From Protest to Professionalization: Brazilian Environmental Activism After Rio-92

Abstract

In the past decade, environmental activism in Brazil has experienced a substantial tactical shift. Many activists have gained access to national political offices, the most prominent of whom is Marina Silva at the Ministry of the Environment. This research shows that protest groups of the 1980s paved the way for a professionalized form of environmental activism that relies on a firm-like organizational profile and expert staffing. Today, far away from confrontation, environmental activism in Brazil builds on cooperative relationships between political authorities and scientific elites. In this article, the authors argue that the transmutation of the profile of activism was largely stimulated by the availability of new resources and opportunities and the presence of national and transnational alliances available after Rio-92. The argument presented here draws on an analysis of the two biggest and most important environmental organizations in Brazil, namely, the SOS Atlantic Forest Foundation and the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA).

Fitness for Purpose in Online Communities: Community Complexity Framework for Diagnosis and Design of Socio-Technical Systems

“…However, there is certain regularity in that more mature and long-standing communities often tackle more complex goals. For example, groups of activists tend to form NGOs after recurring actions ( Staggenborg and Staggenborg, 1988 ; Alonso and Maciel, 2010 ), fundraisers grow effective management structures as they gather experience in repeated events ( Herman and Renz, 1998 ) and businesses grow and develop more complex products after initial success ( Hobday, 1998 ). In all these examples, experience enables achieving more complex goals but it is often accompanied with an evolution of the social systems – not only the goals change, but also the complexity of the group as well.…”

Corporate Movements in Democratic Brazil: Informal Business Networks, Civil Activism, and Political Influence

“…According to conventional explanations, the institutional and ideological proximity this group developed with the Lula administration, closer than anything the PNBE developed under Cardoso, should have led to either internal polarisation, as happened to the PNBE and other business associations, or to demobilisation, as experienced by many interest groups and movements co‐opted by Lulismo (Alonso and Maciel, ). However, this did not occur: during the next decade, the network continued with its agenda even when it conflicted with the government, particularly as environmental and corruption grievances returned to the spotlight.…”

Provincialising Nature: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Politics of the Environment in Latin America

“…An ongoing example of this argument is the question of Brazilian stewardship over the Amazon region. The Amazonian territory within Brazil's borders and the social, environmental and economic problems in that region, tend to be viewed internally as an exclusively domestic matter, although this view is not necessarily shared by those domestic social movements and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) engaged in international networking and campaigning (Alonso and Maciel, 2010;Hochstetler and Keck, 2007). Brazil has long resisted any form of international Amazonian deforestation monitoring and rejects what it calls the 'internationalisation' of the Amazon.…”