NOTES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL GEOPOLITICS: TRANSNATIONAL NARRATIVE AND THE INTELLIGENCE APPARATUS FOR THE AMAZON REGION

Abstract

The objective of this article is to reflect on environmental geopolitics. Some bureaucratic narratives provide argumentative elements to elaborate governmental actions to the Amazon region. In this sense, conceptions of an Amazon are made through the relationship between policy (a set of ideas or a plan) and territory (embodiment of space). Thus, this article aims at analysing the way geopolitical conceptions can impact environmental practices in the Brazilian Amazon. Both the Brazilian administrative intelligentsia and North American think tanks seek to establish territorial practices for the Amazon, grounding trade strategies. Specialized offices in Brazil and the United States work with a military framework in the reflections and actions for the Amazon, which project hegemonic models of development. The Brazilian administrative intelligentsia seeks to territorially integrate the Amazon region into the dynamic centre of the national economy, subordinating this integration to a national security conception. In turn, US think tanks comprehend the Amazon as a natural resource warehouse, which can be subordinated to their civil and military industrial complex. Therefore, the paper comes to the conclusion that institutional prescriptions establish pragmatic actions which build up an unlike kind of territorialities through different institutional narratives.