This paper analyses contrasting discourses of ‘climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA) for their implications on control over and access to changing resources in agriculture. One of the principal areas of contestation around CSA relates to equity, including who wins and who loses, who is able to participate, and whose knowledge and perspectives count in the process. Yet to date, the equity implications of CSA remain an under-researched area. We apply an equity framework centred on procedure, distribution and recognition, to four different discourses. Depending on which discourses are mobilised, the analysis helps to illuminate: (1) how CSA may transfer the burden of responsibility for climate change mitigation to marginalised producers and resource managers (distributive equity); (2) how CSA discourses generally fail to confront entrenched power relations that may constrain or block the emergence of more ‘pro-poor’ forms of agricultural development, adaptation to climate change, or carbon sequestration and storage (procedural equity); (3) how CSA discourses can have tangible implications for the bargaining power of the poorest and most vulnerable groups (recognition). The paper contributes to work showing the need for deeper acknowledgement of the political nature of the transformations necessary to address the challenges caused by a changing climate for the agricultural sector.

This article discusses the consequences of the 1997–1999 “Asian–Brazil–Russia” financial crisis on environmental policies and state–nongovernmental organization (NGO) relations in Brazilian Amazonia. While the crisis led to severe cuts in national budgets, active NGOs—local and international—as well as new forest management solutions implemented by coalitions of NGOs and public actors ameliorated the impacts of the financial crisis and helped improve tropical forest management governance systems over the same period. However, the article cautions against overly optimistic generalizations based on these findings due to the specificity of the case of Brazilian Amazonia as well as the somewhat superficial character of the mentioned improvements as compared to the forces behind deforestation.