Colonial law helped build modern deforestation. Legal historian Dr. Mariana Dias Paes traces how nineteenth-century property law created mechanisms for land dispossession and environmental destruction in Brazil's Atlantic Forest. Her research connects that history to the Amazon and Congo rainforests, where colonial legal systems continue to shape land disputes, court decisions, Indigenous rights, and conservation. Rather than treating environmental law only as a solution, the episode examines how law helped create the conditions for rainforest loss and why those structures persisted after independence. This is an environmental history of private property, colonialism, and the legal architecture still influencing environmental policy, environmental justice, and forest conservation today.
Episode Guests: Dr. Mariana Dias Paes
Browse Dr. Dias Paes’ publications on Google Scholar
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Audio Editing by Clark Marchese, Video Editing by Madelyn Cho Weir
Videography and Set Design by Le Studio Du Passage
Cover Art by Laurel Wong
Theme music by Nela Ruiz
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