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11. The changing face of environmental governance in the Brazilian Amazon: indigenous and traditional peoples promoting norm diffusion

Author:
Veronika Miranda Chase
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional (RBPI)
Institution:
Instituto Brasileiro de Relações Internacionais (IBRI)
Abstract:
Transnational networks of non-state actors are using ILO Convention No. 169 as a powerful instrument of environmental governance. The treaty promotes the norm of Free, Prior and Informed Consultation (FPIC), empowering local communities to influence infrastructure projects that impact their livelihoods and natural resources. However, there is a disconnect between the Brazilian government’s discourse and the effective implementation of this norm. Using document analysis and process tracing, this article investigates this rhetoric-practice gap. It argues that these transnational networks are diffusing the FPIC norm through Consultation Protocols, slowly bridging the gap.
Topic:
Environment, Treaties and Agreements, Governance, Transnational Actors, Indigenous, Norms, and Norm Diffusion
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, and Amazon Basin

12. Global climate adaptation governance in the Amazon through a polycentricity lens

Author:
Fronika Claziena Agatha de Wit and Paula Martins de Freitas
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional (RBPI)
Institution:
Instituto Brasileiro de Relações Internacionais (IBRI)
Abstract:
The 2015 Paris agreement has made adaptation to climate change a global goal and increased the polycentricity of the governance landscape. This study uses insights from polycentric governance theory to analyze the emergence of adaptation governance (AG) in Brazil and its implications for the state of Acre, situated in the Amazon region. By using a qualitative data analysis, including subnational climate policies and semi-structured interviews, we aim to analyze the advantages and challenges of polycentric AG in Acre and provide recommendations for improved AG in the region.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, Treaties and Agreements, and Paris Agreement
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, and Amazon Basin

13. A Non-Secular Anthropocene: Spirits, Specters and Other Nonhumans in a Time of Environmental Change

Author:
Nils Ole Bubandt, Bronislaw Szerszynski, Astrid Oberborbeck Andersen, Jessica Madison, and Victor Cova
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
AURA: Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene
Abstract:
Psychologist Sigmund Freud described phenomena that are familiar and foreign at the same time as uncanny. Unheimlich – the German word for uncanny – literally means “unhomely” and captures the paradoxical mix of the homely and the strange that goes into the feeling of the uncanny (Freud 2013 [1919]). Ghosts, gods, spirits, and specters are classical icons of the uncanny. These entities are uncanny because they disturb the proper and familiar separation of things: the separation between the living and the dead, between the imaginary and the real, between the virtual and the actual. Ghosts, gods, specters and spirits are invisible apparitions, a paradoxical NO THING, a “between that is tainted with strangeness” (Cixous 1976: 543). But in 1970, the Japanese robotics engineer, Masahiro Mori, suggested that robots, too, become uncanny when they increasingly approach but still fail to achieve full human likeness. A prosthetic hand that has the fleshy look but not the proper fleshy feel of a human hand is, Mori suggested, as uncanny as a ghost. Mori called the experiential space of such phenomena “the uncanny valley”: the space where the function of increased likeness intersects with the function of decreased familiarity (Mori 2012 [1970]: 98-100). In Mori’s chart of the uncanny valley, corpses and zombies share quarters with only one human invention: the prosthetic hand. But since 1970, it is fair to say, Mori’s uncanny valley has become radically crowded with new beings far beyond robotics. Advances in genetic technology and bioengineering have added cloned animals, gene-modified crops and a host of other familiar-yet-strange denizens to the uncanny valleys of our time. The overpopulation of these uncanny valleys has also arguably grown exponentially after anthropogenic environmental disturbance has begun denaturalizing nature itself: jelly fish blooms, freak storms, and factory chicken are examples of this kind of environmental uncanniness. What are we, for instance, to make of the fact that the total biomass of the 20 billion chickens in the world’s industrial mega-farms is three times that of all wild birds combined (Bar-On et al. 2018)? A chicken is a very familiar bird for sure. But when the chicken is well on the way to becoming the signature, and one day soon perhaps the only, bird in the world, its very familiarity takes on a distinctly uncanny hue. Ecological uncanniness, one might call this.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, Infrastructure, and Nonhuman
Political Geography:
Mongolia, Peru, Ecuador, Florida, Amazon Basin, Global Focus, and United States of America

14. URBAN CONFLICTS IN NORTHERN AMAZON REGION: DISORDERED GROWTH OF WETLANDS/RESSACAS IN MACAPÁ

Author:
Bianca Moro de Carvalho
Publication Date:
05-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
Internationally recognized for its immense wealth of natural resources, the Brazilian Amazon Region and its enormous forest are characterized by significant urban conflicts. The growth of illegal settlements in Amazon cities is a sad reality that has transformed the region’s space. The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate part of my doctorate investigation in which I present the squatter-settlement development process (called favelização) of wetlands in the city of Macapá where there is intense occupation of environmental protection areas for precarious housing construction. Also by virtue of such phenomenon, the Federal University of Amapá, via its extension project called “Planning with the Community,” has been seeking to answer some questions relating to informal urbanization processes and their effects on communities living in ressaca areas.
Topic:
Environment, Urbanization, Conflict, and Settlements
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, and Amazon Basin

15. The Environmental Impacts of Soybean Expansion And Infrastructure Development in Brazil's Amazon Basin

Author:
Maria del Carmen Vera-Diaz, Robert K. Kaufmann, and Daniel C. Nepstad
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
For decades, the development of transportation infrastructure in the Brazilian Amazon has been the government's main social and economic development policy in the region. Reductions in transportation costs have not only opened the agricultural frontier to cattle ranching and logging but have also caused more than two-thirds of Amazonian deforestation. Currently, soybean cultivation is a new economic force demanding improvements to roads in the region. Profitable soybean crops have spread over the Mato Grosso's cerrados and now head toward the core of the Amazon rain forest. One of the main constraints for soy expansion into the Amazon has been the poor condition of roads. In this study, we analyze the effect Amazon transportation infrastructure programs have on soybean expansion by lowering transport costs. The analysis is based on spatial estimates of transportation costs for the soybean sector, first using current road networks and then projecting changes based on the paving of the Cuiabá-Santarém road. Our results indicate that paving the Cuiabá-Santarém road would reduce transportation costs by an average of $10 per ton for farmers located in the northern part of Mato Grosso, by allowing producers to reroute soybean shipments to the Santarém port. Paving the road also would expand the area where growing soybeans is economically feasible by about 70 percent, from 120,000 to 205,000 km2 . Most of this new area would be located in the state of Pará and is covered largely by forests. A Cost-Benefit analysis of the road project indicates that the investments in infrastructure would generate more than $180 million for soybean farmers over a period of twenty years. These benefits, however, ignore the project's environmental impacts. If the destruction of ecological services and products provided by the existing forests is accounted for, then the Cuiabá-Santarém investment would generate a net loss of between $762 million and $1.9 billion. This result shows the importance of including the value of the natural capital in feasibility studies of infrastructure projects to reflect their real benefits to society as a whole.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Economics, Environment, and Infrastructure
Political Geography:
Brazil, Latin America, and Amazon Basin

16. Modeling Amazon Deforestation for Policy Purposes

Author:
Clive W. J. Granger and Lykke E. Andersen
Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD)
Abstract:
Brazil has long ago removed most of the perverse government incentives that stimulated massive deforestation in the Amazon in the 70s and 80s, but one highly controversial policy remains: Road building. While data is now abundantly available due to the constant satellite surveillance of the Amazon, the analytical methods typically used to analyze the impact of roads on natural vegetation cover are methodologically weak and not very helpful to guide public policy. This paper discusses the respective weaknesses of typical GIS analysis and typical municipality level regression analysis, and shows what would be needed to construct an ideal model of deforestation processes. It also presents an alternative approach that is much less demanding in terms of modeling and estimation and more useful for policy makers as well.
Topic:
Environment, Infrastructure, Econometrics, and Deforestation
Political Geography:
Brazil and Amazon Basin