L'ingérence écologique européenne face à la déforestation en Amazonie brésilienne : une analyse décoloniale

par Willy Delvalle (École normale supérieure - PSL, France)

En collaboration avec AMERICAS MSH

The European ecological intervention faced with the deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: a decolonial analysis” examines the nature of ecological intervention on the international system. European reactions to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon from the time of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro to that of left-wing President Lula da Silva are analysed through the prism of decolonial thinking. The focus is on the context of the negotiations on the association agreement between Mercosur and the European Union and the French attitude. Given the environmental concerns raised by the mass deforestation of the planet's largest tropical forest, the central question is whether ecological intervention is an expression of the coloniality of power or its dismantling, so to say a decoloniality.

A content analysis is envisaged based on official documents and declarations concerning deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon and the Mercosur-European Union agreement negotiations, as well as semi-directive interviews with Brazilian indigenous leaders and activists, journalists, researchers, diplomats, and actors from the Brazilian and European economic and political sectors, and a bibliographic research focused on Brazilian and Amazonian litterature.

The first hypothesis sees ecological intervention as an expression of the articulation between modernity and global coloniality of nature, given the execution of actors from the imperial bloc of power and their concentration of moral and economic authority in the face of the subversion of actors oppressed by the sovereign state over nature destruction. Under this perspective, the persistence of the notion of nature as a commodity for the global market is understood as a coloniality of nature.

In the second hypothesis, ecological intervention is characterised by a de-colonial expression of power, a notion that combines Quijano and Alimonda’s approaches as a democratic redistribution of authority with regards to nature.

Willy Delvalle est doctorant en science politique à l’École normale supérieure-université Paris Sciences et Lettres. Ses recherches portent sur la nature de l’ingérence écologique au sein du système international à partir d’une analyse décoloniale des réactions européennes à la déforestation en Amazonie brésilienne. Membre de la Chaire Géopolitique du Risque et du groupe de recherche Povos Indigenas e Politica Global.

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