Ontological Security and Climate Policy in Jair Bolsonaro's Brazil: Understanding the Emotional Underpinnings of Environmental Destruction

In this paper, we examine Brazil’s climate/environmental discourse and policy during Jair Bolsonaro’s administration (2019-2022), focusing on the relationship between the state leader and the powerful agricultural sector. We address the following question: What factors drove and sustained Bolsonaro's strong connection with Brazilian agribusiness, leading to the normalization of policies and discourses that undermined Brazil's environmental commitments and stance in global climate negotiations? We argue that, by mobilising and embracing collective experiences and symbols of Brazilian agribusiness and confronting those who were seen as threats to these, Jair Bolsonaro’s administration promoted a fantasised and emotionally charged conception of Brazil’s national identity that merged the nation to the symbolic orientation of a sub-national group. The inter-subjective constitution of ontological security, through emotional attachments, was the outcome of a temporary symbiosis between these two state/societal actors which embraced and realised a shared fantasy, leading to the normalisation of a set of climate policies, discourses and practices. Drawing on Lacan, we propose that the enjoyment (jouissance), deriving from the inter-relationship between the pursuit of a desired fantasy of nationhood and the fixation on those who were perceived as obstacles to it, was the driving force behind the ontological security aspirations and the accompanying political projects of both state actors and the agricultural sector that persisted even after Bolsonaro’s departure from the presidency.