Christian Brannstrom

Access Regimes and Regional Land Change in the Brazilian Cerrado, 1972–2002

We examine how access regimes, defined by a set of interrelated institutions and organizations, facilitated the flow of production resources and benefits that resulted in patterns of land change in the Brazilian Cerrado. We analyzed remotely sensed data (Landsat MSS, TM, +ETM) for three time periods (1972/1973–1986, 1986–1992, 1992–2002) with qualitative and archival data for eastern Mato Grosso state. Overall we found that land privately colonized was cleared more rapidly and extensively than lands under no colonization scheme. We also identified significant spatial variability in Cerrado conversion within and outside colonization areas and variability of annual rates of Cerrado conversion during each period. We explain that farmers in the Cerrado engaged in land-leasing and production contracts and worked through cooperatives and firms to marshal resources, including credit, technology, and inputs, which, in turn, influenced land-use decisions and regional patterns of land-cover change. We conclude that a mesoscale analytical framework that examines how land managers access natural and productive resources provides useful insights to explain the processes that cause patterns of high-input agricultural expansion.

South America's Neoliberal Agricultural Frontiers: Places of Environmental Sacrifice or Conservation Opportunity

Abstract Neoliberal agricultural frontiers, defined as export-oriented farming areas motivated more by global demand and land privatization than by government subsidies, present at least two major challenges for environmental researchers: estimating land change and understanding governance types and outcomes. Environmental governance, the “filter” between human and biophysical systems, is considered in terms of two models in light of empirical evidence from a neoliberal frontier in the Brazilian Cerrado (savanna) ecoregion. Land-change analysis indicates that agricultural land uses increased from 12% of the study region in 1986 to 44% in 2000 and 55% in 2005, with a corresponding loss of native Cerrado. A prominent farming organization formed in 1990 has participated in or led several environmental policy initiatives. Evidence of both governance models is found, and dilemmas facing environmental activists and managers, as well as the farming sector, are presented. For organizations representing large commercial farmers, compliance with environmental regulations may be seen as both a cost to be borne by the farming sector and as a means to establish environmental credentials. Suggestions are made for future longitudinal work on compliance, information, agenda-setting, and discursive strategies of nonstate actors in neoliberal frontiers.

Social Perspectives on Wind-Power Development in West Texas

Since 2000, U.S. wind-energy capacity has increased 24 percent per year, with Texas emerging as the leading state. Multidimensionality, economic decline, and ownership-participation hypotheses dominate recent geographical research on social perspectives toward wind energy. We examine these hypotheses regarding support of wind power from the perspective of a county that leads Texas in installed capacity. Using Q-method, we present empirically determined, statistically significant social perspectives regarding wind energy. Key actors surveyed included landowners with wind turbines, elected and civil service government officials, and prominent local business and community leaders. We identified five significant clusters of opinion varying in terms of degree of support for wind energy and concern for negative impacts. Stakeholders use economic decline discursively to support wind power, but views on tax policy and distribution of costs and benefits of wind power condition the overall favorable position of key actors to wind-energy development. Specific forms of ownership and participation and positions on tax abatements for attracting wind farms frame discourses of support for wind power.

Study Abroad Field Trip Improves Test Performance through Engagement and New Social Networks

Although study abroad trips provide an opportunity for affective and cognitive learning, it is largely assumed that they improve learning outcomes. The purpose of this study is to determine whether a study abroad field trip improved cognitive learning by comparing test performance between the study abroad participants (n = 20) and their peers who did not participate (n = 365). Test performance was statistically identical between these groups before and immediately after the study abroad program. On the final exam, the study abroad participants scored significantly higher. Qualitative methods were used to identify increased engagement with the course material and the creation of new social networks as likely explanations.

A Q-Method Analysis of Environmental Governance Discourses in Brazil's Northeastern Soy Frontier

This article describes and analyzes discourses regarding environmental governance held among key actors in a region of expanding high-input, high-output agriculture. Q-method, an intensive (small n) and quantitative technique in which n tests are measured by m individuals, was used to determine four empirically significant social perspectives: critical environmentalism, agri-environmentalism, private environmentalism, and statist environmentalism. The article highlights major differences and agreements among social perspectives, in addition to the arguments used to justify claims. These findings help fill a knowledge gap in the literature on governance debates between farmers and environmentalists; moreover, the findings contribute to a concern in the literature regarding the role of discourses in producing policy solutions to environmental governance problems. The article also supports continued use of Q-method in human geography, suggesting the value of Q as a research ends and means, particularly when research subjects include landed elites.

Decentralising water resource management in Brazil

Recent studies of decentralisation of natural-resource management have advanced two related claims: participation of municipalities encourages downward accountability to local populations and single-issue decentralisation encourages upward accountability to higher levels of government. This contribution examines a case at the intersection of these arguments: participation of municipalities in single-issue decentralisation. Evidence from Brazils water-resource decentralisation indicates that participation of municipalities is not the best indicator of downward accountability; rather, the nature of social and business groups, and mechanisms that encourage their participation, better predict downward accountability. New territories of single-issue decentralisation may have unintended positive effects on downward accountability.

Conservation-with-Development Models in Brazil's Agro-Pastoral Landscapes

Abstract Conservation-with-development (CWD) models currently influential in public policies in Brazil are inappropriate for environmental problems in its agro-pastoral regions. Community mobilization, biodiversity, environmental services, and top-down conservation are severely limited as environmental policy initiatives. Using the case of western Sao Paulo, I illustrate these limitations and outline a more appropriate definition of environmental problems, use of spatial scale, and forms of resource governance. The case study and critique illustrate the need to define appropriate biophysical and land-use regions for public policies and to support initiatives within drainage-basin planning institutions.

Coffee Labor Regimes and Deforestation on a Brazilian Frontier, 1915–1965*

Abstract In this paper I analyze the relationship between coffee labor relations and deforestation in São Paulo state, Brazil, using new empirical data from judicial archives and a microeconomic approach stressing transaction costs. Contractual planting, sharecropping, and mixed wage–piece rate schemes encouraged rapid conversion of forest and woodland (Cerradão) to coffee by a wide range of landowners. Factors of labor quality, costly supervision, information asymmetries, and risk shaped the labor relations that speeded the creation of coffee groves. Tensions existed within labor relations schemes regarding usufruct, debt, and the definition of work. The findings suggest that greater attention should be given to the particular nature of labor arrangements in affecting environmental resource use.

A Case of Contested Ecological Modernisation: The Governance of Genetically Modified Crops in Brazil:

Ecological modernisation is a normative theory that explains why societys institutions and practices change in response to environmental consequences of industrial economies. It is also a term used to describe broader processes of change in environmental governance. In this paper, we use the second concept to explore the development of Brazils governance of genetically modified (GM) or transgenic crops. We discuss three major shifts in GM-crop governance and regulatory institutions during the past decade. We focus on how nongovernmental organisations, local governments, and farmers challenged the federal governments biotechnology regulatory institution. The analysis of Brazils GM debate offers important insights into the process of ecological modernisation in the global South. The case represents a key example of how ecological modernisation may proceed in countries facing neoliberalism and export-oriented economic policies paralleled by increasing democratisation. In Brazil, these seemingly contradictory forces have led to innovative, market-based paths of institutional change in environmental governance. Our study also offers an instructive example of how ecological modernisation processes in the global South intersect with broader dynamics of globalisation to shape potentially diverse environmental policy outcomes.

How Dallas became frack free: hydrocarbon governance under neoliberalism

Local-scale government ordinances that attempt to delay or displace oil and gas drilling in their territories are common in regions with hydrocarbon extraction activities. Drawing on literature from policy mobilities and resource and energy governance, this paper analyzes policymaking processes that resulted in a December 2013 ordinance in Dallas, Texas, which established a 1500 foot (457.2 meter) setback between gas wells and residences, making drilling (with hydraulic fracturing) nearly impossible. Dallas was not the first city in the region to adopt an oil and gas drilling ordinance; indeed, many regulatory provisions were copied from other regional cities. This paper explains policy mobility in the Dallas policymaking process in terms of anti-political practices and hydrocarbon institutions that, overall, determine neoliberal hydrocarbon governance. City governments cede some of the political process to gas drilling task forces that work to render setbacks technical. Legal classification of subsurface hydrocarbons as the mineral estate creates a legal gray area that confounds municipal regulatory authority and gives discursive power to mineral owners to threaten municipal officials with lawsuits. Both of these anti-political strategies encouraged selective copying and morphing of other policy provisions by the Dallas city government. Adopting longer municipal setback distance regulations represents a type of contestation of neoliberalism situated between complete deregulation and overt opposition.