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Cited by 7Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource ManagementAgriculture, Land Use, Rural DevelopmentExtractivism and Socioeconomic Issues

The international and local politics of the rural environmental registry: Brazil’s green currency

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Horn, Claudia·2024·Development and Change
DOI 10.1111/dech.12863
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Abstract

Since the 2000s, rural elites have engaged in ‘greening’ the Amazon extractive frontier. Private and state‐led initiatives have consolidated the agro‐industrial system by incentivizing compliance and effectively legalizing deforestation. Brazil's Rural Environmental Registry (Cadastro Ambiental Rural — CAR) is fundamental to ‘sustainable producer’ initiatives and international and local carbon markets. Since its emergence at the end of the 1990s, it has been funded and promoted by European countries and the World Bank through the G7 Pilot Programme for the Conservation of Brazilian Rainforests and the Amazon Fund. This analysis draws on a critical political economy approach and several years of multi‐site interviews, participant observation and archival research to illuminate how donor and recipient agencies have sustained territorial and georeferencing technologies as an international state project to enable the green economy, despite political shifts and the inherent contradictions of this instrument. The article shows how ecological modernization technologies enable the ‘greening’ of agro‐industry expansion while exacerbating land conflicts and marginalizing Indigenous and traditional peoples’ collective land rights.

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  • The creation of a Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) populated through self-declaration and left inadequately scrutinized means it has been widely used as an institutional device to grab lands, i.e., to claim ownership over smallholder plots or parts of protected areas.

    “Furthermore, the creation of a Rural Environmental Registry (Cadastro Ambiental Rural -CAR) populated through self-declaration and left inadequately scrutinized (see Carvalho et al., 2024) means it has been widely used as an institutional device to grab lands, i.e., to claim ownership over smallholder plots or parts of protected areas (Horn, 2024).”

    From Beyond the “supply chain” framing: Cattle ranching as a vanishing mediator of deforestation and dispossession in the Brazilian and Colombian Amazon (2026) · cites this paper as Horn, 2024

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Cited by

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Authors
Horn, C.
Corresponding author
Horn, Claudia
ORCID
Horn, Claudia
Venue
Development and Change
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2024-11
Volume
55
Issue
6
Pages
1230-1258
ISSN
  • 0012-155X (ISSN-L)
  • 1467-7660
DOI
10.1111/dech.12863
OpenAlex
W4404197012
Cited by
7
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 4
FWCI
1.24
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
Development and Change (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
Funders
  • Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social
  • Fundo Amazônia
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › General Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Extractivism and Socioeconomic Issues
Keywords
Rural Environmental Registry, Amazon deforestation, emissions trading, Amazon Fund, green economy, extractive frontiers, ecological modernization, land disputes, indigenous land rights, traditional communities, donor-state relations, Brazil

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