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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines financial instruments in environment-related investments in the Sino-Brazilian soybean complex. We focus on the rise of Chinese companies like COFCO, offering insights into its strategies for financial integration and its implications for environmental governance.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the intricate nexus between the integration of the Brazilian soybean complex into global value chains and the concurrent expansion of financial markets, instruments, and institutions in agribusiness. Over recent years, this trend has extended into speculative activities surrounding environment-related investments, including insurance and futures hedging against adverse weather events, carbon credits in agricultural production, and green bonds for sustainability-branded projects. Our study focuses on the main agribusiness transnationals involved in green finance-driven investments in farming, processing, and trade in Brazil. We discuss the various ways in which they adhere to local and global environmental regulations while engaging in speculative practices related to green investments. By adopting an actor-centred approach, we closely examine the individual strategies employed by each dominant player, providing a nuanced understanding of their corporate policies and elucidating their social and environmental impacts. Close attention is directed to top Chinese companies recently engaged in soybean exports, like COFCO. We enquire to what extent they have imitated “greed finance” strategies from North Atlantic counterparts and how their expansion relates to environmental regulations, norms and sustainable corporate policies for soybean exports. To do so, we combine global value chain and environmental governance analyses, delving into relationships between dominant economic practices and institutional frameworks within a dynamic historical context. The findings of this study shed light on the evolving landscape of financialisation and green investments in agricultural exports from the Global South following the expansion strategies and disputes among dominant players.