Baía de Guanabara e Petrobras: Degradação, Conflitos e Produção da Injustiça Ambiental

Abstract

This research aims to examine the social and environmental conflicts directly related to petroleum and petrochemical industrial activities that in recent decades have reorganized the territorial dynamics of Guanabara Bay. To this end, the impacts and conflicts between Petrobras oil and petrochemical enterprises and the communities that survive from the waters and ecosystem of Guanabara Bay were studied, with emphasis on artisanal fishermen. Thus, I examine the metropolitan context of Rio de Janeiro and its insertion in the multiscale processes of the oil production space circuit, including environmental injustices in this geography. To this end, the survey presents a history of the main social and environmental impacts of the oil industry in Guanabara Bay and the consequences of struggles and resistance, especially after the leak in 2000. In the end, the survey finds that environmental irregularities and crimes do not they harm or terminate the activities of Petrobras and its subsidiaries or affect their profits and exports, while traditional fishing communities lose the right to live and work according to their way of life. That is, by staying with the social and environmental burdens of petroleum and petrochemical industrial activities, fishermen in Guanabara Bay resist the hegemonic capitalist mode of production based on the appropriation/domination of natural resources.