Robert Davenport

a working proposal narrative for AHE 2026

In recent years the discourse of a “sociobioeconomy” has taken hold amongst academic and policy circles in Brazil to outline a special vision of sustainable development for forest communities. In conducting interviews with stakeholders, we asked, of what of the governance of such a program? does it empower communities’ autonomy, or create new paternalistic ties and economic monopolies? In such a landscape of promoting products with a forest identity, and in the context of a burgeoning value of land, forests and in particular carbon in its global financial context, the Brazilian Amazon is now the vanguard for “nature based solutions” and …. As Lygia states,

Scientific colonialism: a FAPESP postdoc interacts with locals in Jatobá, Santarém

The sociobioeconomy –– according to the discourse (Garrett et al. 2024) argues that forest based economies can transform regional development, using a model of “niche initiatives” i.e. social entrepreneurship that will “scale” to gain investment traction. The discourse proposes safeguards to forest identity communities, riverine, extractive reserve, and Indigenous. While the promoted idea is that forest communities are taking charge, organizing themselves, transforming development and society and economies, interview data suggests that communities lack power to administrate with the extremely hierarchical and bureaucratic (elitist) (bourgeois) aspects of the Brazilian state. (where municipalities run fiefdoms, Amazonian states exert a mafia style control on resources, and where the federal bureaucracies (particularly INCRA) are (in constant states of lawfare) or with no staff or resources to attend to the public). In this context, in step the bourgeois movement of NGOs and NGO minded academics, beaming with enthusiasm for their ‘growth – diversity fusion enterprises’ that, like the aviamento of old, bring goods to remote communities in exchange for resources that can be processed and marketed in regional and national value chains, gathering acclaim for their talent in scouting new foods, seeds, and the like…

We create wealth with forest identity marketing