BNRGI Team Participates in Transdisciplinary Training Program

A team of six US and Brazilian researchers and community members is participating during July and August 2024 in a training program hosted by the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) in partnership with the Santa Catarina State Research Foundation (FAPESC).

The program, “Tropical Forests in the Americas: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Changing Environments,” brings together 20 transdisciplinary teams from across the Americas for 30 hours of virtual training to support problem-driven and solution-oriented integrative tropical forest research. Teams are working on topics including deforestation, sustainable development, ecosystem function, climate change, and environmental justice.

The BNRGI project is focused on climate-resilient agroforestry in the Brazilian Amazon and aims to pilot participatory action-research in partnership with Afro-descendant quilombola communities in Marajó archipelago in the Amazon estuary.

Research team from INEAF/UFPA in a quilombola school in Pau Furado, Salvaterra, Pará.

The project is co-constructed with the grassroots organization Campinas/Vila União Center for Quilombola Action and Resistance (NARQ). The team is led by Prof. Monique Medeiros of the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), and includes Luciane Lopes and Glenda Leão of NARQ, Prof. Daniel Braga (UFPA), and Profs. Don Nelson and Gregory Thaler (University of Georgia).

UGA and UFPA Sign International Cooperation Agreement

On June 5, 2024, the University of Georgia (USA) and Federal University of Pará (Brazil) formalized an International Cooperation Agreement. The agreement, signed by UFPA Provost (Reitor) Emmanuel Zagury Tourinho and UGA Associate Provost for Global Engagement Martin Kagel, reinforces inter-institutional linkages for academic, scientific, and cultural collaboration.

Strengthening ties between UGA and UFPA reflect in part the ongoing cooperation between UGA and UFPA faculty and students through the Brazil Natural Resource Governance Initiative, and this new UGA-UFPA International Cooperation Agreement provides further scaffolding for BNRGI collaborations.

New Book: "Saving a Rainforest and Losing the World"

Saving a Rainforest and Losing the World: Conservation and Displacement in the Global Tropics, by BNRGI co-director Prof. Gregory Thaler, was published on February 27, 2024 by Yale University Press.

For two decades, land-sparing policies have promised to save tropical forests by intensifying tropical agriculture. Based on six years of research on agrarian frontiers in Indonesia, Brazil, and Bolivia, this book shows that land sparing's successes are an illusion, achieved by displacing deforestation to new frontiers. The failure of land sparing exposes the harsh truth behind green capitalism: capitalist development is ecocide.

The book is available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook formats.

Two UFPA professors to come to UGA as Fulbright visiting researchers

Source: PROINTER/UFPA

Prof. Katiane Silva and Prof. Monique Medeiros from the Federal University of Pará (UFPA) have won Fulbright awards to come to the University of Georgia as visiting researchers. Both Katiane and Monique are affiliated with UFPA’s graduate program in Amazonian Agricultures (PPGAA). They will be in residence at UGA in Spring 2025 to take part in collaborative research and teaching activities under the Brazil Natural Resource Governance Initiative (BNRGI).

These awards continue the long-term cooperation between UGA and UFPA under BNRGI, a student and researcher collaborative dedicated to equitable environmental governance in Brazil. Katiane’s research centers on engaged anthropology with Amazonian Indigenous peoples, and Monique’s research centers on biodiversity, rural development, and social innovation in agrarian and Afro-descendant (quilombola) Amazonian communities.

Katiane will be hosted by Prof. Don Nelson in the UGA Department of Anthropology, and Monique will be hosted by Prof. Gregory Thaler in the UGA Department of International Affairs.

Prof. Monique Medeiros (UFPA) visits UGA

Original version in Portuguese: https://ineaf.ufpa.br/ultimas-noticias/236-docente-do-instituto-amazonico-de-agriculturas-familiares-realiza-missao-cientifica-na-universidade-da-georgia-eua

From October 14 to 21, 2023, Prof. Monique Medeiros of the Amazonian Institute of Family Agricultures (INEAF) at the Federal University of Pará visited the University of Georgia campus as part of ongoing cooperation under the Brazil Natural Resource Governance Initiative (BNRGI).

Prof. Medeiros participated in meetings with UGA faculty through the Teaming for Interdisciplinary Research Pre-Seed Program, and interacted with undergraduate and graduate students through a variety of events over the course of the week.

Prof. Monique Medeiros (left, UFPA) with Prof. Don Nelson, BNRGI co-director and professor of Anthropology (right).

In particular, on October 17th, Prof. Medeiros participated in a coffee hour with graduate students where she presented her projects in collaboration with Afro-descendant quilombola communities on the island of Marajó in the Brazilian Amazon, and participants discussed the importance of decolonial studies and intercultural research.

Participatory seminar on Afro-descendant communities in the Brazilian Amazon.

On October 18th, Prof. Medeiros led a participatory seminar with UGA faculty and students on the topic, “Amazonian quilombola territories in transformation: between development projects and resistance strategies.” Following the seminar, she met with Prof. Gregory Thaler (International Affairs) and Dean Matthew Auer of the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA). In that meeting, Profs. Medeiros and Thaler discussed with the Dean the ongoing collaborations between UGA and UFPA.

The next day, Prof. Medeiros met with students in the upper-level undergraduate Environmental Politics course taught by Prof. Thaler, where she shared perspectives on the intersections of gender and environment.

Prof. Medeiros’s visit strengthened ties between UGA and UFPA and advanced scientific cooperation between students and faculty at the two institutions. One product of the visit was a proposal for a roundtable, to take place in 2024 at the 76th Annual Meeting of the Brazilian Society for Scientific Progress (SBPC), titled “Climate resilience in productive agroforests in the Brazilian Amazon.” If accepted, the proposed roundtable will deepen reflections and initiatives related to a developing project on these topics involving researchers at UFPA, UGA, and rural communities in the state of Pará.

UGA Faculty JP Schmidt Teaches Data Visualization and Statistics Workshop at UFPA

From August 16-18, 2023, UGA faculty and BNRGI team member JP Schmidt led a workshop for graduate students at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA) in Belém. Dr. Schmidt reports:

“I gave a 3-day morning workshop ‘Introduction to R Studio and R Basics for Simple Data Visualization and Statistics’ to graduate students at UFPA. The 20 enrollees were mainly students in the social sciences connected to INEAF. After spending the first morning on R basics, we worked with the Brazilian Censo Agropecuário. The Censo Agropecuário is a fount of data on topics relevant to many of the students, but the data require extensive reformatting and restructuring, which we dug into. On the last day, we were able to move into simple data analyses, visualizations and map figures. I was impressed with the enthusiasm of the students, who asked for help with particular applications relevant to their work, network diagrams, maps, and regression analysis.”

Dazzo and Medeiros Facilitate Hybrid Participatory Action Research Class

Versão em português na página do INEAF.

On Wednesday, May 10th, Prof. Giovanni Dazzo (UGA/College of Education) and Prof. Monique Medeiros (UFPA/INEAF) facilitated a class on Participatory Action Research (PAR) methods for the Research Methodology course of UFPA’s Graduate Program in Amazonian Agricultures. Prof. Dazzo, participating remotely along with other BNRGI faculty from UGA, shared his background and experiences conducting participatory action research projects, notably with indigenous communities in Guatemala, and he shared different PAR methods he has employed, including “ripples of change,” card sorting, and storytelling.

The first half of the class had a hybrid format, with UFPA students and Prof. Medeiros participating together from their classroom and UGA faculty participating remotely. During the second half of the class, Prof. Medeiros and the students conducted a “ripples of change” exercise together, discussing the question of “What changes at UFPA will be necessary for more effective academic participation in COP30?” (the UN Climate Conference expected to be held in Belém in 2025).

The discussion prompted numerous suggestions, and the students decided to prepare a document for the UFPA offices of research and graduate education sharing the propositions developed through their methodological practice.

This hybrid class section contributes to ongoing cooperation between UGA and UFPA students and faculty aimed at developing participatory research collaborations in the Brazilian Amazon, supported in part by a pre-seed award from the UGA Office of Research.

Shelly Biesel Presents Her Dissertation on Legacies of Loss in Afro-Brazilian Communities

Congratulations to Shelly Annette Biesel, who successfully defended her dissertation on March 24th, 2023! Dr. Biesel is a cultural anthropologist with expertise in environmental anthropology and member of the Brazil Natural Resource Governance Initiative (BNGRI). She has more than 10 years of experience working on collaborative, community-based, ethnographic research and applied projects. Her dissertation is titled: “Confronting Legacies of Loss: Negotiating Intergenerational Inequalities in Afro-Brazilian Traditional Communities”.

Dr. Biesel’s dissertation explores the impacts of Brazil's national infrastructure development program, the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC, in Portuguese), on Afro-descendent coastal communities in Pernambuco, Brazil. Her research shows that the program has led to widespread dispossession, environmental devastation, and depression in these communities, who are regularly expropriated for development initiatives due to their lack of formal land rights. She sheds light on how the violent expulsion of over 26,000 residents from Cabo and Ipojuca, both in Pernambuco, by the Suape Port Industrial Complex (CIPS, in Portuguese) is linked to centuries of racial land tenure arrangements that systematically exclude Afro-descendant communities from land use and ownership. Her study further highlights the disproportionate impact of environmental degradation, particularly on Afro-descendent women. She shows how the loss of livelihoods, ecological knowledge, and more-than-human kinship contributes to the disempowerment and emotional distress of traditional communities.

Source: Shelly Biesel personal archive.

Despite these challenges, Dr. Biesel finds that many communities from Cabo and Ipojuca exhibit remarkable resilience and strength. Some engage in community organizing, while others draw upon regional identity and cultural traditions to create moments of joy amidst structural hardship. She concludes that understanding the profound and uneven consequences of economic development requires consideration of the articulation of development agendas with colonial histories, intersectional inequalities, and socio-ecological relations, particularly in marginalized communities.

UGA Team Plans New Research Collaborations in Brazil

In 2023, the University of Georgia’s Teaming for Interdisciplinary Research Pre-Seed Program is supporting a new faculty team focused on adaptive smallholder agriculture in a changing climate. The team will develop research opportunities to support the resilience, sustainability, and livelihood success of small-scale agriculturalists in the Global South, with an initial geographical focus on the Brazilian Amazon and the drylands of India.

 In Brazil, the team will build on BNRGI collaborations with the Amazonian Institute of Family Agricultures (INEAF) at the Federal University of Pará. Team members working on new research collaborations in Brazil include Emily Bell (Public Administration), Daniel Markewitz (Forestry), JP Schmidt (Ecology), Jennifer Jo Thompson (Crop & Soil Sciences), Giovanni Dazzo (Education), and BNRGI co-directors Gregory Thaler (International Affairs) and Don Nelson (Anthropology).

Smallholder agroforestry nursery in São Félix do Xingu, Pará (photo: Gregory Thaler)

PhD student Bruno Ubiali publishes his Masters’ research in 'Land'

Bruno Ubiali, a Ph.D. student in Integrative Conservation and Anthropology at the University of Georgia and a member of BNRGI, has recently published the article “Forests, Fields, and Pastures: Unequal Access to Brazil Nuts and Livelihood Strategies in an Extractive Reserve, Brazilian Amazon” in the journal Land. The article is based on his thesis and co-authored by his Masters’ advisor, Dr. Miguel Alexiades.

The study was conducted with forest extractivist rubber tappers (seringueiros) at the Cazumbá-Iracema Extractive Reserve, in the state of Acre, Brazilian Amazon.

Bruno and a couple that hosted him in the reserve and participated in the interviews.

The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with fifty-five household heads to investigate the complex relationship between differential access to Brazil nuts and investment in alternative livelihood strategies, notably and controversially small-scale agriculture and cattle-raising. The findings reveal that rubber tappers have developed informal (de facto) mechanisms to overcome formal (de jure), uneven access to Brazil nuts. Limited access to Brazil nuts is also overcome through investments in wage labor, swidden agriculture, and cattle raising, as part of highly diversified livelihood portfolios. The article highlights that the limited role of forest extractivism and reliance on other sources of income call for re-assessing the role and potential of small-scale cattle raising and agriculture and recognizing livelihood diversification as an important component of economic resilience.

The study speaks to an extensive body of literature that analyzes traditional populations’ livelihoods in the Amazon and will allow readers to further understand the complexities between differential access to forest resources and the livelihood strategies designed by smallholders, supporting the design of policies that aim for resilience in extractive reserves. The article also contributes to debates around the relationship between extractivism, forest conservation, social and economic development, agriculture and cattle raising. The study was funded by the University of Kent under the MSc. Conservation and Rural Development program and the authors also obtained logistical support from the Chico Mendes Institute of Biodiversity Conservation and financial support from University of Georgia’s Department of Anthropology.