SOCIAL EQUITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS IN BRAZIL - LESSONS FROM THE RUBBER TAPPERS OF ACRE

Successive strategic portrayals of the rubber tappers' struggle helped reframe ideas about environmental protection and social equity. While local conditions shaped the movement's development, international political resources were provided by environmentalists' campaign around Multilateral Development Bank lending. The local struggle for material survival was identified with an emerging global concern for tropical forests, and the Acre rubber tappers became a paradigm for local participation in environmentally sustainable development. Defining an issue as ''environmental'' is thus a strategically consequential act that changes the political context of conflict.