Charges of neocolonialism justify deforestation by recasting conservation as foreign domination.

Evidence

The Amazon rain forest is being clear-cut and burned at a fast pace to create farmland. This valuable ecological resource is being converted from a carbon absorber to a carbon emitter. International environmental groups have made efforts to save the rain forest by funding the creation of protected natural reserves. These conservation projects have aroused vigorous opposition by powerful business and political groups (Rohter, 2007). Business interests want to open up the rain forest to mining, logging, and agricultural projects supported by a network of highways, dams, and ports. Political extremists on both sides branded the conservation effort as a new form of colonialism organized by a “Green Mafia.” In the fight for public opinion, they claimed that the environmental movement was a pretext for a plot by the “hegemonic powers” to take over the Amazon rain forest “to maintain and augment their domination” (Rohter, 2007). Convinced that the environmental initiative by outsiders was a threat to Brazilian sovereignty, a major share of the Brazilian general public sided with the opposition forces. In this inhospitable political climate, Brazilians regarded the market approach of payment for halting deforestation and reducing carbon emissions as suspect. … Brazilian lawmakers passed a law granting amnesty to landowners who deforested areas illegally and opened up huge new areas of Amazon forest for farming and ranching (Romero, 2012). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2533

Categorization

• XREF: This is precisely the rationalization mechanism connecting to Cooper’s social-conservatism claims and authoritarianism patterns in the vault — conservation is framed as foreign hegemonic threat to national sovereignty. — connects to: Sixteenth-century apologists justified deforestation by claiming profits could offset ecological losses. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 219; Deforestation in the Amazon is economically rational under the existing legal and enforcement regime. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 319
• SEED: The ‘Green Mafia’ framing is a clean case study for an essay on how environmental action gets delegitimized as neocolonial domination.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2533