Environmental Governance as a Development Strategy: The Case of Lucas do Rio Verde Legal

Abstract

The goal of this dissertation is to describe and analyze one set of efforts to improve monitoring, licensing, accountability, and socio-environmental outcomes of industrial-scale farming in the Cerrado, located in Brazil's southern Amazon. These efforts are collectively called Lucas do Rio Verde Legal [Lucas Legal], an environmental licensing initiative which is the product of a multi-stakeholder partnership. This partnership includes an international environmental NGO, national and multi-national industrial agriculture firms, and local government agencies. Environmental issues in the Cerrado are frequently framed as economic, and, to a lesser extent, policy issues, due to the high profitability of industrial agriculture in the region and shortcomings on the part of the state to adequately monitor rural activities and enforce environmental laws. Lucas Legal is novel not only for its relative successes at improving the effectiveness of environmental licensing of rural properties locally and at the state level, but also for its role in increasing the interest of rural producers in addressing environmental issues and for calling attention to cultural, historical, institutional, and technical factors that contribute to agri-environmental problems in the Amazon. A multi-method approach, including archival research, ethnographic research, ongoing interviews with key informants, and a semi-structured survey of 20 farmers was used to explore the genesis and outcomes of Lucas Legal from many different angles, and to trace the history of the project and understand the unique history of the municipality (Lucas do Rio Verde) in which the project began. Analysis of the project drew on three distinct literatures - the literature on Environmental Governance; the literature on Environmentality, which is heavily based on Foucault's work on Governmentality; and the combined literatures on Advocacy and Discourse Coalitions. While none of these literatures was sufficient alone to explain the unique history and outcomes of Lucas ...