BUREAUCRACY AND ECOPOLITICS IN THE THIRD WORLD: ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY FORMATION IN BRAZIL

Abstract

We are definitely in an age of scarcity. Scarcity of resources, scarcity of places to dispose of our wastes, and, above all, scarcity of adequate institutions to face the challenges of the current environmental crisis. In this context, ecopolitics represents the most immediate recognition that in order to look inward, searching for answers to the basic questions of human existence and destiny, we must look outward, to our ways of relating to our fellow human beings in society as well as to our partners in nature. This is thus a study of politics. It is also a study of the bureaucratic politics of environmental policy formation. But it is equally a study of a particular political system, of a particular process of policy formation, that of a Third World country, Brazil. Starting from an exploration of the context of Brazil's political development, attention is focused on the social and political conditions that favoured the creation of a specialised environmental agency, as well as the extent to which these conditions have determined its perceived missions and its ability to translate environmental concerns into coherent public policies. The study introduces also an analysis of the bureaucratic politics of ecopolitics, understood both as pollution control and abatement, and as conservation and management of natural resources.