Environmental Justice and the Brazilian Amazon
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ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON APREPRINT X.M.B. Verschuur Forest and Nature Policy Wageningen University and Research Droevendaalsesteeg, 6708 PB Wageningen, the Netherlands Supervised by Dr. J.H. Behagel [email protected] July 17, 2020 ABSTRACT The forest fires and deforestation levels that rapidly increased in the Brazilian Amazon in 2019 resulted in global media coverage and became a point of international concern. This information brought forward tensions regarding the use of and decision-making on the Amazon while competing claims regarding environmental justice were made. Despite the absence of a common understanding on environmental justice, the concept is widely applied by scholars and practitioners alike. The study reconstructs the discourses and discourse-coalitions in the Dutch and British media that shape the Amazon fires as an issue and illustrate how environmental justice is articulated. The results are helpful in contextualising various political debates and discourses beyond this case study to include other (transnational) environmental issues. A discourse analysis of media sources revealed three dominant discourses: 1) Bolsonaro as the Hero; 2) Bolsonaro as the Villain; and 3) The problem is bigger than Bolsonaro. The portrayal of Bolsonaro as a Villain was favoured by the media and supported by a powerful discourse-coalition, therefore suggesting that – at least internationally – this appears to be hegemonic. The two dominant Hero/Villain discourses used discursive strategies largely based on division and polarisation, including through the use of divisive rhetoric such as mythological archetypes. Distributive justice was extensively and widely articulated by all three discourses, thereby illustrating that concerns on the overemphasis of distributive justice by environmental justice scholars are warranted. The research thus illustrates how competing discourses ‘make sense’ of the Amazon fires whilst highlighting power dynamics in knowledge production, truth creation and value systems, including hegemonic ideologies. Ultimately, in order to address socio-environmental issues, a genuine attempt should be made for greater respect, recognition and participation of less powerful actors and discourses in (environmental) decision-making while using a multidimensional and critical justice approach. Gaining insights into (alternative) discourses and how these came into being is thus a first step towards more inclusive environmental politics and governance. MSC THESIS -JULY 17, 2020 Disclaimer This thesis report is part of an education program and hence might still contain (minor) inaccuracies and errors. Contact [email protected] Citation Verschuur, X.M.B. (2020). Environmental Justice of the Brazilian Amazon: A Discourse Analysis. MSc. Thesis. Wageningen University and Research. Forest and Nature Policy. Acknowledgements I wish to express my sincere gratitude to dr. J.H. Behagel for providing me with the opportunity to conduct this research and for guiding me throughout this master thesis. I also wish to express great appreciation to my family and my housemates for putting up with me throughout this second thesis - I could not have done it without your support! In particular I want to thank Eva, Judith and Marta for their extensive contributions (feedback, brainstorming, support), Gautham, and Marnix for being my LaTeX hero. 2 MSC THESIS -JULY 17, 2020 Contents 1 Chapter I: Introduction 6 1.1 Problem Statement . .9 1.2 Research Objective . 10 1.3 Research Questions . 10 1.4 Structure of the Thesis . 10 2 Chapter II: Theoretical Framework 11 2.1 Part 1: Understanding Discourse . 11 2.1.1 Storylines . 11 2.1.2 Discourse-coalitions . 12 2.1.3 Power in Discourses . 12 2.2 Mechanisms of Discourse . 13 2.2.1 Crisis narratives . 13 2.2.2 Discursive strategies as a divisive tool . 13 2.3 Part 2: Understanding Environmental Justice . 15 2.3.1 A brief introduction into environmental justice . 15 2.4 Distributive Justice . 16 2.4.1 Procedural Justice . 18 2.4.2 Justice as recognition . 18 2.4.3 Critical Environmental Justice . 19 2.4.4 Discussion on Environmental Justice . 20 3 Methods 21 3.1 Data collection and selection . 21 3.2 Data Analysis . 21 4 Bolsonaro as the Hero 23 4.1 The Discourse . 23 4.1.1 Storyline 1: Political Sovereignty . 23 4.1.2 Storyline 2: Development & Progress . 24 4.1.3 Storyline 3: Brazil as a Conservation leader . 25 4.2 Environmental Justice . 25 4.3 Language . 28 5 Chapter 5: Bolsonaro as the Villain 31 3 MSC THESIS -JULY 17, 2020 5.1 The Discourse . 31 5.1.1 Storyline 1: The Amazon as a Crisis . 31 5.1.2 Storyline 2: The Amazon as a Global Issue . 31 5.1.3 Storyline 3: Bolsonaro as an Enemy to All . 33 5.2 Environmental Justice . 34 5.3 Language . 35 6 Discourse 3: The problem is bigger than Bolsonaro 39 6.1 The Discourse . 39 6.1.1 Storyline 1: Underlying Drivers . 39 6.1.2 Storyline 2: The fires are illustrative of a global problem . 40 6.1.3 Storyline 3: Shared but Differentiated Responsibility . 41 6.2 Environmental Justice . 42 6.3 Language . 45 7 Discussion 47 7.1 Part I: Bringing it together . 47 7.1.1 Competing Discourses . 47 7.1.2 The articulation of environmental justice . 48 7.2 Part 2: Explaining dominance . 50 7.2.1 Power and the politics of knowledge . 50 7.2.2 Legitimacy . 50 7.2.3 Crisis narratives . 51 7.2.4 Divisive rhetoric . 51 7.3 Part 3: Environmental justice in discourses . 53 7.4 Part 4: Moving Forward and Recommendations for Action . 55 7.4.1 Comic apocalyptic framing . 55 7.4.2 A multidimensional understanding and inclusion of justice . 55 7.4.3 Active reflection . 56 7.5 Part 5: Limitations . 57 8 Conclusion 58 9 Appendix A: Newspaper articles used for the analysis 60 4 MSC THESIS -JULY 17, 2020 Table 1: Abbreviations used throughout thesis Abbreviation Meaning BLA Brazil’s Legal Amazon CEJ Critical Environmental Justice CSR Corporate Social Responsibility DMA Discourse-Mythological Approach EJ Environmental Justice EPA United States Environmental Protection Agency FUNAI National Indian Foundation GCF Green Climate Fund HR Historical (Emission) Responsibility IBAMA Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources INPE National Institute for Space Research NGO Non-Governmental Organisation UK United Kingdom UN United Nations WUM Wise Use Movement ZD Zero-Deforestation List of Tables 1 Abbreviations used throughout thesis . .5 2 Newspaper articles from the Guardian that were used for the analysis . 60 3 Newspaper articles from the Telegraph that were used for the analysis . 60 4 Newspaper articles from de Telegraaf that were used for the analysis . 61 5 Newspaper articles from de Volkskrant that were used for the analysis . 61 List of Figures 1 Monthly area of rainforest lost in the Brazilian Amazon due to deforestation (2015-2019). [1] . .7 2 French President Macron’s tweet on Amazon fires, 22 August 2019. [2] . .8 4 Deforestation levels in Brazil (2015-2019); Note the reference to ’record level’. [3] . 32 5 MSC THESIS -JULY 17, 2020 1 Chapter I: Introduction October 29th, 2018, marked the day that populist-authoritarian candidate1, Jair Bolsonaro, was elected as president of Brazil. His election was based on an extreme, far-right movement with the majority of support coming from the south of Brazil where many of the economic elite and agribusinesses are located. Throughout the following year, Bolsonaro’s administration made it into a multitude of headlines in different media outlets around the world, in particular regarding the increased deforestation rates and forest fires. Newspaper headlines were diverse and included titles such: “Chaos, chaos, chaos: a journey through Bolsonaro’s Amazon inferno” [5], “#PrayforAmazonia Rainforest” [6] and “Bolsonaro declares ’the Amazon is ours’ and calls deforestation data ’lies’” [7]. Bolsonaro, an ex-military member, found much of his support from the agribusiness sector, the powerful evangelical churches, and Brazil’s political and economic elite [4, 8, 9]. Opening up the Amazon rainforest to extractive industries and agro-industrial monocultures has been an integral part in his campaign and advanced in his early presidential term, but increasingly has also become a point of contestation. Nevertheless, the success of Bolsonaro’s campaign was largely based on “the promise of radicalizing markedly authoritarian rural policies” [4, p.960], a promise that would favour the minority group of wealthy landholder producers. In the populist reasoning, the “claims of a minority group are framed to be equivalent to the claims of the ‘the people’, while the interests of most are rendered as antagonistic to those of the nation” [4]. That this political and economic elite contribute(d) to making Brazil an agricultural economic power, thereby benefiting “the country as a whole” (p.960), are long-standing claims that largely emanate from Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-85). Back when Amazon colonisation measures were encouraged, the Produtores (or producers) aided in making Brazil one of the biggest agricultural producers in the world [4, 10]. As such, they argue(d) that they are Brazil’s hope when it comes to realising economic growth, an argument that “obfuscates the “differentiated entitlements” that grant some groups of people privileged possession of—and access to—resources while excluding and dispossessing other groups” [4, p.965] [8]. During the 1970s and 1980s, developmentalist policies shaped the Amazonian frontier as a site of violence and environmental destruction, setting in motion racial hierarchies and agricultural expansion of monoculture ecologies [4], including cattle ranching. Deforestation rates were very high during the 1980s and 1990s, partly a result of the continuous expansion of large-scale cattle ranches into the forests. During the mid-1980s, environmental issues were identified and the conservation of the Amazon was stimulated by different actors such as foreign nations and transnational environmental groups, further triggering Brazilian anxieties on the internationalization of the Amazon (i.e.