Sustainability and Social Justice
‘Tradescapes’ in the Forest: Framing Infrastructure's Relation to Territory, Commodities, and Flows
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Pressure to facilitate the flow of commodities and capital across global and national markets has translated into narratives and programs prioritizing integration and development of forested regions. The 2009 World Bank Development Report argues that to reduce distance, infrastructure development is crucial. The infrastructure imperative, however, reworks a broader array of investment flows, property regimes, forest cover, and socio-political rights across scales as it drives increases in the speed of commodity extraction, production, mobility, and consumption. With illustrations from Amazonia and Selva Maya, the paper proposes ‘tradescapes’ as a useful framework to analyze infrastructure projects as part of multi-scalar mega-corridor networks and financial flows. Tradescapes transform relations between society, territory, and environment, with implications for infrastructure governance, resilience, and sustainability.
Publication Title
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
Publication Date
12-2021
Volume
53
First Page
29
Last Page
36
ISSN
1877-3435
DOI
10.1016/j.cosust.2021.10.004
Keywords
flows, tradescapes, commodities, forests, infrastructure
Repository Citation
Delpino Marimón, Pilar; Humphreys Bebbington, Denise; Bebbington, Anthony; Sauls, Laura; Cuba, Nicholas; Chicchon, Avecita; Hecht, Susanna; Rogan, John; Ray, Rebecca; Diaz, Oscar; Kandel, Susan; Osborne, Tracey; Rivera, Madelyn; and Zalles, Viviana, "‘Tradescapes’ in the Forest: Framing Infrastructure's Relation to Territory, Commodities, and Flows" (2021). Sustainability and Social Justice. 21.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_idce/21
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
