ABSTRACT
This chapter goes beyond the existing areas of agribusiness production in the Teles Pires and explores the situation in the rest of the Amazon, particularly in the lower Tapajós River Basin, in the state of Pará, to the north of Mato Grosso, where there is growing interest in soybean production and also where significant investments in river navigation infrastructure were made by official agencies in collaboration with powerful TNCs. It revisits the conventional blame on economic deficiencies or the inadequacy of existing governance approaches in order to offer a critical interpretation of the complexity of the phenomenon of poverty amid rich ecosystems and abundant natural resources. Socio-ecological tensions have been particularly relevant in relation to activities such as agribusiness production, cattle ranching, dam construction and rapid urban growth. The chapter underpins combined various sources of data and complementary research strategies to allow the reinterpretation of poverty from a political economy and, more specifically, a political ecology perspective.
