Extracting Value, Exporting Risk - Foreign capital, profit repartriation and soy-driven deforestration in Brazil

Siwar Ortiz-Guzmán, a PhD candidate at WU Vienna's Institute for Ecological Economics, presented a poster titled "Extracting Value, Exporting Risk: Foreign Capital, Profit Repatriation, and Soy-Driven Deforestation in Brazil" at the ISIE Socio-Economic Metabolism 2026 conference in Cambridge (6–8 July). The research argues that profit repatriation from foreign-owned firms is a structural driver of land-use change in Brazil's soy frontier, tracing how soy export revenue flows up ownership chains to institutional investors concentrated in the US, Japan, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

Key findings include an estimated US$50 billion drained abroad annually in net primary income, with six trading firms — five foreign-controlled — accounting for 57% of soy exports, and just 13% of municipalities driving 95% of soy-related deforestation. With close to 18% of Amazon forest cover already cleared against an estimated tipping point of 20–25%, the work calls for capital-flow management and FDI-architecture reform as a form of nature policy to ease pressure on the frontier.