How does the election of far-right populist leaders contribute to the environmental crisis? We delved into this question by conducting an in-depth case study on the impact of Jair Bolsonaro’s government (2019-2022) on the rise of deforestation rates in the Legal Amazon. Our focus was on forest deforestation oversight, the main tool for enforcing Brazilian environmental policy against deforestation, particularly in the short term. Since 2019, deforestation rates in the Amazon have surged to concerning levels, identified as the primary […]

Studies on the environment, public opinion, and voting have shown that, despite widespread support for the environmental cause among the population, this support does not necessarily translate into votes. This article will look into concepts including agenda setting, framing, and media effects to provide a background of how the environment became a prominent issue in public opinion. It will also test hypotheses that argue for the significance of issue decision salience, in conjunction with the issue ownership theory, to explain […]

Since the 1960s, the Brazilian defense policy toward the Amazon has been oriented by the security/development binomen. This was simultaneously a directive for the Brazilian authoritarian regime and for US defense doctrine for the Americas. We argue in this paper that despite the structural influence of US hemispherical security and defense strategy, the formulation of an Amazonian defense strategy by the Brazilian military responded to peculiarities attached to local military historical practices regarding civilizational values, concepts of security and development, […]