OBSERVARE

Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 9, Nº. 2 (November 2018-April 2019), pp. 60-77

COMPLEX INTERDEPENDENCE AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO A NEW APPROACH

TO THE WORK OF THE AMAZON COOPERATION TREATY ORGANIZATION

Gisela da Silva Guevara

gisela.silvaguevara@gmail.com

Ph.D. Holder. Professor and researcher at the Faculty of Finance, Government and

International Relations of the Externado University of Colombia.

A researcher at the Centre for Research and Special Projects (CIPE) of the Externado University

in Colombia, she carries out projects on regional security with emphasis on Brazil. Her latest

published books include Geopolítica Latinoamericana: Nuevos Enfoques

y Temáticas, Bogotá: Externado University. She holds a Master Degree in Security and

Intelligence Studies from Brunel University, London, and a Ph.D. in Political Science and

International Relations from the University of Minho, Portugal.

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the work that the Amazon Cooperation Treaty (TCA), later

converted at the beginning of the 21st century into the Amazon Cooperation Treaty

Organization (ACTO) with permanent secretariat in Brasilia, has conducted in favour of the

debate on the sustainability of the Amazon. Although the work of this organization has usually

been studied under a realist approach, focusing mainly on the action of its Member States, it

is argued that the Complex Interdependence, a theory developed by Nye and Keohane, can

expand the knowledge of the work of the Treaty in favour of the debate on the sustainability

of the Amazon region

Keywords

Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO); sustainable development; complex

interdependence theory; regional environmental debate.

How to cite this article

Guevara, Gisela da Silva (2018). "Complex Interdependence and its contribution to a new

approach to the work of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization". JANUS.NET e-journal

of International Relations, Vol. 9, N.º 2, November 2018-April 2019. Consulted [online] on

the date of the last visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.9.2.5

Article received on September 14, 2017 and accepted for publication on July 1, 2018

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 9, Nº. 2 (November 2018-April 2019), pp. 60-77

Complex interdependence and its contribution to a new approach to the work

of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization

Gisela da Silva Guevara

COMPLEX INTERDEPENDENCE AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO A NEW APPROACH

TO THE WORK OF THE AMAZON COOPERATION TREATY ORGANIZATION

Gisela da Silva Guevara

Introduction

The Amazon Cooperation Treaty (TCA) and its re-launch in the 1990s with the Amazon

Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), was a historic opportunity for South American

countries to reflect on the meaning of sustained and sustainable development for their

Amazonian territories. Six years before the Treaty was signed, the Stockholm Conference

had defined sustained development as "a process through which natural resources are

preserved for the benefit of present and future generations" (Stockholm Declaration,

1972, principle 2). Over ten years after Stockholm, the Brundtland Report (UN, 1987)

not only expanded the concept to sustainable development, but also drew attention to

the seriousness of forest deforestation.

Patricia Guzmán emphasizes that

"The conceptual fragmentation of the territory through ‘borders’ had

an incoherent impact. Ideally, given the presence of a limited

resource, the concept of political boundaries should have led to an

integral understanding of the causes and effects of human activity

[...]" (2012: 29).

This statement could not be better applied to the Amazon, a territory that is shared by

eight South American nations that share numerous common problems. These range from

disturbing levels of deforestation and water resource management to high poverty rates,

correlated, in some cases, with a greater propensity for illegal activities.

For the eight member countries of the TCA, the Amazon represents a very different

percentage with respect to the extension of their respective national territories. While for

All parts in foreign languages in this text were translated into Spanish by the author, except in the

explanatory notes, where they were kept in their original language.

The author thanks the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. Any error is the sole

responsibility of the author.

The translation of this article was funded by national funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e

a Tecnologia - as part of OBSERVARE project with the reference UID/CPO/04155/2013, with the aim of

publishing Janus.net. Text translated by Carolina Peralta.

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Complex interdependence and its contribution to a new approach to the work

of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization

Gisela da Silva Guevara

Brazil it represents more than 60% of its territory, for nations like Ecuador it corresponds

to about 46%. In Brazil there are also large asymmetries between the south and

southeast with their industrialized megacities, such as São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro,

responsible for 50% of the GDP, and the north and west of the territory, with low

population density, high poverty rates and difficulties in integrating into the national

space (Anatol, 2011).

Focusing especially on the Brazilian Amazon, Espitia Caicedo (2007) highlights that 80%

of the wood of the Amazon rainforest is illegally exploited and even when such

exploitation is done legally, it causes great destruction. On the other hand, when we take

into account the unemployment problems affecting the Amazonian states such as Pará,

Mato Grosso and Rondonia, and that the exploitation of wood corresponds to 15% of the

GDP (Espitia Caicedo, 2007), we realize that to develop more sustainable models for the

Amazonian territories, whether Brazilian or non-Brazilian has been, for decades, a blunt

need.

When the TCA was signed in 1978, the relationship between sustained development and

economic models had not yet been clarified. In fact, in an ambiguous way, the TCA

mentions that

"Considering that in order to achieve an integral development of the

respective territories of the Amazon it is necessary to maintain the

balance between economic growth and the preservation of the

environment" (ACTO, n.d.).

Only at the beginning of the 1990s were the premises of the Amazon Pact re-evaluated

and the concept of sustainable development recognized, with the creation of two new

Special Commissions, the Environment Commission and the Indigenous Affairs

Committee. (Román, 1998). It is necessary to emphasize that the re-launching of the

TCA in those years had been closely tied to the threats, real or perceived, of the

internationalization of the Amazon

. However, it was still not clear how the TCA

signatories should cooperate regarding the Amazonian affairs and how funding for the

Treaty could be obtained. The dilemma remained for the members of the Amazonian

pact, and especially for Brazil: should the Treaty’s priority be to protect the sovereign

rights of the Amazonian countries against the supposed ambitions of the North? Or to

coordinate common policies to manage in a sustainable way the Amazonian resources of

the eight TCA signatory nations?

The South American states, both within the framework of their centralist models, as in

the case of the Colombia, and as federalists, as in the case of the Brazil, tend not only to

ignore the specificities of their Amazonian areas, but also not to value the transboundary

possibilities of their environmental and cultural characteristics. In the case of the

Colombian Amazon, Arenas and Ruedas (2012: 145) affirm that the national

government’s policies "reflect a vision from the Andean or the Caribbean facet and have

For an in-depth view of the topic on the internationalization of the Amazon, especially the Brazilian case,

see Da Silva Guevara, Gisela (2016).

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Gisela da Silva Guevara

not managed to incorporate the particularities of a region where the environmental and

cultural wealth goes beyond the national border".

Germán Grisales sums up how to deal with the problems of the Amazon region as follows:

"We must treat the Amazon as an internal matter; defend it as a regional issue, and

receive financial and technical support [...] as a global plan." (quoted in Espitia Caicedo,

2007: 78). Starting from Grisales' statement, this article seeks, in the first instance, to

analyse the efforts of the TCA, at a regional level, to encourage reflection on models of

sustained development for tropical forests. Secondly, the limitations of the neorealist

approach to ACTO are examined, and a proposal to expand knowledge about this

organization through Complex Interdependence is advanced. These aspects are analysed

in order to assess whether ACTO has contributed significantly to the debate on the

sustainability of forests, regionally speaking.

We suggest that several premises of the Complex Interdependence (CI) theory can be

applied to the analysis of the TCA/ACTO, reviewing the realist/neo-realist analytical

approach. Among them is that the role of the hegemon requires "deference", but it does

not mean that it does not have to lead to a consensus with the member states of the

regional organizations. On the other hand, the relevance of the action of transnational

networks of contacts during the consolidation of the funding of the TCA was not taken

into account at the time, since a realist/neorealist state-centric approach dominated, as

we will see in this article in the case of the network built around Carrera de la Torre.

Under the CI approach, these networks make it possible to highlight that not only the

states are determinant in the consolidation of regional organizations. Finally, we believe

that it is necessary to take into account that CI allows to give importance to the work of

transnational actors which, in many cases, are very proactive when promoting the

environmental initiatives of environmental organizations, as we will see with the pilot

project of the MAP initiative (Madre de Dios, Peru, Acre, Brazil, Pando, Bolivia).

The methodology is qualitative, using several academic works and articles and primary

sources, where the role of the ACTO in the regional debate in favour of the sustainability

of tropical forests can be evaluated. A set of treaties and other official documents were

triangulated with secondary sources in order to shed light on the work of transnational

actors, among others. Several dimensions were defined from which we aimed to review

the limitations and biases of the realist or neorealist theoretical approach, in order to

open a new field of analysis under the Complex Interdependence theory applied to the

TCA/ACTO. These dimensions include:

1) The funding of the TCA driven by transnational networks of contacts, which were

largely ignored by realist or neorealist analyses;

2) The overvaluation of the role of the hegemon (Brazil) in explaining the progress of the

TCA/ACTO;

3) The undervaluation of the work of transnational actors such as the MAP, which

encompasses the work of NGOs, think tanks, transnational organizations and

university academics, among others, which deserves more precise study when

analysing the work of environmental organizations, like the ACTO;

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of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization

Gisela da Silva Guevara

4) The undervaluation of the work of environmental organizations articulated with non-

state actors, in the sense of promoting the "bottom up" protection of environmental

aspects of tropical forests.

Theoretical framework

According to Brazilian academic de Brito (2007: 182)

"Legally, the TCA can be classified as a multilateral, international

framework treaty. It is also considered an international

environmental treaty, with soft law norms’ characteristics, and

which creates an international regime in the Amazon region [...].

The treaty, also known as the Amazon Pact, had been promoted in the 1970s by Brazil

under the label of regional cooperation, in order to manage environmental issues

combined with the economic development of the Amazon. When the pact was signed, at

the end of the 1970s, the concept of sustainable development

had not yet been fully

debated internationally. At the Stockholm Conference in 1972, only the concept of

sustained development had been defined in its final Declaration.

For Philippe De Lombaerde (2009: 8) regional cooperation

"can be defined as an open process, whereby individual states (or

possibly other actors) within the framework of a given geographical

area, act together for mutual benefit and to solve common tasks, in

certain aspects [...] despite conflicting interests in other fields of

activity."

This definition is differentiated, according to the same author, from that of "regional

integration”, which refers to "a more in-depth process, by means of which units that were

previously autonomous are merged into a whole" (op. cit.: 8). Based on De Lombaerde’s

definitions, we will move on to discuss which theoretical approach would best serve us

for our case study of the ACTO.

The eight South American countries that ended up signing the Amazon Pact in 1978 had

fuelled serious distrust regarding Brasilia's objectives with this agreement, which were

not easily eliminated with the signing of the pact. Indeed, the initial ambitions expressed

by Brazil to make the TCA a broader integration scheme were rejected by Venezuela,

which "feared a Brazilian expansion in the region." (Román, 1998: 242).

Author’s Translation.

Sustainable development is defined as "development that meets the needs of the present without

compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs"” (Our Common Future, UN, 1987).

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Gisela da Silva Guevara

The mistrust mentioned above was justified. As Román

(1998: 250) stated, in the mid-

1980s, "Brazilian leaders now considered regional cooperation as a tool to achieve

military security objectives." In fact, the TCA and later the ACTO have been met with

scepticism by a large part of academics. Da Silva (2012) mentions that despite the

cooperative mechanisms in environmental terms, the interests and ambitions of the

member countries, which are mainly focused on power relations, continued to rise above

all on this organization. De Brito (2007), on the other hand, emphasizes the incongruity

between the sustainability discourse of the ACTO and the practice of the signatory

countries.

The aforementioned could lead us to see it, at first glance, with realist lenses, or more

precisely, to conclude that offensive neorealism could be the theory that would best apply

to our case study. In fact, neorealist Mearsheimer (2001) argues that countries do not

cooperate to promote peace, but to maximize their power in the system.

In the case of Brazil, the Calha Norte Plan (PCN), created in 1985 and released to the

public domain the following year, sought to strengthen the military protection of the

northern border against unstable neighbours such as Peru, Bolivia or Colombia

. These

three countries produced constant amounts of cocaine at the beginning of the 1990s

(Anatol, 2011). Román (1998) states that the priority of the Brazilian leaders was to

complement the PCN with the TCA. In other words, Brasilia pursued national security

objectives with this treaty and not so much promoted regional cooperation to deal with

the environmental issues of the Amazon. But then, how to explain that, despite the

rejection by the other Amazonian nations of the Brazilian military objectives regarding

the TCA, the pact gradually became a regional cooperation tool, through which there was

"a conceptual redefinition of the relationship between environment,

security and economic development [...], with the military security

issues becoming less prioritized"? (Román, 1998: 256).

Due to the aforementioned, offensive neorealism proves to be a theory with limitations

for our case study, because it does not fully explain the consolidation of the TCA. Under

the mandates of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002), Brazilian diplomacy

began to address issues in "a cooperative international environment with a predominance

of interdependence" (Vigevani, i.a., 2003: 56). To explain the consolidation of the TCA,

the theoretical approach to complex interdependence of Nye and Keohane (1977) could

be very useful. Neither Brazil nor the other South American countries could consider

taking forward only their military objectives to protect their borders, from the exclusive

perspective of their sovereignty, having to use multilateral fora to better interact with

other nations in a Post-Cold War context, more interdependent, in order to discuss such

pressing issues such as the sustainable development of the Amazon. In fact, with the

creation of the TCA in 1978, even if the context was the Cold War, in the framework of

He is one of the TCA top experts and wrote a Ph.D. thesis on the subject.

Brazil has special contingents of border patrols along the borders with Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, which

according to the neighbouring country are designated BOBRA (Bolivia-Brazil); PEBRA (Peru-Brazil) or

COBRA (Colombia-Brazil) (Anatol, 2011).

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authoritarian regimes

member countries had recognized that they had to cooperate to

safeguard the Amazon. We have then in the TCA and, later, in the ACTO, the awareness

of the member countries that 1) Measures must be taken against the environmental

deterioration of the Amazon and 2) that the Amazon had to be considered as a South

American regional priority.

The notion of Complex Interdependence arose in the 1920s with academic Raymond

Leslie Buell but it was with the work of Nye and Keohane, published for the first time in

1977, entitled Power and Interdependence, that what interdependence means for

International Relations and its usefulness for the analysis of this field of knowledge

became better understood. The two Americans argue that the decline in the use of

military force as a political tool and the increase of economic interdependence (and other

forms) should increase cooperation between states (and other actors) (Nye and Keohane,

1977).

The characteristics of Complex Interdependence mentioned by Nye and Keohane (1977)

include interstate, trans-governmental and transnational relations. On the other hand,

while the realists or neorealists start from the premise that the connection channels in

world politics are, par excellence, between states, the two North American authors

explain that the agenda of interstate relations is composed of multiple themes not always

clearly hierarchized. Thus, "Different issues generate different coalitions, both in the

framework of governments and transversally to them, and involve different degrees of

conflict." (Nye and Keohane, 1977: 25)

Likewise, according to Complex Interdependence, it is stated that "less vulnerable states

will try to use asymmetric interdependence in some particular groups of issues as a

source of power" (Nye and Keohane, 1977: 32). In the case of the TCA and after the

ACTO, Brazil tried to launch proposals that were articulated with regional security,

economic and environmental integration issues. The first two were rejected by some

neighbouring nations, but the last one had some acceptance, as we shall see.

Nye and Keohane (1977: 32-33) argue that Complex Interdependence would make it

more likely that the topics’ agendas would be "affected by international and domestic

problems [...]." The question is, in our case study, in what way, for example, the

discussion that took place at the beginning of the nineties about the internationalization

of the Amazon or the Rio 92 Conference

led to a reactivation of the TCA. On the other

hand, what role did international organizations have in environmental issues, in the

agenda established by the TCA and in its reactivation, according to Complex

Interdependence? We will therefore find out, according to this theoretical approach, what

was the role of the TCA at regional level in promoting the debate on the sustainability of

tropical forests.

In the case of the Brazilian authoritarian regime, it extended between 1964 and 1985.

Author’s translation.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, which took place in Rio de Janeiro in

1992.

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Gisela da Silva Guevara

The ACTO and the debate on the sustainability of forests at regional level

In the academic literature, the ACTO has often been negatively described. This is due to

various reasons: for example, in Rodolfo Ilario da Silva’s master degree thesis (2012), it

is mentioned that the organization’s budgetary difficulties, depending on external

resources, mean that the cooperation among its members is not as close as it would be

desirable. In addition, he emphasizes that while it is true that member countries show

consensus as to their willingness to cooperate, they nevertheless have "difficulty [...] in

translating this compatibility into practical actions." (da Silva, 2012: 179). For Sant'Anna

(2009: 121) "The preservation of sovereignty is still a topic of greater relevance in

meetings within the scope of the ACTO. It is understood that countries are reluctant to

affirm commitments that imply greater obligations."

Despite the scepticism demonstrated by the aforementioned authors, other scholars,

such as historian Amado Cervo, emphasize the importance of signing the Amazonian

pact, stating:

cooperation matters began to acquire relevance and to exceed the

limits and possibilities of bilateral cooperation. [...] This treaty was

conceived with a different purpose from the treaties which created

the Alalc, the Aladi or the Andean Pact, which sought to stimulate

intra-zonal trade or the common market. Its main objective was to

implement a permanent agreement mechanism between the

governments and the technical sectors of the Amazonian countries,

with a view to cooperation in non-economic areas, such as

hydrological and climatological studies, technical and scientific

cooperation in health, transportation, communication, preservation

of the environment, etc. (Cervo, 2001: 261).

The economist Alfredo Costa-Filho (2003), in turn, points out that cooperation is

increasingly important, since the Amazon is worldwide of growing significance. However,

he warns that the eight ACTO countries conduct their Amazonian programmes very

heterogeneously. Still, we must recognize, as Keohane (1984) does, that cooperation

cannot be seen only in terms of common interests, as the the states’ potential objectives

must be taken into account. On the other hand, we must bear in mind, like Paasi (2011:

15) that

"Like it or not, regions and regional identities seem to have

maintained their important roles in the world. They are not merely

abstract academic discourses, but crucial elements of social and

political practice and discourse.”

The TCA also leads us to question whether a regional agreement which was signed at the

end of the 1970s, later reactivated in the 1990s, that prioritized cooperation in

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environmental terms, or if it was, first and foremost, a pact intended, as the Brazilian

slogan put it, to "occupy in order not to deliver", faced with the supposed ambitions of

the industrialized powers regarding the rich Amazonian resources. In this sense, José

Greño Velasco (cited in Román, 1998: 128) questioned: Did the TCA have the intention

of specifying a cooperation through integral development or did it (just) seek the mutual

recognition of sovereignty over the respective Amazonian territories?

In 1980, a few years after the TCA was signed, a document from the Brazilian Foreign

Ministry contradicted the idea that the colossus was seeking hegemony in South America,

stating

"In general terms [...] Brazil seeks the reality of cooperation, not

the chimera of the hegemony and considers highly positive that

Latin America is an area of deconcentration of power [...]"

(Itamaraty to the Delegation in Buenos Aires, 25.08.1980, cit. in

Cervo, 2001: 262).

It must be noted, despite the aforementioned, that the studies on the TCA (for example

Román, 1998) show that the fears of the South American neighbours continued.

Regardless of the fears of the TCA member countries against the claims, real or fictitious,

of Brazil, under Complex Interdependence we have a different approach from the

neorealists regarding the role of hegemony and leadership in International Relations,

which enriches the study of our case on the ACT. Regarding the role of leadership in

International Relations, it is stated:

Successful hegemonic leadership depends, to some extent, on

asymmetric cooperation. The hegemon has a different role,

providing its partners with leadership, in exchange for deference.

However, different from the imperial power, it cannot make or force

[to fulfil] the rules without a certain degree of consensus on the part

of the other sovereign states. (Keohane, 1984: 46).

When the TCA was signed, it was stipulated that ordinary meetings should be held every

two years. That did not materialize. Additionally for meetings aimed at studying specific

problems defined by the Treaty, the countries and their representatives did not take

seriously the preparation of the topics announced in advance, arriving at the meetings

without having done the due preparatory work. Additionally, it was necessary to wait

until the end of the 1980s for the first special Commissions

to be created, due to initial

scepticism about the Treaty. (Román, 1998).

Until the 1990s, the TCA’s functioning was affected by budgetary insecurity, since the

nations-member of the pact defended the idea that the developed countries had to

It is also important to note that, in 1996, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela had not yet created permanent

national commissions, which should work in coordination with the TCA Commissions. (Román, 1998).

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provide the funds for the protection and development of the Amazon, which placed the

agreement in the paradox situation of depending almost entirely on international

organizations (Román, 1998). This clearly contradicted the idea that the countries of the

South should finally take the development of their territories in their own hands.

In the 1990s, before and after Rio 92, the debate over the shared responsibility of the

North on environmental issues was heated. While the position of the nations of the South

was usually that the Northern countries should provide resources for the environmental

services provided by the South, during, for example, the talks on Agenda 21, within the

framework of the Rio 92 Conference,

"strong criticism against the Southern bloc was heard because it was

viewed that their only interest in the Conference was to look for

mechanisms to extract more resources from the North" (Rodriguez

Becerra, 1994: 84).

It should be noted that the text of Agenda 21

calls for not only states to promote

international cooperation in sustainable development, but also states that "other

international, regional and sub-regional organizations must also contribute to this effort."

(Argentine Ministry of the Environment, chapter 1, 1.3.).

The obstacles to launching environmental projects were of different kinds, and not only

in terms of resources. They started with the principles stipulated in the TCA, which were

not very clear about which development was desired for the Amazon. It is mentioned

that the Amazonian pact had the objective of

"promoting the harmonious and integrated development of the

basin, as a basis for sustaining a model of regional economic

complementation that contemplates the improvement of the quality

of life of its inhabitants and the conservation and rational use of its

resources." (OAS, n.d. n.p.).

However, the definition is quite ambiguous and therefore leading to a wide variety of

interpretations and forms of implementation.

Even at a systemic level, as in the case of Agenda 21 of the United Nations, there are

strong criticisms on the part of academics dedicated to environmental issues. Blühdorn

and Welsh (2008: 6), for example, mention that both the global Agenda 21 and local

ones "are invariably subordinated to economic growth, competitiveness and innovation."

The same authors also state that an obstacle to dealing with environmental crises is that

there are so many ecological approaches in this regard, so the impact of

environmentalism ends up being overwhelmingly affected. Blühdorn goes so far as to

Agenda 21 was a programme developed by the United Nations Sustainable Development Division to

implement sustainable development principles at all levels, from the local to the global.

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mention the "abdication of the ecologist paradigm" (Blüdorn, 1997 cit. in Blüdorn and

Welsh 2008: 9).

Also, in the 1990s, Brazil accepted to be part of the International Pilot Programme for

the Protection of the Tropical Rainforests of Brazil, which sought to enhance "the natural

heritage, productive potential and cultural diversity of the regional population”

(Kohlhepp, 2018: 308). This programme had five subprogrammes that included science

and technology, the management of natural resources such as parks and nature reserves,

and analysis and monitoring. The novelty of this programme was that it emphasized the

contributions, among others, of small producers, seringueiros

and indigenous groups,

with "bottom up development" characteristics (Kohlhepp, 2018: 315). We can thus verify

that already in the international cooperation for environmental issues, an approach in

which not only the national state, but also several state and non-state actors at various

levels, from the international to the local, are important.

Ravena (2012) highlights that environmental problems and the access/use of natural

resources have substantial implications for reaching a common institutional framework

at the national level of the contemporary state, which has a global dimension. However,

according to the same author, when analysing the formulation and implementation of

environmental policies in the European Union, contradictions or dilemmas characterized

by "the intrinsic relationship between the domestic and international levels" arise

(Ravena, 2012: 36). Nevertheless, the author admits that "interdependence continues to

be the beacon of an international policy aimed at environmental regulation [...]" (op. cit.

36).

One must not ignore that the obstacles to achieving a unified approach in dealing with

environmental issues are vast. Emily Forster (2013) mentions a fundamental one. This

leads to the propensity, within the framework of security organizations and agencies, to

maintain traditional security ideas that invariably tie environmental issues to the interests

of the national state. In this regard, the author emphasizes,

"state-centric notions of green [environmental] security are not

sustainable [...] and military intervention [...] is not necessarily the

way to deal with problems." (Forster, 2013: 43).

The foregoing does not stop considering that the Armed Forces are well positioned to

deal with environmental issues due to their technological capabilities, such as monitoring

satellites (Forster, 2013). This undoubtedly applies to the Amazon, whose extensions can

hardly be supervised without their support. However, in the case of the SIPAM/SIVAM

satellite system that Brazil developed, it is not always seen with good eyes by its

neighbours, perhaps because it is intended, together with the Calha Norte Plan, as

mentioned by the academic Nascimento (2010: 185), to "defend, protect and guarantee

the integrity of the national territory, combat illicit acts," and, he adds "above all, to

promote the sustained and sustainable development of the Amazon and the Border Strip

in particular".

Rubber collectors.

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Complex interdependence and its contribution to a new approach to the work

of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization

Gisela da Silva Guevara

The Brazilian approach seems to be that of protecting the territory of the colossus of the

south, also in a sense, though not explicitly stated, against the illicit acts of its

neighbours. This is an attribution and a good right of any sovereign state. However, it is

necessary that the Amazonian States complement their monitoring with activities that

support the local populations. This is because the abandonment of remote areas such as

the Amazon, whether Brazilian, Colombian or otherwise, often prompt the local

inhabitants to engage in illegal activities due to lack of job opportunities.

In the case of Brazil, the country has an environmental police in the Amazon, which, with

the support of SIVAM, monitors illegal tree cutting, illegal mining and illicit activities

perpetrated on indigenous reserves (Anatol, 2011). However, it becomes imperative that

both Brazil and the other Amazonian countries cooperate more in regional sustainable

development projects that support the local populations living in the jungle.

From the Brazilian perspective, Cordeiro da Trindade (2010) states that, in the official

discourse, the Amazon region was always viewed as area that should be protected from

other South American countries. The author emphasizes that "much more than revealing

the region, as content-forms, political borders tend to only formally single out regional

dimensions, denying the extensions of socio-spatial formations beyond those same

borders." (Cordeiro da Trindade, 2010: 111). The author ends by questioning: what is

the profile and importance of the lower and upper, formal and informal circuit of the

economy in border areas of the Brazilian Amazon with neighbouring countries? (Cordeiro

da Trindade, 2010: 121). It seems that the ACTO does not answer these questions.

In spite of the aforementioned ambiguities of the TCA, at the end of the 1980s and at

the beginning of the 1990s, as Rio 92 approached, the member states of the TCA were

forced to act. A determining factor was the intensification of the debate on whether the

Amazon should be internationalized, to eventually be better protected

. For Román

(1998), the TCA was reactivated to form a platform that would allow the South American

nations to establish a common position regarding the Amazon. In order to prepare the

position they would take at the Conference, in February 1992 the Amazonian nations met

in Manaus. This meeting ended with a declaration that emphasized the importance of

promoting regional cooperation on an equal footing.

Limitations of the neorealist approach to the ACTO and new theoretical

perspectives

The issue of the funding of the TCA had been taken very seriously from the Ecuadorian

pro-tempore Secretariat of Luís Carrera de la Torre, at the end of the 1980s. Carrera

began a broad action to negotiate with international organizations, in which he was

seconded by Roberto Samanez of the FAO, the United Nations Organization for Food and

Agriculture, and by Antonio Braque, of the UNDP, the United Nations Development

Programme. Although the Ecuadorian government had shown great disinterest in the pro

tempore Secretariat of Carrera

, the diplomat had acted actively with the support of

those who had decided to back it up transnationally. Not only had he managed to create

This topic can be read in-depth in Da Silva Guevara (2016).

Carrera de la Torre even had to use his own house for a year due to the fact he did not have a place to

practice the pro tempore secretariat (Román, 1998).

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of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization

Gisela da Silva Guevara

projects focused on the integral development of the Amazon (Román, 1998), but also he

obtained external funding through his transnational contacts and connections, before a

rather passive Ecuadorian government. This case shows us that the Complex

Interdependence approach applies here.

Young (1989) refers that "non-governmental organizations or individuals themselves can

be leaders in efforts to form international regimes

." (op. cit. 373). Although the topic

of whether the TCA, or the ACTO as of 1998, is an international regime falling outside

the framework of our work, we can demonstrate, with Young, that at a decisive moment

in the development and consolidation of the TCA, transnational networks of contacts and

individuals such as Carrera de la Torre, were decisive in promoting the Amazonian pact.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the MAP Initiative was created, which initially sought

only to change the use and coverage of Amazonian soils in the Madre de Dios region

(Peru), Acre (Brazil) and Pando (Bolivia) (Chávez et. al., 2005). The initiative came from

research projects conducted at the Federal University of Acre, in Brazil, and the Woods

Hole Research Centre

(Sant'Anna, 2009). Based on the knowledge produced by

professors and researchers in Brazilian universities, this "was transferred [...] to the

delegations of Peru and Bolivia." (Chávez, 2005: 64). For de Brito (2007), the MAP

initiative emerged as an alternative to the traditional cooperation model of the TCA, given

the lack of effectiveness of the Treaty to promote sustainability in the MAP region.

Ravena (2012) highlights that since at least the seventies, the work carried out by

academics on environmental issues was relevant in the implementation of international

agreements in this field. With this, environmental problems such as jungle deforestation

became more visible, while tools to improve environmental regulation were being refined

at the international, national and local levels. In the European Union, as the most relevant

example, efforts have been made to incorporate and implement environmental solutions

within the framework of multilevel governance in subnational spaces. However, there are

still obstacles in this regard (Varas Arribas, n.p.). We highlight two aspects regarding he

efforts to regulate environmental issues at regional level:

1) The contribution of academics to better study environmental issues;

2) The empowerment of subnational regional actors to solve these problems. The MAP,

in South America, is part of these efforts.

Despite De Brito's criticism of the selfish interests of the states in the Amazonian area,

scholars of the MAP Initiative (Chávez, 2005: 59) state that the TCA was a reference for

the MAP,

"Considering that it is a legal instrument signed 30 years ago, it is

interesting to note how, at that time, guidelines were defined to

promote the harmonious and integrated development of the Amazon

Román defines international regimes as “social institutions composed of agreed-upon principles, norms,

rules and decision-making procedures that are intended to govern the interaction of actors in specific areas.”

(1998, p. 65).

Centre located near New York, dedicated to the study and debate of climate change.

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of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization

Gisela da Silva Guevara

basin as a basis for a regional economic complementation model

[...]."

Already in 2002, with the MAP III and under a new concept of space that sought to move

from "borders of separation to borders of cooperation" (Chávez i.a., 2005: 52), the

Initiative began to bring together technicians and researchers, municipal governments,

representatives of civil society, in a dynamic that successfully promoted the

multidimensional treatment of the problems of the Amazon. Half a decade after the MAP

initiative, one can say:

There is no doubt that there was a gradual consolidation of a

transboundary social movement whose essence is the conviction

that the development of the South-western Amazon can only be

channelled through cooperation and the integration of local, regional

and national societies [...]. (Chávez, 2005: 56).

The MAP Initiative is a transnational actor that includes NGOs and transnational

corporations and less institutionalized movements (Risse-Kappen cit., in Sant'Anna,

2009: 168). Taking into account that the MAP

ended up being supported later by the

ACTO, the GEF

(Global Environment Facility) and the UNEP, United Nations Programme

for the Environment, regarding the climate adaptation of the region Dios-Acre and Panda,

we could affirm that from a state-centred approach, the MAP could reveal the failure of

the ACTO. However, if we take into account the Complex Interdependence perspective,

the MAP, by uniting efforts and transnational networks of scientists, municipal

governments and civil society, supported by organizations such as the ACTO or the UNEP,

shows that the neorealist approach excessively limits the study of the MAP to the States,

and only to them. Under De Brito’s realist approach (2007), the MAP would show that

the TCA had failed, but under the Complex Interdependence approach used in this article,

by supporting the MAP the ACTO proves to be effective by recognizing non-state

initiatives as relevant for the sustainability of the Amazon. There is no doubt that the

subsequent support of the ACTO to the MAP demonstrates the potential of the

organization. In fact, according to the ACTO, the GEF and the UNEP report:

The pilot project has provided the basis to formulate and implement

adaptation strategies for climate variability with the representatives

of the governments of the three countries and the local society. With

the trinational team of 15 specialists, the technical validation of the

The pilot project that associated the MAP to a more systemic initiative to support the Acre River basin from

climate change has the support of Peru, with authorities such as the National Water Authority and the

Maldonado local water administration, of Brazil with the National Research Institute, among others, and on

the Bolivian side, the Departmental Emergency Operations Centre of Pando, to name some national and

local organizations.

The GEF was created in 1991 to fund projects whose objective is to protect the environment worldwide. The

World Bank manages its resources is the.

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of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization

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vulnerability and risk maps was carried out through a 185 km

expedition along the Acre River (November-December 2013)

The aforementioned pilot project allowed, successfully, to implement a trinational early

warning system, which is seen as a model for future expansion to the other Amazonian

countries. However, we do not rule out, although we do take them into account, De

Brito's criticisms that the TCA should be more efficient and effective regarding the

development and implementation of sustainable programmes for the Amazon.

We would not like to stop completing this section without making reference to a survey

carried out in 2010 in Colombia on the Amazon. The results were worrisome and show

that much more should be done by the ACTO, the civil society and local governments,

among others, regarding the backward regional Amazonian areas.

In the aforementioned survey, 67% of the population knew little or nothing about the

Amazon. Both the indigenous population and the non-indigenous population consider

that this is highly threatened, not only due to deforestation, but also to illicit activities,

internal conflict, as well as loss of cultural identity (CEPAL, 2013).

Although it is not the subject of this article to delve into the subject of cultural regions

we consider that Axerod, who mentions that there is an emergence of regions with shared

cultures, advances some premises that may be useful for the Amazon. One of them

establishes that "Initially, most of the neighbouring places have little in common, and

therefore have little probability of interacting with one another. However, when two

places interact, they become similar, and thus are more likely to interact with each

other."(Axelrod, 1997: 157). In the case of the Amazonian areas, so neglected by the

governments and object of all kinds of myths or misinterpretations

, the ACTO should,

from our perspective, exercise a pedagogical task that could range from the

environmental importance of the Amazon in South America, to its cultural rescue through

the demystification of preconceived ideas. But that would be another research.

Conclusions

With our research, we sought to demonstrate that the TCA was an agreement that had

innumerable difficulties to be implemented, including the same ambiguity regarding the

definition of sustainable development applied to the Amazon. Another obstacle was, as

we saw, that initially the member countries had different ambitions in terms of their

objectives. Brazil, for example, sought to confer on the TCA a dimension that would make

it possible to strengthen military security and monitor its borders, which ended up being

rejected by the other member countries. Although the TCA has been usually studied

through the realist (or neorealist) approach, we attempted to demonstrate that Complex

Interdependence can broaden the knowledge field about this Treaty. We saw that in the

several stages of consolidation of the TCA, the interaction of international organizations

with the Treaty enabled supporting the funding of sustainable projects.

Axerod defines a Cultural Region as “a set of contiguous sites with identical culture” (Axelrod, 1997: 156).

For the Brazilian Amazon see, for example, Joana Becerra (2011), Ph.D. thesis.

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Gisela da Silva Guevara

From the various dimensions defined to review the realist/neorealist approach, we verify

that there are limitations and biases in the realist or neorealist theoretical approach.

Thus, the funding of the TCA was driven by transnational networks of contacts, despite

the disinterest of the treaty states in initially funding the projects. On the other hand, by

overestimating the role of the hegemon (Brazil) to explain the progress of the TCA/ACTO,

the work of transnational actors such as the MAP, which encouraged projects to protect

the Amazon, was not taken into account. These projects included contributions from

centres, academics and transnational organisations, among others, which promoted a

“bottom up” environmental project that led the ACTO to support relevant environmental

initiatives. It was also concluded that Keohane's premise that cooperation not only takes

into account common interests, but also the states’ potential goals and targets, should

also be taken into account.

Likewise, the MAP Initiative showed that the scientific community of Brazil, Peru and

Bolivia, as well as civil society, received the support of the ACTO, the GEF and the UNEP

in a process that was promoted "from the bottom up" and that these processes are more

common than one might think. It is still necessary to continue research that more broadly

evaluates how the ACTO is interacting with transnational networks, NGOs, and other

regional and international organizations in terms of promoting the sustainable

development of the Amazon. We consider, however, that this paper can already be a

contribution to this topic.

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