Terraforming Earth—The Environmental Economics of Engineered Participatory Watershed Management in Ceará, Northeast Brazil

Brazilian watershed management councils offer an interesting environmental eco-nomics case study. They illustrate how the noösphere is a major force in environmental regulations that terraform surface topography. Across the state of Ceará, Northeast Brazil, democratic management system of watersheds, i.e., watershed management councils (WMC) promote scientific and democratic regulations of environmental rela-tions: a clear case of the noösphere transforming the semiarid landscape into a fertile ground for agriculture. This paper discusses the environmental economics of the re-gion by studying the noösphere using both institutional diagnosis and social network analysis. I argue that environmental and ecological discussions should privilege the category of “terraformation” over “adaptation”, especially now, in the Anthropocene. In other words, the increased dominance of mankind over nature would be better un-derstood by treating democratic environmental governance and sustainable develop-ment as a kind of “ritual regulation” which shapes “environmental relationships”. The lessons from Ceará’s 38-year-old natural experiment could prove valuable for tackling the more pressing issues of environmental change and human collective action.