Branding featured on the ebook cover, graphic design by Fernando Campos | Photo of Amyra: personal archive.
**The Collective Construction of a Life Project
“Environmental Commodities”: A New Economic Model for Latin America and the Caribbean**
This e-book celebrates the bedouin journeys[1] of more than three decades of the economist and professor Amyra El Khalili, in her socio-environmental economic work throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. It is a compilation of the principal works featured in the Fórum de Direito Urbano e Ambiental (FDUA) Journal of Urban and Environmental Law[2], developed alongside a multidisciplinary team of students and lecturers from Amyra’s courses. These works were debated and presented in classrooms, online discussion groups, forums, publications, interviews, lectures, conferences and seminars in Brazil and abroad.
Environmental commodities offer an alternative to the neoliberal economic model through a collective construction of life projects. They stand in direct opposition to conventional commodities by challenging the criteria of standardisation and commercialisation, confronting them technically and questioning the statistical scales and numeric logic of large-scale production. Environmental commodities are not carbon credits, their derivatives, or related mechanisms (REDD, REDD+, Payments for Environmental Services, Offset Credits, Effluent Credits, Payments for Ecosystem Services, the Tropical Forests Forever Fund (TFFF), and other forms of financial pyrotechnics). On the contrary, this ebook (report) directly rebuts the false solutions promoted by those who appear as “wolves in sheep’s clothing”.
In this publication, you will reflect on subjects such as market economy and public policy, environment and citizenship, solidarity networks and proactive initiatives, socio-environmental impacts and their solutions, inequality and social exclusion, income generation and alternative employment, geopolitical and socioeconomic conflicts, poverty and prosperity.
Amyra is an example of activism in service of peace: between peoples, between men and women, and between progress and environmental preservation. Her commitment to human dignity, women’s rights, and resistance against racial and ethnic discrimination has earned the respect and admiration of those who share her friendship, as well as those who listen to her or read her work. As an economist, Amyra has dedicated herself to demonstrating that it is possible to reconcile an alternative to the market economy with environmental protection. Docas da Livraria Publishing House is honoured to participate in the publication and dissemination of this pioneering work, which has become a bibliographical reference in university extension courses.
About the Oriented — Amyra El Khalili
Amyra El Khalili is a Palestinian-Brazilian Bedouin, descended from Saladin and Shayk Muhammad al-Khalili*. She is a professor of socio-environmental economics and received the academic title of “Notório Saber” in 2004 from the Faculty of Law of Campos dos Goytacazes at Centro Universitário Fluminense FDC/UNIFLU (RJ). She is a retired economist with over three decades of experience in capital markets. Founder and editor of the networks: Women for Peace in Palestine Movement and RECOs Alliance – Network Alliance for Community Cooperation from the Global South. She contributes to multiple outlets specialising in environmental issues, human rights and economics.
She was nominated by several groups, with endorsement from Israeli-Palestinian pacifists, for the “1,000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize” (2004). She was also nominated for the Bertha Lutz Award (2005) by the Bahá’í Community of Brazil, and in 2007 by the Federation of Arab-Brazilian Entities (Fearab/Brazil). She was honoured by the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies radio station on International Women’s Day in 2006 and in 2008, alongside other prominent Arab-heritage personalities, during the 56th anniversary celebration of the Syrian-Lebanese Club of Santos (SP). She has been a lecturer and guest speaker in numerous seminars, forums and events for ministries, armed forces, social and environmental movements in Brazil and abroad.
* Shayk Muhammad al-Khalili — Born in the first Islamic month of Shaaban in the Hijra year 1139 (1724 CE), he was the leader of the Qadiri Sufi Brotherhood and possibly the most renowned “holy man” of his time in Palestine.
About Docas da Livraria Publishing House
Docas da Livraria Publishing House aims to promote the dissemination and discussion of topics related to spirituality — an essential aspect of human nature — with a focus on interfaith and ecumenical dialogue.
The publishing house also represents Brazilian publishers covering a wide range of subjects, enabling their works to be released and distributed across Portuguese-, Spanish- and French-speaking countries, fostering cultural and literary exchange.
Learn more at: www.docasdalivraria.pt
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Footnotes
[1] The Bedouins are an ethnic group inhabiting the deserts of the Middle East and North Africa, including regions of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt. The word “Bedouin” derives from the Arabic plural badawī, meaning “nomad”, as well as the terms al-bedu (people of the open lands) and al-beit (people of the tent).
[2] The reports produced by the RECOs Alliance as part of the Socio-environmental Economics courses are published by the FDUA Journal — the first Brazilian periodical specialising in Urban and Environmental Law. FDUA subscribers include courts of justice, public ministries, the Attorney General’s Office, the Supreme Federal Court, legislative bodies and legal professionals, among others.
