Sustainable Development Meets the Amazon

Chapter 3 focuses centrally on the host of plans and policies for sustainable development conducted in Brazil beginning in the late 1980s, when the concept of sustainable development was introduced into the mainstream of global environmental politics. The chapter also elaborates on the contemporary major players of Amazonian sustainable development politics, focusing on the roles and historical formations of the Catholic Church, social movement groups, and activism in relation to various projects and socio-environmental struggles of the late 1980s and into contemporary times. Illustrative cases of Brazilian infrastructure and developmental priorities for the Amazon are discussed in order to illustrate the primacy of national integration and consolidation of state power—in other words, economic priorities with a strong modernization orientation—well beyond environmental protection and social equity considerations.