The Amazon as a Global Carbon Sink: How Scientists and Bureaucrats Built Climate Capacity in Brazil and What Can We Learn From It.
One of the most successful cases of state-driven CO₂ reduction occurred in Brazil from 2004 to 2012 when the country implemented a series of policies that curbed deforestation in the Amazon by over 80%. Underpinning this success lies a generation of natural scientists and bureaucrats that together re-conceptualized the Amazon Rainforest as a climate problem, rendered it global, and outpaced economic elites in implementing stringent policy.
My dissertation and book project provide a detailed comparative-historical account of environmental state-building in Brazil from 1985 to 2024. I build on over five years of field research, which includes (1) content analysis of hundreds of documents, (2) in-depth interviews with economic, policy, and scientific elites, (3) diverse administrative and environmental data analyses, and (4) recurring field visits to the Amazon Rainforest.
The book advances our knowledge—and my work on the topic—on three crucial fronts for the green transition. First, I show concrete ways and scope conditions for effective interaction among science, policymaking, and global climate regimes such as the UNFCCC. Given the current state of climate politics, where there is a significant scientific consensus but lacking state and private action, detailed accounts of the few positive cases we know of are vital in finding ways forward.
Second, I take stock of debates about green growth. Concurrently, Brazil managed to drastically reduce CO2 emissions while reducing inequality and growing the economy. This triple goal—greening, growing, and equalizing—remains one of the main bottlenecks in the green transition, especially for the Global South. I provide a detailed discussion of what allowed Brazil to achieve this goal.
Third, I propose a set of concepts that can help scholars shed light on similarities and differences across cases. I discuss what structural conditions characterise the Brazilian case (a large-emitting developing economy), why these conditions are important for understanding how climate capacity (a) was built in Brazil and (b) can be built in other countries.
