Over the past 18 years, Dr Grace Iara Souza has developed a deep understanding of the impacts of global environmental governance and social policies on local rainforest defenders in the Brazilian Amazon. Her academic training is rooted in Political Ecology, and her professional experience includes project management in the educational, private, and charity sectors, teaching in higher education and researching environmental conservation and development.
Grace spends some of her time advising Synchronicity Earth as our Latin America affiliate. Her knowledge and experience working with conservationists and policymakers in Brazil and Latin America provides a vital bridge, both in terms of knowledge and culture, between our partners on the ground and our London-based team. In this interview, she speaks to Jim Pettiward about her pathway into environmental conservation.
Can you describe how you came to be working in the environmental sector?
Grace Iara and the Guarani leader Kerexu Yxapyry at the Indigenous Free Land Camp (ATL) 2022
Grace: My introduction to environmental conservation began when I was working in the private sector for the fourth-largest producer of sugar and ethanol in Brazil. That was back in the early 2000s, and the company was looking into producing carbon credit certificates in line with the Kyoto Protocol. I spent a lot of time researching the theme and preparing the team for all the phases of the Clean Development Mechanism certification, which meant travelling around Brazil to get a feel for what was happening in different regions.
At that time, I was also studying International Relations, but I found that rather than foreign trade, my main interest was in the relationship between what was happening at a local level and global policy and governance systems. But it was only once studying in the UK and being exposed to a more critical view of environmental history that I started to develop a more critical understanding of global governance and offsetting initiatives like carbon credits (or ‘licenses to pollute’, as I call them).
In 2007, I moved to the UK to study English, and I ended up going on to a master’s degree on Environment, Politics and Globalisation at King’s College, London, in 2010.
As my knowledge developed, I began to understand there was something wrong with the whole concept of offsetting carbon emissions.
Countries and companies with higher greenhouse gas emissions have been doing little to reduce their contributions to climate change and it is unfair to the planet and biodiversity-rich countries to provide ‘licences to pollute’ when they are the ones most impacted by deforestation, pollution, and the impacts of climate change.
I knew that the best place for me to carry out my master’s research would be in the Amazon. At that point, I was one of those ‘paulistas’ (resident of São Paulo), a Brazilian who had to leave Brazil to really see Brazil. I had grown up inside the country, but my understanding was limited by the social mobility and privileges of living in the country’s business capital. This added to how little I’d seen of the multiple versions of Brazil and my vision of the world back then.
I felt I needed to see how local people in the Amazon understood the profound importance of the rainforest and its role in global human security. I started looking into the idea of the ‘internationalisation’ of the Amazon. And once I was there, I realised the price local people paid by being a part of a global natural resource, something vitally important to global human and environmental security.
From that moment on, the way I perceived the world changed, particularly in relation to concepts such as wealth, development, and security. I realised I needed more time in the Amazon and that was when I decided to study for a PhD.
