Mudança institucional e diversidade territorial na Amazônia Oriental Brasileira: o papel do mercado de terra como causa estrutural para o fenômeno do desmatamento

Abstract

Deforestation is one of the main problems of the Amazon. The explanation of the causes of this environmental degradation tends to be done under the market relations (supply and demand), that is, with the use of neoclassical economic theory. By this theory, socio-environmental problems are reduced to market issues so that issues are considered externalities whose solution is the definition of property rights and the regulation of forms of use (command and control). In the case of the Amazon, deforestation would be linked to the demand for commodities that would act as an incentive to the devastation of new areas. However, the neoclassical view focuses only on immediate economic relations focused on the real economy (production, distribution and consumption). Thus, the neoclassical theory ignores the possibility of the earth being an asset with specific characteristics, with market and that can be transacted in the present or in the future, turning into a reason for speculation. Thus, this thesis raises the hypothesis that deforestation is a result of the constitution of land market. To test this hypothesis, this essay follows the theories of the New Economic Sociology and New Institutional Economics, which have the potential to explain the historical processes and the institutional changes that have taken place in the Amazonian territory that have resulted in the expansion of the agricultural frontier, expanding the possibilities of technological trajectories and in transformations in the institutional arrangements that helped to create the market for factors, including the land market, which is one of the drivers of Amazonian deforestation