Lecture by Eliane Brum

The Amazon, centre of the world

The Amazon is not only the world’s largest tropical forest, but it is also a symbol of a radical transformation of ways of thinking about and inhabiting the world. In this conversation with the writer Gabi Martínez, the journalist and climate activist Eliane Brum argues that the true centre of the world is where there is life.

In the present situation of climate collapse and ever-accelerating loss of biodiversity, a radical change in language is essential for ending the disintegration of our planet and home. This is the position of the Brazilian journalist Eliane Brum for whom it is imperative to rid ourselves of the capitalist concepts of centre and periphery. According to Brum, writing from the heart of the Amazon rainforest, the planet’s centres are not occupied by Washington, Madrid, London, Frankfurt, São Paulo, Beijing, and the other capital cities that control stock exchanges and dominate political decisions. The real centres are Nature’s enclaves that are still resisting, despite the plunder of transnational extractivist companies in their quest for oil, minerals, soya beans, meat, and palm oil.

In Brum’s view, the planet’s centres are the places where there is life. This means giving centre stage to values and ways of life of peoples who do not live separately from nature, who are able to live with others, with humans and more-than-humans, without destroying their own home. In this conversation with the writer Gabi Martínez, Eliane Brum argues that her standpoint is no mere rhetorical claim but a proposal for a way of imagining the future, acting in the present, and guaranteeing a certain quality of life to new generations of human beings and members of other species.