Indigenous Peoples and REDD + Regulation in Brazil: Beyond the War of the Worlds?

This article focuses on the actors, interests and ideologies shaping Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) regulation in Brazil, with a particular focus on indigenous territories. It examines the convergence of four parallel and potentially conflicting initiatives: a consultation exercise led by the federal Environment Ministry; the development of sub-national regulatory frameworks by states in the Amazon region; the introduction of a ‘REDD Certification’ bill in Congress; and a civil society effort to establish principles and criteria for ‘socioenvironmental’ safeguards. The article interrogates the extent to which this convergence has resolved underlying tensions or merely postponed engaging with them, drawing on Bruno Latour’s concept of a ‘war of the worlds’ to examine the highly contested  relationship between market-based approaches and the rights of indigenous peoples.