Currently there are a number of policies
based on sustainable development and for the most part they are fostered by foreign financial
institutions and NGOs. In 2000, with the creation of the SNUC (National System of Conservation
Units) for the first time legislation was draw up to provide a feasible private funding system by the
State and conservation areas, like RESEXs. Between the years of 2003 and 2008, when the
former rubber tapper Marina Silva at the time (affiliated to the Workers Party) was head of the
Ministry of Environment, the state of Acre became part of important policies at federal and
international levels which allowed important fund raising from major financial institutions. For
further reading of the environmental policies in the state of Acre please consult: IPEA. Avaliações
das políticas de desenvolvimento sustentável do estado do Acre (1999-2012). Brasília,
2014.
16Katz (1998, p.55) reports that NGOs, like The Nature Conservancy, does not consider the

cultural relationship between nature and society. The nature conceived by the projects is apart

11
 Exactly 26 years after the murder of Chico Mendes, the Union of Rural
Workers in Xapuri disclosed a letter making an assessment of the political
struggle of the rubber tappers and the existence of two RESEX Chico Mendes
projects. On the one hand there is the initial RESEX project that defended a form
of environmental conservation, land policy and social justice. On the other hand,
the State, NGOs and international financial institutions that understand the
RESEX as a form of investment. Therefore, to guarantee the financial return it
was necessary to choose the project that commodify the nature17.

Conflict and contradiction between the two projects and two logics
emerged in terms of immediate life. In reports carried out in the fieldwork in 2014,
a series of prohibitions placed on the daily life and the process of appropriation
and use of nature were observed. The Utilization Plan and Management Plan
have become the major guidelines of what is allowed and prohibited in the
RESEX. The state inspectors and NGOs forbid the rubber tappers’ ancestral
practices. And repression and punishment are due without taking into
consideration the arguments of the practices of that population18.

The political role within RESEX has been weakening. Under neoliberalism
it is observed that traditional forms of political struggle will be dampened. As a
result of this, a progressive decrease of political role of the unions is observed,
due to the formation of community associations (HARVEY, 2014). The political
and economic priority is timber and the Brazilian nuts extraction. The union was
the main political representative, but the association and the cooperatives have
overtaken that role. Within RESEX political sphere, economic claims are more
recurrent guidelines than political ones. RESEX’s management board has made

from society: “Of course, it is precisely this separation between the wild and non-wild that defines
The Nature Conservancy’s environmental strategy. Their vision and their attractiveness is
founded in the insistence that nature can be located, their work perpetuates and hardens the
boundaries Jackson and others dissolve between urban, agricultural, and wilderness landscapes,
to valorize only the latter as the vestiges of pure nature; second, they read generations of social
actors out of the “nature” they preserve, denying any social history of landscape”.
17
For the Letter from the Union of the Rural Workers in Xapuri, see: STR Xapuri. Carta de 22 de
dezembro de 2014. Xapuri, 2014.
18 Neil Smith (2008) mentioned that production of nature is also the result of views and visions of

nature. Under modernity, there are two conceptions of nature, one that the nature is universal and
the other that the nature is external. These two conceptions are the base of the idea of nature
under capitalism. We do not intend to go further; we just want to draw the attention that production
of nature is designed by this social logic. In addition, we comprehend that the conflicts between
different productions of nature can be the conflict of different logics. For further reading, please
consult chapter one “The Ideology of Nature”.

12
continuous changes periodically thus reducing the participation of the unions, and
increasing the participation of associations, cooperatives, NGOs and ICMbios
technocrats.

This is an ongoing story – on the 26th August 2015 a public hearing in

Brasiléia (Acre, Brazil) was summed in order to consult the rubber tappers from
the Extractive Reserve on their relationship with the ICMbios technocrats. The
current scenario at the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve is that ancestral
practices of everyday life are fined by the State. The rubber tappers families are
tired of repressions and the uneven power of the different social actors. The new
path of the social movement is to rethink how the forest can be saved and to
explore the other means to protect the Extractive Reserve for future generations
proposed initially by Chico Mendes19.

Final considerations: politics of nature

The initial rubber tappers’ proposal for a new environmental and land
reform policy was to create a new path in reply to a social demand not only by
the rubber tappers families, but also to a series of other local communities. After
the creation of the extractive reserves law many different cultures and sites could
be institutionalized by this policy. However, when the social movement was finally
celebrating a conquest, the State was actually disengaging itself from its political
compromise in order to facilitate the production of nature as an accumulation
strategy. The contingences also are incorporated in the paths of the production
of nature. Neil Smith (2008, p.48) points out that the concept of production of
nature can also provide the horizons of the historical future, because incorporates
the political events and forces determined by the capitalist mode of production:

[…] the idea of the production of nature implies a historical future

that is still to be determined by political events and forces, not
technical necessity. But the political events and forces are
precisely those that determine the character and the structure of
the capitalist mode of production (SMITH, 2008, p.48).

The politics of nature has shown that the social demand is not incorporated
in regard to social justice; the politics of nature do not take into account the local

19The report of the public hearing on 26th August 2015, please consult:
http://www.oaltoacre.com/camara-de-brasileia-realizar-audiencia-publica-para-debater-multas-
do-icmbio-na-resex/ accessed on 31/08/2015.

13
communities demands. As Katz (1998) writes, policy of preservation, for example,
is designed to facilitate capitalist accumulation. In many cases, we observe that
the politics of nature are to justify the different ways of nature exploitation20 by
incorporating the practices of the population in order to pursue interests of others.
Neil Smith (1998) wrote that the politics of nature at the 1960s and 1970s were
on the spotlight because of the social movements, but also that it was moving
towards other economic interests. By the time that the politics of nature was
institutionalized, it lost its radical content regarding the capitalism. Nowadays
everybody is an environmentalist. The challenge for the twenty first century to the
geographer is to incorporate the radical critique and to make environmental
politics subversive:

We have won a major victory by putting nature squarely and

ineluctably on the popular agenda, but we have also suffered a
major defeat insofar as the agenda of politics as normal has
largely digested, institutionalized and marketized the politics of
nature. Compared with the late 1960s and 1970s when the
politics of nature erupted, fin de millenium angst about nature is
widespread but of low intensity, we’re all environmentalists now.
The radical genie of the environmental challenge to late capitalist
nature destruction has been stuffed back into the bottle of
institutional normality just in time to calm millennial jitters about
nature. The challenge for the twenty-first century is to start again,
to make environmental politics subversive again (SMITH, ibid, p.
272).

From the rubber tappers struggle it is possible to learn that for over forty
years they have been trying to bring to light a means of incorporating the politics
of nature to social justice. The extractive reserve was a radical proposal and
based on a different logic, contradictory to the capitalist exploitation of nature.

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“The politics of preservation and restoration short circuit the radical possibilities of producing
nature, authorizing instead, a privatized rescripting of nature. The social is excluded as a
redemptive prelude to the resocialization of nature in a very particular guise. The doctrine of “wise
use” operates for example, as if wisdom and use were entirely separable from questions of
history, geography, and power, while claiming nature for some social and economic interests over
others. Nature indeed becomes an accumulation strategy, and provides simultaneously the new
material for present and future production and an in-built justification of the naturalness of
exploitation” (KATZ, 1998, p.57-58).

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Today the project has incorporated many social actors with various other
interests, but history is far from over.

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