ABSTRACT
This entry argues that since the origin of environmental policy making in Brazil, environmentalists have worked from inside the state to help design policy and build institutions. Even during Brazil's harsh military dictatorship (1964–1989), conservationists working in the government influenced policies regulating natural resource use. During the 1980s, “socio-environmentalist” thinking increasingly dominated the Brazilian environmental movement. This approach criticized traditional top-down approaches and called for greater community participation in policy making and in environmental protection itself. In the 1990s, close collaboration between nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and government agencies resulted in a number of innovative programs and institutions influenced by that philosophy, such as the creation of extractivist reserves. In the 2000s, these collaborative relations further intensified with the appointment as Minister of Environment of a renowned activist, Marina Silva. Today, as Silva has emerged as an important oppositional candidate against the governing party, relations between the federal government and environmental NGOs are more contentious than in the past. Nonetheless, the continued engagement of a large group of activists in electoral campaigns suggests that the boundary between movement politics and institutional politics continues to be blurred in the Brazilian environmental sector.
