Inverted Sacrifice Zones: The Acrean Amazon

• In Event: Justice, Democracy, and Policy

Abstract

Unlike traditional sacrifice zones – areas devastated and abandoned for the sake of resource extraction – inverted sacrifice zones are spaces of ecological conservation that function as instruments of capitalist state control. The paper examines this dynamic through the case of the Brazilian state of Acre, where the 2010 creation of SISA (System of Incentives for Environmental Services) marked a turning point in green governance. In Acre, preservation was formalized not as resistance to capitalism but as its reinvention: forests were reframed as appreciating assets in the global carbon economy, while rural and Indigenous communities were incorporated into state-led systems of environmental labor and management.

Author

• Arjuna da Silva, Northern Arizona University