Preface & Introduction
“That…green capitalism ha[s] not worked as planned—as I explore in this book—does not mean…[it] can be easily dismissed as just the latest accumulation strategy or form of corporate greenwashing. Instead, ethnographically examining…[it] as an often genuine culturally and materially meaningful effort to address the climate crisis may be a way to understand this period of early climate change, in all its patchy unevenness and inequity.” (Greenleaf xix)
Synopsis
The preface and introduction explore the concept of green capitalism, specifically the embrace of capitalist frameworks, practices, and logics to address environmental degradation, within the Amazonian state of Acre, Brazil. As the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon plays a critical role in the climate crisis due to its capacity to store carbon while alive and release it when burned or cut. Green capitalism, including mechanisms like carbon offsets and related “REDD+” initiatives, aims to assign monetary value to the carbon sequestered in the Amazon and other forests—referred to as forest carbon—to keep it out of the atmosphere. However, my ethnographic research revealed forest carbon to be less a tradable commodity than a relational state of being—carbon kept in the living forest by the complex socioenvironmental interactions within living forests. Tracing these interactions uncovers key dynamics of green capitalism—its inherent contingency, unexpected social inclusivity, enticing promises, and disturbing failures.
Discussion Questions & Key Concepts
Key concepts: Forest carbon, valorization, inclusion, REDD+, socioenvironmental relations, green capitalism, neoliberalism
What is green capitalism, in tropical forests and in your own life?
Why was forest carbon difficult to follow in Acre?
What is behind the joke that Acre “doesn’t exist”?
What was the role of inclusion in making forest carbon valuable in Acre? Is inclusion important to green capitalism more widely?