The globalization of nature in the Jequitinhonha Valley/MG: ecological modernization in eucalyptus monoculture

Abstract

As the environmental crisis becomes a consensus in the 20th century, globalised space begins to be produced with the support of new regulations on material and energy sources, in order to control, prolong and economise these resources. In this proposal for environmental regulation through ecological modernisation, the discourse of sustainability is co-opted by economic power, as can be seen in the management of the Aperam group in its eucalyptus cultivation in Minas Gerais. Therefore, the objective is to analyse the international insertion of the environmental issue in the capitalist production of space and demonstrate its characteristics in the Jequitinhonha Valley. Based on Lefebvre’s research on social space, the article starts from a theoretical discussion of political ecology as a basis for analysing multilateral and corporate documents and proceeds to a bibliographic review of development projects and the expansion of eucalyptus monoculture in the region since the 1970s, with the addition of secondary data on conflicts. The results show a correspondence between the discourses of sustainability present in global and regional production of space, materialised in the intensification of the use of resources aimed at the external market, without greater job creation and with technologies more focused on productivity than on ecological and social debts.