“Dismantling and Resistance: Social Participation in Federal Conservation Units During the Covid-19 Pandemic”
Public participation, biodiversity conservation, dismantling of public policies, far right.
This dissertation examines the tensions between democracy and the practice of biodiversity conservation in Brazil, focusing on the dismantling of public policies promoted by a far-right populist government. It traces the historical development of formal spaces for participation in protected areas governance and presents the federal environmental policy changes imposed by the agribusiness hegemony in a context of scientific denialism. It reflects on the socio-environmental crisis and details the resistance strategies adopted by the state bureaucracy, which faced authoritarianism and institutional harassment. It analyzes how the covid-19 pandemic added challenges to public participation and how creative adjustments in the federal protected areas’ management councils enabled their operation in 2020 and 2021. Finally, it reveals how a network of Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation civil servants has worked to prevent regulatory rollback and preserve protected areas’ participatory management in the country’s Northeast and Southeast regions. The institutional legacy of structuring management councils played a decisive role in ensuring their continued operation, as well as the legal framework of the National System of Conservation Units.