The Production of Excess - When Abundance Becomes Diplomatic Subordination

Latin America does not suffer only from scarcity. Very often, it suffers from producing excess before transforming production into internal service. Excess soy, meat, minerals, energy, converted land, captured water, credit, logistics, political attention, and commodities. When this excess does not return as schools, health care, sanitation, clean energy, reusable water, transportation, living forests, local technology, and yield to body-territory, it must be exported. And when it must be exported, it becomes dependent on tariffs, international exchanges, foreign buyers, certifications, exchange rates, sanctions, diplomatic agreements, and the policies of other States.

The problem is not production. The problem is production without internal metabolism. A body-territorial economy would first ask: how much of this production improves the life of those who live in the territory? How much reduces the cost of energy? How much restores riparian forests? How much reuses water? How much strengthens cities, original peoples, traditional communities, local farmers, and biomes? The colonial economy asks another question: how much can we export? The first question generates Real Jiwasa. The second may generate subordinated abundance: large volume, little living return.

ECLAC has warned that Latin America needs to escape the trap of low growth capacity through more sophisticated, territorial, and coordinated productive development policies. Its 2025 report on productive development policies discusses the need to strengthen productive capacities, institutions, and policies that increase added value and sustainable growth. The body-territorial reading deepens this point: it is not enough to grow; we must ask where growth breathes. If it breathes only in exports, ports, and trade balances, but not in neighborhoods, villages, schools, rivers, and biomes, we remain trapped in excess without return.

This excess also captures the State. To keep large export chains competitive, governments begin to organize subsidized credit, tax exemptions, infrastructure, trade diplomacy, insurance, roads, ports, railways, environmental flexibilization, and international defense. Sumaúma reported that large agribusiness companies benefited from billions of dollars in federal tax exemptions, in a context of chains linked to deforestation, pesticides, and pollution. The effect is called incentive. The cause may be the capture of public attention: the State protects the competitiveness of excess while body-territory still waits for treated water, sanitation, clean energy, and local income.

External dependence appears when surplus needs a buyer before serving its own territory. ECLAC estimated a 4% growth in the value of Latin America and the Caribbean’s goods exports in 2024, in a report on international trade and global reconfiguration. But exporting more does not automatically mean living better. If prices are defined on external exchanges, if global buyers impose conditions, if tariffs change with elections in other countries, if foreign certifications define the product’s value, abundance becomes dependence. The territory produces; another center decides the price, the rule, and the rhythm.

For this reason, surplus without internal service becomes diplomacy of subordination. The State begins to negotiate in order to sell what it has not yet transformed into life inside its own territory. Instead of using clean energy to lower the cost of local industry, public transportation, sustainable irrigation, schools, hospitals, and community technology, it exports cheap energy as a comparative advantage. Instead of using food for regional food sovereignty, it exports commodities and later imports inflation. Instead of using carbon credit to remunerate those who live in and preserve the territory, it sells compensation outward. Abundance becomes external showcase and internal lack.

This is where the proposal for retail CBDC with credit without debt enters. If every national territory is valued through carbon credits, reusable water, riparian forests, green corridors, zero waste, clean energy, and real preservation, money can be born not only from debt, but from living territory. This credit without debt would not be a loan with interest; it would be daily territorial yield, issued through a retail CBDC to the local CPF or to groups of CPFs from communities that live in and preserve the biome. Original peoples, traditional communities, riverine peoples, quilombolas, and residents of standing forests would no longer be treated as obstacles to development, but as living issuers of value.

The logic is simple: a living forest emits yield; a city without original vegetation pays repair. Properties and cities that removed native vegetation, destroyed riparian forests, impermeabilized soil, and broke green corridors should pay a fee equivalent to the carbon credit that territory could generate if it were alive. The positive exception would be Bribri prosperity: zero waste, reusable water, protected riparian forests, functional green corridors, clean energy, local production, and material circularity. In this way, the city stops being merely a consumer of territory and becomes a participant in the metabolism of the biome.

Reusable water is central to this turn. The economy of excess tends to extract water, pollute water, and discard water. A body-territorial economy reuses, treats, recirculates, and returns it. The OECD published a 2025 report on the circular water economy in Latin America, showing that only a few selected countries safely treat more than 60% of domestic wastewater and that there is large room to advance reuse, governance, and water circularity. Water cannot be seen as a municipal cost; it is sovereignty infrastructure. Without reusable water, the production of excess dries the future.

Clean energy also needs to change destination. ECLAC argues that climate action can help Latin America and the Caribbean overcome development traps by articulating productive transformation, inclusion, and sustainability. But clean energy cannot become merely a new colonial product. If solar parks, wind power, green hydrogen, and biomass first serve exports, while local communities continue paying high energy bills, we repeat the same pattern: excess outward, scarcity inward. The transition will only be Real Jiwasa if it lowers the cost of local life before improving international image.

The Latin American market must be treated as the first layer of valorization. Before selling raw surplus to the world, the region should add value among itself: clean energy for regional industry, high-quality processed foods, forest bioproducts, water technologies, biodiversity-based medicines, public AI, green semiconductors, electric mobility, sanitation, bioeconomy, and territorial environmental credits. Surplus should only leave after strengthening the Latin American body-territory. Overvaluing surplus is not charging more out of vanity; it is preventing the continent from selling cheaply what cost forest, water, soil, labor, and future.

Recent research on trade and deforestation shows that the effects of excess do not remain at the point of production. A 2024 study on Brazil argues that agricultural export shocks cause local expansion and forest cover loss, with pollution and mortality effects in distant cities, creating a health externality connected to trade. This confirms the body-territorial thesis: surplus is not neutral. It crosses the atmosphere, lungs, rivers, hospitals, public budgets, and lifetimes. When profit goes to the export chain and the cost remains in the territory, there is internal subordination even before external diplomacy.

For this reason, the reader’s metacognitive question must be: did this production return as internal service before becoming surplus? Did soy return as food and local income? Did clean energy return as lower tariffs? Did carbon return to the CPF that preserves? Was water reused? Did the city recover green corridors? Did the forest receive daily yield? Did the State receive proportional taxes or grant exemptions? Does diplomacy defend body-territory, or only the foreign buyer? The answer defines whether we are facing sovereign abundance or subordinated abundance.

The conclusion is direct: excess without internal service becomes dependence. It becomes dependence on tariffs, exchanges, buyers, exchange rates, certifications, credit, insurance, and foreign policy. The Latin American New World must reverse the order: first life, then surplus; first body-territory, then export; first reusable water, clean energy, standing forest, and local yield, then the global market. The standing forest must emit money. The city without biome must pay repair. Surplus must be overvalued because it carries water, soil, labor, carbon, ancestry, and future. Abundance is only sovereignty when it returns to those who sustain the territory.

Selected references after 2021

ECLAC — Panorama of Productive Development Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2025 — 2025

Supports the need for productive development policies capable of overcoming the region’s low-growth trap by strengthening productive and institutional capacities.

ECLAC — The economics of climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2025 — 2026

Supports the idea that climate action can help the region overcome development traps by articulating productivity, inclusion, transition, and sustainability.

ECLAC — International Trade Outlook for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2024 — 2024

Supports the analysis of foreign trade, global reconfiguration, and regional recovery, helping discuss dependence on exports, buyers, and external markets.

ECLAC — Value of goods exports in Latin America and the Caribbean — 2024

Supports the data point of 4% growth in the value of regional exports in 2024, useful for distinguishing export growth from territorial return.

Sumaúma — “Tax exemptions are fuelling deforestation and pollution” — 2025

Supports the critique of tax waivers and agribusiness incentives, connecting exemptions, deforestation, pollution, and capture of public resources.

OECD — The Circular Water Economy in Latin America — 2025

Supports the importance of circular water economy, reuse, wastewater treatment, and water governance in Latin America.

UN-Water — Progress on Wastewater Treatment: 2024 Update — 2024

Supports the global urgency of accelerating wastewater treatment and reuse as part of SDG target 6.3.

World Bank — Scaling Water Reuse — 2025

Supports the idea that water reuse is strategic infrastructure for water security, circularity, and territorial resilience.

Du, Li, and Zou — “Trade, Trees, and Lives” — 2024

Supports the causal connection between agricultural trade, deforestation, pollution, and health effects in distant cities, showing that exports can generate hidden territorial costs.

Reuters — Soy Moratorium, tax incentives, and global buyers — 2025

Supports the diplomatic and commercial dimension of dependence on buyers, incentives, and private environmental protection agreements.