The paper discusses the process of mapping environmental conflicts in the
Brazilian State of Minas Gerais, highlighting the epistemological differences
between the concepts of conflicts and impacts. By focusing on the case of
mining registered in the map, it analyzes the effects of abstract global ideas
upon politically-grounded processes in Brazil. It reveals how global
environmental policies and strategies related to consensus building are
presented as solutions to environmental conflicts and interrogates how such
strategies, driven by transnational financial institutions, have been adopted
by Brazilian agencies in turn producing depoliticizing effects (i.e. shifting
the focus from rights to interests). If participation has been a key concept
within a global sustainability paradigm, and one that seemingly responds well
to calls for democracy in countries like Brazil, negotiation is the medium
through which participation (therefore democracy/the political) must occur.
Yet in a process typical of coloniality of knowledge and power, dissent and
alterity are sidelined, perpetuating processes of environmental inequalities
