Territorial Visions and Climate Policy Clashes

Jair Bolsonaro’s Amazon Strategy in Historical Context

Abstract

The study examines how elements of Brazil's military geopolitical tradition related to the Amazon have been revived under Jair Bolsonaro's government. The analysis argues that Bolsonaro's sovereignist and climate-denying policies are not merely populist deviations but rather a structural continuity that comes from the idea of "grandeza" and the logic of a developmental-expansionist state. Recognizing climate change would have meant limiting Brazilian state control in the Amazon; therefore, climate policy necessarily appeared as an "external dictate" in government discourse. The study shows that under Bolsonaro, sovereignty became a selectively applied political resource that simultaneously rejected environmental norms and encouraged foreign economic presence. The Amazon embodied one of the sharpest geopolitical contradictions of the climate change era.