Bioeconomy and green capture through oil palm monocultures: the case of the Acará Valley in the state of Pará

Abstract

The research aims to analyze the implementation of an oil palm bioeconomy in the Pará Amazon through the Pará State Bioeconomy Plan. In doing so, we focus on the Tomé-Açu microregion, specifically the municipality of Acará, which is part of the so-called oil palm hub. The expansion of oil palm monocultures has taken hold in territories traditionally occupied by Indigenous peoples, riverine communities, and quilombola communities, generating appropriation, landscape transformations, and the criminalization of these groups. This raises the following question: How do processes of green grabbing linked to the oil palm bioeconomy affect quilombola territories? Methodologically, the study will be conducted through a literature review, participant observation, and situational ethnographic analysis in collaboration with the Associação de Moradores e Agricultores Remanescentes de Quilombolas do Alto-Acará (AMARQUALTA; Quilombola Residents and Farmers Association of Alto Acará). The preliminary conclusions are as follows: bioeconomic policy emerges in the context of climate change as a new ecological rationality capable of producing a colonial mode of inhabiting — one that promotes the financialization of forests, peoples, and ways of life — as observed in the quilombo under study.