Producing the Forest

Producing the Forest: Chapter 2 explores how Acrean forest protection entails increasing the production of many things other than carbon commodities—rather than an anticipated decrease in production often associated with forest carbon offsets. In the context of green capitalism, the low-yield forms of production that characterized rural Acre appeared as an opportunity to create carbon offsets and make a low-carbon rural economy. Specifically, the chapter focuses on efforts to increase açaí berry cultivation and yields in forests and fields as part of the effort to make the forest valuable in socially inclusive ways. It explicates this as what it calls inclusive productivism to show how green capitalism can be socially and environmentally inclusive and yet also reinforce the marginalization it purportedly seeks to combat.