Fire and Political Alterity in Amazonia
Taking the Amazon wildfires in 2019 as a starting point, this research project aims to explore how the extensive rainforest fires affected political processes in Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru.
Human induced climate change not only affects global temperature and precipitation patterns, but also the intensity and frequency of extreme environmental events. Where past research has mainly focused on identifying the political, economic and social factors that cause these environmental changes, this project reverses this focus to ask: What political processes are set in motion by wild fires and other environmental events?
In 2019, 72.000 wild fires spread across large parts of the Amazon rainforest. Brazil, Bolivia and Peru were all hit hard by the fires, which created national and international political attention, with climate activists, scientists and politicians warning that local deforestation and conversion to agricultural land brought the world closer to one of the climatic 'tipping points' known as the Amazon dieback. The present project studies this tipping point as it unfolds socially and the evolving political cosmologies of fire.
Through local fieldwork, the project will identify and analyse the importance of forest fires for:
- Shifts in national and international climate policies with a focus on Brazil, remote sensing of fire and the policies aimed at curbing deforestation and the unfolding of the ‘tipping point’.
- Changes to indigenous land rights and patterns of land tenure in the border area between Brazil, Bolivia and Peru as well as the effects of fire for indigenous practices of forest gardening and politization of swidden cultivation.
- Land use change and frontier dynamics, regulation of soy production, company CSR and deforestation free supply chains.
- Processes of political polarisation, and the importance of fires for the changing of political landscape.
The project shows how fires have reinforced political controversies and discussions about deforestation, create political alterity and alteration of political cosmologies and forested landscapes.
The `Fire and Political Alterity in Amazonia´ project will be carried out in collaboration with the Universidad Austral, Chile.
In preparation.
Funded by:
Fire and Political Alterity in Amazonia has received funding from the Independent Research Fund Denmark.
Project: Fire and Political Alterity in Amazonia
Period: December 2022 – December 2026
Contact
Stine Krøijer
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
stine.kroijer@anthro.ku.dk
+45 35 32 15 81
Project participants
| Name | Title | Focus Area |
| Stine Krøijer | Associate Professor | Brazil, Ecuador, Climate policy |
| Søren Hvalkof | Senior Researcher | Peru, land tenure and rights |
| Cari Tusing | Post.Doc | Brazil, soy supply chain |
| Felipe Roa Pilar | PhD Fellow | Bolivia, Mennonite colonization |
| Tora Aurora Jensen | Master student | Bolivia, fire and land use change |
| Nehemias Pino | PhD Fellow | Ecuador, forest gardening |
| Fernanda Gallegos Gutiérrez | PhD Fellow | Chile, disastrous fires and agroforestry |