Beneficiaries and Forest Citizenship

Beneficiaries and Forest Citizenship: Chapter 4 centers on forest beneficiaries—those who received governmental benefits (funded in part by forest carbon’s new value) that are meant to encourage them to protect the forest and its carbon. It explores forest beneficiary as a figure of environmentally mediated and negotiated citizenship, in conversation with the Acrean state’s understanding of the concept of florestania—a term often translated as “forest citizenship.” The chapter traces negotiations between agricultural technicians and smallholders over what it should mean to be a beneficiary. While the former group saw benefits as a temporary way to help smallholders become independent, productive, and socially organized rural producers, the latter understood benefits as forging an ongoing and valuable relationship with the state. Smallholder beneficiaries had some leverage, the chapter suggests, because the Acrean state depended on them to keep forest carbon sequestered in a socially inclusive way.