Contested Resources and South-South Inequalities: What Sino-Brazilian Trade Means for the “Low-Carbon” Bioeconomy

Abstract

This article explores Brazil’s relationship of trade dependency to China and its implications for the former’s attempt to lead the way into a low-carbon bioeconomy. While actors from Brazil’s sucro-energetic sector try to rescale the use of agrofuels as a clean source of bio-based energy, China’s growing demand for Brazilian resources places a structural constraint on any Brazilian attempt to move away from fossil developmental paradigms. The chapter shows how green narratives of South-South cooperation—entailing the “low-carbon bioeconomy” on the Brazilian side, and the concept of “ecological civilization” on the Chinese side—collide with the high-carbon qualities of Sino-Brazilian trade. Importantly, Brazilian exports to China are currently adding to the carbon-intensive quality of the global economy. Additionally, bilateral trade is indicative of a new pattern of global inequality in which Brazilian geographies of oil, iron ore and soy extraction provide the material basis for China’s economic transformation.