The rapid disappearance of tropical forests has led to increased adoption of sustainability commitments. However, implementing zero-deforestation commitments faces numerous challenges, including resistance from those who benefit from the current practices in agricultural commodity-exporting countries, such as large-scale farmers. This study focuses on industrial soy farmers in Tocantins, a Brazilian state in the Cerrado ecoregion with high soy-driven deforestation rates. Drawing from a review of the land-use change literature in Brazil and background interviews with soy farmers in Tocantins, we ran a focus group with them to appraise three scenarios of increased restrictions on agricultural land-use expansion. They are: (1) access to a productivity-increasing technology conditioned to refraining from opening new farms in areas with native vegetation; (2) a hardened European policy limiting imports to conversion-free soy regardless of the ecosystem; and (3) a strengthening of Brazil's environmental policy, increasing the amount of land farmers are to set aside for conservation. Our findings show Brazilian soy farmers are highly skeptical of environmental regulations and suspicious of foreign actors. While rallying for greater autonomy, they rejected attempts to rein in their (agri)business-as-usual practices and dismissed such policy efforts as ultimately driven by hidden agendas – showing a strong inclination to resort to conspiracy theories, understood as alternative explanations that attribute events to scheming by powerful actors. A frontier mindset, underscored by libertarian values, coupled with distrust in state institutions or in the motives of foreign regulators thus create an obstructive, reactionary stance in the face of zero-deforestation efforts in Brazil.

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“Greenlash”和环境治理中的反动利益相关者：对巴西大豆种植者反对零森林砍伐的分析


热带森林的迅速消失导致人们越来越多地采取可持续发展承诺。然而，履行零毁林承诺面临着诸多挑战，包括来自农产品出口国当前做法的受益者（例如大规模农民）的抵制。这项研究的重点是托坎廷斯的工业化大豆种植者，托坎廷斯是巴西塞拉多生态区的一个州，因大豆造成的森林砍伐率很高。根据对巴西土地利用变化文献的回顾以及对托坎廷斯大豆种植者的背景访谈，我们与他们组成了一个焦点小组，评估了对农业土地利用扩张增加限制的三种情景。它们是：（1）获得提高生产力的技术，但条件是避免在有原生植被的地区开设新农场； (2) 严格的欧洲政策限制进口非转化大豆，无论生态系统如何； (3) 加强巴西的环境政策，增加农民留出的土地数量以进行保护。我们的调查结果显示，巴西大豆种植者对环境法规高度怀疑，并对外国参与者持怀疑态度。在争取更大自主权的同时，他们拒绝了控制其（农业）一切照旧做法的尝试，并认为此类政策努力最终是由隐藏的议程驱动的——表现出诉诸阴谋论的强烈倾向，阴谋论被理解为另一种解释，事件到强大演员的阴谋。自由主义价值观所强调的前沿思维，加上对国家机构或外国监管机构动机的不信任，因此在巴西零森林砍伐努力面前形成了一种阻碍性的反动立场。