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Mapping Environmental Inequalities in Brazil: Mining, Environmental Conflicts and Impasses of Mediation

Working Paper 75

Working Paper 75

Andréa Zhouri – 2014

The paper discusses the process of mapping environmental conflictsin the Brazilian State of Minas Gerais, highlighting the epistemological differences between the concepts of conflictsand impacts. By focusing on the case of mining registered in the map, it analyzes the effects of abstract global ideas upon politically-grounded processes in Brazil. It reveals how global environmental policies and strategies related to consensus building are presented as solutions to environmental conflictsand interrogates how such strategies, driven by transnational financialinstitutions, have been adopted by Brazilian agencies in turn producing depoliticizing effects (i.e. shifting the focus from rights to interests). If participation has been a key concept within a global sustainability paradigm, and one that seemingly responds well to calls for democracy in countries like Brazil, negotiation is the medium through which participation (therefore democracy/the political) must occur. Yet in a process typical of coloniality of knowledge and power, dissent and alterity are sidelined, perpetuating processes of environmental inequalities.

Title
Working Paper 75 "Mapping Environmental Inequalities in Brazil"
Publisher
desiguALdades.net International Research Network on Interdependent Inequalities in Latin America
Location
Berlin
Keywords
environmental conflict; mining; consensus buildin
Date
2014
Language
eng
Type
Text
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