Technocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century Brazil

Technocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century Brazil

Author: Eve E. Buckley

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2017-07-28

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1469634317

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Eve E. Buckley’s study of twentieth-century Brazil examines the nation’s hard social realities through the history of science, focusing on the use of technology and engineering as vexed instruments of reform and economic development. Nowhere was the tension between technocratic optimism and entrenched inequality more evident than in the drought-ridden Northeast sertão, plagued by chronic poverty, recurrent famine, and mass migrations. Buckley reveals how the physicians, engineers, agronomists, and mid-level technocrats working for federal agencies to combat drought were pressured by politicians to seek out a technological magic bullet that would both end poverty and obviate the need for land redistribution to redress long-standing injustices.


Greening Brazil

Greening Brazil

Author: Kathryn Hochstetler

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2007-08-29

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 0822390590

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Greening Brazil challenges the claim that environmentalism came to Brazil from abroad. Two political scientists, Kathryn Hochstetler and Margaret E. Keck, retell the story of environmentalism in Brazil from the inside out, analyzing the extensive efforts within the country to save its natural environment, and the interplay of those efforts with transnational environmentalism. The authors trace Brazil’s complex environmental politics as they have unfolded over time, from their mid-twentieth-century conservationist beginnings to the contemporary development of a distinctive socio-environmentalism meant to address ecological destruction and social injustice simultaneously. Hochstetler and Keck argue that explanations of Brazilian environmentalism—and environmentalism in the global South generally—must take into account the way that domestic political processes shape environmental reform efforts. The authors present a multilevel analysis encompassing institutions and individuals within the government—at national, state, and local levels—as well as the activists, interest groups, and nongovernmental organizations that operate outside formal political channels. They emphasize the importance of networks linking committed actors in the government bureaucracy with activists in civil society. Portraying a gradual process marked by periods of rapid advance, Hochstetler and Keck show how political opportunities have arisen from major political transformations such as the transition to democracy and from critical events, including the well-publicized murders of environmental activists in 1988 and 2004. Rather than view foreign governments and organizations as the instigators of environmental policy change in Brazil, the authors point to their importance at key moments as sources of leverage and support.


Brazil and Climate Change

Brazil and Climate Change

Author: Viola Eduardo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-23

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1351589709

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Climate change is increasingly a part of the human experience. As the problem worsens, the cooperative dilemma that the issue carries has become evident: climate change is a complex problem that systematically gets insufficient answers from the international system. This book offers an assessment of Brazil’s role in the global political economy of climate change. The authors, Eduardo Viola and Matías Franchini expertly review and answer the most common and widely cited questions on whether and in which way Brazil is aggravating or mitigating the climate crisis, including:?Is it the benign, cooperative, environmental power that the Brazilian government claims it is? Why was it possible to dramatically reduce deforestation in the Amazon (2005-2010) and, more recently, was there a partial reversion?? The book provides an accessible—and much needed—introduction to all those studying the challenges of the international system in the Anthropocene. Through a thorough analysis of Brazil in perspective vis a vis other emerging countries, this book provides an engaging introduction and up to date assessment of the climate reality of Brazil and a framework to analyze the climate performance of major economies, both on emission trajectory and policy profile: the climate commitment approach. Brazil and Climate Change is essential reading for all students of Environmental Studies, Latin American Studies, International Relations and Comparative Politics.


Activist Biology

Activist Biology

Author: Regina Horta Duarte

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2016-11-15

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 081653201X

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Activist Biology is the story of a group of biologists at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro who joined the drive to renew the Brazilian nation, claiming as their weapon the voice of their fledgling field. It offers a portrait of science as a creative and transformative pathway. This book will intrigue anyone fascinated by environmental history and Latin American political and social life in the 1920s and 1930s.


The Antarctic Politics of Brazil

The Antarctic Politics of Brazil

Author: Ignacio Javier Cardone

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-09-20

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 3030801616

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This book focuses on the connection between Brazil and Antarctica, two regions that can be seen as distant and contrasting, but are physically, culturally and politically associated. Relying on archival material and previous literature, the book offers a thorough account of Brazil’s involvement with one of the most significant regions in the global environment. The author explores the place of Antarctica in geopolitical works and in the first initiatives involving Brazil and the continent, from the rise of geopolitical thought in Brazil in the 1930s up to the present day. He argues that the connection between Brazil and Antarctica is not without its difficulties, but it has been structured in many enduring ways. The book covers causes for the delay and eventual adoption of a now active foreign policy regarding the region, the policy’s early performance in Antarctica, its evolution as a consequence of domestic and international changes, the increasing interest in the environment, and further recent developments.


Routledge Handbook of Brazilian Politics

Routledge Handbook of Brazilian Politics

Author: Barry Ames

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-25

Total Pages: 788

ISBN-13: 1134848285

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With contributions from leading international scholars, this Handbook offers the most rigorous and up-to-date analyses of virtually every aspect of Brazilian politics, including inequality, environmental politics, foreign policy, economic policy making, social policy, and human rights. The Handbook is divided into three major sections: Part 1 focuses on mass behavior, while Part 2 moves to representation, and Part 3 treats political economy and policy. The Handbook proffers five chapters on mass politics, focusing on corruption, participation, gender, race, and religion; three chapters on civil society, assessing social movements, grass-roots participation, and lobbying; seven chapters focusing on money and campaigns, federalism, retrospective voting, partisanship, ideology, the political right, and negative partisanship; five chapters on coalitional presidentialism, participatory institutions, judicial politics, and the political character of the bureaucracy, and eight chapters on inequality, the environment, foreign policy, economic and industrial policy, social programs, and human rights. This Handbook is an essential resource for students, researchers, and all those looking to understand contemporary Brazilian politics.


Forests in International Environmental Politics

Forests in International Environmental Politics

Author: Ans Kolk

Publisher:

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13:

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Increasing concern over the environment in the past decade has incited new attempts at policy-making. International organisations and environmental NGOs play substantial roles. When Brazilian President Cardoso signed a decree in January 1996 allowing interested parties more leeway in filing injunctions against the demarcation of indigenous areas, he was attacked on all sides. National and international NGOs and the European Parliament protested, and requested that the World Bank, the European Union and the G7 take measures. As the environmental issues becomes more important in international politics, vested political and economic interests are threatened.


The Brazilian Amazon

The Brazilian Amazon

Author: Joana Bezerra

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-08-25

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 3319230301

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The aim of this book is to analyse the current development scenario in the Amazon, using Terra Preta de Índio as a case study. To do so it is necessary to go back in time, both in the national and international sphere, through the second half of the last century to analyse its trajectory. It will be equally important analyse the current issues regarding the Amazon – sustainable development and climate change – and how they still reproduce some of the problems that marked the history of the forest, such as the absence of Amazonian dark earths as a relevant theme to the Amazon. ​In a world in which the environment gains each time more space in the national and international political agenda, the Amazon stands out. Known around the world for its richness, the South-American forest is the target of different visions, often contradictory ones, and it plays with everyone’s imagination. This is where the terra preta de índio – Amazonian Dark Earths - are found, a fertile soil horizon with high concentrations of carbon with anthropic origins, which has generated great interest from the scientific community. Studies on these soils and their so singular characteristics have triggered crucial discussions on the past, present and the future of the entire Amazon region. Despite its singular characteristics, the importance of Amazonian Dark Earths – and a history of a more productive and populated Amazon – was hidden since its discovery around 1880 until 1980, when it is possible to identify the beginning of an increase in the number of research on these soil horizons. These hundred years between the first records and the beginning of the increase in the interest around these soils witnessed structural changes both in the national arena, with the military dictatorship and a change in the place of the Amazon within internal affairs, and in the international arena with changes that reshaped the role of the environment in the political and scientific agendas and the role of Brazil in the global context.