Presentation short abstract

The Amazon has long been politically projected as a region for development. Such politics eschews the labour of those producing the forest diverse as it is. We reflect on how delivering development is now associated with NBS that appropriate ways of ‘labouring’ the forest producing biodiversity.

Presentation long abstract

The fact that the Brazilian Amazon has long been projected for development eschews the labour of those producing forest biodiversity, leading to a double-movement of appropriation. On one hand, there is a contemporary flux framing biodiversity as a given, disavowing the knowledge of those inhabiting the forest who produce biodiversity through a non-proprietary land-use regime. On the other hand, there is an older flux characterised by violent land occupation due to its emptiness that engenders the consolidation of a colonial habitation (Ferdinand, 2022) that fractures the environment (forest) from its social constructiveness, fuelling legal forms of expropriation. The assemblage and accumulation of land as such produced a colonial territory in the Amazon connected to the uneven exchange of land, but also of senses and sensibilities about what the rainforest should be designed for.

Both as neo-extractivist or sustainable, development is the curse of the region and the source and symptom of appropriating space unevenly. A less discussed consequence of it is how it shaped control over collective experiences of managing and relating to the forest. In this paper, we reflect on how delivering development has been associated with Nature-Based Solutions schemes that appropriate ways of ‘labouring’ the forest that produce high-integrity climate and environmental mitigation results. For critically analysing this next step of valuing nature by devaluing its people and de-risking their resistance, we look at the regenerative agricultural practices that were proposed by the Brazilian government as NBS in alliance with major traders and fertiliser industries in the world.