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Accepted Paper:
From the mirage of development to the sustainability deception - The Ferrogrão railroad (Brasil) or "how a mega infrastructure project is presented as a 'green' alternative"?
Oiara Bonilla
(University of Bologna)
Through the case of the Ferrogrão railway project, I'll analyze how the language of conservation is distorted to promote the project as 'green', and combined with legal tools to force its implementation, contrasting with the concepts mobilized by indigenous people in the struggle against the project
Paper long abstract:
The objective here is to describe and analyze the railroad infrastructure project known as Ferrogrão (EF-170). The railroad will cross the cerrado (Mato Grosso) and part of the Brazilian Amazon (Pará) to transport agribusiness production to the northern ports (of the Arco Norte). The planned path crosses a sensitive area of the Amazon region, which is already marked by land conflicts and intense deforestation, and will impact preservation areas and indigenous lands. However, the project is being certified for the issuance of 'Green Bonds'. I will first analyze the use of the language of environmental conservation and climate change and its 'degeneration' or 'distorsion' by the agencies promoting the project to make it viable as a 'green' project. Second, in light of work done by various authors on the Belo Monte dam on the Xingu River, I will attempt to show how this distorted language is allied to the various legal instruments used by the agencies involved to make such projects viable and unavoidable. And how this language contrasts with with the concepts of land and good living mobilized by the indigenous movements involved in the struggle against the project.