Papers presented by Audrey Gerrard since 2019
2023 Detroit, MI, United States
"The Law of Fire and Axe: Tensions of Sustainability and the Brazilian Forest Code 1964-1981"
Audrey Gerrard, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Abstract:
At the very interface between industry and environment exist the laws and regulations that seek to mediate between the powerful forces of profit and economic growth, and the fragile, irreplaceable ecosystems that provide the natural resources essential to global industries. This paper examines one of the most contested sites of this polarized interaction: the Brazilian Amazon, and the Forest Code devised to regulate its exploitation. In 1965, the new military dictatorship implemented a Brazilian new ‘Forest Code’. This paper will examine the complex entanglements of this vital, yet problematic, legislation with the turbulent politics of class, agrarian reform, dispossessions, and rural violence in Brazil that marked this period. Focusing on the Brazilian government’s ideological commitment to facilitating agribusiness interests, the paper positions the Forest Code in the volatile space between sustainability and conservation, to pry open key questions regarding how laws have sought to govern the very concept of sustainability and its inherent dualism of preservation and exploitation. The paper asks the following main research question: how did the new Forest Code change the ways that the Brazilian government approached the dilemma of wanting to control deforestation and at the same time aiming for agricultural expansion? How did the legislation affect the large international agribusiness companies investing in Brazil in this period? Considering Brazil’s deep structural problems of land distribution and rural poverty at the time, how did the Forest Code of 1965 participate in the emerging governance environment that facilitated the growth of multinational agribusiness as we know it?