UGA Ph.D. student Bruno Ubiali visits the Federal University of Pará

Bruno Ubiali, a PhD student in Anthropology and Integrative Conservation at the University of Georgia and a member of BNRGI, visited the Amazonian Institute of Family Agricultures (INEAF) at the Federal University of Pará in Belém from 06/06 to 06/13/2022. The purpose of the visit was to get to know the work of INEAF members and strengthen ties with them, particularly those working in the Santarém region, where Bruno will carry out his doctoral research.

Bruno talking to a vendor at the Ver-o-Peso market.

Prior to working in Pará, Bruno conducted his Masters’ research at the Cazumbá-Iracema Extractive Reserve, in the state of Acre. His work, featured in a new publication in the journal Land, used a common property perspective to analyze different forms of access to Brazil nuts and their relationship with land uses adopted by extractivists.

From Belém, Bruno headed to Santarém, where he is currently conducting exploratory fieldwork. His preliminary doctoral fieldwork will look at cultural notions of land from the point of view of Ribeirinhos and large-scale farmers, aiming to understand the cultural and social values ​​of forest-based livelihoods and industrial agriculture in the Amazon. Santarém was chosen as the research site because it is an agricultural frontier where Ribeirinhos' livelihoods and corporate interests are – and have historically been – in stark contrast. The objectives of this initial and exploratory fieldwork are to collect primary and archival data, identify communities and individuals with whom Bruno will conduct his research, and establish partnerships with local scholars.

Bruno Ubiali and Evandro Neves in a visit to Ver-o-Peso.

In this sense, the conversations and reflections with INEAF members were very helpful for Bruno, who aims to develop a contextualized dissertation that is relevant for the local smallholder farming communities. INEAF doctoral student Evandro Neves and Professor Valério Gomes provided Bruno with essential logistical support during his visit. The academic experience was complemented with a taste of the rich Pará culture in visits to the Ver-o-Peso market, museums, and cultural events in the Belém region.

BNRGI Member Shelly A. Biesel's research featured in Anthropology and Environment Society's 'Engagement' Blog

BNRGI member Shelly Annette Biesel was a 2021 finalist for the Anthropology and Environment Society's prestigious Rappaport Prize for up and coming environmental anthropology scholars. Her work—completed in collaboration with community partners in Cabo de Santo Agostinho and Ipojuca, Pernambuco—investigates the affective, emotional political ecologies of environmental loss among predominately Afro-Brazilian traditional communities.

By linking environmental grief to intersectional structural inequalities in Brazil, Biesel builds important conceptual bridges between the emerging concept of ‘ecological grief’ (or how societies mourn their rapidly changing environments) and environmental justice movements and scholarship in Brazil. You can read her full write-up on the Anthropology and Environment Society blog: Engagement.

Thaler, Viana, and Toni Receive Political Geography Research Award

The article “From frontier governance to governance frontier: The political geography of Brazil’s Amazon transition” published in 2019 in World Development was awarded the 2022 Virginie Mamadouh Outstanding Research Award from the Political Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers. Gregory Thaler, Assistant Professor of International Affairs, and his co-authors Cecilia Viana and Fabiano Toni won the award given to journal articles or book chapters that make an innovative contribution to the field of political geography.

The article focuses on the role of governance in frontier development in the Brazilian Amazon, revealing the role of politics in constructing and transforming frontier spaces. Using evidence from municipal forest governance policies in Pará and Mato Grosso, the authors argue for the integration of frontier theory and governance theory in a place-based, political geography approach to regional political-economic transformation. Dr. Thaler co-directs the Brazil Natural Resource Governance Initiative (BNRGI). The article is based on extensive fieldwork carried out by the authors in the Brazilian Amazon.

Reference:

Thaler, Gregory M., Cecilia Viana, and Fabiano Toni. “From Frontier Governance to Governance Frontier: The Political Geography of Brazil’s Amazon Transition.” World Development 114 (2019): 59–72.

Evandro Neves Gives BNRGI Seminar on Oil Palm in Pará

On February 18th, Evandro Neves presented findings from his dissertation project in a BNRGI seminar at UGA. In his paper, “Collaborative arrangements on oil palm production in the state of Pará, Eastern Brazilian Amazon,” Evandro focuses on the ways family famers overcome challenges of integration in the oil-palm supply chain. He analyzes collaborative arrangements in the Tomé-Açu microregion, in northern Pará.

Tomé-Açu is home to Nikkei farmers, Colonos farmers, and traditional communities. Nikkei farmers are descendants of Japanese immigrants who arrived in Pará in the 1920s. Colonos farmers are descendants of rural migrants hailing from the Northeastern and Southern regions of Brazil who settled in the region in the 1960s. Evandro examines how these groups collaborate with each other and external actors to participate in the oil palm value chain.

One of paper’s takeaways is that in Tomé-Açu, agroforestry systems are creating economic opportunities and access to markets and promoting the social inclusion of Colonos farmers more effectively than state-led oil palm programs. Evandro will be continuing research on oil palm in the Brazilian Amazon as he works to complete his dissertation.

Evandro Neves is currently a PhD student in the Amazonian Institute of Family Agricultures (INEAF) at the Federal University of Pará in Belém, Brazil. From September 2020 to February 2021, he was a Visiting PhD student at the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) of the University of Georgia.

Call for papers: Anthropology and Environmental Crisis for Horizontes Antropológicos

From the global to local, environmental crises plague our planet. Numerous scientific studies and civil movements point to the urgency of a greener vision for the world. The international community took up this call for environmental sustainability at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCTAD). Theoretical and methodological approaches in social science and humanities engage critical events through analytical inquiry of major catastrophes and also the quotidian human practices and experiences in different contexts and cultures. The systematic exploration of risk factors such as, pollution, resilience, sustainability, environmental education, symmetry, the anthropocene or environmental awareness policies open up a range of reflections on human action, that emphasize the ways in which economic policies and social relationships can be put in conversation with issues of ecosystem balance and social equity and justice. New engagements with the constitutive elements of life, such as land, water and air, and with the basic activities for human survival such as agriculture, health and reproduction, are increasingly present in anthropological research endeavors. There is also growing interest in reflecting on our understanding of the human trajectory and the memory of this path. We look for anthropological and ethnographic contributions that interrogate complex questions about the state of humans within their environments.

More details from Horizontes Antropológicos: https://www.ufrgs.br/ppgashorizontesantropologicos/?page_id=2646

Submission deadline: May 31, 2022

Guest editors:

Ana Luiza Carvalho da Rocha (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil)

Cornelia Eckert (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil)

Donald R. Nelson (University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, United States)

New Article Discusses Methodologies for Ethnography of Environmental Governance

Offices of The Nature Conservancy’s Amazon Conservation Program in Belém, Pará in 2018. Photo by Gregory Thaler.

Ethnography provides essential insights for understanding environmental governance, helping to illuminate the everyday practices and rationalities of environmental regulation and decision-making. In a new article published in Geoforum, BNRGI co-director Prof. Gregory Thaler discusses three methodological approaches for ethnography of environmental governance: place-based ethnography, institutional ethnography, and organizational ethnography. These approaches are distinguished by how they define the ‘field’ where the ethnographer works, and each approach implies a different set of research practices and enables different kinds of insights into environmental governance.

Organizational ethnography is a particularly promising research strategy, since it can provide a unique perspective on the internal workings of powerful actors in environmental politics. Prof. Thaler draws on his experience conducting a transnational organizational ethnography of the tropical forest conservation programs of The Nature Conservancy, an environmental non-governmental organization, to illustrate practicalities, pitfalls, and benefits of an organizational approach. His research reveals how transformations in the NGO sector related to internationalization, financial shifts, and scientific debates have helped drive the rise of market-based environmental policy and ‘sustainable development’ discourse in global environmental governance.

Ethnographic methods have been a focus of recent discussion within BNRGI, and this new publication contributes to the continued refinement of our understanding of the role of ethnography for studying, informing, and contesting environmental governance.

Reference:

Thaler, Gregory M. (2021) “Ethnography of Environmental Governance: Towards an Organizational Approach.” Geoforum 120: 122-131.

New Report on Social Learning for Community-Based Forest Management

Community exchange among users of six Brazilian Amazon Extractive Reserves on September 19, 2019. Photo courtesy of Ana Violato Espada.

Ana Violato Espada, a doctoral researcher at the University of Florida and participant in the BNRGI Workshop and session at the 2020 Integrative Conservation Conference, has published a report on her community forestry research in the Brazilian Amazon. Ana organized a community exchange among users of six Amazonian Extractive Reserves to emphasize collective inquiry, experimentation grounded in experience, and social learning related to community timber management. The community exchange was part of Ana’s dissertation fieldwork (May 2018 to September 2019). Drawing on a decade of experience working in community-based forest management in the Amazon, Ana applied a participatory action research approach, using multiple participatory tools to engage people and emphasizing participation and action towards Sustainable Forest Management. Her innovative methodological approach to participatory action research is replicable in natural resource co-management contexts elsewhere.

Read more about the community exchange and Ana’s research here:

Espada, Ana Luiza Violato and Kainer, Karen A. (2020) “Fellowship Report: An ITTO Fellowship in the Brazilian Amazon has helped a doctoral researcher organize a community exchange among users of six sustainable-use forests and promote social learning on community-based forest management.” ITTO Tropical Forest Update 29 (3): 20-24.

BNRGI Virtual Lab Meeting Kicks Off the New Semester

BNRGI Virtual Lab Meeting on September 30, 2020

Graduate students and faculty from UFPA and UGA kicked off the new semester with a virtual lab meeting on September 30th. Participants welcomed new INEAF students to the BNRGI network and shared information about their research sites, partners, and methodologies. Lab meetings will continue on a monthly basis during the semester - stay tuned for meeting themes and information about new BNRGI activities!

Evandro Neves Publishes Article on Community Natural Resource Management in the Brazilian Amazon

INEAF PhD student Evandro Neves recently published the article “Community Participation in the Management of the Fishing Resources in Soure Marine Extractive Reserve, in Marajoara Amazon (PA)” in the journal GeoTextos.

Neves’ article analyzes community involvement in the Soure Marine Extractive Reserve (Brazilian Amazon) utilizing semi-structured interviews and extensive participant observation. Marine Extractive Reserves are part of the National System of Conservation Units in Brazil and are designed to be innovative environmental governance instruments that promote sustainable, equitable, and shared natural resource governance.

Neves presented an earlier version of this paper in the BNRGI session of the Integrative Conservation Conference at UGA in February 2020.

Respect for life in a Marajoara mangrove. Photo Credit: Evandro Neves

Article reference: Neves, Evandro (2020) “Community Participation in the Management of the Fishing Resources in the Soure Marine Extractive Reserve, in Marajoara Amazon (PA)” GeoTextos 16 (1): http://dx.doi.org/10.9771/geo.v16i1.35718.

Dr. Gregory Thaler Co-Authors Analysis of Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations

A new article in PLOS ONE, “Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations and Global Environmental Discourse,” was recently published by a team of co-authors including BNRGI co-director Dr. Gregory Thaler. Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations (ENGOs) have become critical players in global environmental politics over the last several decades. Nearly 1,000 ENGOs have participated in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. While ENGOs increasingly influence environmental policy and define environmental issues, a comprehensive understanding of the ENGO sector had previously eluded researchers.  

Dr. Thaler, along with lead author Stefan Partelow and co-author Klara Johanna Winkler, analyzed 679 ENGOs in 89 countries. Their analysis included ENGOs’ human and financial resources and ENGO discourse around environmental issues.  Analysis confirmed the conventional wisdom that ENGOs from Europe and North American tend to command substantially more human and financial resources than ENGOs from other regions. However, analysis also revealed considerable diversity not fully captured in previous studies. For example, ENGOs include a wide array of groups beyond the high profile conservation organizations with which most people are familiar. Research groups, religious associations, and human rights and development organizations also constitute the ENGO landscape. Additionally, a systemic analysis of ENGO mission statements identified four major environmental discourses: Environmental Management, Climate Politics, Environmental Justice, and Ecological Modernization. Previous studies have underestimated the importance of Environmental Justice and Climate Politics in the environmental policy discourse shaped by ENGOs.

These insights into ENGOs can help us understand a critical component of the environmental policy arena at a time of monumental environmental change.

Article reference: Partelow, Stefan, Klara Johanna Winkler, and Gregory M. Thaler (2020) “Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations and Global Environmental Discourse.” PLOS ONE 15 (5): e0232945.