Forest frontiers out of control: The long-term effects of discourses, policies, and markets on conservation and development of the Brazilian Amazon

Racism and Indifference in Brazil: Anti-indigenous Text, Action, and Sensibility

The article investigates how racist trends have permeated Brazilian history and geography. It discusses the persistence of racism and indifference in the early post-independence and republic periods. Past relations continued to systematically impact the present in an always unfinished process of nation-building based on spurious treatments of socio-spatial differences. The discussion makes use of emblematic literature books and controversial interpretations of progress and national identity. One of the most relevant examples of the contested basis of national development, examined in the second part of the text, is the trajectory of indigenous peoples. The main reference is the Guarani-Kaiowa indigenous nation, which has been relentlessly impacted by an aggressive instrumentalisation of difference through the indifference of an agribusiness-based regional society. Their contemporary experience exposes multiple violence accumulated over time and through the production of an uneven space by explorers, missionaries, colonists, public authorities and, eventually, the export-oriented agribusiness sector. Despite all racist violence, the voice, consciousness and agency of indigenous peoples represent the most acute challenge to the status quo and the main source of creative politics in the country today.

Forest environmental frontiers around the globe: Old patterns and new trends in forest governance

Forests are subject to a huge variety of often competing socio-economic demands and environmental change. This paper assesses the related conflicts that occur along what we label to be a "Global Forest Environmental Frontier". Assessing 11 contributions to a special issue on the same topic, it summarizes the main contents of these papers and concludes with an assessment of major trends. The contributions to the special issue take both a regional and topic-related approach, assessing forest environmental conflicts on all five forested continents and investigating issues such as forest biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation and mitigation, environmental justice and equity, development, and forest management and conservation discourses. Taken together, they provide an overview on the multiple facets of the Global Forest Environmental Frontier, but also identify some shared patterns and trajectories, which are outlined at the end of this paper.