| Policy development and implementation for the Brazilian Amazon has been driven by institutional thinking and actions defining the region as an empty space of unbounded wealth of natural resources that must be exploited to ensure national security. The natural domain has overwhelmed the social. To date, people of Amazonia have not been envisioned as the core component to address the fundamental condition for freedom and self-realization of humans: the strength of institutions.;Arguing that Caxiuana subsumes the general conditions driving policy for Amazonia, this study hypothesizes that institutional weakness leads to loss of cultural, social and biological values. The study contends that the principles guiding policy for Caxiuana in particular and Amazonia in general neglect humans beings, a condition enhanced by institutional fracture triggered by (i) private sector penetration of the state apparatus and competition for its resources, (ii) tension of multiple mandates operating under diverse patterns of authority, and (iii) interagency struggles for power.;The theoretical construct guiding the study flows from Kingdon (1984) focusing on the context of policy formation: the development of ideas, the rise of policy questions, the roles of participants inside and outside of government in the agenda setting process. The emphasis is on the process whereby problems, ideas, and politics combine with opportunities to produce public policy.;Conceiving natural systems as tools to enable human beings by creating human capital, the study explores a conceptual basis to rethink and reground policy flowing from images of the future expressed as policy demand patterns revealing a range of policy couplings of problems, ideas and politics.;These couplings are placed in the context of a set of principles to guide policy. These principles become frames of reference for rethinking and regrounding policy for the Brazilian Amazon with Caxiuana as a working model, shifting away from chronic extractivism and resource-dependency toward envisioning natural systems as tools to enable human beings while acquiring knowledge to protect and enhance cultural, social and biological values. |
