Socio-environmental harm and capitalist accumulation:

A critique of the Brazilian experience through emerging concepts

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966/2026/90539

The objective of this article is to contribute to the critical analysis of socio-environmental harm in the capitalist semi-periphery by examining socio-historical processes through emerging concepts. We begin with an overview of the theoretical discussions around “green colonialism” (LANG; BRINGEL; MANAHAM, 2023), “climatic coloniality” (SULTANA, 2022), “expanded extractives” (GAGO; MEZZADRA, 2017), and “entangled accumulation” (GONÇALVES; COSTA, 2020), demonstrating their potential to reconnect socioenvironmental harm with the logic of capitalist expansion and North-South geopolitics. Next, we explore two central processes driving socio-environmental harm in Brazil: deforestation and mining. By articulating these concepts with historical processes, we examine how expanded accumulation interacts with processes of dispossession, mediated by colonial difference. Thus, the article proposes an exercise in mediating between the specific dynamics of socio-environmental harm in a semi-peripheral country and the global transformations in capitalism and coloniality.