Land Use Policy 84 (2019) 1–11 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Land Use Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol A conspiracy of silence: Subsistence hunting rights in the Brazilian Amazon T ⁎ André Pinassi Antunesa,b, , George Henrique Rebêloa,b, Juarez Carlos Brito Pezzutia,c, Marina Albuquerque Regina de Mattos Vieiraa,d, Pedro de Araujo Lima Constantinoa, João Vitor Campos-Silvaa,e, Rogério Fonsecaa,f, Carlos César Durigana,g, Rossano Marchetti Ramosa,h, João Valsecchi do Amarala,i, Natalia Camps Pimentaa,j, Tiago Juruá Damo Ranzia,k, Natália Aparecida Souza Limaa,l, Glenn Harvey Shepard Jra,m a RedeFauna – Rede de Pesquisa em Diversidade, Conservação e Uso da Fauna da Amazônia, Brazil b Laboratório de Manejo de Fauna, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA), Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil c Núcleo de Altos Estudos Amazônicos (NAEA), Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA), Belém, Pará, Brazil d Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), Boa Vista, Roraima, Brazil e Instituto de Biologia e Ciências da Saúde, Universidade Federal do Alagoas (UFAL), Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil f Laboratório de interações fogo, fauna e florestas protegidas-LaIFFF, Departamento de Ciências Florestais, Faculdade de Ciências Agrárias, Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil g WCS Brasil – Associação Conservação da Vida Silvestre, Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil h Núcleo de Pesquisa e Monitoramento, Prevfogo, Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (IBAMA), Brasília, Distrito Federal, Brazil i Grupo de Pesquisa em Ecologia de Vertebrados Terrestres (ECOVERT), Instituto de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá (IDSM), Tefé, Amazonas, Brazil j Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Amazonas, Brazil k RESEX do Cazumbá-Iracema, Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade (ICMBio), Sena Madureira, Acre, Brazil l Centro de Triagem de Animais Silvestres (CETAS), Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (IBAMA), Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil m Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi/MCTI, Belém, Pará, Brazil ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: Subsistence hunting is an important cultural activity and a major source of dietary protein and other products for Wildlife use and management indigenous and non-indigenous populations throughout Amazonia. Nonetheless, subsistence hunting occupies an Food security and sovereignty uncertain legal status in Brazil, leaving many traditional and rural Amazonian populations subject to arbitrary Indigenous rights interpretation and enforcement of contradictory laws. The Brazilian Wildlife Protection Act of 1967, which Traditional people rights helped to stem the slaughter of wild animals for the international hide market, made the hunting of all wild Environmental Brazilian legislation animals illegal. Later, only indigenous peoples had their rights to hunting explicitly recognized in Brazilian laws. Sustainable use reserves Indigenous lands Exceptions for other traditional and rural populations were then introduced, allowing subsistence hunters to own and license guns and hunt with them in a “state of necessity” or “to quench hunger” through the Brazilian Disarmament Statute and Environmental Crimes Law. These legal inconsistences mean that there is no single regulatory framework for subsistence hunting in Brazil. This scenario of uncertainties jeopardizes the estab- lishment of consistent sustainable hunting management practices across Brazilian indigenous lands, sustainable use reserves and agrarian reform settlement areas. This article analyzes the relevant legislation and examines evidence from key studies with a view towards implementing robust, scientifically informed and practically feasible co-management strategies for indigenous and sustainable use reserves in the Brazilian Amazon. By focusing on subsistence rights, food sovereignty and organizational autonomy as guaranteed in international agreements ratified in Brazil, the framework presented here involves empowerment and technical training of local people in Amazonia to monitor and manage their own resource base. 1. Introduction properly attracted the interest of the speculative and creative minds of our time? We do not believe so. This phenomenon is so marked and “What are the hidden factors of the true conspiracy of silence presents itself with such regularity that, far from a work of chance, it around hunger? Is it simply a work of chance that this theme has not seems conditioned by the same general laws that regulate other social ⁎ Corresponding author. Present/permanent address: Estrada do Bexiga 2584, Bairro Fonte Boa, Tefé, Amazonas. CEP: 69553-225, Brazil. E-mail address: [email protected] (A.P. Antunes). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.02.045 Received 15 July 2018; Received in revised form 26 February 2019; Accepted 27 February 2019 0264-8377/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. A.P. Antunes, et al. Land Use Policy 84 (2019) 1–11 manifestations of our culture. It is a silence premeditated by the soul of resources pertaining to their lands according to their institutions and culture itself: it was the interests and discriminations of moral, political worldview. In this, we believe that the regulation of subsistence and economic orders of our so-called Western civilization that turn hunting on traditional peoples’ lands could work as a driving force to hunger a forbidden subject, or at least unwise to be approached pub- legitimize their engagement in environmental decisions affecting them. licly”. In Brazil, over 250 different groups of Amerindian peoples are –Josué de Castro (1946), former FAO president legally considered to be indigenous peoples, with ancestral land rights Josué de Castro’s (1946) words referred to the uncomfortable re- specifically guaranteed in the 1988 Brazilian Federal Constitution and lationship of avoidance that mid-century elites maintained towards the 1973 Indian Statute. Among non-indigenous traditional peoples, only topic of food security among marginalized peoples of the world. Brazil’s Afro-Brazilian communities known as “quilombolas” are legally and Wildlife Protection Act of 1967, and its subsequent ratification of the explicitly recognized (Article 68th of the 1988 Brazilian Federal Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Constitution). According to the National Policy for the Sustainable Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1973 helped put an end to more than a half Development of Traditional Peoples and Communities (NPTPC, Decree century of uncontrolled slaughter of wild animals for the international 6040/2007), traditional communities (“quilombolas”, “ribeirinhos”, market in luxury pelts and hides (Antunes et al., 2016). Yet these leg- “seringueiros”, “castanheiros”, “quebradoras-de-babaçu”, “caiçaras” islative victories for biodiversity conservation has, once again, led a and others non-indigenous traditional peoples) constitute “culturally new “conspiracy of silence” around the topic of food security for mar- differentiated groups that recognize themselves as such, who have their ginalized peoples: the generalized ban on wildlife hunting made it own forms of social organization, occupy and use territories and natural technically illegal to hunt wild game, though of course traditional and resources as a condition of their cultural, social, religious, ancestral and rural populations, especially in Amazonia, continued hunting as they economic reproduction, by using knowledge, innovations and practices had for centuries. Ever since, traditional and rural populations of the generated and transmitted through tradition” (Article 3). These groups Amazonian hinterlands have occupied a dubious legal space, hunting at are distinct from rural populations and peasants, who typically are the margins of legality and subject to unpredictable, arbitrary en- agricultural laborers or small farmers living in rural areas. For the scope forcement of wildlife laws. of this article, analyzing both legal and technical perspectives for the Hunting is an important element of subsistence and economic self- regulation of subsistence hunting in the Amazon, we treat “indigenous reliance for indigenous, traditional and rural communities in Amazonia. peoples”, “non-indigenous traditional peoples” (from now on, “tradi- Yet the connections of traditional peoples with wildlife run deeper than tional peoples”) and “peasants” or “rural populations” separately, since just food security, touching on fundamental questions of identity, legal regulatory frameworks in Brazil are often independent from each spirituality, cosmology and health (Castro, 1996; Descola, 1998; Fausto, other. 2007; Shepard, 2015). In Brazil, there is a wide-ranging but fragmented set of legal in- This article emerged from the workshop entitled “Caça de struments that in fact pertain to the rights of indigenous, traditional and Subsistência em Áreas Protegidas no Estado do Amazonas: rural populations on the issue of subsistence hunting, without reg- Conhecimento Atual, Questões Legais e Desafios práticos para o ulating it de jure. First, there are regulations and penal sanctions that Manejo” (Subsistence Hunting in Protected Areas in Amazonas State: relate to the protection of hunted fauna, and are essentially prohibitive Current Knowledge, Legal Issues and Practical Challenges to in nature. These include the Wildlife Protection Act and the 1998 Management, in free translation from Portuguese), held in November Environmental Crimes Law, which states