Conflitos ambientais na Baía de Guanabara: a disputa territorial entre a expansão da indústria petrolífera e os pescadores artesanais

Abstract

The growing environmental degradation of an area is the combination of a historical, social, political, economic and cultural process. The environmental theme in capitalists societies is intrinsically conflictive, due to being a product of constant disputes between different projects of use and meaning of the environment. There is a direct correlation between overvalue of capital and socioenvironmental violence as the capitalist means of production, based on the short-term profit acquisition, degrades the environment. In this sense, Guanabara Bay was chosen as a symbol of this example, as the location of analysis for the current research. The implementation of t Duque de Caxias's refinery in the 1960s was responsible for the emergence of a strong industrial park in the region. The increase of the oil business in the following years, specially with the favorable scenario of the pre-salt, amplified the conflicts caused by the capitalist expansion process over the rights of the local inhabitants. Considering the Guanabara Bay as a “sacrifice zone”, the research proposes a connection between the hegemonic model of development and the territorial dispute inherent to this process. To this end, qualitative methods of research as bibliographical revision, interviews and map analysis are used. During four months, interviews with 14 fishermen and their families, natives from Paquetá Island, were carried out as a primary source of data. Based on the theoreticalmethodological model of the global production network, that includes the transnational corporation as organizational axis of the economical development, the research tries to evaluate the asymmetries of power related to the environmental conflict. This model explicit the connection between companies, State and society, therefore covering economical, political and social agents. In this sense, the research shows how the interactions between different agents and asymmetries of power existent in a society of fossilist character redrawn the territories. The Fluminense area economic dependence on oil appropriates symbolically and materially the Guanabara Bay, making the artisanal fishing maintenance incompatible and therefore increasing the environmental conflicts and reducing the traditional fishing communities.