Researcher Caio Auler, from the Graduate Program in International Relations at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), commented on the role of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which he said indicates that the agency views the United States as having a co-management role or shared responsibility over the Amazon. Such an approach, he added, suggests external interference in Brazil’s sovereignty over the region.
Caio Auler, a researcher with the Graduate Program in International Relations at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC).
“In the studies I have been conducting, I observe that the Amazon has been an object of interest not only for the United States more broadly, but also for a specific U.S. institution, USAID, which in Portuguese stands for the United States Agency for International Development. USAID was recently dismantled, at the beginning of 2025, by the second Trump administration in the United States. Although it was not entirely shut down and remains active, USAID is an agency with a long-standing presence in Brazil, having operated in the country since the 1960s and 1970s as a partner of the military regime. In the 1990s, particularly after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, USAID began to direct its resources and interests in Brazil toward the Amazon region. From the 1990s onward, it has gradually changed its modus operandi in Brazil. Whereas in the 1960s and 1970s it established bilateral agreements directly with the federal government during the military regime, since the 1990s it has prioritized direct engagement with its final counterparts in projects in the Amazon.
These counterparts are mainly non-governmental organizations, both international and Brazilian, but above all private companies. This has been USAID’s operating model in the Amazon, based largely on engagement with NGOs and private-sector actors. To give a sense of the scale of this activity, a 2020 report titled Amazon Vision, published by USAID itself, estimates the resources allocated to environmental projects in the Amazon from 2015 to 2024. The agency projected investments of around $257 million over that period, equivalent to roughly 1.3 billion reais at current exchange rates.
As a more concrete example of the introduction of the private sector in the Amazon, there is a particularly significant project known as Amazon Connect, developed in 2022. The project aimed to stimulate production and supply chains linked to what is described as low-carbon agriculture, known by the acronym ABC. In practice, however, the project mobilized private-sector companies to purchase and sell equipment related to low-carbon agriculture. A 2024 results report on Amazon Connect states that the project established partnerships with five large private companies in the agricultural sector. The report does not name these companies, but it is known that firms such as Cargill, a major U.S.-based agribusiness with extensive operations in Brazil, are part of and support the project, as does JBS, a Brazilian company in the animal protein and meat production sector.
In practice, Amazon Connect serves as an example, alongside several other projects I have examined, of USAID initiatives in the Amazon that are aimed at creating value chains oriented around private interests brought together within these projects. In the case of Amazon Connect, this includes companies such as Cargill and JBS, which illustrates the general thrust of this approach.”
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