Waste, racism and environmental injustice in Belém Metropolitan Area

Abstract

The rationale of production and disposal of solid waste is among the most destructive and controversial consequences of disproportionate power-division in capitalism. It is associated with “underdevelopment”, “unwanted”, “disposable” individuals and places that receive the waste and its associated risks brought by the consumer society. Based on documentary and bibliographic evidence as well as unstructured interviews with citizens and militants involved in disputes for the discontinuation of the ‘Marituba Landfill’ (as this irregular and contentious Belém Metropolitan Area landfills has been known), this article focus and discuss this case, representative as a colonial scenery in contemporary urban Amazon, from the political ecology perspective and the notions of environmental justice perspective, coloniality, racism, and necropower.

Marituba Landfill; urban Amazon; colonialities; necropower; political ecology