Markus Kröger has spent the past two decades researching the political ecocomy of deforestation, resource extraction and global development, with extensive fieldwork in the Amazon and Latin America.
This extensive fieldwork has served to inform his insights on deforestation and how it is connected to tipping points. Scientists believe the Amazon may be approaching a tipping point, which is a threshold beyond which parts of the rainforest could gradually shift into a much drier savanna ecosystem. What's particularly concerning is that this could happen long before the entire forest is lost, with consequences that extend far beyond the Amazon by accelerating climate change and increasing the risk of other tipping points.
In light of tipping points, there is extensive knowledge that the stakes are this high with environmental degredation caused by deforestation. However, even with this knowledge why is it so difficult and slow to stop the mechancisms of deforestation? In this conversation, Markus and Kaisa explore the political and economic forces that keep deforestation going, the interests and mindsets that reinforce these patterns, what Markus has learned from years of fieldwork, and what more hopeful alternatives he sees. This conversation links to the work Markus explores in his open-access book Clearcut: Political Economies of Deforestation, published in 2025 by Cambridge University Press.
Give this episode a listen if you want to hear about:
- why the Amazon's tipping point matters far beyond South America
- how entire economies can become locked into patterns that ultimately undermine their own long-term future
- what Markus calls moral economies — the beliefs and values that shape what societies see as progress
- what alternatives are already in motion, such as social movements and preservation and development of forest-based knowledge and economy
- why understanding the system behind deforestation is essential if we want to change it
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