Abstract, Coloniality in the Appropriation of Nature: Agrofuel Production, Dependency, and Constant Primitive Accumulation in the Periphery of Capitalism

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Coloniality in the Appropriation of Nature: Agrofuel Production, Dependency, and Constant Primitive Accumulation in the Periphery of Capitalism
by Wendell Ficher Teixeira Assis, Sérgio H. Rocha Franco


The expansion of sugarcane monoculture for the production of agrofuels since the early 2000s has caused territorial reconfigurations in the Brazilian countryside. This territorial reordering represents both a lucrative way of employing idle capital and the geographical expansion of capital domains. In the process, new markets are created and leveraged by discourses of environmental conservation while air, soil, and water are depredated and indigenous people, peasants, and quilombolas are dispossessed and dragged into new circuits of accumulation. Linked to the continuous search for new fronts of accumulation and the increasing commodification of nature, Brazilian agrofuel production may be understood as an expression of the logic of coloniality.

Exclusive, Ecología Política 51. Political Ecology in Latin America by Nemer E. Narchi

For nearly four decades studies in Political Ecology has proven the well known effects that power relations have over the quality of and availability and access to natural resources. Nonetheless, the neo-Maltusian discourse [1], which highlights population growth as the single-most salient factor promoting anthropogenic impacts on the environment, is still a prevailing idea among prominent thinkers and opinion leaders.

Optimal scenarios for understanding how unbalanced exercises of political and economical power create environmental costs and benefits can be observed throughout the world due to an overarching colonial past. However, when scrutinizing the recent history of Latin America, there is no question that the region could provide a myriad of textbook-scenarios.