sustainbility for non-sustainable use of natural resources in western Bahia and the Eagle Ford Shale of Texas

AbstractThe paper compares two regions on the basis of the discourses published in well disseminated publications, complemented with field work. Western Bahia, a region of intensive agriculture, is compared to the Eagle Ford Shale, a region of unconventional oil and gas production. I focus on how elites use sustainability in environmental governance to justify continued resource extraction in agriculture and hydrocarbons. I emphasize how spectacles function to enhance "regional prestige" (CHASE, 2003) and how social aspects of sustainability help consolidate the resource-extraction ambitions of elites. In both cases, regional elites do not reproduce verbatim national discourses; rather, elites invest in either translating national discourses into regional form, or channeling regional concerns and constraints into new discursive solutions to keep resource extraction possible.