When laws destroy nature

The first one is colonialism.

Broadly speaking, colonialism refers to the political and economic system of violence, control, and extraction of one territory over another.

It is characterized by land seizures and forced labor, and the restructuring of local societies.

Unfortunately, it has happened many times throughout history and in almost every corner of the world.

There is a danger, though, in thinking of colonialism as a purely historical concept or something that can be packaged as a thing of the past.

In addition to the ongoing colonial projects of the 20th and 21st century, as we will learn today, those that got started 400 years ago are still defining the legal systems and livelihoods of a lot of us today.

Another important concept for today is the idea of private property and property rights.

It seems fairly simple because we're all used to what that means to us in our lives.

I own this.

You own that.

We have a record of it somewhere.

Dr. Pais is going to do a much better job of explaining how that concept has evolved, but for now, I'll just remind us up front that these terms didn't always function the way we understand them now.

Okay, one last word that might be helpful is dispossession.

This means the act of depriving someone of land, property, or other possessions.

Simple enough, but it's quite relevant for the episode today.

In the talk to follow, Dr. Mariana Dias Pais is going to walk us through a case study of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, which can be applied to help us understand how important colonial legal history is in explaining many of the environmental conflicts we see today.