Forests, Communities, and States: Ecological and Political Challenges in Latin American Environmental History

Session Submission Type: Complete Panel

Abstract

Climate change results from a wide and complex environmental transformation, whose alarming effects affect ecosystems, cultures, communities, and forms of sociability. Ecosystems have been affected by the unprecedented advance of human activities in different parts of our planet. Tropical forests are among the most threatened environments, with impacts not only on the global climate but also on broader and more complex ecological processes. Latin America has been experiencing historical processes of major environmental changes since this continent began to have its natural resources exploited and expropriated, resulting in the destruction of its rich biodiversity. This panel seeks to reflect on the processes of environmental change in Latin America based on forest formations and their effects on ecosystems, climate patterns, cultures, and communities. Samira Peruchi Moretto seeks to analyze the impact of replacing native forests with exotic forestry on the cultivation and extraction of a native fruit species, the feijoa (Acca sellowiana) in southern Brazil. The production of another fruit species, the avocado, is the paper subject by Viridiana Hernández Fernández, who seeks to describe the ecological transformations of native forests in the Mexican state of Michoacán into forestry monoculture for the global agricultural market. The complex environmental issues related to the Amazon Forest appear in the last two papers that make up this Panel. José Augusto Pádua seeks to analyze deforestation and historical fluctuations regarding changes in forest landscapes, proposing to reflect on the complexities related to these fluctuations for Amazon protection policies. Susanna Hecht ends the discussion by proposing to analyze the invisible processes of deforestation from the exploitation of latex and the rubber boom in the region, showing that the region experiences strong shifts in sub-canopy structures, as well as deforestation linked to the exploitation of several species of Latex trees other than Hevea.

Sub Unit

• ASEH Annual Conference

Individual Presentations

• A fruit species in the middle of the Araucarias Forest: the threats of deforestation and (re)forestation to feijoa (Acca sellowiana) in Southern Brazil - Samira Peruchi Moretto, Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul

• The Mexican Avocado Belt, a Case of Ecological Simplification: From Indigenous Woodlands to Commercial Orchards - Viridiana Hernández Fernández, University of Iowa

• The Limits of International Action in the Conservation of the Brazilian Amazon Forest: the National State in its Historical Interactions with Global and Local Actors - José Augusto Pádua, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

• Deforestation Before Deforestation: Latexes, Forest Production Trails, and Firewood for Steam Ships - Invisible and Forgotten, But not Insubstantial Impacts of the Rubber Boom - Susanna Hecht, University of California, Los Angeles

Chair

• Sandro Dutra e Silva, Universidade Estadual de Goiás; Universidade Evangélica de Goiás