Brazil

Our work in Brazil

It is believed that Brazilian governments remain wedded to the exploitation of the Amazon rainforest despite the ecological and climatic impact of large-scale logging and conversion of forest to agricultural land. Mitigation policies such as the creation of conservation sites and attempts to use already deforested areas as sites of monoculture farming and animal rearing have sometimes fallen short of their goals. In response, various social groups are forming enterprises and employ smart /or appropriate technologies in pursuit of a ‘post-extractivist’ business model, claiming decoupling by enabling a combination of commercial and sustainable bioeconomic use of the Amazon. The study engages with this Brazilian ‘scaling’ of different technological revolutions for the use of the Brazilian Amazon. Key questions include: how digital technologies and infrastructures  directly and indirectly impact upon ‘the value’ – economic or climatic – of the rainforest; how it can come to fruition in the conjunction of interests of rural settlers, indigenous groups, international capital, governments and the agro-IT sector; and which kinds of technological, environmental and entrepreneurial agencies are at play in this attempt of decoupling.