Environment, development and politics: Capital accumulation and the livestock sector in Eastern Amazonia

Abstract

Deforestation and environmental degradation are increasingly common themes in the literature on humid tropical rural development. This paper explores the frameworks used to analyze environmental questions in developing economies and how well these function in the particular case of livestock development in the Eastern Amazon Basin. The paper argues that, due to the peculiarities of the state subsidies available for ranching activities that spurred a frenzy of land speculation, the exchange rather than productive value of land became paramount. In such a context, cautions land management was irrelevant and serious environmental degradation was the result. The paper suggests that models of environmental degradation that focus only on the question of production cannot capture the environmental dynamics of speculative economies.