Political economies of deforestation: The impact of regionally dominant resource sectors in the forest politics of Brazil, Peru and Finland

The project analyzes deforestation and forest degradation in Brazil, Peru, and Finland. Deforestation in the Amazon has risen again since 2012, actually doubling in Brazil – a multi-causal change that has not been studied sufficiently. I explore how cattle, mining, and forestry sectors together and separately influence deforestation, and how this may concretely take place in different environments and societies. The main analytical focus lies on profound, underlying causes of deforestation in regions where a specific resource extraction is dominant, as the power of the resulting political economic systems may explain regional forest politics and policies. Methods and data include field research, statistical and qualitative comparative analysis, interviews, and multi-sited political ethnography. The research will uncover the causalities of contemporary deforestation and forest degradation, which can be used in governing these processes better and diversifying research on the subject. This is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow project.