Society-Nature & Climate
Amazonia · Climate Governance · Society–Nature Relations · Regional Development
Climate Governance, Ecological Conditions and Regional Development
Research on society–nature relations and climate change examines how ecological and material conditions become connected to societal processes and how these connections acquire regionally specific forms.
The research starts from a theoretical problem that is particularly important for a communication-theoretical understanding of regional development:
How do ecological and material conditions become socially consequential without assuming that they directly determine social structures?
Climate change provides an especially important field for investigating this question. Climatic processes operate independently of societal communication, yet they become relevant to society through observation, scientific knowledge, measurement, political programmes, legal regulation, economic valuation, organizations and infrastructures.
The research therefore examines not nature or climate as external determinants of regional development, but the processes through which ecological conditions become observed, interpreted and connected to the structures of world society.
Research Development
Research on society–nature relations has developed alongside my work on regional development and resource extraction in Amazonia. Early research on mining already raised questions about the environmental consequences of resource use and the relations between economic transformation, natural resources and regional development.
These questions subsequently expanded toward sustainable development, natural-resource management and environmental governance. Research on conservation, extractive reserves and the governance of natural resources increasingly drew attention to the ways in which ecological conditions, resource use, organizations and public policies become connected within particular regional contexts.
A further development concerned broader transformations in society–nature relations under conditions of global environmental change. Research on the Anthropocene and changing human–nature relations extended the analytical perspective beyond environmental policy toward the societal processes through which ecological transformations are observed, interpreted and addressed.
Current research on climate governance brings these trajectories together with the theoretical programme Regional Development in World Society. Climate change provides a particularly revealing field for investigating how ecological conditions become observable through science and measurement, acquire relevance to political, legal and economic operations, and become connected to organizations and historically established regional structures.
The current research therefore does not represent a departure from earlier work on resources, sustainability and environmental governance. It reformulates questions generated through these fields around the broader theoretical problem of how material and ecological conditions become socially consequential within regional configurations.
Climate Governance and World Society
Climate change has generated an increasingly differentiated global architecture of scientific observation, political negotiation, legal regulation, economic instruments, standards and organizational programmes.
Scientific institutions produce knowledge about climatic processes and ecological conditions. Political organizations formulate mitigation and adaptation programmes. Legal processes establish obligations and regulatory frameworks. Economic operations attribute value to emissions reductions, ecosystem services and carbon storage. International organizations, governments, firms, universities and civil-society organizations selectively process these heterogeneous expectations through programmes and decisions.
Climate governance can therefore be understood as a particularly revealing field for examining how heterogeneous operations associated with different function systems become selectively connected around ecological problems without being integrated into a single societal logic.
These connections do not produce uniform territorial consequences. Climate-related programmes, knowledge, standards and financial flows selectively connect to particular places, populations, organizations and ecological conditions.
Knowledge, Measurement and Ecological Relevance
Ecological conditions do not automatically become objects of societal action.
Forests, mangroves, soils, coastal ecosystems, atmospheric processes and other ecological conditions become relevant to climate governance through processes of observation and knowledge production.
Scientific research, inventories, monitoring systems, indicators, classifications and measurement technologies make particular ecological processes observable in standardized and communicable forms (Edwards 2010).
Measurement is particularly important because it can transform ecological characteristics into standardized and comparable information.
Carbon stocks can be quantified. Land-use change can be monitored. Ecosystem services can be classified. Climate risks can be mapped. Emissions and sequestration can become objects of accounting.
Such operations do not merely describe ecological conditions. Nor do they determine how organizations will respond to them. Rather, they establish forms through which ecological processes can become connected to political decisions, legal standards, economic valuation and organizational programmes.
Climate Infrastructures
Infrastructures play an important role in connecting ecological observation, knowledge production and societal communication.
Building on research on climate knowledge infrastructures (Edwards 2010), the concept of climate infrastructures is used here more broadly to refer to material, technological, scientific and institutional arrangements through which climate-related processes become observable, measurable and potentially relevant to regulation, organization and decision-making.
Such infrastructures are not distributed uniformly.
Differences in scientific knowledge, measurement capacities, organizational resources and institutional recognition affect which ecological characteristics become visible to climate governance and which remain weakly observable or weakly connected to climate-related programmes and decisions.
This creates an important connection between knowledge, infrastructure and regional inequality.
Selective Climate Territorialization
Global climate governance selectively identifies particular territories, ecosystems, resources and populations as relevant to climate-related operations.
Forests may become relevant as carbon sinks. Mangroves may become valued through their carbon-storage and coastal-protection functions. Agricultural areas may become objects of mitigation programmes. Coastal communities may become target populations of adaptation policies. Particular territories may become eligible for climate finance or conservation programmes.
Within this research programme, this process is conceptualized as selective climate territorialization.
Selective climate territorialization describes the processes through which particular ecological and territorial characteristics become observable and relevant to climate-related scientific, political, legal, economic and organizational operations.
Such territorialization can become structurally consequential when recognition within climate governance contributes to new standards, organizations, financial flows, monitoring practices or institutionalized expectations within regional configurations.
Climate Governance and Regionalization
Selective climate territorialization interacts with historically established regional structures.
Climate programmes do not enter empty territories. They encounter existing organizations, political institutions, infrastructures, economic structures, forms of land use, knowledge systems, social inequalities and collective organizations.
Regionalization therefore concerns the processes through which new climate-related connections become related to these historically established structures and potentially stabilized as elements of regional configurations.
The same global climate mechanisms can consequently generate very different regional outcomes.
In some settings, climate governance may strengthen scientific capacities, organizations, infrastructures and possibilities for international cooperation. In others, it may reinforce existing asymmetries, generate new dependencies or selectively benefit particular organizations, territories and populations.
The regional consequences of climate governance therefore cannot be inferred directly from global programmes or policy objectives.
They must be analysed through the concrete configurations in which world-societal processes become regionally connected.
Climate Governance and Regional Development
From this perspective, climate governance constitutes both a possibility and a constraint for regional development.
Connections to global climate governance may generate new regional capacities through scientific cooperation, institutionalized arrangements, environmental monitoring, technological innovation, organizational capacity-building and access to financial resources.
At the same time, these processes can create new dependencies on external knowledge, standards, certification systems, organizations and financial mechanisms.
They may also intensify regional inequalities when access to climate-related resources depends upon unevenly distributed capacities for measurement, organization, representation and institutional recognition.
The analytical question is therefore not whether participation in or connectivity to climate governance is inherently beneficial or detrimental.
Rather, research examines which regional structures are transformed, which capacities are generated, which organizations and populations gain access to climate-related programmes and resources, which dependencies emerge, and which developmental possibilities are opened or constrained.
The Zona Bragantina as an Observation Site
The Zona Bragantina in northeastern Pará provides an important empirical setting for investigating these processes.
The region combines mangrove ecosystems, coastal environments, fisheries, agricultural landscapes, urban settlements and historically established forms of resource use and collective organization.
These ecological and social conditions provide an important setting for investigating emerging connections to climate science, biodiversity conservation, coastal governance, environmental policy and climate-related financial mechanisms.
Mangroves provide a particularly revealing example.
Their ecological characteristics can become scientifically observed and measured as carbon storage, biodiversity, coastal protection and other ecosystem functions. Research on blue carbon illustrates how characteristics of mangrove ecosystems such as carbon storage can become objects of scientific measurement, valuation and governance (Beloto et al. 2023; Luisetti et al. 2024).
The Zona Bragantina provides an empirical setting for investigating whether and how such processes become connected to historically established regional structures.
This can generate connections extending far beyond the region itself — to scientific networks, international environmental organizations, governmental programmes, standards and potentially climate-related financial mechanisms.
Yet these connections interact with historically established patterns of land and resource use, organizations, local knowledge, livelihoods and inequalities.
The Zona Bragantina therefore provides an observation site for analysing how ecological characteristics become selectively territorialized, how these connections interact with established regional structures, and how they may contribute to new forms of regionalization.
Organizations and Climate Governance
Organizations play an important role in these processes as sites at which heterogeneous climate-related expectations become selectively processed through decisions, programmes and procedures.
Within their own decision-making processes, they relate scientific knowledge to political programmes, ecological conditions to measurement systems, regulatory requirements to local practices, and regional projects to national and international networks.
Organizations can therefore contribute to the formation, stabilization and transformation of climate-related relations within regional configurations.
At the same time, unequal organizational capacities may strongly influence which places, ecological conditions and populations become capable of participating in climate governance.
Research on climate governance consequently provides an important empirical field for examining the broader theoretical question of how organizations selectively process heterogeneous societal expectations and references to different function systems within regional configurations.
Current Research Questions
The research currently concentrates on several interconnected questions:
How do ecological and material conditions become relevant to societal communication and decision-making?
How do scientific knowledge, measurement and standards transform ecological characteristics into objects of climate governance?
Through which processes does global climate governance selectively territorialize particular ecosystems, places, resources and populations?
How do climate-related programmes and organizations interact with historically established regional structures?
How do organizations selectively process heterogeneous scientific, political, legal and economic expectations concerning ecological conditions within regional contexts?
How do differences in knowledge, measurement and organizational capacity shape patterns of access, participation and connectivity within climate governance?
Under what conditions does climate governance generate new regional capacities, and under what conditions does it reproduce or intensify dependencies and inequalities?
How do these transformations alter the possibilities and constraints for regional development?
Society–Nature Relations in Regional Development in World Society
Research on climate governance contributes to the broader programme Regional Development in World Society by addressing one of its central unresolved theoretical problems: the relation between communication, materiality and regional structure formation.
Its provisional proposition can be formulated as follows:
Material and ecological conditions do not determine regional social structures directly. They become consequential for regional configurations through selective processes of observation, knowledge production, measurement, valuation, regulation and organization.
Climate governance provides an especially revealing empirical field because these processes can be observed across multiple societal contexts simultaneously.
The resulting regional configurations are neither simply products of ecological conditions nor territorial expressions of global climate governance.
They are formed and transformed through historically contingent connections involving material conditions, world-societal processes, organizations, institutionalized expectations and established regional structures.
This makes society–nature relations a constitutive problem for a theory of regional development in world society rather than an external environmental variable added to it.
Research Foundations
The research field draws on social systems theory and research on ecological communication, climate knowledge infrastructures, environmental governance, territorialization and the emerging literature on blue carbon, measurement and climate finance.
Social systems theory provides the conceptual point of departure for examining how ecological conditions become relevant to societal communication without treating material processes as direct determinants of social structures. Research on climate knowledge and infrastructures extends this perspective by showing how observation, measurement, models, databases and standards make climatic and ecological processes available to scientific, political and organizational decision-making.
Research on environmental governance, REDD+ and carbon territorialization provides important comparative perspectives for analysing how climate-related programmes identify, classify and reorganize particular spaces, resources and populations. The concept of selective climate territorialization developed in this research programme builds on these discussions while emphasizing how particular ecological and territorial characteristics become selectively relevant to heterogeneous operations of world society.
A further empirical foundation is provided by research on blue carbon and mangrove ecosystems. This literature demonstrates how ecological characteristics such as carbon storage become connected to measurement, accounting, standards, governance and finance, while also showing that scientific, organizational and institutional capacities are distributed unevenly across regions.
These perspectives provide the foundation for examining climate governance not simply as environmental policy, but as a field in which ecological conditions, knowledge infrastructures, organizations, standards and financial mechanisms contribute to the formation and transformation of regional configurations.
Selected References
Edwards, P. N. (2010). A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming. MIT Press.
Luhmann, N. (1986). Ökologische Kommunikation. Kann die moderne Gesellschaft sich auf ökologische Gefährdungen einstellen? Westdeutscher Verlag.
McCall, M. K. (2016). “Beyond ‘Landscape’ in REDD+: The Imperative for ‘Territory’.” World Development, 85, 58–72. DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.05.001.
Ramcilovik-Suominen, S. (2019). “REDD+ as a Tool for State Territorialization: Managing Forests and People in Laos.” Journal of Political Ecology, 26(1), 263–281. DOI: 10.2458/v26i1.23357.
Arora-Jonsson, S., Westholm, L., Temu, B. J., & Petitt, A. (2016). “Carbon and Cash in Climate Assemblages: The Making of a New Global Citizenship.” Antipode, 48(1), 74–96. DOI: 10.1111/anti.12170.
Ullman, R., Bilbao-Bastida, V., & Grimsditch, G. (2013). “Including Blue Carbon in Climate Market Mechanisms.” Ocean & Coastal Management, 83, 15–18. DOI: 10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2012.02.009.
Thomas, S. (2014). “Blue Carbon: Knowledge Gaps, Critical Issues, and Novel Approaches.” Ecological Economics, 107, 22–38. DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.07.028.
Luisetti, T., McHarg, E., Smith, G., Brunnschweiler, C., Parker, R., Juntti, M., & Benson, L. (2024). “Blue Carbon: Challenges for Definition, Valuation and Governance.” In D. Baird & M. Elliott (Eds.), Treatise on Estuarine and Coastal Science, 2nd ed., Vol. 7, pp. 132–153. Elsevier. DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-323-90798-9.00059-7.
Beloto, N., Cotovicz Jr., L. C., Rodrigues, J. V. M., Gmach, M. R., Zimmer, M., Helfer, V., Soares, M. O., & Bezerra, L. E. A. (2023). “Blue Carbon Stock Heterogeneity in Brazilian Mangrove Forests: A Systematic Review.” Marine Pollution Bulletin, 197, 115694. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2023.115694.
Selected Research Projects
Amazônia 21 — Operational Instruments for Sustainable Development Management in Amazonia
1998–2002 · European Community / INCO-DC · Researcher / Subproject Coordinator
International research on socio-ecological transformation and the institutional conditions of sustainable development in Amazonia.
Formal and Informal Practices of Natural Resource Use and Management in the Amazon
2011–2015 · CAPES–NUFFIC · Brazilian Project Coordinator
Research on formal and informal practices of natural-resource use and management and their relations to institutional and governance arrangements in Amazonia.
Governance, Conflict Management and Natural Resource Management in Amazonia
2013–2018 · CAPES Pró-Amazônia · Researcher / Subproject Coordinator
Research on governance, conflicts and cooperation surrounding natural-resource use in Amazonia.
Selected Publications
Mathis, A. (2001). “Instrumentos para o desenvolvimento sustentável regional.” Adcontar: Revista do Centro de Estudos Administrativos e Contábeis, 2(2), 19–30.
Mathis, A. (2012). “Extração versus conservação – garimpagem de ouro e política de conservação no Estado do Amapá.” Papers do NAEA, Paper 289. DOI: 10.18542/papersnaea.v21i1.11323.
Freitas, J. S., Mathis, A., Farias Filho, M. C., Homma, A. K. O., & Silva, D. C. C. (2017). “Reservas extrativistas na Amazônia: modelo conservação ambiental e desenvolvimento social?” GEOgraphia, 19(40), 150–160. DOI: 10.22409/GEOgraphia2017.v19i40.a13806.
Freitas, J. S., Farias Filho, M. C., Homma, A. K. O., & Mathis, A. (2018). “Reservas extrativistas sem extrativismo: uma tendência em curso na Amazônia?” Revista de Gestão Social e Ambiental, 12(1), 56–72. DOI: 10.24857/rgsa.v12i1.1388.
Silva, I. L. B., Farias, A. L. A., & Mathis, A. (2024). “Entre contradições e governança, grandes projetos na Amazônia e políticas climáticas.” In R. T. Folhes & M. Vecchione Gonçalves (Eds.), Para além da COP 30: Tópicos sobre desenvolvimento na Amazônia em tempos de emergência climática, 256–278. Belém: Editora NAEA.
Current Publication Project
The International Climate Governance Regime as Possibility and Constraint for Regional Development.
Current book-chapter research examining the differentiated possibilities and constraints that global climate governance may generate for regional development, with particular attention to the Zona Bragantina in northeastern Pará.
Current Research Activities
Climate Governance and Regional Development — Zona Bragantina
Research on how global climate governance becomes connected to ecological conditions, organizations and regional structures in northeastern Pará, with particular attention to mangroves, coastal environments, environmental knowledge and the potential relevance of climate-related financial mechanisms for regional development.
Related Research
Regional Development in World Society →
The theoretical research programme examining how world-societal processes become regionally configured and shape possibilities and constraints for development.
Mining & Extractive Transformations →
Resource extraction, world-market integration and regional structural transformation.
Extractive Communities & Territorial Relations →
Resources, organizations, livelihoods and differentiated participation within regional configurations.
Policy, Evaluation & Applied Research →
Research on how knowledge, public policy, planning and organizational capacities shape attempts to influence regional transformation.