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NEGOTIATING SOLUTIONS FOR LOCAL SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND THE PREVENTION OF DEFORESTATION IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON

By Imme Scholz

In the Brazilian Amazon, deforestation has been largely the result of public policy interventions. In the period 1960-1990, fiscal incentives for large cattle ranches, road construction, infrastructure projects and planned colonisation were introduced largely under conditions of a military regime. Since the new constitution of 1988, however, there have been ample possibilities for political participation by local and federal-state governments as well as for social movements and the population as such, especially regarding environmental protection. This means that nowadays local stakeholders and their interests have to be taken into consideration when the federal government plans new investments in the Amazon.

Partnership types
The increased local capacity to evaluate federal investment projects critically can be seen as the result of two types of partnerships:

In the 1980s, international public attention was drawn to the social and ecological costs of the Brazilian development strategy for the Amazon, especially after the murder of the rubber tapper Chico Mendes in 1988. This led to the engagement of numerous NGOs, foundations and other organisations from the industrialised world in the Amazon, who wanted to support local social movements and NGOs in their struggle for local development.

In the 1990s, this first type of international partnerships among civil society organisations led to the establishment of an official cooperation among the Brazilian government and the G7 countries for the protection and sustainable use of the Brazilian tropical forests - the Pilot Programme to Protect the Brazilian Tropical Forests - PPG7. This programme channelled considerable funds into the development of environmental capacities at federal and regional level, including both environmental authorities and civil society organisations, with the aim being to reduce deforestation rates and CO2-emissions as well as to promote alternative sustainable production systems.

The second type of international partnership enabled the Federal Ministry of the Environment (MMA - Ministério do Meio Ambiente) to redefine its role and to establish itself as a strategic partner for local social movements in the Amazon. Since 1994, the MMA Secretariat for the Amazon Region in particular has strongly promoted alliances with social movements and NGOs, in order to increase its bargaining power at federal level. The question arises as to whether these partnerships between local social movements and the MMA and international NGOs are effective when it comes to negotiations about large investment projects. With the new federal government, led by the Workers' Party PT, opportunities for dialogue and negotiations have increased considerably.

Scope of the study
Our study summarises the results of an analysis of the political controversies regarding the construction of a dam and a hydroelectric power plant in the Xingú river (Belo Monte), close to Altamira at the Transamazônica, and the paving of the road between Cuiabá and Santarém (BR-163). Both projects are located in the state of Pará. They entail high environmental risks: accelerated deforestation due to higher immigration, enormous disturbance of the Xingú river and the living conditions of the local population, including indigenous peoples, and the reproduction of fauna and flora. In Altamira, the expected adverse impacts have stimulated effective legal action by local civil society - especially peasants' associations, the churches and NGOs - in order to inform the local population about the risks of the project and to delay the beginning of the work. In the case of the BR-163, the paved road as such is welcomed by everyone but its associated impacts are regarded with mixed feelings, as it will facilitate the expansion of soy farming and cattle ranching. Large soy farmers from Mato Grosso, one of the largest soy-producing regions in Brazil and world-wide, have the main stake in the paved road because it will considerably reduce their transportation costs to world markets via the port of Santarém.

Results
The research results can be summarised as follows:

• The capacity of local civil and public actors to engage in dialogue and negotiations and cope effectively with highly complex conflicts depends very much on their ability to establish local coalitions around clearly defined objectives and strategies, as well as on their ability to correctly understand the interrelated nature of the local social, economic and environmental impacts of the planned investment projects.
• Environmental awareness is much more developed among social movements than among public actors at local and regional level. Local social movements learned lessons from the large investment projects of the past, but also benefited from the PPG7 subprojects aimed at promoting sustainable production methods by financing local experiments. These projects enabled them to strengthen their infrastructure and to engage in economic-ecological learning processes.
• Negotiations are not sustainable if important actors do not participate. The government of the state of Pará is not present either in Altamira or in Santarém, and neither is its environmental authority engaging in dialogue with local actors nor in environmental monitoring and control activities. Federal environmental authorities exist at local level, but do not have the necessary human and financial resources to fill the gap left by federal state and local authorities. In addition to that, powerful local economic actors often prefer to achieve their objective by using violence rather than by participating in negotiations.
• The weakness or even absence of legal institutions (judiciary, police) is a severe obstacle for civil society action and the implementation of environmental law prescriptions. The close partnership between local social movements and the Ministério Público Federal (Federal Prosecutor) has often been crucial for preventing the complete undermining of environmental law.

Lessons learnt
Two preliminary lessons can be drawn from these results:

• International partnerships contribute significantly to the strengthening of local networks of social movements and NGOs. Such networks are important to make public actors aware of the social and environmental risks associated with large public investments, but cannot do the job of the public sector. These partnerships should include environmental capacity building among public actors in order to increase their problem-solving capabilities.
• The weakness of the legal system is a major bottleneck for environmental and forest protection. Violence and impunity are two of the main obstacles for participation of local stakeholders in natural resource management planning.

Note:
The paper is based on field research carried out between February and May 2003 in Brazil together with Daniel Dräger, Isabelle Floer, Constanze Neher and Julia Unger.

Further information:
Dr Imme Scholz
German Development Institute
Tulpenfeld 4
D-53113 Bonn
Germany
E-mail: imme.scholz@die-gdi.de
Website: http://www.die-gdi.de

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