A decolonial approach to Brazilian environmental policy since 1972

Rodrigo Machado Vilani, Carlos José Saldanha Machado, Vicente Paulo dos Santos Pinto, Maria Amália Silva Alves de Oliveira and Daniel Fonseca de Andrade

Third World Quarterly, 2025, vol. 46, issue 1, 59-78

Abstract: The aim of this article is to discuss the neoliberal project as a colonial determinant of the environmental policy in Brazil since 1972. The 1972 Stockholm Conference is used as a milestone for analysis. The results show that, since the military regime in the 1970s and through successive elected governments, whether right- or left-wing, federal policies have consistently aimed to boost the country’s economic growth. Even the few socio-environmental advances identified during the first administrations of the Labour Party (2003–2010) resulted from processes focused on the ‘deterritorialisation’ of Indigenous peoples and traditional communities. The ultra-liberal project adopted by the Bolsonaro administration (2019–2022) accelerated these processes and promoted an aggressive denialist, anti-environmental and anti-Indigenous agenda. Given the current political scenario (Lula administration 2023–2026), this study makes the following main contributions: it offers a new orientation for the environmental and Indigenous agendas developed by the progressive sector in Brazil and advocates for a science orientated towards contributing to a new environmental and Indigenous agenda in the country.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2024.2421226

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