ABSTRACT
The Pantanal is a geological depression in the Upper Paraguay River Basin (UPRB) which extends for around 148,000 kilometer where, due to the long residence of water in the flat landscape, a large tropical wetland was naturally formed. This chapter considers the legacy from the past, the controversies of regional development and the perspectives for the future. It explains that the majority of the analyses offer a partial and superficial examination of the conservation challenges and environmental threats posed to the Brazilian section of the Pantanal. The chapter argues that instead of a crude contrast between a bucolic, romanticized Pantanal dominated by extensive cattle production and the disruption associated with modern day agribusiness, there exists is a continuum of socio-ecological problems that crosses the centuries. It talks about the compound ontology of scarcity which is established according to specific historic-geographical circumstances and, in the market-based society; it is based on processes of social differentiation that serve the capital accumulation.
