Suchergebnisse

"The ongoing debate concerning the Amazon's crucial role in global climate is entirely dependent upon sustainable development in the region. This book analyses numerous promising local tree and forest management initiatives taken by smallholders in the Bolivian, Brazilian, Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon to better understand the key success factors"--

ABSTRACTMany believe that Amazonian communities could benefit from the growing market for timber through self‐governed approaches to forest management. However, there is no clear understanding of how communities are to develop such approaches given logging frontiers that are characterized by informal negotiations with loggers and community forestry initiatives that are promoted by development agents. This article reports on research from four study areas in Bolivia, Brazil and Peru which reveals that external players exercise considerable power over communities. First, loggers and development agents impose forest management schemes directly on communities, hindering them from developing their own approaches. Second, paternalistic relationships with loggers and development agents prevent communities from identifying common interests and expressing these through their representative organizations. Finally, loggers and development agents use powerful discourses to shape acceptable schemes in forest management, silencing communities' voices in debates. Through these different power mechanisms, external agents thwart the emergence of self‐governed community management approaches.

This paper reviews the design of the international forest governance and policy, and analyses its impacts in addressing deforestation and forest degradation as global sustainability issues. Informed by literatures on international relations, regulatory governance of global commodity production, and international pathways of domestic influence, key arrangements are aggregated into six types, and mapped in terms of their main aims, instruments, and implementation mechanisms. Key analytical dimensions, such as the actors involved (state–private–mixed), the character of legal authority (legally binding–non-legally binding), and the geopolitical scope (global–transnational) helped to identify the potential and limitations of arrangements. They were assessed and compared in terms of their main pathways of influence such as international hard-law rules, cross-sectoral policy integration, non-legally binding norms and discourses, global market mechanisms, and direct access through capacity building. Our results reveal important challenges in the design and implementation, and in the pathways of influence, of the forest governance arrangements, including major inconsistencies with forest-adverse economic sectors. We conclude about the need for coherent international forest-related policy cooperation and integrative actions in agriculture, bioenergy, and mining to enhance the prospects of achieving the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

With the Brazilian military governments of the 1960s, systematic economic development of the Amazon began. Social and environmental concerns have entered Amazonian discourses and policies only since the 1990s. Since then, reports of threats to forests and indigenous people have alternated with reports of socio-economic progress and environmental achievements. These contradictions often arise from limited thematic, sectoral, temporal, or spatial perspectives, and lead to misinterpretation. Our paper offers a comprehensive picture of discourses, policies, and socio-environmental dynamics for the entire region over the last five decades. We distinguish eight historical policy phases, each of which had little effect on near-linear dynamics of demographic growth and land-use expansion, although some policies showed the potential to change the course of development. To prevent local, national, and international actors from continuing to assert harmful interests in the region, a coherent long-term commitment and change in the collective mindset are needed.

Many governmental and non-governmental development organisations (NGOs) invest considerable efforts to support forest dependent people for the extraction and commercialization of non-timber forest products (NTFP) to generate income in an ecologically sustainable way. But success so far has been quite modest. Many of the families abandon these initiatives once the external support ceases. This paper critically reflects on the expectations and concerns regarding this kind of development projects by in-depth analysing a project for the commercialization of vegetal oils by the traditional community of Pedreira, situated in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon, which received intensive government-lead support. The study explores the motivations of the participating families, how the project influenced production schemes, and what have been the specific benefits for participating families and the overall consequences for the entire community. Findings indicate that the analyzed NTFP project, on the basis of overoptimistic expectations, strongly invested in the re-organisation of local production schemes without adequately considering the socio-environmental reality, capacities and interests of the community. As a consequence, the proposed social-productive model was not necessarily meaningful to all local people and even had detrimental effects.

With the Brazilian military governments of the 1960s, systematic economic development of the Amazon began. Social and environmental concerns have entered Amazonian discourses and policies only since the 1990s. Since then, reports of threats to forests and indigenous people have alternated with reports of socio-economic progress and environmental achievements. These contradictions often arise from limited thematic, sectoral, temporal, or spatial perspectives, and lead to misinterpretation. Our paper offers a comprehensive picture of discourses, policies, and socio-environmental dynamics for the entire region over the last five decades. We distinguish eight historical policy phases, each of which had little effect on near-linear dynamics of demographic growth and land-use expansion, although some policies showed the potential to change the course of development. To prevent local, national, and international actors from continuing to assert harmful interests in the region, a coherent long-term commitment and change in the collective mindset are needed.