In the department of "problems we thought we solved decades ago," deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, which was a major target of environmental movements in years past, has radically increased since 2015.
In some ways this is a familiar story. American ag giant Cargill is weaseling out of its own environmental commitment (they had committed to stop sourcing products linked to new deforestation by 2020 but are now pushing that deadline back to 2030). Local farmers growing for the commodities market are incentivized to burn the jungle to plant monocultures (soy, in this case), with devastating environmental effects.
But there is an interesting twist here. Bolivian president Evo Morales has justified the recent expansion of "intensive agriculture"--i.e., rainforest-destroying monoculture and cattle ranching--by arguing it promotes Bolivian food sovereignty. In fact, though, most of the soy produced in this manner is exported via international commodities markets rather than being consumed domestically.
Writing for the Center for International Forestry Research, Barbara Fraser gives a fascinating account of the tension between sustainability goals and economic development in Bolivia. As a socialist, Morales has expressed a commitment to exploring non-market-based methods for reaching sustainability goals, a laudable idea in principle. But in practice this has led to the decentralization of public administration and the weakening of carbon trading programs, with troubling environmental effects.
As CIFOR scientist Pablo Pacheco puts it, "This is not specific to Bolivia. Many other countries face this contradiction. The challenge is to find ways to reconcile food production with forest protection, and to decouple agricultural growth, which has an important role in meeting food security goals, from deforestation.”
The question of how to balance environmental concerns with issues of national sovereignty, the rights of indigenous peoples, and economic well-being is bafflingly complex, constituting one of the "wicked problems" referred to by Horst Rittel. And time is running out.