Abstract

In Brazil, the looming threat of mass extinction has prompted increasingly exceptional measures to protect sensitive biomes. At the same time, such measures threaten to curtail capitalist expansion and thus Brazil's neoliberal model of economic development. Jair Bolsonaro's 2018 presidential campaign responded to these threats by fueling anti-environment sentiments and anti-environmentalist enmity. Once inaugurated, he immediately began the work of dismantling national environmental governance structures. Yet his strategies for doing so are often masked by what this article describes as a 'firehouse effect', where his tactics appear chaotic, confused, and lacking any particular goal. The article uses a combination of interviews with 35 environmental experts, participant observation, and a review of secondary sources to zoom in on Bolsonaro's anti-environmentalism within the context of the contemporary turn toward populist authoritarian neoliberalism. By focusing on how Bolsonaro's policies serve to weaken protective environmental measures that limit capitalist extraction, the article unearths the major anti-environment strategies of the Bolsonaro administration. This framework thus allows us to see through the 'firehouse effect' to make some sense of Bolsonaro's methods, further building on emerging research on the political ecologies of the contemporary populist authoritarian neoliberal turn. Moreover, the article shows the utility of applying a generalized populist authoritarian neoliberal framework to a particular context in order to identify its local processes and specificities.

Highlights

  • The Amazon rainforest is the largest and most biodiverse tropical rainforest in the world, with 60% falling within Brazilian borders

  • While many of the restrictions on extractive practices and land use in Brazilian forests were eased by the 2012 modifications to Brazil's Forest Code, several politicians still claim that the exceptional environmental regulations in Brazil are at the root of the deepening economic crisis (Arsenault 2017; Nugent 2021). Among these is Jair Bolsonaro, who in addition to blaming corruption for Brazil's economic woes has described Brazil's environmental protection as "suffocating" economic growth (Rachman, Blasina and Schipani 2019; Viscidi and Graham 2019) and believes that "environmental politics in the way of business" (ENGO employee specializing in public policy, April 2019)

  • I review the literature on political ecologies of authoritarian neoliberalism and the environmental strategies of populist authoritarian neoliberals to situate Brazil and Bolsonaro within this broader context and argue that this allows us to start making sense of his antics

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Summary

Introduction

The Amazon rainforest is the largest and most biodiverse tropical rainforest in the world, with 60% falling within Brazilian borders. Bolsonaro is staunchly pro-business, known for his disregard for environmental regulations (Spring and Eisenhammer 2019) and science (Escobar 2021; Tollefson 2018), and for making racist, misogynistic, homophobic remarks (Borba 2020; Kaul 2021; Lehman 2018; Da Silva and Larkins 2019) He garnered popular attention during the presidential campaign by promising to fix corruption and perceived threats to the national economy of Brazil with swift, decisive, and uncompromising action (Hunter and Power 2019; Tollefson 2018). I review the literature on political ecologies of authoritarian neoliberalism and the environmental strategies of populist authoritarian neoliberals to situate Brazil and Bolsonaro within this broader context and argue that this allows us to start making sense of his antics

Political ecologies of authoritarian neoliberalism
Findings
Conclusion

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