State-led social and environmental policy failure in a Brazilian forest frontier: Sustainable Development Project in Anapu, Para acute accent

In this paper we analyze transformations within a land reform settlement in the Brazilian Amazon, with special land-use regulations targeting forest conservation. We conducted long-term action research in the Virola-Jatoba ' Sustainable Development Project (PDS), where peasant farmers who were the early settlers of the area, and more recent occupants allied to illegal loggers, land grabbers and speculators adopt antagonistic positions and challenge respective entitlements towards land and forest. In this research we highlight issues of power asymmetry and social injustice when assessing how social relations and environmental conditions in the study area are affected by land use and forest conservation policies since year 2000, when the scheme was established. The PDS situation approached a collapse in late 2017 when the integrity of its forests and the beliefs and practices of vulnerable local residents were damaged. This case study empirically demonstrates that Amazon forest frontier systems have a limited capacity to endure extreme perturbations in the social and ecological interconnected domains. We argue that when a threshold is reached in systems featuring heavily institutionalized social asymmetries that constrain the action of vulnerable resource users, few conditions remain to reorganize the constituent setup through adaptive changes in the same regime or state. Reaching this stage will likely result in drastic changes that will lock the system into a pathway that compromises human wellbeing and the provision of ecosystem services. The fundamental nature of a tenurial scheme that combines social justice and environmental conservation tends thus to be lost for good, to enter a new regime with fewer options and novelties in social ecological advances, reflecting the overall setbacks currently experienced in Brazilian policy.

Automated summary

This paper analyzes transformations within a land reform settlement in the Brazilian Amazon, focusing on how social relations and environmental conditions are affected by land use and forest conservation policies. The study finds that the Amazon forest frontier systems have limited capacity to endure extreme perturbations, and reaching a threshold in heavily institutionalized social asymmetries can result in drastic changes that compromise human wellbeing and ecosystem services.