The Amazon region is the focus of intense conflict between conservationists concerned with deforestation and advocates of agro-industrial development. This book focuses on the contributions of environmental organizations to the preservation of Brazilian Amazonia. It reveals how environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and others have fought fiercely to stop deforestation in the region. It documents how the history of frontier expansion and environmental struggle in the region is linked to Brazil's position in an evolving capitalist world-economy. It is shown how Brazil's effort to become a developed country has led successive Brazilian governments to devise development projects for Amazonia. The author analyses how globalization has led to the expansion of international commodity chains in the region, particularly for mineral ores, soybeans and beef. He shows how environmental organizations have politicized these commodity chains as weapons of conservation, through boycotting certain products, while other pro-development groups within Brazil claim that such organizations threaten Brazil's sovereignty over its own resources.

The Amazon region is the focus of intense conflict between conservationists concerned with deforestation and advocates of agro-industrial development. This book focuses on the contributions of environmental organizations to the preservation of Brazilian Amazonia. It reveals how environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and others have fought fiercely to stop deforestation in the region. It documents how the history of frontier expansion and environmental struggle in the region is linked to Brazil's position in an evolving capitalist world-economy. It is shown how Brazil's effort to become a developed country has led successive Brazilian governments to devise development projects for Amazonia. The author analyses how globalization has led to the expansion of international commodity chains in the region, particularly for mineral ores, soybeans and beef. He shows how environmental organizations have politicized these commodity chains as weapons of conservation, through boycotting certain products, while other pro-development groups within Brazil claim that such organizations threaten Brazil's sovereignty over its own resources.

This provocative book documents how national and global politics intersected to bring about changes in Brazil's environmental preservation laws. Luiz Barbosa argues that global forces coupled with two decades of military rule in Brazil led to policies that promoted deforestation for the sake of development, ultimately having devastating consequences for AmazTnia's ecosystem and its native populations. By the mid-1980s, changes in global ecopolitics and the onset of democracy in Brazil paved the way for new environmental preservation laws. Barbosa's study is unique in showing the impact of global processes on third-world environmental degradation and in its claim that democracy can facilitate preservation. The latter point is further emphasized in a comparative chapter in which Barbosa demonstrates the importance of democracy for environmental preservation in Costa Rica, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Sociologists and anthropologists interested in issues surrounding economic development as well as environmental activists will find much to their liking in this work.