Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions: Transdisciplinary Experiences in Latin America [1st ed.] 9783030497668, 9783030497675

Citation preview

Minerva Arce Ibarra Manuel Roberto Parra Vázquez Eduardo Bello Baltazar Luciana Gomes de Araujo  Editors

Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions Transdisciplinary Experiences in Latin America

Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions

Minerva Arce Ibarra Manuel Roberto Parra Vázquez Eduardo Bello Baltazar Luciana Gomes de Araujo Editors

Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions Transdisciplinary Experiences in Latin America

Editors Minerva Arce Ibarra Department of Systematic and Aquatic Ecology El Colegio de la Frontera Sur Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico Eduardo Bello Baltazar Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment El Colegio de la Frontera Sur San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico

Manuel Roberto Parra Vázquez Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment El Colegio de la Frontera Sur San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico Luciana Gomes de Araujo Institute of Energy and Environment University of São Paulo São Paulo, Brazil

ISBN 978-3-030-49766-8    ISBN 978-3-030-49767-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

The rural area in several countries of Latin America presents differences and similarities; it is in this region where the main foods for its population are produced. In addition, it is essential for the conservation of the environment and biodiversity. This book discusses some problems of the rural environment with studies carried out in seven countries. Poverty and inequality are two of the main problems in Latin America. With respect to poverty, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in 2018, 30% of the population in this region was in poverty and 10.7% in extreme poverty. Poverty occurs in different ranges among the countries within Latin America. This can be seen in the poverty percentages of the population that is in this condition and that were included in this book: Argentina 24.4%, Bolivia 33.2%, Brazil 19.4%, Colombia 29.9%, Honduras 55.7%, and Mexico 41.5%. These data are disturbing; however, poverty in rural areas is more drastic, reaching approximately 45.1% of rural households. Most of the indigenous and other traditional peoples are found in rural areas. The World Bank identified 400 indigenous peoples in Latin America, which constitute approximately 10% of the population and correspond to approximately 50 million people. Indigenous peoples have been historically excluded, and this situation manifests itself in the fact that the majority (61.5%) of indigenous households located in rural areas are in poverty. Those are the characteristics of the population studied in this book, peasants and indigenous people whose living conditions are very hard. Natural areas and biodiversity have been drastically reduced over time, both by natural events and by anthropogenic issues. An example of the magnitude of the deterioration is the loss of the forest area, which reached 97 million hectares in the period 1990–2015 (ECLAC), and the destruction of natural resources for the profit of the capital continues. In the last decades, a series of governments with different political characteristics have ruled Latin American countries; however, in general terms, the economic policy directed towards the countryside has been to promote commercial agriculture at the cost of the use and destruction of the environment, as well as the exclusion of small-scale agriculture.

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These principles have led to irrational positions such as the case of the fires in 2019 that occurred in the Brazilian Amazon, which affected a large area of the jungle destroying biodiversity, and for which apparently there was no adequate response from the Brazilian government. Examples of these policies are unfortunately abundant in many countries. In the case of Argentina, monoculture has been promoted, with the sowing of more than 17.5 million hectares of soybeans in 2019, affecting the environment. These policies have supported large companies to profit from the destruction of the environment. The same happens with respect to mining that is carried out in various countries, where the interests of large companies take precedence, which have allowed them to carry out activities in large land extensions. For example, in Mexico the surface area granted in concession to mining companies corresponds to more than 11% of the national territory. The stripping of natural resources has been constant, and in an attempt to preserve them, protected natural areas have been created in Latin America and the Caribbean which according to ECLAC, estimates for 2014 were 4,808,746 km2. Peasants and indigenous people have practiced agriculture in small areas with the use of traditional technology, and due to their attachment to the land, these groups have defended and conserved natural resources over time. Government initiatives to preserve these resources are totally insufficient in the presence of natural disasters, the degradation of areas due to inadequate agricultural management, the authorization of companies that are predatory on the environment, and illegal activities, among others, that affect natural resources. There are laws that protect these areas, but the voracity of companies threatens natural resources and this is where communities and their organizations, with a leading role of indigenous groups, carry out resistance movements and fight in defense of their culture and their subsistence means. The problems above described related to public policies are discussed in this book and the relevance of which lies in: –– The topics covered are fully current and provide knowledge to researchers who carry out studies in the Latin American rural environment. –– It addresses common issues and topics with studies in seven Latin American countries (from southern Mexico to the Argentinean Patagonia). –– The studies are generally directed towards small agriculture and focus on indigenous and peasant groups, populations with high levels of poverty. –– Transdisciplinary approaches were used for the analysis of the studies presented. –– It makes use of various qualitative and quantitative research techniques. In this sense, it is necessary to highlight that the majority of the case studies were carried out through participatory approaches involving the inhabitants of the communities. –– Territorial contrasts are presented, from small case studies to the analysis of large areas.

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–– It analyzes the role of traditional technology and culture of the inhabitants of indigenous groups and peasants, in the conservation of natural resources and local food production. –– It includes the participation of a high number of prestigious academics from various universities and research centers from Latin America. Reading this book provides knowledge to researchers interested in rural areas and also guidelines that could be incorporated into new public policies in some Latin American countries. The most important thing is that, it explains several problems faced by the peasant and indigenous communities and proposes some concrete solutions towards improving the living conditions of the rural population. Profesor Investigador Titular Colegio de Postgraduados  Campus Puebla, Puebla, México

Dr. Benito Ramírez Valverde

Acknowledgements

This book results from collaborative research that has been undertaken primarily by scholars of seven Latin American countries with their colleagues as well as with their graduate and undergraduate students. Currently, they all are based either at research centers, public universities and NGOs. On the one hand, all chapters addressed the relevance and contribution of small farming systems and traditional livelihoods to several arenas, including indigenous and traditional people’s autonomy, food security, health, intergenerational transmission of knowledge, indigenous customary law, and community self-organization, among others. On the other hand, the majority of chapters assessed coping, resistance, and adaptive strategies used by small farmers, peasants, indigenous and other traditional peoples in confronting the socio-environmental regimes effects and to a lesser degree, the educational regime effects. In assembling this Latin American case studies collection we had several goals. First, we wanted to take into account the diversity of organizations, rural occupations, and professionals (i.e., the local action groups and the group of producers) working to support sustainable rural production systems but also acknowledging the importance of alliances built among these actors. Second, from interactions of the Local Socio-Environmental System’s actors presented in the case studies, as well as from our own previous experience, we wanted to provide insights on how could it be the nature and scope of new public policy for Latin America’s rural people and their territories. The latter informed advice is presented in the closing chapter. We are very grateful for the commitment and contributions of all the authors. We acknowledge and appreciate the time of Ms. Alison Macnaughton for her feedback on the contents and English grammar editing of the book project’s proposal. We value the time and constructive criticism from the many people who have reviewed individual chapters because their feedback enhanced the quality of the book. Every single chapter went through a peer review process by two or three reviewers. Among them, one or two reviews were completed by one of the Editors. We appreciate the time and words of Dr. Benito Ramírez Valverde from the Colegio de Postgraduados, for writing the book foreword.

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Acknowledgements

To a large extent, this book has been possible thanks to João Pildervasser (Springer Nature) who had trust in a transdisciplinary and inter-institutional research team based primarily in ECOSUR to complete a book with a Latin American scope. Thank you also for the kind support received from Mrs. Sowmya Thodur (Springer Nature). A special thanks to Sacsy Hernández López for her support in many editorial tasks. The poverty section of chapter 21 was completed with the support of Jesús Geovani Alcazar Sánchez. Lastly, the Editors wish to thank our home institutions in Mexico and Brazil, which provided the physical infrastructure and basic internet services to be able to complete this book.

Contents

Part I Introduction 1 Local Socio-Environmental Systems as a Transdisciplinary Conceptual Framework��������������������������������������������������������������������������    3 Manuel Roberto Parra Vázquez, Minerva Arce Ibarra, Eduardo Bello Baltazar, and Luciana Gomes de Araujo Part II Where Different Sources of Knowledge Intersect 2 Traditional Knowledge in the Colombian Amazon: Tensions Between Indigenous Territorial Autonomy and Environmental Governance ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   27 Pablo Emilio De La Cruz Nassar, Eduardo Bello Baltazar, Luis Eduardo Acosta Muñoz, Erin I. J. Estrada Lugo, Minerva Arce Ibarra, and Luis Enrique García Barrios 3 Education in Macehual Mayan Institutions������������������������������������������   49 Axayácatl Segundo Cabello, Ma. Eugenia García Contreras, and Abraxas Segundo García 4 Ngô ndêt pá khre: Environmental Governance for the Future of the Xingu River (Mato Grosso, Brazil)����������������������������������������������   71 Rosely Alvim Sanches and Célia Futemma 5 Synergy Between Innovation Niches and Transdisciplinarity: The Case of Coffee Producer Families and their Organizations (Southeastern Mexico) ����������������������������������������������������������������������������   99 Obeimar Balente Herrera and Cristina Guerrero Jiménez

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Part III When Culture and Traditions Matter 6 The Milpero of the Macehual Mayan Normative System vis à vis with Global Laws and Policies of Agricultural Fire ��������������  121 Ma. Eugenia García Contreras, Axayácatl Segundo Cabello, and Abraxas Segundo García 7 The Interaction Between Mayan Honey Producers and the Global Agri-Food Regime����������������������������������������������������������  145 Lilia Betania Vázquez González 8 The Environmental Regime for Climate Change and the Effects of Climatic Variability on Maya Livelihoods in Quintana Roo, Mexico ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  159 Karina N. Chale Silveira, Minerva Arce Ibarra, and Laura Carrillo Part IV The Multiple Roles of Natural Protected Areas 9 Trindade and the Struggle for its Territory: A Trajectory of Community Empowerment and Self-Governance in Southeastern Coast of Brazil��������������������������������������������������������������  187 Luciana Gomes de Araujo, Péricles Vinícius Gentile, and Juliana Rezende Torres 10 Burning Reasons: Traditional Land Management Using Fire and Environmental Conflicts in Serra da Canastra National Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil����������������������������������������������������������������������  205 Emmanuel Duarte Almada, Ana Beatriz Vianna Mendes, and Aderval Costa Filho 11 Interculturalism and Power at the Margin of Environmental Governance: An Approach from the Selva El Ocote Biosphere Reserve (Mexico)��������������������������������������������������������������������  225 Carla Beatriz Zamora Lomelí 12 Territories for Conservation? Capitalist Strategies for Appropriating Nature in Los Glaciares National Park in the Argentinean Patagonia������������������������������������������������������������������  241 Sabrina Elizabeth Picone, Iris Josefina Liscovsky, and Alejandro Fabián Schweitzer 13 Emancipatory Partnership and Advances in Citizenship: Struggles for a Sea-Land Territory in Brazil����������������������������������������  253 Deborah S. Prado

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Part V From Clashes to Agreements: How to Get There? 14 Social Learning by Small Ruminant Farmers in Granma, Cuba����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  271 Isela Ponce Palma, Manuel La O Arias, José Nahed Toral, and Francisco Guevara Hernández 15 Socio-Environmental Regimes in Natural Protected Areas: A Case Study in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve��������������������������������  291 Amayrani Meza Jiménez, Manuel Roberto Parra Vázquez, Luis García Barrios, Gerard Verschoor, and Erin I. J. Estrada Lugo 16 The Future of Food in Our Hands. Key Factors for Governance Learned from Committees of Food and Nutrition Security in Honduras������������������������������������������������������  313 Jorge Urdapilleta Carrasco and María Raquel Zolle Fernández 17 Governance of African Palm Production and Lifeways of Palm Producers in Two Municipalities of the Chiapas Jungle����������������������  335 Enrique de Jesús Trejo Sánchez, Guillermo Valdiviezo Ocampo, and Manuel Roberto Parra Vázquez 18 Community Responses to Historical Land Degradation: Lessons from São Luiz do Paraitinga, Brazil����������������������������������������  363 Alice Ramos de Moraes and Camila Alvez Islas 19 Effects of Public Agricultural and Forestry Policies on the Livelihoods of Campesino Families in the Bolivian Amazon����  381 Pamela Cartagena and Carmelo Peralta 20 Organic Agriculture, Agroecology, and Agroforestry: Small Farmers in Brazil��������������������������������������������������������������������������  409 Célia Futemma Part VI Synthesis and Moving Forward 21 Lessons on Local Socio-Environmental Systems and Rural Producers’ Local Visions to Inform on Public Policy for Latin America������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  437 Eduardo Bello Baltazar, Minerva Arce Ibarra, Manuel Roberto Parra Vázquez, and Luciana Gomes de Araujo

Contributors

Luis Eduardo Acosta Muñoz  Instituto Amazónico de Investigaciones Científicas Sinchi, Leticia, Colombia Emmanuel  Duarte  Almada  Kaipora - Laboratory of Biocultural Studies, Department of Biological Sciences, Minas Gerais State University, Ibirité, Brazil Minerva Arce Ibarra  Department of Systematic and Aquatic Ecology, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico Manuel La O Arias  Jorge Dimitrov Institute for Agricultural Research, Bayamo, Granma, Cuba Current address: Ganadería Ambiental, Universidad Autonóma de Chiapas, Villaflores, Chiapas, Mexico Eduardo Bello Baltazar  Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico Laura Carrillo  Department of Systematic and Aquatic Ecology, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Chetumal, Mexico Pamela  Cartagena  Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado, La Paz, Bolivia Karina  N.  Chale  Silveira  División de Ciencias e Ingeniería, Universidad de Quintana Roo, Chetumal, Mexico Pablo  Emilio  De la Cruz  Nassar  Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Mexico Enrique  de Jesús  Trejo  Sánchez  Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico Alice  Ramos  de Moraes  Programa de Pós Graduação em Ecologia, Institute of Biology and Ecosystem Ecology and Management Lab, NEPAM, University of Campinas - UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil xv

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Erin I. J. Estrada Lugo  Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico Aderval  Costa  Filho  Department of Anthropology and Archeology, School of Philosophy and Human Sciences, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil Célia Futemma  Center for Environmental Study and Research (NEPAM), State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil Luis  García  Barrios  Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico Ma.  Eugenia  García  Contreras  División de Ciencias Sociales y Económico Administrativas, Departamento de Cencías Jurídicas, Universidad de Quintana Roo, Chetumal, Mexico Péricles Vinícius Gentile  MZUSP, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil Luciana  Gomes  de Araujo  Institute of Energy and Environment, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil Francisco Guevara Hernández  Facultad de Ciencias Agronómicas, Universidad Autonoma de Chiapas, Villaflores, Chiapas, Mexico Cristina Guerrero Jiménez  Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Mexico Obeimar Balente Herrera  Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Mexico Camila Alvez Islas  Programa de Pós Graduação em Ecologia, Institute of Biology and Ecosystem Ecology and Management Lab, NEPAM, University of Campinas UNICAMP, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil Amayrani Meza Jiménez  Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico Iris  Josefina  Liscovsky  Instituto Superior de Formación Técnica Profesional (CENT N°40), Ministerio de Educación y Derechos Humanos, Viedma, Rio Negro, Argentina Ana  Beatriz  Vianna  Mendes  Department of Anthropology and Archeology, School of Philosophy and Human Sciences, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil José  Nahed  Toral  Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico Manuel  Roberto  Parra  Vázquez  Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico

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Carmelo  Peralta  National Unit for Development, Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado, La Paz, Bolivia Sabrina  Elizabeth  Picone  Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Centro de Investigación y Transferencia Santa Cruz (CONICET-CIT Santa Cruz), Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, Argentina Isela Ponce Palma  Jorge Dimitrov Institute for Agricultural Research, Bayamo, Granma, Cuba Current Address: Academia de Ingeniería Ambiental, Universidad de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas (UNICACH) Sede Mapastepec, Mapastepec, Chiapas, Mexico Deborah S. Prado  Center for Environmental Studies and Research, University of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil Rosely Alvim Sanches  Commons Conservation and Management Research Group (CGCommons) and Human Ecology and Governance Research Group, State University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil Alejandro Fabián Schweitzer  Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Centro de Investigación y Transferencia Santa Cruz (CONICET-CIT Santa Cruz), Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, Argentina Axayácatl Segundo Cabello  Área de investigación, Centro Regional de Educación Normal Javier Rojo Gómez, Bacalar, Mexico Abraxas  Segundo  García  Interdisciplinary Maya and Nature Studies Group (EIMyN), Chetumal, Mexico Juliana Rezende Torres  Department of Human Sciences and Education, Federal University of São Carlos, Sorocaba, Brazil Jorge  Urdapilleta  Carrasco  Independent Scholar, San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico Guillermo  Valdiviezo  Ocampo  Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico Lilia Betania Vázquez González  TecMilenio University, Merida Campus, Mérida, Mexico Gerard Verschoor  Sociology of Development and Change, Department of Social Sciences, University of Wageningen, Wageningen, Gelderland, The Netherlands Carla  Beatriz  Zamora  Lomelí  Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Mexico María  Raquel  Zolle  Fernández  Ingeniería sin Fronteras Galicia, San Lorenzo, Valle, Honduras

Reviewers

Pablo  Pérez  Akaki  Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, FES Acatlán, Naucalpan, Mexico Carlos Héctor Ávila Bello  Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa, Mexico Gerardo  Bocco  Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Campus Morelia, Mexico City, Mexico Axayácatl  Segundo  Cabello  Centro Regional de Educación Normal, Bacalar, Mexico Ingreet Juliet Cano Castellanos  Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Mexico Lourdes Melissa Chable Chi  Independen Scholar, Chetumal, Mexico Alexander Dunlap  University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway Lucio Pat Fernández  El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Campeche, Mexico Alberto Conde Flores  Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala, Mexico Rodrigo Rodrigues de Freitas  University of Southern Santa Catarina, Tubarão, Brazil Obeimar Balente Herrera  El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Mexico Svein Jentoft  UiT-The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway Emmanuel Gómez Martínez  Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, Texcoco, Mexico Philile Mbatha  University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa Mateo Mier y Terán  CONACyT-El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Mexico

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Reviewers

Antonio  Saldívar  Moreno  El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Mexico Selyf Lloyd Morgan  Cardiff Metropolitan University, Cardiff, UK Jorge Mario Aponte Mota  National University of Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia Luis Eduardo Acosta Muñoz  Instituto Amazónico de Investigaciones Científicas, Leticia, Colombia Fredy Ochoa  El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Mexico Gustavo Soldati  University of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brazil Tim Trench  Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, Texcoco, Mexico Sergio  Vargas  Velázquez Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, Cuernavaca, Mexico Sergio Cortina Villar  El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Mexico

Part I

Introduction

Chapter 1

Local Socio-Environmental Systems as a Transdisciplinary Conceptual Framework Manuel Roberto Parra Vázquez, Minerva Arce Ibarra, Eduardo Bello Baltazar, and Luciana Gomes de Araujo

Abstract  In this chapter, we introduce the scenario of the book and provide the theoretical foundations of its key topics—socio-environmental regimes, innovation niches, local visions, and transdisciplinary approaches, as well as the interactions among these topics—which we use to analyze indigenous and other rural production systems in Latin American (LA) territories and communities. Most of the studied territories are located in diverse geographic regions, including the Mayan jungles and the Amazon that the literature recognizes as lands in which high biodiversity and indigenous and traditional peoples are interwoven. In order to analyze diverse rural productive sectors in LA territories, we propose the Local Socio-Environmental Systems framework which is rooted in systems theory. This approach is sufficiently flexible to be compatible with the particular assumptions and theories that a given research team chooses to apply to a given territory. We used Bonfil-Batalla’s cultural control theory to explore the territories addressed in this book, categorizing them according to the sources of rural producers’ key local resources and their capacity for decision-making regarding these resources. We also discuss the manner in which we have shifted from disciplinarity to transdisciplinarity in our research in indigenous and other rural territories. We view transdisciplinarity as a way of combining scientific knowledge and social practices. Thus, transdisciplinarity involves

M. R. Parra Vázquez (*) · E. Bello Baltazar Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] M. Arce Ibarra Department of Systematic and Aquatic Ecology, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] L. Gomes de Araujo Institute of Energy and Environment, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_1

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praxis as well as discussion and consideration through a spiral of exchanges of knowledge in which participants play interchangeable roles: we are all novices; we all learn; and we all produce knowledge. Transdisciplinarity involves a critical interculturalism perspective to promote dialogue among different worldviews. The final section briefly summarizes the book’s chapters, which present case studies from seven LA countries—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, and Mexico. Keywords  Systems theory · Transdisciplinarity · Cultural control theory · Territory · Socio-environmental regimes

1.1  Introduction This book addresses a set of Latin American (LA) transdisciplinary investigations of local use and traditional management and conservation of landscapes in rural territories, which have historically been influenced by rules dictated by multi-level socio-environmental regimes. In addressing this topic, we consider ethnobotany to have been key to developing a set of multidisciplinary studies by Latin American scholars, beginning in the early 1970s with studies on human–plant relationships over time and space and across cultures within Mexico (E. Hernández Xolocotzi, 1913–1991) (Hernández, 1959; Hernández & Solano, 1982). Therefore, ethnobotany is the starting point for developing the conceptual framework of this book. Half a century ago, ethnobotany studied human–plant relationships on a local level in a variety of contexts, addressing a study object through various academic disciplines, including biology, botany, ecology, and agronomy. Over time, ethnobotanical studies shifted from analyzing an “object of study” to holistically addressing a “subject of development,” engaging researchers and students in local processes of change and development. As a result, there was a need to adapt the research approaches of ethnobotanical studies to include such intrinsic factors in local social processes as food, work, health, education, security, and justice. For this reason, research projects gradually incorporated economists, anthropologists, sociologists, educators, lawyers, etc. Many research teams, in collaboration with other social actors, sought to improve rural livelihoods while also conserving local landscapes and natural resources. As a result, networks of cooperation have been established over time in diverse rural LA territories. In building these networks, researchers have used several strategies to develop collaborative relationships based on trust and solidarity between inhabitants of rural territories with difficult access and little means of external communication on the one hand, and other participants in research projects such as NGOs and independent consultants on the other hand. Such collaboration involves recognition and respect for the human rights of indigenous and traditional peoples and other rural producers.

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As a result of the so-called globalization during the second half of the twentieth century, States’ borders began to become permeable to free trade of goods, capital, and people (Wallerstein, 2005). This had repercussions for human–plant research worldwide, including in Latin America. One striking example is the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, based on the idea that human well-being and sustainable development require better management of Earth’s ecosystems (WRI, 2003). Given such global transformations, scholars who formerly carried out research on human– plant relationships now needed to broaden their research to consider “human–environment” relationships. To pursue this endeavor, scholars across LA have devised endogenous context-specific theoretical models for approaching research in rural territories (e.g., Futemma, 2013; Martínez-López, Cruz-León, Sangerman-Jarquín, Cárdenas, Herrera, & Ramírez-Valverde, 2019). One such model is the Local SocioEnvironmental System (LSES) framework (see Sect. 1.1.1). LSES has been applied—either fully or partially—to the majority of the case studies addressed in this book. It is sufficiently flexible to be compatible with the specific models, assumptions, and theories of any given research team. Therefore, the fact that the different researchers contributing to this book used components of a single framework allowed for comparing case studies from different territories and identifying their typology. In carrying out a transdisciplinary comparative analysis, we identified a variety of patterns of response to the socio-environmental regimes in place in the studied territories, as analyzed in the closing chapter (see Bello-Baltazar et al. Chap. 21, this volume). With this book, we seek to identify, describe, and analyze social and technical innovations that are being devised in the LSES studied. These innovations are the result of multiple interactions among factors—which include territorial configuration, power relations among social actors, traditional and indigenous knowledge, environmental drivers (threats and opportunities), the market, and current public policies. Moreover, innovations are the result of peoples’ capacity to respond to global processes. Over the past three decades, transformations resulting from globalization have favored establishment of a global neoliberal1 socio-political regime. In the 1990s through multilateral agreements, the World Bank (WB) institutionalized a mechanism of “conditionality lending” (de Moerloose, 2014; Vordtriede, 2019, p. 1), by which each signatory country must modify its laws to align them with a development agenda directed by international financial institutions. For example, if a country participates in these agreements, the WB offers to fund its development initiatives or other federal programs. A country’s access to funding is conditioned by its government complying with rules set through this mechanism. Therefore, a participating country provides prior informed consent to complying with rules established 1  We understand the term “neoliberal” as a characteristic of neoliberalism, which according to Harvey (2006, p. 145): “Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices which proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, free markets and free trade.”

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through multilateral agreements. From 1980 to 1993, LA borrowed more money from the WB for structural adjustment than any other region of the world. In the case of Brazil, such loans allowed the WB to expand its operations in education, health, the environment, and other areas. By the end of the 1980s, environmentally based criticism by North American and European NGOs had begun to be i­ ncorporated into WB operations, for example, with respect to the impact of construction of a road to connect southern and northern Brazil (Pereira, 2014). Considering this global socio-political context, through LA case studies, this book aims to identify ways in which the neoliberal regime operates in different sectors of rural producers. We also aim to compare and contrast innovations and other responses by different local actors to the reigning regimes. Below we present the attributes of LSES, and—using a relational perspective—discuss our past research and provide several examples of research in rural and indigenous settings.

1.1.1  General Attributes of LSES We understand a conceptual framework to be a set of concepts which are useful for examining a given topic. The LSES conceptual framework is rooted in systems theory,2 which allows for identifying salient characteristics of the LSES in each case study included in the present volume. LSES also allows for communication among scholars who work in rural territories, as well as among these scholars, the communities, and external agents. An LSES is comprised of people and therefore contains a significant social component (Fig. 1.1). We follow the argument of Niklas Luhmann (1990), who contends that social systems are neither hierarchical nor nested, but rather consist of multiple interrelated sub-systems. Thus, we portray an LSES as a complex adaptive system made up of four sub-systems which are interrelated based on the fact that they are connected to a single territory (Fig. 1.1). These sub-systems are: (i) landscapes; (ii) the group of producers, consisting of indigenous, peasants, and other rural small-scale producers, including fishers; (iii) the socio-academic group, consisting of researchers, members of NGOs, and students; and (iv) the political-economic group, consisting of governmental official in charge, and entrepreneurs (the regime’s agents; Fig.  1.1). Understanding these four components of the system—as well as their interactions—allows for comprehending processes of change that occur in indigenous and other rural production systems. For purposes of this chapter, we understand a territory to be a social construction resulting from interactions among multiple actors, involving power relationships 2  We understand a system to be a set of components which are interconnected such that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. As most systems consist of a large number of components, they may be fully understood by analyzing not only their components but also the complex interactions among components, as well as between the system and its environment (Cilliers, 1998; Meadows, 2008).

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Fig. 1.1  The Local Socio-Environmental System (LSES) framework (Source: Adapted from Parra-Vázquez, González-Espinosa, Nahed-Toral, García-Barrios, Bello-Baltazar, Estrada-Lugo, & Cruz-Morales (in press))

(Zamora Chap. 11, this volume). As shown in Fig. 1.1, we identify three categories of social groups that act in a single territory on different geographical and political scales: rural producers and the organizations to which they belong, socio-academic actors, and economic-political actors. For a better understanding of the contribution of the concept of social actors to the field of new rurality in Rural Latin American studies, see Norman Long (2004). Each of the components in Fig.  1.1 has been the subject of several academic disciplines. Territory has been the subject not only of history and geography, but also more recently of agroecology; the group of producers has been the subject of anthropology, sociology, and ethnobiology; the socio-academic group has been the subject of sociology and economics; and the political-economic group has been the subject of political sciences, history, economics, and sociology. LSES are complex systems which cannot be properly addressed through a single discipline. In the past three decades, academics have been shifting from multidisciplinary to interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to analyzing complex systems (Armitage, Charles, & Berkes, 2017; Berkes, 2015; Conde Flores, Ortiz Báez, Delgado Rodríguez, & Gómez Rábago 2013; Lazos-Chavero, Mwampamba, & GarcíaFrapolli, 2018; Leff, 2006; Parra-Vázquez & Díaz-­Hernández, 1985). In addressing LSES, it would be helpful to combine knowledge and practices from several fields such as—depending on the case at hand—agroecology, anthropology, sociology,

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economics, law, and political sciences, as well as other types of knowledge such as traditional and indigenous knowledge. Over decades of fieldwork and research experience, we have recognized that in order to contribute to improving the living and working conditions of rural producers in general, there is a need to address how they could cope with and resist development initiatives by the dominant regime. To this end, some scholars and other professionals join together to support local innovations to deliberately catalyze territorial change (Nieto Masot & Cárdenas Alonso, 2015); we refer to these actors as the socio-academic group (Fig. 1.1). Changes in an LSES emerge from the relationships among various social groups present in the territory as well as from endogenous and external environmental dynamics affecting the territory. The territorial configuration of an LSES is a result of historical social practices and power relations that conform people’s “habitus” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 52). Both local and external norms that govern daily life shape territorial livelihoods. Diverse livelihoods generate tangible and intangible values which are often disputed by local actors, while witnessed and/or influenced by external actors. Most of the authors of this book used participatory research approaches which allowed for comprehending the type of changes sought by rural families in their territories and analyzing differentiated local responses to global drivers.

1.1.2  Components of LSES 1.1.2.1  Landscape and Territory We refer to landscape as a marine or terrestrial area that has a certain level of homogeneity, formed by a complex set of systems resulting from multiple interactions among rocks, water, air, flora, fauna, and humans. Moreover, the features of a landscape are distinguishable from those of other neighboring areas (Mejía-Ávila, 2007, p. 10). A landscape is a representation of an ecosystem together with the local population’s social and economic organization that allows for comprehending the relationship between society and nature (Infante-Ramírez, Arce-Ibarra, & Bello-Baltazar, 2014). Several landscapes together (i.e., rainforest, grasslands) create a territory. A key concept to understanding territories in which people carry out agriculture is agroecosystem. In our participatory research in rural communities, we have observed that a family or community often uses a combination of ecological niches in a diversity of agroecosystems. In a seminar on agroecosystems held in Mexico in 1976, Professor Efraím Hernández Xolocotzi proposed a simple yet broad and useful definition of agroecosystem: an ecosystem in which humans use natural resources for crop agriculture, livestock raising, forestry, and wildlife management, thereby modifying the ecosystem to a or greater or lesser extent (Hernández, 1977). Each agroecosystem results from the accumulation of knowledge of many individuals, which results in specific agricultural practices (Hernández, Inzunza, Solano, Arias,

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& Parra, 2011) as well as in social and cultural practices that underlie territorial identities. We regard a territory as a portion of land—including soil, subsoil, water, and air—impacted by both dynamic social and natural processes. Each territory has been inhabited by social groups that continually try to appropriate it. Objective appropriation occurs through labor to adapt the land to peoples’ needs, whereas subjective appropriation occurs whenever people give meaning to land and this meaning is validated by the community’s norms, values, and behaviors. Each territory has a specific configuration which has been shaped by a combination of socio-­ environmental conditions resulting from power relations and control of space (Haesbaert, 2013). Therefore, territories undergo differentiated patterns of change over time. Throughout history, public institutions have been in charge of defining and controlling territories although the private sector has often exercised this control through their investments, and occasionally civic organizations do so through social movements (FAO, 2019). In this book, the addressed territories contain enormous forested and marine areas with first-rate biophysical reserves of water, minerals, flora and fauna, which are among the most important highly biodiverse landscapes in the world, including the Mayan jungles and the Amazon. These and other LA’s territories are recognized as lands in which high biodiversity and indigenous and traditional peoples are interwoven (Peña-Azcona, Estrada-Lugo, Arce-­ Ibarra, & Bello-Baltazar, 2020; Puc-Alcocer, Arce-Ibarra, Cortina-Villar, & Estrada-Lugo, 2019). According to Bonfil-Batalla (1991), the theory of cultural control allows for classifying territories taking into account ownership of key local resources (local ownership versus ownership by an external actor) and the decision-making capacity over those resources (local decision-making versus decision-making by an external actor). Thus, according to this theory, the following scenarios can be found in studied territories: (a) an “autonomous territory,” in which local people have both ownership and decision-making power over resources; (b) an “alienated territory,” in which local people have ownership over resources but decisions regarding their use are made by one or more external actors; (c) an “appropriated territory,” in which local resources are owned by one or more external actors but decisions regarding their use are made by local people; and (d) an “imposed territory,” in which one or more external actors have both local ownership and decision-making power over resources (Table 1.1). Such analyses are further discussed in Chap. 21 of this book, Table 1.1  Classification of a territory based on the cultural control theory Resource ownership Local ownership Ownership by external actor/s Source: Adapted from Bonfil-Batalla (1991)

Decision-making over resources Local Decision-making by decision-making external actor/s Autonomous Alienated territory territory Appropriated Imposed territory territory

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which contains a synthesis of the case studies using cultural control theory (see Bello-Baltazar et al. Chap. 21, this volume). According to our past as well as current research, continual territorial transformations and socio-environmental innovation processes result in divergent territorial trajectories. This occurs partly due to the fact that interactions among the three types of actors in an LSES (group of producers, political-economic group, and socio-­ academic group) do not follow a given pattern; rather, the types of interactions are context specific. We regard interactions among these three types of actors as collective actions characterized by asymmetrical power relations which are expressed in different manners depending on the territory. For instance, for one of the case studies included in this volume, the researchers played a role as critical external observers of the rural producers (Macehual Mayan campesinos) but had no relationship with the political-economic group (Segundo et al. Chap. 3, this volume). Another case study (De La Cruz et al. Chap. 2, this volume) presents results of research by a socio-academic group which—after resolving cultural and communication difficulties—was able to establish an alliance with the indigenous producers (Tikuna, Uitoto, Bora, Cocama, and Inga peoples) in order to confront the political-economic group. In a third case study (Trejo et al. Chap. 17, this volume), taking on an external position as critical observers, the researchers explain the interactions (and confrontation) between African palm growers and the company that promotes and purchases this crop (part of the political-economic group). In yet another example (Herrera & Guerrero Chap. 5, this volume), the socio-academic group establishes a strong relationship with coffee growers and confronts the coffee buyers (part of the political-economic group). We argue that all these transformations and processes occur under a single political-economic regime. 1.1.2.2  The Political-Economic Group (or Regime’s Agents) To better comprehend the concept of “regime,” we should understand it as part of a political system. David Easton (1965) points to three components of a political system: • Political community: a group of people interconnected as a result of social division of labor. • Political regime: within a political community, the set of norms, values, and structures defined by authorities in order to distribute and organize power. • Authority: those people who occupy a role in a system’s political management. A government is comprised of a set of institutions to which another party has granted the exercise of power (Bobbio, Matteucci, & Pasquino, 1991), and public policies are actions by a government to correct or modify a social or economic situation that has been publicly recognized as a problem (Merino, 2013). The interrelationship among the political community, the political regime, and political authority is as a subject for political research.

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On a local level, public policies are put into place by local governmental officials who receive funding to implement policy which is often dictated from higher political levels. Local governments make agreements with a variety of local actors to institute local territorial regimes. Therefore, each territory has a government and a regime with specific attributes that vary from one territory to another. On a national level, governments are in charge of establishing public policies which determine actions to be carried out in different public sectors (e.g., economy, health, education). Governmental institutions such as ministries, departments, or secretariats are in charge of implementing public policies which in turn form sectoral regimes. According to Bourdieu and Wacquant (1995), this form of organization results in a set of administrative fields in which governmental and non-governmental agents—individually or in groups—struggle for power over any particular economic sector. This is carried out by means of laws, regulations, administrative measures (subsidies, permits, etc.), and any other process that may be used to implement public policy. On an international level, regime refers to a set of principles, regulations, international summits, institutions, and procedures for decision-making used to govern taking into account different actors’ claims or interests within specific economic sectors (Pigrau Solé, 2015), including education and law. In recent decades, national governments have adopted regulations resulting from international agreements (i.e., from the global regime), implementing them through national or sub-national regimes. We refer to socio-environmental regimes as those regulations resulting from international agreements implemented by national and sub-national regimes to address social and environmental issues. As they are implemented in specific territories, they may also be referred to as territorial regimes. 1.1.2.3  The Group of Producers and Their Social Organizations In all of the cases studied in this book, the group of rural producers carried out local actions in their systems of production and participated in many social movements. In many rural indigenous settings, such as in Mexico’s lowland Mayan region, there are Mayan peasants which system of agricultural production is organized into domestic groups (Estrada Lugo, 2011; García et al. Chap. 6, this volume). As these groups carry out collective actions, they act either as communities or peasant organizations. These rural producers belong to different social organizations distinguished by their livelihoods. We regard a livelihood as the daily activities of a group of rural producers including their practices and discourses (Herrera, Parra, Liscovsky, Ramos, & Gallardo, 2017). In their rural contexts, these social actors seek to secure access to essential resources including natural and man-made capital—whether tangible or intangible—in order to carry out a set of activities (strategy) through which they may satisfy their needs (Herrera et al., 2017). These needs may be objective—such as food, or subjective—such as shelter. The way in which families and other rural producers organize their activities to interact with their socioeconomic environment is governed by both local norms of behavior and

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r­ egulations established by socio-environmental regimes (Cartagena & Peralta Chap. 19, this volume). We argue that opportunities for rural families to carry out social reproduction are dependent on their capacity for agency, their decision-making capabilities, and their collective action (Parra-Vázquez et  al., in press). People’s capacity for agency is dependent on structural conditions which in turn are based on asymmetrical power relations (Zamora Chap. 11, this volume). Therefore, innovation niches (Ingram, 2015) created by socio-academic groups play an important role in social reproduction. Domestic groups or families live in communities or other types of social units in which social interactions take place and co-territorial relationships exist. In rural contexts, a community has several roles—as a unit of collective production (as in the case of the common property or “ejido” that practices forestry, see Chale-­ Silveira et al. Chap. 8, this volume), but also as an entity with the capacity to mediate between local rural economic systems on the one hand and regional, national, and global economic systems on the other (Parra-Vázquez et al., in press; Cartagena & Peralta Chap. 19, this volume). On a community level, social organizations serve as intermediaries between policies established on a macro-level and the local political-economic group. The ability of rural people to carry out economic activities—which includes having access to landscapes and the resources within them—depends on them being community members with the associated rights and obligations. Families and other rural producer groups are not only connected to communities, but also to markets and other social networks through which they sell their goods and labor (including through migration), and obtain goods and services (Appendini & Nuijten, 2002). The nature of these connections depends on the relationships that communities establish with other social organizations (e.g., cooperative, community assembly) oriented toward specific objectives (Scott, 2005). Sergio Gómez (2000) proposes that rural or peasant organizations be classified into three categories, according to their objectives and the behavior of their members: (i) economic organizations which seek commercial benefits for their members; (ii) corporative or professional organizations which seek only to benefit their members regarding specific issues; and (iii) solidarity organizations with “universal” objectives that affect their entire sector, not just members of their organizations. Other researchers also point out the existence of political organizations (de Grammont & Mackinlay, 2006). Some such organizations are subordinated to political parties; others have relationships with political parties but maintain their autonomy; and still others reject any relationship with political parties, arguing that political parties reproduce and replicate hegemonic structures.

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1.1.2.4  The Socio-Academic Group We address socio-academic groups by building on the experience of Local Action Groups (Grupos de Acción Local) in the European Union’s LEADER project (Nieto Masot & Cárdenas Alonso, 2015). Socio-academic groups are comprised of scholars, members of NGOs, students, etc. who design, develop, and implement socio-­environmental innovation strategies in rural territories. These groups principally consist of people from public institutions (universities, research centers), and NGOs3 that have non-profit objectives, as well as social or economic actors from the territories themselves. We define socio-environmental innovation (Bello-Baltazar, Naranjo-Piñera, & Vandame, 2012, p. 12) as a process of action research in territories in which a set of actors participates according to their interests, mission, and capacities in specific scientific, technological, organizational, financial, and/or commercial activities with the objective of not only providing a creative response to problems related to rural development and natural resource conservation, but also generating knowledge that facilitates the actors’ achieving autonomy. In general, through their actions, participants seek structural transformations in their community in order to attain collective benefits. In several LA territories, participatory-­action research has been used to influence public policy as well as to support socio-environmental innovation (Parra-Vázquez et al., 2010). In practice, socio-academic groups act in innovation niches (Ingram, 2015) in social spaces suitable to trial-and-error under different development scenarios (or game rules). Innovation niches are sources of ideas, practices, and actions which defy the current regime and may catalyze transformation in specific territories (Ingram, 2015). Within processes of innovation, social learning and social production of knowledge play a fundamental role in social transformation (Ponce-Palma et al. Chap. 14, this volume). 1.1.2.5  Shifting from Disciplinary to Transdisciplinary Approaches With respect to collaboration between researchers and one or more experts (indigenous and non-indigenous producers or other scholars), a continuum of approaches exists, ranging from disciplinary to transdisciplinary (Choi & Pak, 2006; Max-Neef, 2004, 2005; Said et al., 2019). Given that ecology, sociology, etc. have been developed as branches of knowledge (disciplines), they adopt discipline-specific tools and methods for solving their particular research problems. We regard a multidisciplinary approach to research as collaboration (in a project, course, etc.) to solve a specific problem or reach a certain goal. However, if the 3  Although in our LSES model, we generally regard members of both NGOs and research institutions as belonging to the same socio-academic group, in some territories members of global NGOs have assisted the political-economic group in implementing territorial regimes that benefit intermediaries and the market more than rural producers (see Chapin, 2004).

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research problem to be solved has not been collectively agreed upon by participants, perceptions of the nature of the problem at hand may vary by discipline, and the results of such collaboration may not be integrated. A multidisciplinary approach is additive in the sense that despite drawing on knowledge from different disciplines, participants often fail to integrate their different concepts or theoretical assumptions, and therefore their results often fall within the borders of a specific discipline. An interdisciplinary approach to research also involves collaboration, but is more complex than a multidisciplinary approach as it involves a deliberate attempt to combine components of various fields of knowledge to jointly solve the research problem at hand. Moreover, the problem to be solved as well as the methods are discussed and agreed upon by all participants. Such an approach may involve “bridging concepts” (Arce-Ibarra & Gastelú-Martínez, 2007) and “bridging methods,” as well as bridging, synthesizing, deconstructing, and reconstructing parts of the research problem and the theoretical foundations of participating disciplines to come up with new solutions or a new understanding of the problem. Lastly, the concept of transdisciplinarity is relatively new and therefore is not yet included in most standard dictionaries (Choi & Pak, 2006). A transdisciplinary approach is also collaborative and may contain all the elements mentioned above regarding interdisciplinary approaches. However, it transcends interdisciplinarity as it integrates several perspectives (e.g., emic and etic views) as well as peoples’ local visions4 and worldviews, and both popular and scientific knowledge. Therefore, some scholars suggest that transdisciplinarity involves a dialogue between academia and society (Lang et al., 2012), and—depending on the problem at hand—the government and the private sector may participate in this dialogue. Transdisciplinarity goes between, across, and beyond disciplines (Chuenpagdee & Jentoft, 2019). Nonetheless, Max-Neef (2005, p. 12) states that “transdisciplinarity in itself is still an unfinished project, around which there is still much to be discovered and investigated.” At this stage, “it is both a tool and a project” (Max-Neef, 2005, p. 12). In summary, we consider that transdisciplinary approaches may be understood as a crossroads between scientific knowledge and social practices. Although the literature provides several examples of developing and implementing transdisciplinary research approaches (Bourdieu, 2002; Max-Neef, 2005; Said et al., 2019), in our experience, contemporary social transformations in LA—especially those involving territorial resistance and struggles—require a particular path to transdisciplinary research. In such scenarios, in collaborative studies between academics and indigenous and other rural producers, the researchers generally have an understanding of the local context given that dialogue typically occurs between researchers and rural producers regarding local visions and needs. The next step after this dialogue is planning, developing, and implementing an ad hoc research 4  In this chapter, local visions consist of people’s subjectivities as well as a range of community and regionally based personal and family processes that—when faced with economic, social, and/or political impositions by national and international regimes—may or may not be capable of collaborating with socio-academic actors to develop niches of collective action in an attempt to attain life with dignity.

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framework to collectively define the research problem in the specific context. The collaborative research model we propose is represented in Fig. 1.1. Acknowledging the heterogeneity among LA territories such as those analyzed in this book, as well as among local people’s responses and their relationships with research teams, highlights the challenges to participatory studies. This research approach requires researchers to be creative and flexible to observe, be aware of, and be responsive to the visions of rural producers. Thus, according to a perspective of critical interculturalism (see Zamora Chap. 11, this volume), transdisciplinarity involves “learning to learn” (see Ponce-Palma et al. Chap. 14, this volume) as well as a “spiral” of dialogue to exchange perspectives and knowledge, along with action, involving interchangeable roles between researchers and rural producers: we are all novices, and we all learn and produce knowledge.

1.2  About this Book As mentioned in the introduction, this book aims to identify and comprehend the way in which mechanisms of socio-environmental regimes operate in different territories, and compare local actors’ capacities to respond to those regimes. To address this topic, we adopt transdisciplinary research approaches which allow for comprehending rural contexts, taking into account the visions of local residents and carrying out dialogue and exchange of knowledge among researchers and the group of producers. The objectives of this book were established following discussions among scholars who have carried out collaborative research in Mexico since the late 1990s. These scholars agreed to collectively write a book, and three of them agreed to participate in editing it. A colleague from Brazil who worked with the Community Conservation Research Network of Canada was contacted to be one of the editors. Once a team of four editors was chosen and the topic of the book was defined, other scholars from several LA countries and their graduate students were invited to participate. To establish a common language (Klein, 1990) and “level the ground” among participants, three virtual seminars were held with all authors who agreed to contribute to the book with topics addressing transdisciplinarity, socio-­environmental regimes, and innovation niches. Based on these discussions, the editors wrote the book’s abstract, and each contributing author submitted an abstract for their chapter that was aligned with the general abstract. Once all abstracts were submitted, the editors discussed the organization of the book’s contents. To assure common basic concepts and theoretical framework, one editor wrote draft notes for Chap. 1 which were sent to all authors to review; these authors provided continual input and feedback. The final book comprises six sections (Part I to Part VI), including introduction (Part I) and conclusion (Part VI); Parts II to VI are described below. Part II—Where Different Sources of Knowledge Intersect—covers research carried out with the participation of indigenous peoples from Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil. In all cases, the authors demonstrate that local indigenous knowledge and cultural practices lay the foundations for local decision-making processes in

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these territories. Chapters 2–5 show how socio-environmental regimes are involved in development through public policy on environmental governance (Colombia), education (Mexico), agri-food systems (Mexico), and land grabbing (Brazil). Chapter 2, titled Traditional Knowledge in the Colombian Amazon: Tensions Between Indigenous Territorial Autonomy and Environmental Governance, by Pablo De La Cruz, Eduardo Bello Baltazar, Luis Eduardo Acosta, Erin I.J. Estrada Lugo, Minerva Arce Ibarra, and Luis García Barrios, analyzes the role of traditional knowledge in both territorial autonomy and environmental governance, as well as the level of interest of different indigenous and non-indigenous actors of the Colombian Amazon in applying traditional knowledge to public policy. Following discussions with local and external actors, the authors conclude that indigenous communities and their organizations are more willing to apply traditional knowledge to public policy when the latter is oriented toward strengthening their territorial and environmental autonomy than when external actors attempt to use this knowledge to promote global regulatory regimes that are beyond the control of local actors. Chapter 3, titled Education in Macehual Mayan Institutions, by Axayácatl Segundo Cabello, Ma. Eugenia García Contreras, and Abraxas Segundo García, uses a transdisciplinary approach to identify and describe several indigenous educational processes in a Macehual Mayan common property in Quintana Roo, Mexico. It also examines the role of the indigenous educational system in access, use, and management of local natural resources, upon which external development programs are based. Results demonstrate that the Milpa or slash-and-burn shifting cultivation is a Mayan educational institution, allowing for transmission of knowledge from one generation to another and therefore, in contrast to Mexico’s educational policies, supports permanence of Mayan identity in the region and of their culture in general. Chapter 4, titled Ngô ndêt pá khre: Environmental Governance for the Future of the Xingu River (Mato Grosso, Brazil), by Rosely Alvim Sanches and Célia Futemma, uses indigenous and scientific knowledge to address environmental governance over Xingu River’s springs, which are part of the territory of the Kĩsêdjê people inhabiting the Xingu Indigenous Park. On the one hand, Kĩsêdjê leaders’ narratives highlight the political, socioeconomic, and environmental context of expansion of soybean cultivation with high levels of agrochemicals in Brazil, as well as the negative health effects of these agrochemicals on their people under the current environmental governance context. On the other hand, alternative economies and forms of governance in the Upper Xingu River have fostered collaboration among indigenous and non-indigenous people—including local small- and large-­ scale farmers—as well as civil society organizations to protect springs in the Xingu River Basin. Chapter 5, titled Synergy Between Innovation Niches and Transdisciplinarity: The Case of Coffee Producer Families and their Organizations (Southeastern Mexico), by Obeimar Balente Herrera and Cristina Guerrero Jiménez, uses a transdisciplinary lens to analyze the agri-food regime, particularly the effects of the coffee production system in two study sites, as well as grassroots responses to this

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system by organized small-scale coffee growers and socio-academic groups. These responses and innovations are portrayed as “innovation niches” and include fair-­ trade initiatives by the Coordinadora Mexicana de Pequeños Productores de Comercio Justo (Mexican Coordinator of Fair Trade Small-scale Farmers), which supports coffee-growing families in seeking higher sale prices and improving their quality of life. Through collaboration between socio-academic groups and rural producers, this study finds that niche integration, multidisciplinary research groups, and the “quadruple helix” are key components of an ongoing territorial social learning process resulting in innovations which may help these farmers to cope with coffee crises due to volatile prices and agricultural pests. Part III—When Culture and Traditions Matter—demonstrates that socio-­ environmental regimes in indigenous and other rural territories not only threaten rural livelihoods but also indigenous people’s ancestral cultures, their social organization, and their customary laws. Chapter 6, titled The Milpero of the Macehual Mayan Normative System vis à vis with Global Laws and Policies of Agricultural Fire, by Ma. Eugenia García Contreras, Axayácatl Segundo Cabello, and Abraxas Segundo García, compares two legislative systems recognized by the Mexican Constitution that simultaneously govern traditional agricultural burning in Quintana Roo: the Macehual Mayan Normative System and Quintana Roo’s forest fire prevention law. The Macehual system—which has been found to be more sustainable than other cultivation systems in this region—is rooted in ancestral Mayan customary law, whereas the State system is rooted in international agreements addressing global warming which prohibit agricultural burning in rainforests. Quintana Roo’s regulatory system has been implemented on both national and state levels. The authors argue that if the Mayan peasants (milperos) who carry out slash-and-burn cultivation conform to Mexican regulations prohibiting agricultural burning in their territory, their social organization and self-provisioning economy would be disrupted; their livelihoods would be irreparably damaged; their yields would fall; and young milperos would pursue other ways of life which are alienated from the cultural context to which they belong. Chapter 7, titled The Interaction Between Mayan Honey Producers and the Global Agri-food Regime, by Lilia Betania Vázquez González, examines the interaction between agricultural practices in Mayan communities and their campesino organizations in Quintana Roo, Mexico, on the one hand and the reigning agri-food regime on the other. In these communities, traditional agricultural systems coexist and interact with the regime, which is the dominant actor. With respect to honey production, the agri-food regime imposes strict rules regarding production and “transfers” technological packages and technical knowledge to the Mayan peasants, thereby displacing traditional practices and knowledge, for example, with respect to breeding native bees. Chapter 8, titled The Environmental Regime for Climate Change and the Effects of Climatic Variability on Maya Livelihoods in Quintana Roo, Mexico, by Karina N.  Chale Silveira, Minerva Arce Ibarra, and Laura Carrillo, combines scientific and Mayan campesino knowledge to address peasants’ perceptions of the effects of climatic variability (frequent droughts, hurricanes, and extreme rain) on

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their rain-fed agricultural systems and livelihoods, which are dependent on these systems. It also reviews existing national, state, and municipal public policy on climate change to determine whether they address any of the effects of climatic variability on their livelihoods. This study reports that Mayan agricultural and forestry systems are impacted to different degrees by climatic variability, with ­slash-and-­burn agriculture being highly impacted. However, no current public policy includes any mechanisms for mitigation or adaptation of indigenous or other rural rain-fed agricultural systems to climate change, despite the fact that climatic variability is already affecting Mayan people’s food security. Part IV—The Multiple Roles of Natural Protected Areas—is devoted to unveiling the diverse impacts of these areas in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico in safeguarding or negatively affecting livelihoods, customary land tenure rights, and ancestral cultural practices such as agricultural burning. It also addresses the struggles of several indigenous peoples and their initiatives of self-governance to recover and maintain their ancestral land and water rights. This section provides several examples that demonstrate that Natural Protected Areas often ignore their cultural contexts, and that “green” and neoliberal conservation mechanisms often support land grabbing. Chapter 9, titled Trindade and the Struggle for its Territory: A Trajectory of Community Empowerment and Self-Governance in Southeastern Coast of Brazil, by Luciana Gomes de Araujo, Péricles Vinícius Gentile, and Juliana Rezende Torres, describes how people of the community of Trindade have responded to land tenure pressures since the 1970s. Currently, two protected areas, the Serra da Bocaina National Park (created in 1971) and the Cairuçu Environmental Protected Area (created in 1983) overlap land and sea areas of Trindade. This chapter explains community dynamics that favor autonomy and self-governance as strategies for coping with and confronting historical territorial conflicts. Since the 1970s, the community has developed many strategies to enhance their self-determination, capacities, collective action, and local cultural identity. One such initiative is the School of the Sea, involving children and teenagers together with their parents in community actions to reinforce the local history and identity of the people of Trindade. Chapter 10, titled Burning Reasons: Traditional Land Management Using Fire and Environmental Conflicts in the Serra da Canastra National Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil, by Emmanuel Duarte Almada, Ana Beatriz Vianna Mendes, and Aderval Costa Filho, addresses a conflict between members of traditional communities (Canastreiros) of the Serra da Canastra National Park and Brazil’s federal environmental agency which claims to be responsible for biodiversity conservation in this region. While traditional land management using fire and traditional agricultural burning are important to the Canastreiros’ way of life, the federal environmental agency prohibits use of fire in the National Park, based on biodiversity conservation theory rooted in western science. Imposition of the governmental management regime on the traditional communities significantly impacts not only on the territory’s population and their cosmology, but also on local biodiversity which had been managed through fire for centuries.

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Chapter 11, titled Interculturalism and Power at the Margin of Environmental Governance: An Approach from the Selva El Ocote Biosphere Reserve (Mexico), by Carla Beatriz Zamora Lomelí, analyzes power relations involved in environmental governance in the Selva El Ocote Biosphere Reserve (REBISO) in Chiapas, Mexico. With the purpose of identifying elements of power relations, this study examines the perceptions of local actors that inhabit REBISO’s buffer zone, as well as the role of REBISO’s administrative agency. The author points to the need for establishing an intercultural approach to the operation of the environmental regime of the REBISO and of Natural Protected Areas in general. This would improve governance of Natural Protected Areas by governments and other stakeholders and promote social and environmental sustainability. Chapter 12, titled Territories for Conservation? Capitalist Strategies for Appropriating Nature in Los Glaciares National Park in the Argentinean Patagonia, by Sabrina Picone, Iris J. Liscovsky, and Alejandro F. Schweitzer, analyzes the dynamics of territorial appropriation and commodification of nature using the development of tourism in Los Glaciares National Park as a case study. Findings show that while this park was created with the purpose of strengthening national sovereignty and protecting nature, the incorporation of tourism and green economy strategies has resulted in imposition of a hegemonic developmentalist model in contradiction to the initial goals of Argentina’s national parks. As a result, new territorial dynamics (urbanization, settlement, tourism, and public infrastructure development) have displaced local actors as key agents in local decision-making. Chapter 13, titled Emancipatory Partnership and Advances in Citizenship: Struggles over a Sea-Land Territory in Brazil, by Deborah S. Prado, retells the story of resistance of Prainha do Canto Verde, a fishing community that has developed mechanisms to cope with and resist numerous drivers of change over the past 40 years. The author identifies those factors and actors that have contributed to this community successfully coping with these drivers and thereby defending their territory and sustaining their livelihoods. The study describes a long-term process of people from Prainha do Canto Verde building citizenship with the support of several social actors or “emancipatory partners.” After over 20 years of struggle and resistance, the community achieved implementation of a protected area in order to guarantee their collective rights over their territory, protect their livelihoods, and achieve environmental conservation and sustainable use of marine resources. Thus, in this case a protected area contributed to local residents safeguarding their livelihoods. Part V—From Clashes to Agreements: How to Get There?—demonstrates that contradictions between regimes’ and indigenous and other rural producers’ visions and practices has resulted in two extreme outcomes. On the one hand, several communities have experienced an increase in both environmental degradation and emigration. On the other hand, based on their visions, local actors have been involved with, adopted, and even organized agroecological farming systems and other community initiatives to safeguard their rural livelihoods. This section presents different strategies of coping with and adapting to the effects of socio-­ environmental regimes.

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Chapter 14, titled Social Learning by Small Ruminant Farmers in Granma, Cuba, by Isela Ponce Palma, Manuel La O Arias, José Nahed Toral, and Francisco Guevara Hernández, addresses two case studies of sustainable rural livelihoods and conservation of Cuban Creole goats by external actors (researchers and government officials). This study shows how despite the difficulties of farming in Cuba, small-­ scale farmers became involved in a transdisciplinary social learning research approach in which discussions between scholars from national research institutes and government officials resulted in several approaches to conserving the goats that reflected the visions of both local and external actors. At the end of this participatory research, all those involved acknowledged having learned and obtained insights that benefited not only the researchers and government officials but also rural people’s livelihoods and the goats themselves. Chapter 15, titled Socio-Environmental Regimes in Natural Protected Areas: A Case study in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve, by Amayrani Meza Jiménez, Manuel Roberto Parra Vázquez, Luis García Barrios, Gerard Verschoor, and Erin I.J. Estrada Lugo, describes the components of the socio-environmental regime and their interactions in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas, Mexico. It reports farmers’ costs of production and incomes, concluding that some farmers are unable to cover costs and attain a minimum wage with their limited resources. Nonetheless, it also reports several local socio-environmental innovation processes that have generated adaptive management strategies although these still face significant challenges to implementation on a watershed level. Chapter 16, titled The Future of Food in our Hands. Key Factors for Governance Learned from Committees of Food and Nutrition Security in Honduras, by Jorge Urdapilleta Carrasco and María Raquel Zolle Fernández, focuses on governance from a transdisciplinary perspective and analyzes the success of two Food and Nutrition Security Committees in Honduras, where the current national malnutrition rate is over 30%. Unlike other such committees established by national laws that have not been successful, these two committees have promoted governance within inter-institutional spaces by implementing strategies such as agroecology, business and financial training, and development of credit unions to promote local exchange of knowledge and community food security. Chapter 17, titled Governance of African Palm Production and Lifeways of Palm Producers in two Municipalities of the Chiapas Jungle, by Enrique de Jesús Trejo Sánchez, Guillermo Valdiviezo Ocampo, and Manuel Roberto Parra Vázquez, uses a mixed methods approach to exhibit the functioning of the socio-­ environmental regime governing an African palm oil production system in two municipalities of Chiapas, Mexico. Results show that in both study sites, the system of governance of palm oil production is determined by the political-economic group and local-action groups, with marginal participation by campesino domestic groups. Moreover, implementation of regulations governing palm production negatively affects incomes of domestic groups, who express the desire that governance promote honesty and mutual respect among the actors of African palm production. Chapter 18, titled Community Responses to Historical Land Degradation: Lessons from São Luiz do Paraitinga, Brazil, by Alice Ramos de Moraes and Camila Alvez Islas, uses a transdisciplinary Social-Ecological Systems approach to

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identifying and analyzing community self-initiatives as a response to local social and environmental degradation, as well as to identifying the principal public policies that currently support these initiatives. Results show that three community initiatives were carried out over the past decade to restore native forests, promote sustainable farming, strengthen local agricultural production chains, and revalue rural livelihoods. Moreover, recent public policy has supported these community initiatives by funding and creating conditions which favor their permanence. Chapter 19, titled Effects of Public Agricultural and Forestry Policies on the Livelihoods of Campesino Families in the Bolivian Amazon, by Pamela Cartagena Picona and Carmelo Peralta Rivero, assesses the effects of such policies on the livelihoods of campesinos of the community of Trinchera in the Bolivian Amazon. This chapter uses the multidisciplinary Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) which evaluates natural, social, physical, financial, and human capitals from the perspective of development studies. After using a measuring scale comprising five levels in capitals, the community is focused on achieving a relatively high to very high level of their natural capital (forest), which in turn would promote growth of their other capitals, thereby improving their livelihoods. This study reports that currently, families possess a relatively high to very high potential in natural and social capitals, whereas their human, physical, and financial capitals are relatively low to very low. With regard to public policy, only two of the five agricultural and forestry programs implemented in Trinchera moderately contribute to families’ capitals, while the other three contribute little. Chapter 20, titled Organic Agriculture, Agroecology, and Agroforestry: Small Farmers in Brazil, by Célia Futemma, addresses the social, political-institutional, and environmental aspects of three alternative farming systems practiced by small farmers in Brazil, where growth of agribusiness in recent decades has affected rural communities, ecosystems, and human health. Campesino communities in Brazil have been pressured by land grabbing and as a result have experienced declining living standards. Additionally, water and soil contamination due to agrochemical use affects the health of both producers and consumers. As a response, sustainable farming models such as organic agriculture, agroecology, and agroforestry have emerged among campesinos. In many parts of Brazil, such systems not only guide agricultural production but also social movements and environmental conservation. Part VI—Synthesis and Moving Forward provides an overall synthesis of the book (Parts II–V) and proposes public policies for rural LA territories. Chapter 21, titled Lessons on Local Socio-Environmental Systems and Rural Producers’ Local Visions to Inform on Public Policy for Latin America, by Eduardo Bello Baltazar, Minerva Arce Ibarra, Manuel Roberto Parra Vázquez, and Luciana Gomes de Araujo, consists of three sections. The first provides a synthesis of lessons learned from the 19 case studies, based on the LSES theoretical framework presented in Chap. 1. In the second, through transdisciplinary analysis, we compare and integrate two patterns of outcomes found in the 19 case studies, one which resulted from insights obtained in each of the four thematic sections of the book, and another represented by the evaluated territories using Bonfil-Batalla’s cultural control theory. The final section contains suggestions for public policies, taking into account the situations in the 19 rural LA contexts evaluated as well as

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our past experience of research in LA territories. We stress that public policy in LA territories should be adapted to the context-specific situations of rural inhabitants— including their customary laws, and must respect human rights as acknowledged by various United Nations international agreements. Our recommendations are rooted in post-development thinking and promote territorial public policies.

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Part II

Where Different Sources of Knowledge Intersect

Chapter 2

Traditional Knowledge in the Colombian Amazon: Tensions Between Indigenous Territorial Autonomy and Environmental Governance Pablo Emilio De La Cruz Nassar, Eduardo Bello Baltazar, Luis Eduardo Acosta Muñoz, Erin I. J. Estrada Lugo, Minerva Arce Ibarra, and Luis Enrique García Barrios Abstract  The present study aims to analyze the role of traditional knowledge in territorial autonomy and environmental governance, as well as the level of interest of different indigenous and non-indigenous actors in the southern Colombian Amazon in applying traditional knowledge to public policy. Using the theoretical approaches of political ecology as well as a qualitative method, we describe a multidisciplinary project developed and implemented to incorporate knowledge systems of indigenous peoples of the Colombian Amazon into environmental policy. The results present an analysis of arguments by indigenous organizations, researchers, and government environmental agency administrators for and against using traditional knowledge to address the global ecological crisis. Through interviews and reports systematized by researchers and local collaborators within the project, we discuss conflicts that emerge when attempts are made to apply traditional knowledge in asymmetrical spaces of power. This includes responses by local residents to the global governance regime, which imposes policies regarding traditional knowledge in indigenous territories, and the possible repercussions of environmental policies on indigenous autonomy regimes in territories considered to be ancestral by indigenous peoples. We conclude that indigenous communities and organizations are more willing to apply traditional knowledge to public policy when the process is oriented toward strengthening their territorial and environmental autonomy than

P. E. De La Cruz Nassar (*) · E. Bello Baltazar · E. I. J. Estrada Lugo L. E. García-Barrios Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico L. E. Acosta Muñoz Instituto Amazónico de Investigaciones Científicas Sinchi, Leticia, Colombia M. Arce Ibarra Department of Systematic and Aquatic Ecology, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_2

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when external actors attempt to use this knowledge to promote global regulatory regimes that are beyond the control of local actors. Keywords  Traditional knowledge · Environmental governance regime · Territorial autonomy regime · Indigenous organizations · Government environmental agencies

2.1  Introduction Although there is no single definition of traditional knowledge, it is commonly related to beliefs, traditions, practices, institutions, and worldviews developed and sustained by indigenous and local communities in interaction with their biophysical environment (Berkes, 2009; Toledo & Barrera-Bassols, 2008). There is consensus amongst scientists using varying terminology that such knowledge: (i) is linked to a specific place, culture, or society; (ii) is dynamic in nature; (iii) belongs to groups of people who live in close contact with natural systems; and (iv) contrasts with modern or Western scientific knowledge (Reid, Teamey, & Dillon, 2002, 2004). Traditional knowledge has been conceptualized as adaptive in the sense that it is co-produced in the new contexts of modernity and has been considered key to addressing problems associated with the ecological crisis. Over the past three decades, new perspectives on the adaptive nature of traditional knowledge have led to an increasing recognition of the value of such knowledge in environmental policy (Gómez-Baggethun, Corbera, & Reyes-García, 2013). In different parts of the world, indigenous organizations, government agencies, and international environmental organizations such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) have shown increasing interest in applying this knowledge to address environmental governance issues, including governance of natural resources (Prakash, 2003; Whyte, 2013). This interest is overwhelmingly driven by research into sustainable development practices in developing countries (supported mainly by UN programs and NGOs) and the scientific community’s concern about the loss of biodiversity of species and ecosystems and the future implications for the whole planet (Nakata, 2002). In the scientific literature, one finds a whole range of different approaches to conceptualizing governance. For this study, governance is defined as modes of political steering and thus refers primarily to the policy dimension. Governance institutions that formulate and implement sustainable development policies need to convince citizens that these policies are necessary, morally justified, and conducive to the welfare of the society in question. In order to succeed, environmental governance needs to mobilize the support of a great number of individuals who are affected by its policies (Pahl-Wostl, 2009; Steffek, 2009).

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Some authors believe that this increasing interest has revealed the potential role of traditional knowledge in addressing the ecological crisis, where environmental policies and the political and material demands of indigenous peoples could converge (Leach et al., 2007). This has led indigenous and non-indigenous organizations to mobilize this knowledge in asymmetrical power arenas, where it is presented, reinterpreted, and incorporated into State and international environmental agendas (Agrawal, 1995, 2002; Lindh & Haider, 2010). Knowledge is mobilized into a science policy interface with the intention of connecting research and expertise with policy and practice in order to promote social action, thus involving the synthesis, dissemination, transfer, exchange, and co-production of knowledge by researchers and knowledge users (Levin, 2008). Indigenous leaders, activists, and scholars generally feel that knowledge that is mobilized should be protected (Alexander, Chamundeeswari, Kambu, Ruiz, & Tobin, 2003). Some authors argue that external actors often try to “protect” traditional knowledge in such a way that—rather than defending the interests of the local communities—it legitimates the interest of global governance regimes in establishing international conservation and development programs that do not necessarily coincide with these communities’ interests (Agrawal, 1995, 2002). At the heart of the discussion are the respective roles of indigenous and non-indigenous actors in protecting traditional knowledge, as well as the capacity of indigenous communities, their governments, and traditional authorities to use traditional knowledge as a tool for furthering their historical demands for autonomy (Correa, 2015; Puyana-­ Mutis, 2011). In the Colombian Amazon, protection of traditional knowledge has been an object of discussion among indigenous organizations, government environmental agencies, and academic institutions. In particular, these actors have debated the effects on indigenous territorial autonomy of mobilizing indigenous peoples’ knowledge as part of environmental policy (Acosta & Mendoza, 2007; De La Cruz & Acosta, 2015). We speak of autonomy as the self-determination and legitimacy of indigenous peoples governing themselves and their ancestral territories, including all resources in these territories (Fontaine, 2006). Territorial autonomy is closely tied to recognition of traditional knowledge and the management of natural resources.1 According to Varese (1996), it can be attributed to their “complex and concealed dialectic of daily forms of biological and cultural resistance and adaptation.” These daily forms include (1) the strategy of concealing ethnobiological knowledge, while maintaining an active relationship with biological diversity and conservation, (2) an “extreme political adaptability and a high degree of plasticity in political discourse,” (3) and the strategic tendency of most people to hide their ethnobiological knowledge while maintaining an active exploration, investigation, experimentation, and conservation of biodiversity (Varese, 1996, p. 123). These practices and strategies 1  According to Escárcega (2010, p. 9) “In the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, it is recognized that Indigenous Peoples have collective rights to determine their own political status, as well as their own economic, social, and cultural development (art. 3). This gives them the right to self-determination defined in such terms.”

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have preserved a certain degree of sovereignty and autonomy for indigenous peoples and today legitimize all of their rights claims to land, self-determination, culture, and traditional knowledge (Escárcega, 2010). This chapter presents a case study with the objective of analyzing the positions and strategies of indigenous organizations of the Tarapacá region in the Colombian Amazon, in the face of the above-mentioned external actors’ interest in mobilizing and protecting traditional knowledge in different arenas of political discussion among indigenous organizations, the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development (MADS),2 Amacayacu National Park, Río Puré National Park, and the Amazon Scientific Research Institute (SINCHI). Furthermore, we analyze the response of the indigenous organizations to environmental policies which the global environmental governance regime—including the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Nagoya Protocol—attempts to impose on indigenous territories by making use of their traditional knowledge. In this qualitative case study, we analyze the relevance of traditional knowledge to indigenous territorial autonomy and environmental governance. Theoretical and analytic approaches to political ecology were applied in order to discern the strategies used by indigenous organizations in Tarapacá to negotiate in political arenas that make use of traditional knowledge to formulate environmental governance policies. This study is based on dialogism and critical discourse analysis used as a methodology to conceptualize discourses and practices in functionalist terms; that is, as a tool for understanding discourses, analyzing their use and the contexts of their use (Pietikäinen & Dufva, 2006). Fieldwork was based on participant observation, reports, and interviews with indigenous leaders and researchers regarding the purpose of mobilizing traditional knowledge in public policy in Colombia, and the possible repercussions of such a policy on the indigenous autonomy regimes in the resguardos3 and other territories considered to be ancestral. We adopt a perspective that assumes that power and knowledge are inexorably intertwined. Hence, the aim of the study is to identify tensions and to promote reflection on the tensions, building on an empirical analysis of how these are manifested in the interplay of dialogue and negotiation between local actors and representatives of environmental agencies (Phillips, 2011). In this study, we analyze diverse arguments regarding the forms of mobilization designed to protect traditional knowledge that emerged as a result of dialogue between researchers and members of the Tikuna, Uitoto, Bora, Cocama, and Inga peoples. The research project on which the present study is based was carried out from 2011 to 2014 and led to the formulation of a public policy proposal to protect traditional knowledge associated with agrobiodiversity in Colombia. The project titled, “Incorporation of Traditional Knowledge associated with Agrobiodiversity in Colombian Agroecosystems,” under the auspices of the United Nations Development  Most organization and agency acronyms are based on the Spanish names.  A resguardo is a collective landholding belonging to one or more indigenous communities. Resguardos are governed by AATIs (see Note 5) according to rulings by indigenous courts and national laws. 2 3

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Program (UNDP), Global Environmental Facility (GEF), and MADS, was implemented in Tarapacá by the Amacayacu National Park, the Rio Puré National Park, and the SINCHI Institute.4 The following Associations of Traditional Indigenous Authorities (AATIs)5 participated in the project: Greater Indigenous Council of Tarapacá (CIMTAR), Association of Traditional Authorities of Tarapacá (ASOAINTAM), and the Association of Communitarian Women of Tarapacá (ASMUCOTAR). The project was financed by UNDP and GEF. As a result of the project, MADS presented the “Pluricultural Public Policy Proposal for Traditional Knowledge Systems associated with Biodiversity in Colombia” (MADS & PNUD, 2013, p. 4). We argue that in mobilizing traditional knowledge into spaces of political discussion, indigenous peoples, and environmental governance agencies deploy a series of strategies that redefine the role of traditional knowledge in the current ecological crisis and its adaptability to the new contexts of modernity. These discussion spaces are characterized by asymmetric power relations between local and global actors. For indigenous peoples with an oral tradition, participating in the documentation of traditional knowledge implies submitting themselves to the interpretations of others, whereby any interpretation is a product of pluri-epistemological interactions among actors. This leads indigenous organizations to adopt negotiation strategies based on dialogue, ethnic essentialism, and resistance to defining their knowledge in foreign terms and, finally, to accept some objectives of the environmental governance regime in order to attract the attention of possible allies, allowing them to enter the environmental policy interface and promote their own aims, largely related to strengthening indigenous territorial autonomy and their participation in the new global environmental governance. This chapter consists of four sections. First, we examine the literature regarding traditional knowledge within emerging networks of global environmental governance, criticisms of governance-centered approaches to traditional knowledge, and recent cases of mobilizing traditional knowledge in the southern Colombian Amazon. Second, we present some theoretical understandings of mobilization and protection of traditional knowledge from a political ecology approach. Third, we analyze visions of traditional knowledge, the fears of indigenous organizations related to making traditional knowledge an object of public policy, the methodological approaches used in the Colombian Amazonia for interfacing traditional knowledge, and the importance that researchers have given to developing public policy to protect and mobilize traditional knowledge. Finally, we present conclusions and possible consequences for indigenous organizations of mobilizing and protecting traditional knowledge.  The primary author of the present study worked with the SINCHI Institute from 2011 to 2013.  AATIs are civil society organizations which represent indigenous communities and their cabildos (councils) and administer indigenous resguardos (reservations). Since 2001, AATIs belong to the Permanent Indigenous Coordinating Council (MPCI) and work with authorities of the Amazonas Department (territorial entity) and government agencies that form the National System of Environmental Institutes (SINA). 4 5

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2.2  T  raditional Knowledge from the Perspective of Governance and Environmental Policy In the late twentieth century, nation states and international agencies began to consider indigenous knowledge useful for development and conservation (Agrawal, 2002; Berkes, 2009; Reyes-García, Vadez, Huanca, Leonard, & McDade, 2007; Zent & Maffi, 2009). Following the 1987 Brundtland Report and the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, traditional and indigenous knowledge began to be applied in an attempt to resolve environmental issues. Scholars and environmentalists demonstrated a positive correlation between cultural, biological, and agricultural diversity (Toledo & Barrera-Bassols, 2008) and pointed to indigenous peoples and their knowledge as key to ecological conservation. As a result, extensive data bases with ecological, botanical, biological, political, and economic information on indigenous territories were developed (Agrawal, 2002) and led indigenous peoples to expect that collaborating with researchers to establish such data bases would position them better in a political arena in which biodiversity is considered to be humanity’s most valuable resource and indigenous peoples are presented as the principle guarantors of its conservation. Following the Cold War, the concept of governance6 was promoted by the World Bank. Simultaneously, the welfare state—which had ensured the common good— was replaced by neoliberalism7 (Benavides & Duarte, 2010), based on the principle of decentralization in which the State no longer directly governs territories, but rather confers greater administrative autonomy on territorial entities within constitutional limitations, which in the case of Colombia included the indigenous resguardos as well as the municipalities and departments. In Latin America, this shift occurred in the early 1990s, as nation states were beginning to recognize indigenous peoples’ rights (Gros, 2012). In this new context, government environmental agencies and NGOs had the opportunity to act as intermediaries between emerging global environmental policies and indigenous organizations, principally by providing information and “transferring” technology to indigenous territories. In its 1991 Constitution, the Colombian State sought to incorporate traditional knowledge into environmental policy. International accords—specifically Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO, 1989) signed by

6  Governance usually refers to how decisions are made at different levels of society and in different territories. This concept has been used to address such issues as local participation in public policy, development, and access to technology (Berdej, Armitage, & Charles, 2015). Some authors point out that the concept of governance allows for elucidating ways in which local populations can participate in the sustainable management of ecosystems and environmental services (Leach et al., 2007). 7  According to Harvey (2006, p. 145): “Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices which proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, free markets and free trade.”

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Colombia in 1989 and by the CBD8 in 1995, and the Nagoya Protocol signed in 2011—stipulated that participating nations should recognize indigenous knowledge in their regulatory systems, with the aim of respecting and protecting traditional systems of regulation, management, use, and governance of territory and biodiversity (MADS & PNUD, 2013). Colombia signed these agreements in recognition that traditional knowledge had not been valued with respect to its potential contribution to nature conservation, science, technology, and sustainable development (Beltrán, 2016). As a result of these international accords being adopted by the Colombian government, indigenous peoples of the Amazon modified their relationship with the State. Indigenous movements—led by The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) and the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC)—demanded that the State respect their local governments and traditional knowledge as the foundations of their territorial autonomy (Berman & Ros-Tonen, 2009). Since 1991, Colombian legislation has generally supported indigenous territoriality by legally recognizing resguardos as territorial entities governed by their own authorities (Gros, 2012). At the same time, NGOs proliferated and government agencies promoted a strategy for harmonizing the demands of indigenous movements with future conservation benefits (Palacio, 2008). In 1993, Law 99 created new environmental legislation in Colombia, resulting in the establishment of public research institutes and regional environmental agencies which, together with National Natural Parks, formed the National Environmental System (SINA). Since 1992, the SINCHI Institute has conducted, coordinated, and provided outreach for scientific studies related to the biology, ecology, and sociopolitical context of the Amazon. In 2004, in compliance with the CBD, the SINCHI Institute proposed “to generate an institutional policy of working with indigenous communities that promotes inclusion of traditional knowledge in construction of sustainable development in the Colombian Amazon” (Acosta & Mendoza, 2007, p. 3). In 2009, the SINCHI Institute together with the AATIs began to focus on protection of traditional knowledge by documenting knowledge related to agricultural diversity (Acosta & Zoria, 2009).

8  Article 8j of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) stipulates that in accordance with each nation’s legislation, states will “respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and promote their wider application with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices and encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of such knowledge, innovations and practices” (ONU, 1992, article 8j).

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2.3  T  heoretical Approaches to Traditional Knowledge Derived from Political Ecology Political ecology allows for examining the rationale underlying mobilization of traditional knowledge in negotiations which often take place in a context of unequal opportunities resulting from power relations (Armitage, 2007). Studies in political ecology explain that approaches to studying traditional knowledge are either “top-­ down” or “bottom-up.” Top-down approaches—as they emphasize the importance of scientific knowledge—use ex situ methodologies that attempt to define, validate, generalize, and disseminate knowledge; while bottom-up approaches tend to be locally based processes stemming from the collective consciousness (real or imagined) relating to the origins of an ethnic group and its knowledge (Agrawal, 2002). Bottom-up approaches are based on in situ methodologies and are grounded in the right of local actors to decide how their knowledge will be used and by whom. However, implementing such an approach may be more difficult than implementing top-down approaches, as no single method exists for collecting data, and results are validated by actors who expect to benefit from this knowledge (Durham, Baker, Smith, Moore, & Morgan, 2014; Reed, Fraser, & Dougill, 2006). Top-down approaches are criticized for employing methodologies that inevitably decontextualize indigenous knowledge (Agrawal, 2002), ignoring the ways in which knowledge is produced and how it is related to other social processes (Lindh & Haider, 2010). Furthermore, scholars warn that scientists, policy makers, and corporations use such approaches to attempt to tie indigenous knowledge to global conservation interests, environmental services, biotechnology, and technological innovation (Beltrán, 2016). Meanwhile, bottom-up approaches produce results which are difficult to replicate and compare. Moreover, as they are generally controlled locally, they may be manipulated to further the political interests of specific actors within local organizations (Durham et al., 2014). Literature on traditional knowledge differentiates studies with post-structuralist perspectives from those with functionalist perspectives. Post-structuralist perspectives criticize the fact that NGOs, government agencies, and indigenous organizations end up addressing indigenous issues—including their traditional knowledge—in global terms, thereby blurring cultural specificities (Johnson, 2004; Roué & Nakashima, 2002; Serje, 2003). Many authors denounce the epistemic violence exercised in the way in which traditional knowledge is valued (Beltrán, 2017), as well as the image of indigenous peoples as ecological heroes (Ulloa, 2001) formulated by government environmental agencies taking advantage of indigenous peoples’ historical demands—such as for territorial autonomy and their right to dispose of the natural resources in their territories—in order to promote their own environmental agendas. In general, such authors criticize the western values behind the recognition of indigenous rights (Cayón, 2010), forging an image of traditional knowledge in accordance with supposed global needs rather than the needs of the indigenous peoples themselves (Roué & Nakashima, 2002; Serje, 2003).

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Some authors criticize how—under the argument of good governance—governmental agencies try to involve local residents as participants or beneficiaries of governmental policies; these authors question the power relations that envelop science and politics (Giller et al., 2008; Lane & Corbett, 2005; Von Der Porten, De Loë, & Plummer, 2015). They point out that power asymmetries involved in cooperation among NGOs, government agencies, and indigenous organizations finally condition local residents to value traditional knowledge as a means to integrating indigenous territories into a global environmental governance regime in such a way that it legitimizes the cultural and political hegemony of global neoliberal ideology. These studies argue that the way of thinking of indigenous peoples is being colonized to the detriment of their cosmogonies, identities, forms of political, cultural, and social organization, and their capacity to generate responses and strategies in the face of dominant discourses (Cayón, 2010). Studies of a functionalist nature offer a clearer perspective of the motives of indigenous organizations in mobilizing their traditional knowledge. Such studies examine how people use different forms of local knowledge to back up their political and material demands—for example, for resource control or particular rights or ways of life—in national or global arenas such as social and environmental movements (Leach et al., 2007). According to Escárcega (2010), the resistance and struggles of indigenous peoples can be seen as acts of decolonization, in which appropriation of non-indigenous tools to create a differentiated position and situated knowledge is a strategy that enables both a continuous conversation with the structures of domination, and the proposal of alternatives. Fontaine (2006) argues that indigenous peoples are not “ecological natives,” but rather actors who appropriate ecological discourse to demand respect for their rights over the territories upon which their physical and cultural life depends. This author holds that ethnicity is based on the power of tradition, insofar as it evokes common origins (real or imagined) to assert influence in a given social arena. Thus, traditional knowledge may be an instrument of political mobilization, meaning that the rights of indigenous peoples over their knowledge are based not only on the knowledge itself, but also on the community norms that define access, use, and enjoyment of natural resources.

2.4  Study Group The village of Tarapacá (Fig.  2.1) is situated in the North-East Amazon—or the southern part of the Colombian Amazon—on the borders of Colombia, Peru, and Brazil, on the Putumayo River and in the estuary of the Cotuhé River. Tarapacá contains two resguardos: Uitiboc (95,000 ha) and Cotuhé Putumayo (250,000 ha). Uitiboc is administrated by ASOAINTAM and Cotuhé Putumayo by CIMTAR. The Amacayacu Natural Park and the Río Puré Natural Park are located in the Region of Tarapacá. The Uitiboc resguardo, legally recognized in 2010, includes families of the Uitoto, Ticuna, Yagua, Cocama, Inga, Pijao, Okaina, Bora, and Embera

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PNN Río Puré

Río Puré

Political map of the Tarapaca region (2019)

Reserva Forestal de la Amazonia Río Putumayo PERÚ Ríos Cotuhé y Putumayo UITIBOC Río Cotuhe National Natural Parks Cotuhé Putumayo resguardo BRASIL

Utiboc resguardo Forest Reserve Areas

PNN Amacayacu

Boundary of the Tarapacá region

Fig. 2.1  Map of the Tarapacá Region in the southern Colombian Amazon. (Source: SINCHI Institute)

i­ndigenous groups; the majority are descendants of indigenous peoples from the Igará Paraná River and the Upper Putumayo River who either migrated or were displaced during the twentieth century because of the exploitation of fish, rubber, fur, and timber. The Cotuhé Putumayo resguardo, legally recognized in 1994, is largely inhabited by Tikunas, who remain in their territory of origin, and to a lesser extent by Uitoto, Bora, Yagua, and Ocaina people from communities located in the Upper Putumayo, Caqueta, and Amazon Rivers.

2.5  Results and Discussion 2.5.1  Visions of Traditional Knowledge During the first few meetings in Tarapacá, the indigenous people and researchers felt the need to define traditional knowledge, as the concept may be interpreted very broadly. In the meetings, implicit tensions and conflicts became evident because of varying attitudes to traditional knowledge. Two visions that are not completely distinct were identified, one emphasizing “sacredness” and the other emphasizing

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“adaptation,” both visions being associated with political consequences that affect environmental governance and indigenous autonomy. The principal problem lay in the conflict between “bottom-up” and “top-down” approaches used to conceptualize and operationalize traditional knowledge methodologically and the potential effects on decision-making. The emergence of different visions of traditional knowledge can lead to uncertain consequences by mobilizing knowledge into decision-making spaces where global environmental governance regimes have more power than those who possess such knowledge. The sacred vision conceived traditional knowledge as inseparable from its context. The members of both resguardos said that each ethnic group’s traditional knowledge is closely tied to its origin,9 as well as to its language and Law of Origin.10 Traditional knowledge is based on the observations and interpretations of agricultural, ecological, climatic, and cultural cycles by elders and shamans and involves harmonization of agriculture and cultural activities with the spiritual beings of nature. According to the elders, traditional knowledge has been passed on through stories that describe how the world was created, as well as through traditional use of sacred plants such as tobacco, coca, and yucca. For indigenous leaders, the elders’ advice11 is a call to uphold their traditional values in a world undergoing accelerated cultural change. There is a risk that their knowledge will disappear, principally due to the loss of the elders’ advice, without which it is impossible to understand the meaning behind traditional practices such as chewing coca leaves (mambeo), cultivating the chagra,12 or dancing and singing in their celebrations. In the words of Teófilo Ceita, a traditional authority among the Uitoto people, the word of the elders “ensures government, getting along together, and the right to life of a people.” Harol Rincón, an indigenous leader, describes the elders’ advice as a “narration of those past events and teachings throughout history (…) from generation to generation to educate, to teach; that’s tradition (…).” In contrast, for the researchers, the emphasis in traditional knowledge was on the indigenous peoples’ relationship with the biotic environment, and they highlighted the role of such knowledge in social innovations, adaptation to climate change and in sustaining indigenous livelihoods and ecosystems. Documenting traditional knowledge could prove useful to local organizations to the extent that it allows for 9  Colombian anthropologist Juan Alvaro Echeverri (2015) describes the Amazonian population as an interweaving of three cultures: that of the Macuna, Tanimuca, Barasana, Letuama, and Eastern Tucano people who ritually inhale powdered rape (tobacco) and carry out the Yurupari ritual; that of the Yahup Makú hunter-gatherers; and finally that of Murui Muinane, Bora, Miraña, Nonuya, Andoque, and Ocaina populations that live between the Caquetá and Putumayo Rivers and eat or chew ambil tobacco paste to cleanse the body and spirit. 10  Also called “habits and customs,” each ethnic group’s law of origin is the set of laws and norms that they consider to have been dictated by their clan’s ancestors. 11  For indigenous peoples of the southern Colombian Amazon, the elders’ advice teaches them how to live, incorporates their cultural knowledge, and is transmitted through stories. 12  Chagras are family agricultural plots in the jungle which are rotated every 2–3 years. After shortperiod species are harvested, long-period species, such as fruit trees, remain as food for families and wild animals.

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developing agendas which are acceptable to both government environmental agencies and indigenous organizations, through programs and public policy that link actors on different territorial scales. Thus, within the project objectives, the researchers sought to identify key knowledge that would allow for sustainable agroecosystem management. These differences of emphasis between the indigenous participants and researchers made it difficult for them to agree upon the fundamental aspects of traditional knowledge. At the heart of the discussion was the need to define the types of knowledge that could be shared openly with researchers and those that should be kept hidden. This involved finding the appropriate way to approach traditional knowledge, taking into account the plurality of actors and how this knowledge could be “protected.” Government agencies and researchers felt the need to develop public policy to legally protect the traditional knowledge of populations they consider to be vulnerable. Meanwhile, for indigenous organizations, maintaining a public policy approach meant being considered only as beneficiaries of State programs and policies, with the right to participation, when what mattered to them was the recognition of their knowledge as an essential part of their right to autonomy. For them, protection of traditional knowledge was not a question of establishing laws; rather, protecting traditional knowledge implied recognizing the community norms that define access, use, and enjoyment of natural resources. For example, Andrés Churay, a traditional Bora doctor, complained of lack of recognition of indigenous knowledge as compared to “western” knowledge. He argued that traditional doctors should receive the same level of recognition as doctors working in hospitals; however, the public health system promotes a “western” vision of medicine which is acquired in universities, without taking the indigenous health system and knowledge seriously. According to researchers, one of the major problems with public policy regarding traditional knowledge is that elders conceive it to be “ancestral” and it is expressed in stories and symbols that make it difficult to establish a single scientific definition of such knowledge. This leads to confusion between what is locally understood to be knowledge and the definitions that government environmental agencies use in their programs. To overcome this impasse, the researchers clarified to the indigenous organizations that their objective was not to document knowledge that the indigenous people consider sacred and unrevealable, but to explore practical knowledge related to the management of agroecosystems. However, this differentiation between the “adaptability” and “sacredness” of knowledge did not fully convince the indigenous peoples since it was impossible for them to separate the spiritual aspects from their knowledge. Since knowledge changes over time, sometimes through cultural diffusion processes, what concerned indigenous people were the political implications for their territories that documenting and “promoting” their knowledge would bring. For example, some communities received the proposal with suspicion, as they believed that the intention was to steal their knowledge. Furthermore, as the project was promoted by the State, some feared that governmental agencies and NGOs would seek financing to fund research projects using information from their territories. These suspicions led some indigenous people to think that the information could be used to promote intellectual

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property rights involving privatization of their resources, thereby weakening their traditional governments. As Reid et al. (2002, p.118) stated: “Intellectual property rights regimes are not necessarily amenable, affordable, or desirable for groups that reject ‘individualization’ of knowledge, ‘commoditization’ of ‘knowledge products,’ or the ‘monetarization’ of local communities.” In Tarapacá, indigenous organizations felt it was risky to submit their knowledge to a legal system that attempts to define this knowledge in terms with which they do not agree. The local population fears that while their main aim is to strengthen their autonomy, environmental agencies would bring their knowledge to spaces of negotiation foreign to them and that inevitably decontextualize it.

2.5.2  I nterfacing Traditional Knowledge: Negotiations and Strategies Interfacing traditional knowledge with different interests and knowledge systems accepts that the intersections of these knowledges and discourses inevitably produce tensions. According to Nakata (2002), it is not simply about an opposition between outside knowledges and discourses and traditional ones; it is also about seeing in what conditions they converge. During the implementation of the project, it evolved from the use of a series of ex situ scientific methodologies, designed from a top-down approach to in situ methodologies that demanded a participatory approach, and in some cases called for shared social action between environmental agencies and indigenous organizations. This change of direction occurred because of the perception of indigenous people that scientific methodologies were aimed more at justifying compliance indicators to UNDP than addressing locally identified problems. The project was conducive to a multidisciplinary-interdisciplinary methodological approach (see Parra-Vázquez et al. Chap. 1, this volume) to generating information and determining an action plan, with strategies allowing the transmission and use of traditional key knowledge for the management of agrobiodiversity. For this purpose, chagras were studied by biologists and agronomists, using methods from the field of ecology to estimate abundance and diversity of agricultural species. The project characterized agricultural plots, forests surrounding the chagras, and associated fauna. Sociologists and anthropologists carried out social, cultural, and ethnobiological characterizations, using qualitative methods such as chagra maps, problem trees, life histories, and surveys (SINCHI, 2015) to describe knowledge of seed management, medicinal plants, food preparation, and slash-and-burn cycles of the chagras, and to detail the historical changes in family, community, and ethnic structures that have led to the loss of such traditional knowledge. As indicated previously, the initial top-down approach of carrying out scientific research to characterize the ecological, agronomic, social, and economic aspects of

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agroecosystems was criticized by local indigenous residents. Their principal criticisms related to the destination of the information, lack of benefits for indigenous people from the project, and power relations between government agencies and local organizations. Many individuals mentioned past experiences in which the communities finally felt exploited by researchers and government agencies. According to one community leader, “We have not had good experiences with outsiders who come to the community to get information. They never return and we don’t know what has happened to the information.” According to some CIMTAR leaders, the budgets of projects carried out in their territories are largely consumed by the salaries of government functionaries and other professionals. One reason why indigenous people resist cooperating in projects is that they feel excluded from the economic benefits, and they interpret this exclusion as a lack of trust on the part of the government in their forms of government. In the words of one indigenous leader, “The projects pay more money to professionals than to the elders that possess the traditional knowledge.” Some indigenous leaders stated that, although they learned to work with researchers, this cooperation did not contribute to strengthening traditional knowledge or to providing solutions to problems resulting from continual loss of this knowledge. In their opinion, the results generally remain restricted to academic circles or are archived in university libraries, and, at best, research results are returned to the communities in the form of brochures. The essential message of the organizations and communities was that if researchers wish to investigate their traditional knowledge, they must adopt a bottom-up approach that responds more to indigenous needs and objectives than to those of government environmental agencies. This situation generated resistance from some community members to granting cultural and political legitimacy to the project. However, despite their criticism, the indigenous communities and organizations did not refuse to participate since the project activities allowed for dialogue, which gradually redirected the application of methodologies and the collection of information toward local processes being carried out by the organizations. Moreover, indigenous actors continued to participate in the project activities while maintaining an essentialist discourse on traditional knowledge at the meetings, allowing them to reorganize, buy time, and develop alliances that helped them further their demands for autonomy by defining the methods and purpose of the research. To summarize, researchers who were in the field felt the need to redirect the focus of the project on indigenous knowledge by involving local residents in defining research methods and objectives, recognizing that they were the principal beneficiaries of the research, and adopting other approaches such as cultural self-assessment of traditional knowledge. They also emphasized joint construction of social and cultural mechanisms for developing innovative long-range proposals regarding traditional knowledge that would commit government agencies and indigenous organizations to carrying out specific actions regarding territorial management—including management plans, information systems, ecological calendars, life plans, etc. (Fig. 2.2). This led researchers and indigenous leaders to jointly organize encounters among residents of different communities to characterize the cycles

2  Traditional Knowledge in the Colombian Amazon: Tensions Between Indigenous… National and Amazonian indigenous organizations

Indigenous goverments: traditional authorities

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State and international organizations

Life plans; Indigenous territorial managment

Territorial autonomy: Law of Origin, National Constitution

Legal protection of rights, enviromental services, innovations, local entrepreneurships

Enviromental policy; Conservation, sustainability Global enviromental governance: CBD, Nagoya Protocol, Convention169 of ILO, etc.

Traditional knowledge mobilization

Law of origin: spiritual covenants Ecological calendars; with nature; Word of ancestral territorial managment tobacco, coca and yucca

Associations of Traditional Authorities, indigenous councils, communities, clans, families

Ethnobotanical and cultural inventories: Managment plans, indicators indigenous well-being

Scientific research

Government enviromental agencias, NGOs, Universities

Fig. 2.2  Scheme of divergent epistemes and interests with respect to mobilizing, documenting, and protecting traditional knowledge. (Source: Elaborated by the first author)

of the ecological calendar,13 as well as life plan14 workshops and chagra fairs (De La Cruz & Acosta, 2015; De La Cruz Nassar, 2015). Meanwhile, the SINCHI Institute promoted participatory research on Indicators of Indigenous Well-Being that focused on indigenous rights and took into account indigenous authorities, as well as sociocultural and environmental variables such as natural resources, demography, cultural practices, food diversity, and traditional medicine.

 The ecological calendar is a term used by indigenous people of the Amazon to describe local knowledge of agricultural, climatic, food, and epidemiological cycles. 14  “Life Plans” is a concept adopted by indigenous organizations and government agencies to refer to the resguardos’ development plans. These plans are intended to help legitimize indigenous governments. Unlike ordinary development plans, they provide indigenous peoples with greater autonomy and power in negotiating with government agencies. 13

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2.5.3  M  obilizing Traditional Knowledge for Environmental Governance and Indigenous Autonomy The environmental governance regime represented by the CBD and ILO stressed the need to place traditional knowledge under legal protection, which in terms of the project objectives would foment the governance of their natural resources by the communities and indigenous organizations themselves. To this purpose, they also supported the creation of databases to identify specific features that could be generalized and applied more widely to promote protection of traditional knowledge and exert a positive influence on ecological conservation (Agrawal, 2002) and indigenous rights. However, Beltrán (2016) explains that the Colombian State was not able to develop a single definition of traditional knowledge applying to all of Colombia’s different indigenous groups. Furthermore, local indigenous organizations in Tarapacá did not trust public policy to protect their knowledge systems. In their opinion, rather than subjecting traditional knowledge to intellectual property rights systems as “publicly available sources, relevant to the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity” (ONU, 1992, p. 12), as proposed in the CBD, this knowledge should be used to strengthen territorial autonomy by upholding the basic material conditions necessary for sustaining indigenous livelihoods (Beltrán, 2017; De La Cruz & Acosta, 2015; De La Cruz, Bello-Baltazar, Acosta, Estrada-­ Lugo, & Montoya, 2016). The indigenous organizations of Tarapacá were convinced that there was a need to mobilize historical indigenous demands for political discussions involving State policies. This strategy should be based on positioning an ontological discourse on traditional knowledge that highlights its sacred and cultural aspects to legitimize claims for autonomy and self-determination (Escárcega, 2010). At the same time, these organizations wanted to take advantage of activities and meetings with bureaucrats and researchers to appropriate scientific and technical knowledge, and to envisage possible alliances with environmental entities. As pointed out by Gómez-­ Baggethun et al. (2013), any approach attempting to preserve traditional knowledge in fossilized forms is bound to fail, so that indigenous organizations in Tarapacá also recognized the need, in order to negotiate with external actors, for traditional knowledge systems to evolve and adapt in the face of change. Thus, indigenous organizations assumed traditional knowledge to be a resource for mobilizing local processes of territorial management and indigenous autonomy, while bridging the gap between the documentation of traditional knowledge and indigenous territorial autonomy. During the final years of the project, researchers and indigenous leaders agreed on a common agenda with respect to indigenous governance, use of agrobiodiversity resources, environmental planning of resguardos, and the harmonization of agriculture, hunting, and fishing with local ecological cycles and cultural recommendations in order to facilitate AATI negotiations with government environmental agencies regarding territorial control and natural resource use permits (De La Cruz & Acosta, 2015). Indigenous demands also

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included a proposal to legally recognize traditional indigenous authorities as environmental authorities. For example, ASOAINTAM pointed out that while a cultural pact between the elders and spiritual beings of nature existed for territorial management, there were no documents to support the way in which the peoples of the Uitiboc resguardo traditionally manage their territory. The indigenous people stressed that while they have managed their territory since ancestral times, historical circumstances have led to a lack of recognition of their rights in this regard. Therefore, they agreed it would be helpful to document their knowledge as elders to help their young people to understand traditional stories and ecological cycles that guide resource use (Gabino et al., 2013).

2.6  Conclusions In practice, local organizations demonstrated their capacity to at least partially influence agendas that global environmental governance regimes try to impose on their territories with respect to traditional knowledge. Furthermore, the present case study shows how, despite asymmetrical power relations, local actors possess strategies for steering in a political arena that allow them to redirect the agenda toward their own objectives, which in the case of Tarapacá involves mobilizing traditional knowledge to support their territorial autonomy. Fieldwork shows that by maintaining a strategic essentialist discourse, indigenous people define their knowledge as “naturally” conservationist (Fontaine, 2006; Ulloa, 2001).15 However, this depiction should not be understood simply as a manifestation of an uncritical and retrograde essentialism or of a colonized mentality (Escárcega, 2010); rather, it constitutes a strategy to influence the policies that affect their lives and territories. The present study shows the importance of understanding the motives of indigenous actors in mobilizing traditional knowledge and highlights the multiple forms of negotiation which take place among actors that are not necessarily aligned with global environmental regimes. In a political ecology approach to traditional knowledge, knowledge mobilization should be seen as the result of negotiations that take place in hetero-hierarchical and non-hierarchical spaces, characterized by a complex set of practices and strategies possessed by the local population for establishing new forms of collaboration, reorienting objectives, and appropriating techniques and knowledge. Finally, the strategies of the indigenous organizations of Tarapacá show that it is important to advance beyond the idea that every negotiation between state agencies and indigenous organizations is a neo-colonial sequel and an expression of hierarchical domination and to keep in mind that negotiation can lead to significant  As Ulloa (2001) points out, this perception of indigenous people as “ecological natives” has imposed on them the historic task of saving the planet by maintaining and conserving their idealized traditional ecological systems.

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p­ rocesses for those who participate in the exchange. This approach also allows us to comprehend the position of local populations when they insist on participation in global arenas formulating conservation and sustainable development policies and when they reject or accept conditions presented by environmental governance regimes. Although generally the way in which indigenous peoples understand their knowledge is based on values and interests different from those of global governance regimes, without doubt the former are now adapting their knowledge to the new contexts of modernity, and they are aware that their traditional knowledge could help to solve problems associated with the ecological crisis. The tensions between indigenous autonomy and environmental governance reflect the dilemma of indigenous peoples, as well as of the whole of society, about whether to mobilize their traditional knowledge. Will this adaptation process involve sacrificing the ontologies that underpin this knowledge, or is it possible to mobilize it in ways that serve to inspire, inform, and influence other actors in society in respect of problems arising from and going beyond the ecological crisis? Questions remain open for future research on the incorporation of traditional knowledge systems into environmental public policies. Indigenous peoples fear that this could turn out to be ineffectual although they themselves believe that a proper use of their traditional knowledge could bring about more substantive changes in the political spheres that have historically ignored it.

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Von Der Porten, S., De Loë, R., & Plummer, R. (2015). Collaborative environmental governance and indigenous peoples: Recommendations for practice. Environmental Practice, 17(2), 134–144. Whyte, K. P. (2013). On the role of traditional ecological knowledge as a collaborative concept: A philosophical study. Ecological Processes, 2(1), 1–12. Zent, S. & Maffi, L. (2009). Final report on indicator No. 2: methodology for developing a vitality index of traditional environmental knowledge (VITEK) for the project global indicators of the status and trends of linguistic diversity and traditional knowledge.

Chapter 3

Education in Macehual Mayan Institutions Axayácatl Segundo Cabello, Ma. Eugenia García Contreras, and Abraxas Segundo García

Abstract  This study aims to identify and describe several indigenous educational processes in place at a Macehual Mayan common holding from Quintana Roo, Mexico. It includes an analysis of both, the local Macehual Mayan institutions and the educational institutions of the Mexican state. It also examines the role of the indigenous educational system in access, use, and management of local natural resources, upon which external development programs are based. A transdisciplinary approach was applied to examine the two types of educational processes occurring in Xhazil Sur y Anexos. Results show that some Mayan educational institutions, such as the Milpa or the slash-and-burn shifting agriculture serves a function in transmission of knowledge from one generation to another, and therefore supports permanence of Mayan identity in the region and of their culture in general. The chapter also presents a discussion on conflicts, trends, and future scenarios for the Mayan people as a consequence of the current Mexican public policy on education. Keywords  Educational institutions · Non-formal education · Indigenous education · Mayan institutions · Milpa

3.1  A Short Review of the Concept of Institution When talking about institutions in Mexico, the term is usually associated with a set of legal entities established by some level of government (federal, state, or municipalities), either in the field of organization of individuals or the organization of the A. Segundo Cabello (*) Área de investigación, Centro Regional de Educación Normal Javier Rojo Gómez, Bacalar, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] M. E. García Contreras División de Ciencias Sociales y Económico Administrativas, Departamento de Ciencias Jurídicas, Universidad de Quintana Roo, Chetumal, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] A. Segundo García Interdisciplinary Maya and Nature Studies Group (EIMyN), Chetumal, Mexico © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_3

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structures of the government. A similar association occurs when mentioning educational institutions, which are associated only with those established, through legislation, as part of the national educational system. In this section, we introduce a brief review of this concept and the process to construct it. Afterwards, to establish the theoretical position that is used in this research and to provide examples and arguments which can assist people in identifying institutions within different areas of society, we address the characteristics of the three main currents of thought regarding institutionalism. This background is useful to recognize the Mayan Milpa, a form of social organization, an institution of the Macehual Maya people of Quintana Roo, Mexico. The term institution has its origin in two terms; the Latin term institutĭo, which means instituted and refers to the process of establishing a doctrine, teaching, custom, precept, or law, among others; and the suffix ōnis (Ximenez, 1802, p. 385), which is used for the construction of nouns from verbs (The Royal Academy of Spanish [RAE] and Association of Academies of the Spanish Language, 2009). Similar examples of this construction can be found in the verb to correct, which with the suffix ōnis becomes the noun corrections. Following the same logic, the verb to publish, becomes publications; to legislate, in legislations; to modify in modifications; and to educate, in educations. In all these cases, the verb is transformed into a noun that is the product and result of the action to which the verb refers. In the case of the term institution, several meanings can be found in disuse such as instruction, education, or teaching (RAE, 2014) while current meanings are, the establishment or foundation of something; an established or founded thing; an organism that performs a function of public interest, especially of charitable or educational type; each one of the fundamental organizations of a state, nation, or society; the methodical collection of the principles or elements of a science or an art; and the constitutional organs of sovereign power in the nation (RAE, 2014). In the given definitions, it can be observed that the establishment or foundation of something corresponds to an action rather than a noun, whereas the following definitions refer to that which was instituted, e.g., the established thing, the established body, the collection of established principles. Therefore, the term institution implies, the previous process of instituting or establishing what it is intended to be, but also its teaching, hence the terms institutor and institutriz, which have been used in countries whose languages have their origin in Romance languages derived from Latin, and which refers to individuals (male and female, respectively), who are responsible for the education of children. Different researchers of the social sciences also approach the concept of institution as the result of the process of establishing, or to institute. Some other definitions are those given by Durkheim (1985/2001, p. 31), which refers to institutions as “all the beliefs and codes of conduct instituted by the community”; Streeck & Thelen (2005, p. 9), which define them as the building blocks of the social order, representing a socially legitimated order with respect to the behaviors of the partakers when carrying out certain actions, thereby establishing a socially legitimated regime and conformed by rules that stipulate the desired and undesired behaviors (Streeck & Thelen, 2005, pp. 9, 12–13); Giddens (as quoted in Zunino, 2002, p. 108)

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defines them as “a set of rules and resources reproduced through prolonged spacetime lapses”; Zunino (2002, p. 103) which identifies them as “a set of social rules operating at different functional levels”; and Scott (2005, p.  64), which refers to them as a set of cultural-cognitive, normative, and regulative elements that together with the associated activities and resources provide stability and meaning to social life (Scott as quoted in Scott, 2005, p. 464). For the purposes of this work we considered relevant the definitions of Berger and Luckmann (1996/2001) and Greif and Laitin (2004). The first authors define it as a social practice that is historical, repetitive, typified, socially legitimized, and that is objectified through roles that are perceived as existing above and beyond those who objectify it. In turn, Greif and Laitin (2004, p. 635), define it as a “system of non-physical elements created by man (norms, beliefs, organizations, and rules) exogenous to each individual which influences the creation of regularities in the behavior of people.” Based on these last two definitions, our study proposes that the institutions are abstract entities created by the interest of one or several subjects, which become objective by means of roles in which, the individuals interact among themselves in concrete, historical, repetitive social practices, typified with a specific name. These interactions have norms or rules of conduct through which specific roles are regulated, which lead to those who participate in said practices to perceive the created abstract and its practices, as existing above and beyond the subjects that participate, all which lead individuals to even want to participate and be part of them. Two conditions are considered essential for an institution to exist: the process of establishing or validating what it is (i.e., a doctrine, law and organization, among others) and the process of teaching what was established and henceforth what must be considered what it should be. Both processes give rise to institutionalization. As part of these processes, the required protocols are constituted, that is, the rules under which they must be created. In this way, the so-called formal and informal institutions are created, where the former are those that are generated according to an established procedure, and the latter are those that do not comply with the rules. As a general (instituted) rule, only those that have been generated through the procedures attested by the State (e.g., the Mexican State) are considered institutions and are given the formal status of such, whereas all the others are given the name of informal institutions, which implies a lack of State recognition of their legitimacy. Given that in this case the protocol itself is a solemnity that needs to be established or instituted, one cannot speak of the existence of a single procedure for the creation of all types of institutions, in all cases and in all societies. Therefore, each cultural group and form of organization will themselves create the forms that should be followed for processes of upholding those structures. Hall and Taylor (1996) identify three lines of institutionalism thought called historical, of rational choice, and sociological. Along the first line of thought, institutions are the formal or informal procedures, routines, norms and conventions, incorporated into the organizational structure of politics or political economy (Hall & Taylor, 1996, p. 938). According to this line of thought, institutions arise as a result of such procedures over time, and because they are procedures incorporated

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into the organizational structure of politics, they commonly correspond to state structures. From the position of rational choice or rational institutionalism, institutions operate based on “sets of rules and incentives that set the conditions for restricted rationality and establish a political space within which many interdependent actors can function” (Peter, 2003, as quoted in Durán, 2011, p. 62). Based on these rules, institutions allow structuring interactions in two potential ways; it could be in affecting the range and sequence of alternatives in the options agenda, or in providing information and sanction mechanisms that reduce the uncertainty about the behavior of others and consequently leading the actors towards potentially better social behaviors (Hall & Taylor, 1996, p. 945). It is expected that, based on the information provided through sanction mechanisms, the behavior from the subjects will be influenced by leading them to decide, in a rational way, what is socially better. The ideal, given from this position, is a condition to coordinate between the operation of different institutions; however, a variant within the line of thought of rational choice puts more attention on the relations of authority, obligation, and coercion generated with the purpose of influencing the decision-making from individuals and thus minimizing unwanted situations (Streeck & Thelen, 2005). With any of these aspects, it empowers the regulations established from the structures of the State as justifiable mechanisms for acting within society. With respect to sociological institutionalism, it considers that the institutions are the beliefs and the culturally specific practices attested by the community (Durkheim (1985/2001, p. 31); where the beliefs, forms, myths, ceremonies or procedures that are part of the practices don’t always contribute to common goals, but rather to the result of a historical process of conceiving and transferring the knowledge related to these practices. According to Hall & Taylor (1996, p. 947), in this school of thought, institutions are “symbols, cognitive scripts and moral patterns that provide ‘contexts of meaning’ that guide human action”. Along this sociological perspective, institutions are the result of socially catalogued and typified sets of actions that, over time, are repeated by specific actors in established roles, until they become the everyday actions for a particular cultural group, giving rise to legitimated social practice. The reproduction of an action in a reiterated manner by the different actors that participate in it, leads not only to the teaching of the new subjects that are incorporated in the activity, but also to the process of social legitimization that alludes the way in which one should act, thus generating in the partakers the perception that what is instituted, that is, the institution, is an external fact, sometimes coercive, which establishes the way things are and that as Berger and Luckmann (1996/2001, p. 1) pointed out, are experienced “as existing above and beyond the individuals to whom it ‘happens’ to incarnate them at that moment.” According to this perspective, institutions are not created by the structure of the State but from the set of social practices (which includes who and how the rules should be created), carried out by concrete individuals who act, over time, inside or outside the structure of the State. This is because State’s structures form an abstract incapable of creating, which is perceived as pre-existing to the subject and capable

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of acting and establishing how things are, and even of creating new structures because that is how it was conceived. The institutions, therefore, can only be created by concrete individuals which justify and at the same time, are the product of their acts previously instituted (Castoriadis, 1997), a condition that results in recognizing typical attributes from formal or informal structures, either from the State or from the traditions and customs of a town, or any other type of classification (also established), according to whoever makes the classifications and the criteria used for it.

3.2  E  ducational Institutions in the Mexican Educational System With the previous theoretical background, it is possible to perceive the institutions of the Mexican national education system as what they are: a human creation, with social practices, corresponding to specific cultural groups, where it is established what and how they are. In the case of Mexico and as examples of the creation of educational institutions, in the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States (DOF, January 19, 2018, article 3), it is established that basic education encompasses the so-called initial education (educación inicial), primary school, and middle school. Moreover, the General Law of Education establishes the elements that constitute the national education system, as follows: I.—Students, educators, and parents. II.—Educational authorities. III.—Professional teaching service. IV.—Educational plans, programs, methods, and materials. V.—Educational institutions of the State and its decentralized agencies. VI.—Institutions of individuals with authorization or recognition of official validity of studies. VII.—Higher education institutions to which the State grants autonomy rights. VIII.—Educational evaluation. IX.—The Educational Information and Management System. X.—The educational infrastructure (DOF, January 19, 2018, article 10). In both laws, it is established what is to be from that moment, part of the Mexican State, and gives the guideline to justify the visible and tangible part of education, as they are: the initial, preschool, primary and secondary schools, that is, the basic education. Although institutionalization processes are not generated exclusively from the State structures, only those that go through the procedures established from these structures (i.e., the Deputy and Senate Congresses, Presidency, Government, Municipality, or Secretary of state, among others), or those for which a formal incorporation mechanism is created, are likely to be part of the State institutions.

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Sometimes an assimilation process may have place of institutions formerly created by social groups to State institutions. A recent Mexican example of such an assimilation process—from social to state institutions, is the incorporation of the self-defense groups or community guards as a part of the State security forces in the states of Michoacán and Guerrero, even though these groups had been created from social structures from the inhabitants of those states. With regard to basic education, schools both public and private, in any of its modalities, general education and indigenous education as well as the governing bodies established to organize and administer their functioning, constitute part of the Mexican State educational institutions. Similar examples to basic education can be found, based on legislation, for higher secondary education, job training or higher education. For each of the institutions, the spaces, schedules, conditions, rules that regulate the social practices and roles among the actors involved (i.e., students, teachers, authorities, parents) are established. Therefore, actions and roles are taught to participants and legitimized socially, giving rise to forms of being and doing from the participants. Some examples of social customary practices in basic education institutions are: the time to enter the school, the use of a school uniform, the signature of entry and exit of the teachers, the recess schedule during the school day, the technical council meetings of the teaching staff on the last Friday of each month, the teacher meetings with parents, the holiday periods, the pledge to the flag, etc. The previous activities, accustomed by repeated practice, allows teaching to encompass not only the educational contents established in the plans and programs, but also the ways in which activities and interactions among subjects are organized; legitimizing the existence of the institution, its operation and the interactions among the participating subjects, attesting again and again that this is how it should be.

3.3  The Macehual Mayan Institutions The Maya term is the denomination that is given to all those groups of people that share a common linguistic origin. From these, those who live in the southeast of Mexico are the groups: Huasteco, Maya (Yucatec), Lacandón, Ch’ol, Chontal from Tabasco; Tseltal, Tszotsil, Q’anjob’al, akateko, Jakalteco, Qato’k, chuj, Tojolabal, Q’echi, k’iche’, Kaqchikel, Teko Mam, Awakateko, and Ixil (INALI, 2008). The inhabitants who speak the Yucatec Maya language are settled in the Yucatan Peninsula; and the denomination of Macehual Maya is the self-denomination used by the speakers of the Yucatec Maya at the center of the State of Quintana Roo, Mexico, and who are descendants of the rebels of the Yucatan’s Caste War (see Reed, 1964/2002). Since the Spaniard conquest, historical records are available that mention the numerous ways of proceeding from members of various indigenous communities. Among the documents that mention different aspects of the way of life of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, are the Letters from the conquest of Mexico by Hernán

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Cortes, the True story of the conquest of the new Spain by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Shipwrecks and comments by Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and for the specific case of the Maya people, the Relationship of things from Yucatan by Fray Diego De Landa and the less known Collection of unpublished documents related to the ­discovery, conquest and organization of the old Spanish overseas possessions1 compiled and published by the Royal Academy of History (Real Academia de Historia, 1900). Although the exact dates of most works are lacking, they were written in an immediate period to the conquest and are a mandatory reference in this work because they describe in detail, multiple aspects of the life of the Maya people of the Yucatan Peninsula, including social practices from the period of the conquest of Yucatan, which are valid until today. In the case of education, an example of these descriptions is found in the Story of the things of Yucatan: That they had a great priest they called Ah Kin May,2 and by name Ahau Can May, which means the (great) priest May, who was very revered of the lords, who had Indian distribution and who in addition to the offerings, the gentlemen made him present and that all the priests of the towns contributed to him; and that his closest children or relatives were his kinship in dignity, and that in this was the key to his sciences, and that they valued them the most, and that they gave advice to the lords and answers to their questions, and that (the) sacrifices things were rarely treated if they were not (at) very important parties or very important businesses; and that they provided priests to the people when they were missing, examining them in their sciences and ceremonies and that they were in charge of the things of their offices and the good example of the people, and provided with their books; (in addition) they attended the service of the temples and to teach their sciences and write books of them. They taught the children of the other priests and the second child of the lords who led them for this as children, if they saw that they were inclined to this office. That the sciences they taught were the account of the years, months and days, the feasts and ceremonies, the administration of their sacraments, the fatal days and times, their ways of guessing, remedies for evils, antiquities, reading and writing with their letters and characters in which they wrote with figures representing the scriptures. (De Landa, n.d., pp. 15–16).

The description of De Landa, allows to identify several aspects of education in pre-Hispanic Mayan society, such as: the subjects of the education process, with Ah Kin May as teacher and the children of close relatives of priests and lords,3 such as the students; some of the contents of the teaching, such as how to count, read and write, how to heal and the ceremonies; that the education process started from children; and the existence of a place for teaching, codification that follows from the children taking them to their education. A review of Reed’s work (1964/2002), The Caste War of Yucatan and our own field work allowed us to identify the permanence throughout time of Ah Kin, 1  From this collection it was consulted volume XI and XIII from the Digital Library at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo Leon. 2  The italics appeared as written on the cited work. 3  The term “lords” is used within that context to name governors or main people from the community.

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although it currently has functions associated with the Mayan church ceremonies which have gone obsolete. Similar to how various institutions have been generated from the structure of the Mexican State, throughout history, the Mayan people have generated their own institutions, such as the Jun Wíinik, which corresponds to the planting area (a plot) for a man and his family; the Janal Pixan, an annual ceremony with which the deceased are remembered and honored; the request of permission to Yuum Kaax, a name with which they refer to the lord of the forests (Señor del monte) and to whom permission must be requested to use them; or even the Mayan language which in itself is a Mayan institution. In the establishment of these institutions, two basic conditions are met: the process of instituting something and the teaching of what had been instituted. As proof of the latter outgoing process, there is evidence throughout more than five centuries, not only of the permanence of the Mayan language itself, but of a whole set of factual knowledge (what things are), procedural (how is it done) and complex (values, attitudes, decision-making, and interpersonal relationships), which include the institutions themselves, the social practices within them and the identification, in Mayan language, of the things and procedures that should be followed under specific contexts. From a sociological institutionalism perspective, the establishment of the aforementioned Mayan institutions did not require that the structure of a State, as is in this case the United Mexican States (Mexico), were able to recognize in the article 2 of its Political Constitution (an established structure through which a recognition is made of others subjects that do not arise within its scope), that the Mexican nation “has a multicultural composition originally based on its indigenous peoples which are those that descend from populations that lived in the current territory of the country at the beginning of colonization and that retain their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions, or a part of them” (DOF, May 15, 2019). Rather, the creation of the Mayan institutions arises from the formalities established within the Mayan cultural group itself, similarly to how the formalities are established within the Mexican State. An example of an ancient Macehual Maya institution that prevails to this day is the Kool or Milpa, through which, a form of social organization is established and the activities related to the production of various types of maize are regulated (nal t’eel, chakchob nal, x mejen nal, éek’chob nal, x nuuk nal, éek’jub nal) as well as several other associated crops.

3.4  The Mayan Milpa as a Social Organization System There is a lot of research about the cornfields in Mayan communities that range from the different corn species and management techniques, the energy efficiency in terms of different performance components, the individual’s organization for activities, the forms of seed and crop selection, the ceremonies related to the cornfields, the different forms of interaction between participants in the different activities, and the wealth of knowledge surrounded the activity, to mention just a few of

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the many topics. To the best of our knowledge, no previous studies have reported the Milpa as a Mayan educational institution. It should be clarified that the use of the term Milpa or Kool in the Mayan language (literally cornfield), refers to three different objects: the maize field, the maize cultivation technique, and the Milpa institution or the system of social organization that has the cultivation of maize and its associated species. Regarding the last sentence, in this study the terms Milpa and Kool will be used interchangeably from now on. Our study used data and research carried out in the Mayan common property holding (“ejido”) of Xhazil Sur y Anexos which is located in the county of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, at the central portion of the State of Quintana Roo, Mexico (Fig.  3.1). The inhabitants of this ejido live in three separate population centers, Xhazil Sur, Uh-May, and Chancah Veracruz; and have the characteristics of speaking the Yucatec Maya language, being descendants of the rebels from the Caste War of the Yucatan, and having a culture of their own that leads them to recognize themselves as Macehual Maya people. The information and description of the various production systems at the study area and their forms of social organization, including the Milpa, was generated by researchers—including the three co-authors—from the Interdisciplinary Mayan and Nature Studies group or EIMyN by its initials in Spanish, an inter-institutional

Fig. 3.1  Research location of the ejido Xhazil Sur y Anexos from the Mayan Zone at the center of Quintana Roo, Mexico. (Source: Compiled by the authors)

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group of researchers led by El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Chetumal Campus. From 1996 to 2010, EIMyN researchers used multidisciplinary to transdisciplinary approaches to study local Mayan production systems. More specifically, they used a variety of complementary research techniques including field tests, open and semi-structured interviews, community workshops, and ethnographic research with participatory and non-participatory direct observation. In carrying out this research, academics were able to learn and be apprentices of several Mayan “milperos”— which is the local name of the Mayan peasant who practice the Milpa (Bello-­ Baltazar et  al., 1997; Estrada-Lugo, Velazco, Bello-Baltazar, & Macario, 1999; Bello-Baltazar, Macario, & Estrada-Lugo, 2000; García, 2000; Velazco, 2000; Bello-Baltazar, Estrada-Lugo, Macario, Segundo, & Sánchez, 2002; Estrada-Lugo, 2005; Estrada-Lugo & Bello-Baltazar, 2005; Bello-Baltazar & Estrada-Lugo, 2006; Bello-Baltazar, Estrada-Lugo, & Alvarado, 2006; Alvarado, Bello-Baltazar, Estrada-­ Lugo, & Robledo, 2008; Bello-Baltazar & Estrada-Lugo, 2011; Estrada-Lugo, Bello-Baltazar, & Velazco, 2011; Estrada-Lugo et al., 2011). One of these studies, carried out between September 2013 and April 2015, was aimed at identifying the mechanisms of Mayan knowledge transmission to children in the community of Xhazil Sur (Fig. 3.1) using the Milpa as a site for the observation of this transmission process (Segundo, 2016). The Milpa is carried out through slashing, burning, and shifting cultivation in jungles that are at least 20 years old without having been cut previously to sow. The activity is carried out by first slashing down a weedy growth of plants and bushes that are in the place chosen for the cornfields; afterwards, the trees are knocked down and chopped; and finally, after letting the vegetation dry for at least 4 weeks, the fire is then used and managed to eliminate all the material (dry vegetation) and leave the land ready for sowing. After 2 or 3 years of sowing in the same place, the land is abandoned thus allowing the process of natural regeneration of the forest, which is in charge of restoring the lost fertility in the soil. Simultaneously with the land abandonment, the process of preparation of a new land through the means of slashing, burning, and shifting cultivation begins again. Milpa-related activities follow the annual cycle of the rainy season and are repeated year after year, and generation after generation of Mayan milperos. The Mayan Milpa activities are not restricted to the planting of maize and its associated crops, but also include pursuing fishing in the water bodies (cenotes) nearby the area of the Milpa; gathering of various species of flora and fauna, hunting for subsistence, as well as various ceremonial activities related to the Milpa. As an institution, the Mayan Milpa operates from domestic groups and extended families through patrilineal means. Based on this kinship system, the Macehual Maya have established rules for accessing the farming spaces, shaping what Estrada-­ Lugo (2005) calls agricultural pathways or Rumbos. The latter are the spaces where the Milpas of a group of Mayan milperos are located. Every Rumbo is distinguished from others in that it belongs to the same family which members have a common ancestor from the paternal side. The existence of these Rumbos means that, despite the fact that Xhazil Sur y Anexos is formally constituted as an ejido (a common property holding), the distri-

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bution and access rights to the soil and the resources located therein (soil, water, forest, flora, fauna) are governed under a different principle from the ejido, which is manifested in the Mayan expression: tu’ux k’uub xíimbal in koole’ mú’u xíimbal a kool (where my Milpa “walks”, yours does not). The latter is the main rule of the Mayan Milpa established by the agricultural Rumbo institution (García, 2000). To carry out the activities in the Milpa, the members of one or different domestic groups from the same extended family, gather and share tasks in diverse productive activities. Members of different ages participate in these activities, which allow new members to learn what has already been established, for example, the boundaries of agricultural Rumbos. Some of these processes are carried out during long periods of time, thus, in pursuing the Milpa and with resting times of 20 years for a land before returning to cultivate maize in the same place, a milpero would arrive to be in the same agricultural area up to five times in the course of his life. Once when being a child, two as an adult, and once again, perhaps two, during his old age. Like any institution, in addition to the rules that govern the way activities are organized, the participants and their roles, the materials to be used, the spaces for interaction for each one, and the schedules of activities, among others, there are formalities or protocols that should be followed while people are interacting in a Milpa plot. Estrada-Lugo (2005, pp.  293–295) mentions 22 ceremonial activities that are carried out as part of the Milpa process which are repeated every year, with the exception of a biannual celebration that takes place in the Ceremonial Center of Chancah Veracruz. The social practices within Maya institutions are not random, but are related to the productive practices and social relations established among the subjects that participate in them, in a similar way to the interactions that occur within the institutions from the Mexican State. During the social practices within the Mayan Milpa, the factual, procedural, and complex knowledge is reinforced time and time again; with each time, different activities and ceremonies are carried out, such as the Xíimbal k’aax or P’iis; different ceremonies such as the Uk’ul or Sakab, the Loj, the Áak’sa’a, and the Píib naal; and the selection of the seed, just to name a few (Table 3.1). This process of repeating over and over again, through generations, the knowledge of what and how is to be done, in relation to the Mayan Milpa, as a form of social organization through which activities related to it are established, has not only instituted the Milpa, but has rather taught and perfected this institution that remains to this day. Additionally, the established formalities, like the ceremonies, become the vestment, from the perspective of the Maya people, giving formality, in a similar way as to how formalities are established from the Mexican State.

3.5  Mayan Milpa and Education In order to identify the educational processes in the Mayan Milpa institution, our research focused on the transmission of knowledge among the participants using the communication, the spaces, schedules, materials, the participants and their roles,

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Table 3.1  Characteristics of the agricultural and ceremonial activities that are carried out in Milpas of the ejido Xhazil Sur y Anexos Social practices Xíimbal k’áax: Terrain selection

P’iis: Measurement of the land in hectares or mecates and marking of the corners with stones

Participants The head of the domestic group and some of his children The head of the domestic group and some of his children

Feast of St. Michael the Archangel Heads of domestic groups, relatives, and Maya priests The head of the domestic Páak: Which consists of cutting with machete or hoe, all the grass, group and one or two children or relatives vines, and shrubs of the selected area Xmen, the head of the Holy uk’ul o sakab. It is the domestic group and offering of atole that is made sometimes the children before the lying down to avoid or relatives. In the personal misfortunes absence of the Xmen, the head of the domestic group makes the offering The group of patriotically Kool o pets’ kool: Is the lying down or takedown with chainsaw, related men. Sometimes this activity is paid by axe and machete of the thickest the owner of the milpa trees Holy uk’ul o sakab. The offer of Xmen, the head of the atole to San Antonio is made domestic group and sometimes the children or relatives. In the absence of the Xmen, the head of the domestic group makes the offering Feast of the virgin of conception Heads of domestic and of all the saintsa groups, relatives, and Mayan priests

Tools

Time period December and January

Máaskab (machete), suum (rope) and tuunicho’ob

December and January

February

Máaskab, lóob December to (hoe) and jaab February (sharpening stone) Before the lying down

Chainsaw, báat December to February (Axe), máaskab, jaab

Tijil: Days or months are waited for the vegetation to be grazed and lie down The head of the domestic Máaskab Míis u jat kool: Make the group with some son or borderline around the just the chief disassembled area to prevent the spread of fire during burning

During rubbing or takedown if necessary

March and April after holy week every 2 years in Chancah Veracruz April to May

Before burning

(continued)

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Table 3.1 (continued) Social practices Holy uk’ul or sakab before burning

Participants Tools The head of the domestic group with some son or just the boss The group of patriotically Matches, Tóok: Burning vegetation using máaskab related men or the head guano leaves (Sabal yapa) to of the domestic group spread the fire with a child Arepa festival Heads of domestic groups, relatives, and Mayan priests Cha’cháak túuxt o túuxt: Tamales Xmen, the head of the domestic group and ceremony to ask for three heavy sometimes the children rains to fall that are enough to or relatives saturate the water floor Holy uk’ul or sakab offering atole The head of the domestic before planting to ask God to take group with some son or just the chief care of the seed to be put in the milpa of all the animals of the mount Páak’al: It is the sowing with the The group of patriotically Xúul and sáabukan, leek xul (stick or sower stick), making related men or the head or joma’ of the domestic group holes in the ground at a distance with the help of the of 1 m and a half and depositing children. Sometimes three to six seeds of corn, beans, wages are paid for this and pumpkin. The seeds are activity carried in a sáabukan, leek or joma’ hanging on the shoulder Holy uk’ul or sakab. Offering of Xmen, the head of the atole after planting domestic group and sometimes the children or relatives. In the absence of the Xmen, the head of the domestic group makes the offering The head of the domestic Ts’oon Kanan tik: It is the care of the (Carbine) group, alone or seed and consists in monitoring the milpa so that the predators do accompanied by some of his children not remove the seeds that have just been sown Páak o jok: Weed the milpa about The head of the domestic Máaskab, lóob and jaab group with some of his 4 or 5 days after the corn children or all the primordia comes out individuals of the domestic group Páak: Removal of weeds on the The head of the domestic Máaskab, lóob and jaab periphery of the milpa group, alone or accompanied by some of their children

Time period Before burning

May to early June

May

End of May to early June

In late May or early June, depending on how the rains fall In late May or early June

June

Late May to early June

End of May to June

In July and several times until it bends and harvests (continued)

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Table 3.1 (continued) Social practices Santo uk’ul or sakab, offering of atole, to ask for the rains

Cha’cháak túuxt o túuxt: Ceremony to ask for rain. Atole is offered for that purpose

Chan much’: Toad ceremony to ask for rain

Tza bi uchu ne naal: Application of fertilizer to the base of each corn bush using soda caps or small plastic bottles cut in half to put the fertilizer bush by bush Loj: It coincides with the canicular days and the interval drought of August Take care of the cob. It consists of going daily to the milpa to take care of the jilotes from the animals Jolchajal o joc: Harvesting of tender corncobs for family consumption. They are cut by hand and deposited in a xux (hamper) Píib naal o pibinal: Thanksgiving and gift of cooked corns buried by the first corn crop Áak’sa’a: Thanksgiving and offering with atole for the first corn crop

Participants The head of the domestic group, alone or accompanied by some of his children Xmen, the head of the domestic group and sometimes the children or relatives. In the absence of the Xmen, the head of the domestic group makes the offering Xmen, the head of the domestic group and sometimes the children or relatives. In the absence of the Xmen, the head of the domestic group makes the offering The group of patrilineally related males, or the head of the domestic group helped by their sons

Tools

Time period July

July

July

Fertilizer and plastic containers

July

J k’iin and community members

August

The head of the domestic Ts’oon group, alone or accompanied by some of his children The head of the domestic Xúux (hamper) group, alone or accompanied by his children and/or the wife

Starting in September, that’s when the jilotes show up September to October

The members of the patrilineally related group The head of the domestic group, his children and wife and sometimes the members of the group related patrilineally Iis waaj: Thanksgiving and tortilla The head of the domestic gift for the first corn crop group, his children and wife and sometimes the members of the group related patrilineally

September to October September to October

September to October

(continued)

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Table 3.1 (continued) Social practices Chaak bey naal o chaak bi naal: Thanksgiving and gift of boiled corns with salt in fire pit of wood, for the first harvest of corn

Participants The head of the domestic group, his children and wife and sometimes the members of the group related patrilineally Ceremony to San Sebastian Heads of domestic groups, relatives, and Maya priests Ceremony to San Cosme Heads of domestic groups, relatives, and Maya priests Ceremony to the chief of raccoons Heads of domestic groups, relatives and Maya priests Ceremony for the elimination of Heads of domestic worms groups, relatives, and Maya priests The head of the domestic Waats’il: Bend of the corn canes group, alone or to prevent moisture from damaging the cobs and reduce the accompanied by some of his children damage of the birds Máak’antik kumche’: Elaboration The head of the domestic group, alone or of the troje to store the i’inaj, which is the cob with everything accompanied by some of and shell to select next year’s seed his children Túuxt: Offering of tamales in the J k’iin and community members church so that it does not rain during the harvest The head of the domestic Jooch: Harvest of corn, beans, group, alone or pumpkin, makal, and cassava accompanied by some of among others, helped with the his children xúux or sacks The head of the domestic T’isbil: Storage of the cobs with group, alone or everything and its leaves on the accompanied by some of barn, placed in rows and layers, his children with the tips down Seed selection for the next The head of the domestic agricultural cycle group The head of the domestic Matan káax yetel waaj o waajil group, his children and k’óol: Thanksgiving and gift of wife and sometimes the hen broth with tortillas for the members of the group corn harvest that was already related patrilineally achieved or already earned

Tools

Time period September to October

October

October

October

October

December to January

Máaskab, aak’ December to January (vine) or thread or wire Before the harvest Xúux and sometimes the bakche’ Lime, ash

Bakche’

Only on full moon days from December to January December to January

December and January January

In Xhazil a minor party is held every 2 years, when it is not for Chancah Veracruz to throw the party. During this holiday, the ritual called Loj is performed

a

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their knowledge gained as well as the steps required to obtain such knowledge as the main axes of observation and analysis. With respect to communication, the use of the Mayan language during communication activities is a characteristic that is constantly reported throughout community research and although it may seem trivial, the repeated use of the language in these activities becomes routine work and allows participants naming and establishing the name of what things are, in a similar way as in some initial or elementary schools happen, where things and topics are taught to children and repeated over and over in Spanish. However, social practices in Mayan culture not only teach a language, but also teach to know the environment from the Mayan language itself and legitimize that this is the way it is done. As an example to the previous sentence, during the weeding of a plot of land, the instructions given to young apprentices regarding the plants present were ch’aak be or jook be, meaning to cut or pull a plant, respectively, depending on the type of plant involved and whether it was easier to cut (ch’aak be) or pull it out (jook be). The plants to be cut or pulled out are elements that are incorporated as part of the learning, and in the Xíimbal K’áax, the characteristics of the soil, the types of trees, their thickness, the diversity of species and the degree to which they pull their leaves during the dry season are elements to be used and learned to carry out the activity. In the Maya Macehual culture, since childhood people learn to name things, animals, plants, and the world around them in Mayan terms. Thus, orality is the basic element that allows the intergenerational transmission of Mayan knowledge, similar to how various authors report it to happen in different indigenous peoples (Jiménez, 1992; Berkes, 1993; Brooke, 1993; Ruddle, 1993; Battiste & Henderson, 2000; Haruyama, 2003; Sánchez, 2005). This type of learning not only contrasts but also competes with the process of literacy and writing in Spanish used at elementary schools in Mexico. However, in the communication with those outside, with those who do not speak Mayan language and in the basic Mexican education schools of the three population centers (Xhazil Sur, Uh May, and Chancah), Spanish is spoken to a greater extent. Thus, little by little Spanish language has been imposed as the hegemonic language of communication in the local institutions of the Mexican State. The effect of the substitution of the Mayan language by Spanish, even promoted by basic education schools, has an effect not only on the use of the Mayan language itself, but also on the knowledge of things and practices, which is transmitted through this language. In terms of space, the Milpa as a system of social organization or institution, makes use of specific places to carry out each of its activities. Thus, the Xíimbal k’áax or walk for the selection of the land for sowing (see Table 3.1) will always be done on land covered with forest and never on a savanna although both places are adjacent to each other and are within the milpero’s agricultural Rumbo. Likewise, the ceremony of the Sakab will take place in the sowing space, and not in another place. Therefore, the spaces of social practices within the maize fields are not random, but are intrinsically related to productive practices and establish procedural knowledge of how things are done. Moreover, they are also much more than just the place for maize cultivation, as they include a diversity of cultural practices such as

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the Xíimbal k’aax, or the P’iis; different ceremonies such as saint Uk’ul or Sakab, Loh, Áak’sa’a, and Píib naal; and the seed selection, to mention a few of the activities (see Table 3.1). The schedules of the activities and the duration of each of them, which can also be found in Table 3.1, are also established and the activities are repeated over time. Thus, and as an example, a person can participate several times throughout the year in the Jok or elimination of weeds, either in his own domestic group’s cultivation or in one of his close relatives. An individual may have the opportunity to learn, when and how practices are done for years, until his coming of age and establishes his own crops, and even then he could carry out Milpa practices under the direction of an older relative. The repetition of practices allows the milperos to learn and perfect the knowledge related to each of the Milpa activities throughout their lives. In pursuing the Milpa, the environment and its flora and fauna are used as elements for learning. An example of these elements can be described in the hunt for the baj or gopher (tuza) (Orthogeomys spp.), an herbivore rodent, which inhabits underground burrows and builds tunnels through which it moves. The hunt for the baj is mainly carried out by children and youth during the rainy season when gophers dig their tunnels and take out the earth forming mounds which characterizes them. The traditional way of catching them is by the means of a trap made with flexible rods that are kept under tension with a rod embedded in the tunnel and a rope made with fibers of k’an jool (Hampea trilobata Standl.), a tree that is characterized by having long fibers under the bark. This activity involves that the participants should know the trees of the region, which are more than 100 species, identifying which of them are flexible enough to be used in the trap, and identifying which ones should not be used or even avoided, as is the case of the chechem (Metopium brownei), a plant of the Anacardiaceae family, whose toxic resin causes severe damage to the skin. Likewise, in the maize field, learning materials include elements of the environment such as soil, trees, seeds, insects, and other animals, as well as climate, but also procedures and relationships among participants. All this learning forms a corpus of Mayan knowledge that is transmitted orally to the interior of each Mayan institution and that corresponds to an epistemology of Macehual Mayan knowledge. The transmission of knowledge in the Kool takes place among participants who assume the roles of masters and apprentices. During the performance of these roles, there is a sequence for learning, which begins with observation and continues with participation as an apprentice, until becoming the teacher of new apprentices. This quality of teacher-apprentice is not given by age or by obtaining a certification, as it occurs in basic education schools, but rather through the recognition given by concrete results. The two following examples will show the meaning of being teacher or apprentice while working in areas of Milpa. In the hunt for the gophers, skillful hunters teach apprentices how to build traps, and often it may be a teenager who teaches someone older than him in building a good trap for gopher. The second example is in the wasp or ek combs collection; in this case, the final evaluation of being a teacher or an apprentice will be in collecting the combs without being stung

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by the wasps, which implies, among other things, knowing that no perfume or deodorant should be worn while pursuing this activity. As an example of the learning of rules, the path of the cultivation area for the maize field is given in areas adjacent to the already cultivated one, whereas the paths that go along with adjacent areas of two agricultural directions and with the rule of tu’ux k’uub xíinbal in koole’ mú’u xíinbal a kool, that can be translated as “where my maize field “walks”, yours does not.” Learning begins at early ages, usually with playing activities that tend to reproduce social practice, then continue as an assistant under the supervision of adults, with formal practice exercise activities in real conditions and to conclude with the milpero as a teacher of others. The Mayan Milpa and its associated institutions allow not only the acquisition of knowledge, but also the structuring of a social reality based on the use of local resources, norms of conduct and given rights that are specific to the Maya and which, at the same time that they are learned, allow them to construct and reconstruct the social-institutional structures that are their own. As we have previously shown, similar to State education (i.e., formal education in State schools), in Mayan institutions there are roles among participants (including teachers and apprentices), rules, spaces, schedules, learning contents, sequences, materials, and criteria for valuing learning. The evidence collected makes it possible to ensure that there is an intentionality for learning that does not fall on a single individual or on a single institution (teacher and school, for example), which allows the integration of new useful members for society, with conceptual, procedural, and complex knowledge, and that allows them to perform adequately. From a different perspective than the one held by the educational system from the Mexican State, our study’s results constitute a complex network of Mayan institutions that have, as a fundamental part of their existence, the process of teaching new generations what their institutions are, while maintaining and reproducing with it the construction/ reconstruction of their territory and their social structures.

3.6  Concluding Remarks Throughout their history, the Macehual Maya people of Quintana Roo have created their institutions with their protocols and characteristics that make them their own. In the establishment of these institutions, two basic conditions have been met: the process of instituting something and the teaching of what had been instituted. Several of those institutions are still valid today and various activities of social life in the community are organized based on them. One of these institutions is the Kool or Mayan Milpa, which is based on a form of social organization as well as on the kinship relations among members of the community through patrilineal means. The Kool has to do with the production of corn and other associated species but also includes pursuing other livelihoods such as hunting, the collection of plants and animals, fishing, as well as other socialization activities among the participants. The Milpa or Kool operates in conjunction with other Mayan institutions that together

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determine the social activities of the community; all institutions in place reinforce with each other the functioning of the already established ones. Our results demonstrated that during its operation, the Kool also fulfills educational functions that allow the factual, procedural, and complex knowledge to be orally transmitted to the participating members, which constitute the basis of the Mayan culture, including the use of the Mayan language itself. Thus, during the practice of the Kool, the participating individuals begin their roles as apprentices until they become the teachers of those who join later and with less knowledge and/ or skills. The Mayan institutions not only contrast with but are in competition with the basic education system established from the structure of the Mexican State. The competition is given in terms of educational content (i.e., knowledge of the local context, of the Mayan language, and of the Mayan culture versus universal knowledge from a cultural universal vision, with Spanish as the hegemonic language); in terms of education schedules (the working time dictated by Mayan institutions versus the working time from the Mexican educational system); of materials and examples used for learning (local materials and real conditions of the community versus textbooks and standardized teaching materials, as well as examples outside the local context); and educational spaces (the diversity of spaces provided by the Macehual Mayan institutions, included the Milpa, versus the space of the school), among other aspects. Additionally, and possibly the most important of the contrasting factors, the competition occurs in terms of the legitimacy of an educational model, which in order to be regarded as education must come from the so-called formal education provided by the State’s institutions. The latter factor disqualifies and makes invisible the existence of other types of educational systems, whose functions have allowed the existence and permanence of cultural groups, in this case, the Macehual Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Acknowledgements  The authors are grateful for the support of the Macehual Mayan people to their research. This manuscript benefited from the constructive criticism of three anonymous reviewers.

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Chapter 4

Ngô ndêt pá khre: Environmental Governance for the Future of the Xingu River (Mato Grosso, Brazil) Rosely Alvim Sanches and Célia Futemma

Abstract  This chapter addresses the environmental governance debate of Xingu River’s springs and their inhabitants, “indigenous” and “non-indigenous” people in Mato Grosso (Brazil). We focus on the perception of Kĩsêdjê indigenous about temporal and spatial changes related to the land tenure and the expansion of industrial soybean production, at the expense of huge swaths of the forests of the Suiá-Miçu River Basin. The indigenous narratives highlight political, socioeconomic, and environmental context of expansion of soybean, and the use of agrochemicals around the Xingu Indigenous Park. Alternative economies and forms of governance in the Upper Xingu have fostered collaborations among indigenous, local small and large-sized farmers, and civil society organizations to protect the Xingu River’s springs, led by the Xingu Seed Network. The Kĩsêdjê highlighted vulnerabilities in the environmental governance scenario, and are concerned about changes in the quality of the Suiá-Miçu caused by extensive farming around their land. They have been undertaking a permanent monitoring of water and in the restoration of permanent preservation areas. While that network aims to hinder deforestation, indigenous leaders have the ability to maintain a constant dialogue with farmers, local public authorities, and non-governmental organizations to defend the health of rivers, and to contributing for governance in the Xingu headwaters. Keywords  Common resources · Environmental governance · Riparian forests · Water quality · Upper Xingu · Amazon

The term “Ngô ndêt pá khre” refers to plant the forest to protect the river. R. A. Sanches (*) Commons Conservation and Management Research Group (CGCommons) and Human Ecology and Governance Research Group, State University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] C. Futemma Center for Environmental Studies and Research, State University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_4

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Abbreviations IAD PIX PPA SMRB TI XSN

Institutional analysis and development Parque Indígena do Xingu, or Xingu Indigenous Park Permanent preservation area Suiá-Miçu River Basin Terra indígena, or Indigenous Land Xingu Seed Network

4.1  Introduction The Xingu River’s springs region comprises (Mato Grosso, Brazil) Xingu Indigenous Park (we present as PIX, or Parque Indígena do Xingu) and has been experiencing its most intense social, cultural, and ecological transformation since the 1960s. Inside PIX, there are the most of representatives “indigenous” linguistic families in Brazil (Tupi, Macro-Jê, Aruak, and Karibe) of 16 ethnic groups (De Souza, 2012). This indigenous land was created in 1961 (Fig. 4.1), as an ambitious project and geopolitical vision by Villas Boas brothers and federal government to protect the diversity of indigenous people in the Upper Xingu. After it, when the National Integration Policy was established, the lands around PIX were officially opened to expansion of the agricultural frontier to the Midwest Region of Brazil. In turn, this policy was connected with global changes to regional development plans privileging agricultural commodities and concentration of land ownership in the name of efficiencies, free trade, and global food (McMichael, 2012), mostly in Latin America countries. In this chapter, our main objective is to unveil the perception about land use changes and think about possible impacts on the Suiá-Miçu River Basin (23,000 km2), based on the narratives of the Kĩsêdjê living inside the Wawi Indigenous Land and PIX (Mato Grosso, Brazil). We began with a discussion of changes to the ecology and land use tenure of the Upper Xingu and the network of social agents (governmental and non-governmental) operate in the region. Then, we introduced the concept of “governance” and “commons.” In the methodological considerations, we present the political-economic context of the Xingu River’s springs region and the analysis of the narratives. After, we present Kĩsêdjê indigenous people and then, we examined their concepts of time and their description of the ecological change to understand the Suiá-Miçu River Basin effects of macro-economic processes. We also considered the activities of local support groups like the Xingu Seed Network to protection of Xingu River. Then, we described the main changes in water quality of the Suiá-Miçu River and healthy indicators according to the Kĩsêdjê narratives. Finally, we conclude with the main warnings about the environmental governance of the Xingu River’s springs region.

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Fig. 4.1  Xingu River’s springs region (blue line) Xingu Indigenous Park (Parque Indígena do Xingu) and Wawi Indigenous Land (Terra Indígena Wawi—TI Wawi). Suiá-Miçu River Basin encompass this indigenous land and most part of Querência municipality (left). Xingu River basin encompasses 510,000 km2 between Mato Grosso and Pará state (top right). (Source: Adapted from Sanches and Futemma (2019). Background image: World Physical Map. Available in: http://www. arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=c4ec722a1cd34cf0a23904aadf8923a0)

4.2  The Xingu River’s Springs Region Covering 170,000 km2 area, the Xingu River’s springs1 (Fig. 4.1) embrace a large-­ scale impairment of evergreen seasonal forests, a type of vegetation restricted to the seasonal climate of northern Mato Grosso and the state of Rondônia (Ivanauskas, Monteiro, & Rodrigues, 2004). By the late 1990s, mostly the evergreen forest and Cerrado (Brazilian savanna) areas had given way to cattle ranching, hardwoods extractions, soy bean, and corn farming, in rotation with cotton. This has boosted the regional economy (Sanches, Rossete, Rezende, Aves, & Villas-Boas, 2012). 1  The Xingu River’ springs region—almost the size of Uruguay, 176,000 km2—encompasses the headwaters of rivers of the Xingu basin, the Ronuro and Culuene rivers (Brasil Netto, 1964). The Xingu River’ springs are also territories of indigenous peoples of the Upper Xingu.

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Deforestation on natural areas consumed over 50,000 km2 of native vegetation plus 3,000 km2 of permanent preservation areas (Sanches & Futemma, 2019). Although the Upper Xingu was little known by the Brazilian society until the early 1950s, today this region embraces different economic groups and its inhabitants, rural entrepreneurs, smallholders, urban populations; they all connect non-­ indigenous and indigenous populations of the “heart of Brazil” to the global economy. For many, whether in urban centers or in the distant lands from Xingu, agribusiness has consolidated in this region a new large-scale production economy and the export of soybean commodities, which contributes greatly to the Brazil’s wealth, to the international markets, and the increase of the national gross domestic product (Rausch & Gibbs, 2016). On the other hand, these changes in the municipalities attracted small, medium, and large-sized farmers to live in the northern region of Mato Grosso, planning to consolidate agricultural “frontiers” (Barrozo, 2008; Schwantes, 2008). This region comprises concomitantly a diversity of production and livelihood of non-indigenous inhabitants and indigenous peoples, such as the Xingu, as the PIX and Wawi Indigenous Land (Fig. 4.1), or Terra Indígena Wawi (TI Wawi). We consider the Suiá-Miçu River Basin (SMRB) a scenario of the space-time analysis of transformations of common resources—such as springs. Considering that all these economies and new realities for different land uses provide different intersections “between economic chains at different levels, and multiscale perspectives” (Brondízio, Ostrom, & Young, 2009, p.  254), from the local to the global level, it is important to understand how these impacted or benefited the local population, notably, in improving quality of life. However are these transformations in the Suiá-Miçu River Basin—through on a set of political, economic, and environmental factors condition, at the same time, benefit for indigenous peoples, for the small-size and large landowners, for corporate soy producer or large commodity traders (Rausch & Gibbs, 2016) and the urban populations of Querência and Ribeirão Cascalheira (Mato Grosso, Brazil)? The Kĩsêdjê leaders have been reporting to official authorities, technicians from non-governmental organizations, and researchers on the poor water quality of SuiáMiçu, the emergence of diseases (such as diarrhea and itching), and the bad taste of the fish (Sanches & Futemma, 2019). Indigenous men and women have observed the daily physical transformations in frequent trips from their villages to cities outside indigenous land. Youngs Kĩsêdje draw to illustrate the physical changes in the Suiá-Miçu, river silting, changes in the color of waters, increase in turbidity, and loss of riparian forest (Sanches, 2015), i.e., they perceive the loss of surrounding natural resources and its consequences (Sanches & Futemma, 2019). Since the late 1960s, the Kĩsêdjê and non-indigenous populations have both lived in this region and are neither hierarchical nor intertwined (sensu Luhmann, 1990); but they are interrelated with one another, with a common resource—Xingu River’s springs—and with constitutional rules for property arrangements and for enforcement of forest protection. These are, for example, a Plan to Prevent and Control Deforestation in the Amazon, and the Forest Law No. 12,651 of 2012. Both

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regulate use and how much of each rural property can be lawfully cleared (Rausch & Gibbs, 2016, p. 2). The latter, especially, established standards of protection in PPAs and legal reserves, within private properties (Malta Campos Filho et al., 2014). We will answer this question based on information and analysis from sources (primary and secondary) of doctoral research conducted in 2011–2015. Before this, the data was based on these new and on previous diagnoses (1999–2008) on land use dynamics in the SMRB (Maeda, Formaggio, & Shimabukuro, 2008; Sanches et al., 2012). We highlight some indicators that characterize the Kĩsêdjê ‘s recurring concern in the narratives of indicators related to the health of the population and SMRB. Our intention is to focus on indigenous narratives, not at the expense of the perception or information of local rural producers. Their perceptions are both equally important in the spatial and temporal analysis of Suiá-Miçu, as well as the commitment of public and non-governmental social agents to the protection of the Xingu River, which were thoroughly scrutinized in Sanches and Futemma (2019), and Sanches (2015). The Kĩsêdjê narratives show that river health and food security are closely related and are a common good for all inhabitants of the region. They serve as a warning to Brazilian society about the dangers of a possible and irreversible scenario of destruction of water-producing sources in the Xingu River’s springs.

4.3  C  ommon Resources and Environmental Governance in the Xingu Region The Xingu River’s springs are considered to be sources to exporter of water from the state of Mato Grosso to the Amazon River basin, and source of direct water production to approximately 500,000 inhabitants (of which 6000 indigenous inside the PIX) in all Xingu Basin. The environmental protection of its river is a duty and a permanent concern of its users and of the Brazilian society. Human decisions motivated by common interests can protect the Xingu. But, we know they are part of institutions’ agendas, the phenomena studied by the biological, economic, and political sciences. However, empirical investigations about environmental governance are not always easy without a robust theoretical-methodological framework to support the analysis. Before proceeding, we present some thoughts on the theory of the commons. The term “governance” designates a collective decision-making process, in order to promote mutual benefits, or the sustainability of the system, to avoid problems that affect the welfare of social groups (Ostrom, 1990). Decision processes can take place through formal or through informal arrangements. The “governance” is a process in which “social agents (public and private) are able to build an organizational consensus between different groups, to define common objectives and tasks and to agree on each partner’s contribution to a common vision for the future of their territories” (Davoudi, Evans, Governa, & Santangelo, 2008, p. 351).

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The success in protecting common resources in the Upper Xingu depends on interests and on social mobilization assuming that the motivation for conserving these resources has different meanings for the actors involved (Dietz, Ostrom, & Stern, 2003; Sanches & Futemma, 2019). In this complex region, according to the local perception and economies, the campaign that raised the Xingu is part of a recognized process by the regional public (Dietz et al., 2003; Tucker, 2010). Since 1994, a set of public and private organizations, in conjunction with indigenous organizations and the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), a non-­ governmental organization, has promoted collective actions for the recovery and protection of Xingu springs. These actions were made public and attracted international personalities to the Campaign ’Y Ikatu Xingu—healthy water, in Kamaiurá language—serving the indigenous peoples’ appeal about the future of the Xingu River. Leaders such as Raoni Kayapó had already traveled worldwide publicizing the need for joint actions and pacts in defense of the use and management of natural resources and the protection of river springs. The indigenous peoples of the PIX, for their part, denounced abrupt and physical changes in the direct sources of water and fish essential to their material and cultural survival in different rivers such as Ronuro, Culuene, Suiá-Miçu, and the other tributaries of the Xingu River. In 2004, following the public launch of the ’Y Ikatu Xingu Campaign, the support from other non-governmental organizations, researchers, and farmers interested in actions to restore springs and riparian forests increased. After 15 years, this action encompasses a complex social network (Urzedo, Vidal, Sills, Piña-Rodrigues, & Junqueira, 2016) of articulations in the Xingu Seed Network (XSN) and seeks incentives for the ecological restoration of permanent preservation areas—PPAs (Fig. 4.2). Producers and consumers linkages are organized by XSN with support from researchers and farmers discussing the best techniques and technologies for forest restoration of PPAs (Durigan, Guerin, & da Costa, 2013). Directly planted seeds are obtained from more than 500 indigenous and non-indigenous collectors in the Xingu-Araguaia region. Commercialization reached a national market scale with 150 tons of seeds produced from more than 200 native species and a total of US$ 630,000 in 2007–2016 (Malta Campos Filho et al., 2014; Sanches & Futemma, 2019). However, in the space-time of transformations since 2004, and after the creation of the XSN, the Kisêdje people raised doubts as to whether the protective interests of the Xingu are indeed shared. The central issue is that the livelihoods, the changes, and the intense deforestation in the SMRB have had an effect inside indigenous land and degraded the region where springs and rivers emerge, so the common resources for Kĩsêdjê and neighborhood population. According to Pahl-Wostl et al. (2010, p. 572), there was an increasing interest in the concept of governance that has not yet “resulted in frameworks of analysis that encompass the complexity” of the existing process. But, during more than five decades, Ostrom (1990) and colleagues have demonstrated through interdisciplinary field research in different regions of the world, that where there are relatively homogenous sociocultural populations, collective decisions when motivated by interests in common, can be effective in the conservation of natural resources.

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Fig. 4.2  Surrounding Suiá-Miçu upper course and restoration of PPAs on a soybean farm (top), with bags to protect the plant seedlings (Source: R.A. Sanches, May 10, 2013); and cattle ranch (bottom), with the direct planting of seeds (Source: A. Nascimento, May 12, 2013). There are also positive incentives through the commercialization of native seeds by XSN network, which can be bought by the farmers

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Rules-in-Use

Attributes of Community

Biophysical conditions

Thus, Ostrom (1990) proposes Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD), a theoretical-methodological framework for application in governance case studies (self-governance, co-administration, and co-management) related to biodiversity conservation. In this study, we have adopted IAD for the analysis of the environmental governance of the Xingu River’s springs (Sanches & Futemma, 2019). It reveals how the common goal—the protection and restoration of springs and riparian forests—can be launched by a diversity of social agents, strategic actions, and outcomes of XSN.  There is an array of biophysical, socioeconomic, and institutional factors involved in collective decision-making arenas (action-situations) (Fig. 4.3). In this section, we introduce the results of the Xingu Seed Network as the constituent elements of environmental governance (Fig. 4.3). For example, we consider the increased PPAs restored as an outcome and an indicator of the evaluation and XSN success. But according to Ostrom (1990), the maintenance of fundamental principles of planning for robust institutions (this author suggests initially eight External variables Environmental conditions of the Xingu basin. Extreme changes: prolonged droughts and forest fires. Water quality. Socioeconomic diversity. Relationship between social agents and common-pool resources.

Criteria established by the XSN and environmental legislation on forest restoration of PPAs.

Interactions

Action Situations

XSN annual meeting: review and definition of criteria (eg. duties and obligations of seed collectors) Position and function, as well as duties, obligations and sanctions agreed between the network participants.

Technical and scientific information available to XSN participants. Periodic meetings between seed collectors. Technological innovations incorporated into the methods of collection and storage of seeds and in the PPAs restoration.

Outcomes Increase in seed production for forest restoration. Increased PPAs restored. Increase in household income. Reduction of recovery costs of PPAs. Increased collective interest in participating in XSN.

Evaluative Criteria

Extension and quality of the restored PPAs. Quality and quantity of viable seeds. Demand and price in the forest seed market.

Fig. 4.3  A governance diagram of the Xingu Seed Network (Sanches & Futemma, 2019, p. 144). Continuous dashes with the arrows indicate the direction of the relationship and the direct influence among a set of variables, as in the case of biophysical, sociocultural conditions, and in the rules in use on the “action-situations” (the decisions taken at the annual meetings of the XSN). The outcomes can also indirectly modify (dotted lines) the conditions of degradation of the water resources and permanent preservation areas. As an evaluative criterion, water quality is included also in this framework. (Source: Sanches and Futemma, 2019)

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fundamental principles) is a determinant for conservation success. Among other principles, she identified the coherence and congruence between rules and decisions, the definition of the boundary resources, of the sanctions and monitoring, as well as the legal recognition of actions. In addition to the components of the IAD and the analysis of planning principles, it is important to highlight that the reviews of governance must be dynamic and progressive, and must include cultural as well as objective criteria to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the region’s governance processes.

4.4  Methodological Considerations: The Political-Economic Context of the Xingu River’s Springs Region and the Narratives 4.4.1  T  he Historical Importance and the “Necessary” Devastation2 After the late eighteenth century, the history of the Xingu River had long been revealed by its inhabitants, its mineral wealth and timber resources, by the diversity of indigenous or native peoples and the almost insurmountable physical barriers and waterfalls. It mobilized indigenous peoples, riverine populations, missionaries, explorers, and European scientists on expeditions to recognize and dispute territories. They all harbored ambitions. Some endangered their lives, as in the case of the Colonel Fawcett, who ventured and crossed the Roncador Mountain, a natural barrier and watershed of the Xingu and Araguaia basins, then disappeared (Villas Boas & Villas Boas, 1994). The ambitions and geopolitical purposes of the explorers, in fact, marked the drastic transformation in the headwaters region. From the 1940s on, the strategy of integrating and colonizing the Amazon by the governments following President Getúlio Vargas transformed the Xingu River into a regional center, designating it to be the path to be followed by expeditions organized by the Brazilian government, as was the case of Roncador-Xingu. This expedition headed by the Villas Boas brothers, including the military, scientists, and anthropologists, performed the mapping and made official contact with indigenous peoples of the Xingu, and mediated the relations of these with the national society. From the South of the country, prompted by the National Integration Policy and vigorous national propaganda campaign, the State ignited the collective imagination for the clearing of supposedly unoccupied lands in the Amazon. These could be acquired at ridiculously low prices, which led to the formation of huge farms, or latifundia (Villas Boas & Villas Boas, 1994). The integration of this Amazon region, isolated and little known until the mid-­1950s, during the successive national-developmental economic policies, has  Paraphrasing the “Needless Devastation” chapter of the book “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson.

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had its greatest expression since 2000 with the demand of international markets for Brazilian agricultural products (Brando, Coe, DeFries, & Azevedo, 2013; Guereña, 2016). The economic growth in the municipalities of northern Mato Grosso, attracting new interests and the so-called pioneers, or the first settlers of southern farmers. Migrants from the South broke through the physical barriers of the Amazon, and traveled to northern Mato Grosso as part of the promising agricultural enterprise of COOPERCANA.  This led to the creation of the municipalities of Água Boa, Canarana, and Querência.3 After 2000, private colonization projects and the economic value of soybeans contributed to the increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP),4 which transformed Mato Grosso into the most important soy-producing Brazilian state and contributed directly to skyrocketing deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon (Brando et al., 2013; Rausch & Gibbs, 2016). Despite that, the necessary devastation concomitantly consumed the wetlands and marshes of the Xingu floodplains and their tributaries.

4.4.2  Institutions for the Xingu River Protection Challenge The history of the institutions to protecting the Upper Xingu should consider its first dwellers and the environmental impact caused by pre-Colombian Indigenous peoples on the Amazon. Their extensive use of fire for clearing, the creation of black earth at their village sites are studied by scientists as Mann (2008) and US-Brazilian researchers (Heckenberger et al., 2008). They showed in the Upper Xingu that “settlement planning and supralocal integration, which document highly self-organized anthropogenic landscape of late prehistoric towns, villages, and hamlets, with well-­ planned road networks across the region” (Heckenberger et al., 2008, pp. 1214–1215). In other places, as in the south-central Amazon, indigenous people also lived in “dense settlements in a form of early urbanism and created ditches and earthen walls (…) alter their environments, but they also transformed the biota in them” (Mann, 2008, pp.  1148–1149). Despite these studies, we still poorly understand how historic changes in the landscape could be controlled, or how the indigenous institutions can prevent a great impact on the ecology of the region.

3  The project COOPERCANA (Canarana Agricultural Cooperative) took 80 families of small and medium farmers from Rio Grande do Sul to Canarana, a region with a seasonal and predictable climate for agricultural crops and a flat relief (Schwantes, 2008). 4  Brazil’s GDP is approximately US$ 1.8 billion (in 2018). Querência (17,014, or 0.73 inhabitants/ km2) makes a major contribution to the agricultural production of the state of Mato Grosso. It ranks 98th in the national ranking of the highest GDP per capita, and 12th among the 141 municipalities in Matto Grosso. The education rate is 91.1% of children aged 6–14; the infant mortality is 8.26 deaths per 1000 live births, with 1.3 hospitalizations per 1000 inhabitants because of diarrhea (IBGE, 2019).

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However, we are focusing on the recent institutions to protect the Xingu River’s springs and highlight the enforcement of the Native Vegetation Protection Law (2012). This Brazilian law has set new limits in relation to permanent preservation areas (PPAs), such as riparian forests, springs, and lakes, that should be restored in cases of unauthorized deforestation. PPAs are delimited in function of the size of the rural property rather than the width of the riverbed, or the flooding area of the watercourse. Scientists and non-governmental agents criticized this law because of this it reduced the size of the area to be recovered and favored consolidated uses or illegal deforestation in PPAs (Rausch & Gibbs, 2016). However, this law increased a control of land and environmental regularization on private rural properties, through a digitally accessible and publicly available registration system. This system—the Rural Property Environmental Registry (CAR)—has increased environmental oversight and the deliberation of policies to promote research on forest restoration in Brazil and also attracted public funds and international donors (Brando et al., 2013). The institutional restrictions on property prevent those with unlawful deforestation from being able to commercialize soy production on national and international markets (Rausch & Gibbs, 2016). These embargoed farms have led producers to seek partnerships with technical assistance institutions and non-governmental and research organizations (Durigan et al., 2013). In the Xingu River’s springs, by 2015, nearly one hundred public and private organizations directly and indirectly supported and financed forest restoration and an environmental adaptation of rural properties, with support from the XSN. Rules that are known and agreed upon by different actors increase the likelihood of success in protecting common goods (Dietz et al., 2003). In all Latin America, land concentration has become a strongly performing asset for institutional investors (such as pension funds and government agencies). They invest in soybean farming through systems known as “sowing pools.” These are “where they gather capital from various investors to purchase, or rent land on which they produce raw materials for exports. In addition, these systems offer foreign companies the advantage of entering into partnerships with local actors, in order to access tax breaks and subsidies, or to avoid possible restrictions on the purchase of land” (Guereña, 2016, p. 42). Thus, different international environmental protocols have been proposed to address climate and food crises to accommodate these systems in Latin America (McMichael, 2012). Much remains to be done regarding the land use on the borders of the PIX and the dialogue between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. In a globalized free market, the dialogue must include whoever has the economic power over the land. XSN could foster to the environmental governance of the future of the Xingu River, if it can enable agreements to protect resources and ensure the welfare of users. There are other concerns, as shown by indigenous health conditions. The Kĩsêdjê perceptions about SMRB changes, as Brondízio et al. (2009, p. 19) assert, demonstrate “that it is necessary to build up the social capital to deal with environmental problems in Xingu and, the academic and policy communities recognition ” “of forms of mediation, translation, knowledge coproduction, and negotiation that are capable of managing complex interlinked systems.”

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Galvão (2013) and other researchers (Mazzucchetti et  al., 2014) analyzed the nutritional status of Kĩsêdjê populations and diagnosed cases of malnutrition in children under 5 years. In addition, they investigated the incidence of metabolic syndrome and associated diseases in the population over the period 1999–2000 to 2010–2011 (Mazzucchetti et al., 2014), based on physical and biochemical examinations of 78 Kĩsêdjê adults. Ten years of follow-up showed a cumulative incidence of metabolic syndrome (one third of adults), as 47.4% of hypertriglyceridemia, 38.9% of hypertension, 30.4% of overweight, and 2.9% of diabetes and other chronic diseases (such as high blood pressure), or diseases of the so-called modernity (Mazzucchetti et al., 2014). The authors suggest that changes in the nutritional status of the Kĩsêdjê may initially be associated with the type of food consumed, current socioeconomic conditions, new sources of income (Bolsa Família—a public funding project, rural pensions, payment of teachers and indigenous health agents), and the influx of industrialized foods. On the other hand, there are concerns about the intensive use of agrochemicals and illegal deforestation on river banks around their territories (Schiesari, Waichman, Brock, Adams, & Grillitsch, 2013). These researchers and others have strongly pointed out the need for further studies explaining the impacts of socioeconomic conditions on indigenous health and the input or contamination of physical environments in villages due to industrialized material goods on the context of delimitation and physical demarcation of territories (Seeger, 1981; De Souza, 2010). Thus, although civil society has advanced in the debate about and drafting of environmental governance, providing participatory arenas, there are challenges in establishing ways to monitor these social-ecological systems and in creating institutional arrangements that, in addition to restoring PPAs, control the flow of industrialized products into Kĩsêdjê land, or the production, marketing, and importation of pesticides used around it.

4.4.3  Description of the Kĩsêdjê People The Kĩsêjdê indigenous people5 have inhabited the region of the so-called cultural area of the Upper Xingu society, and the Suiá-Miçu River Basin since XIX (De Souza, 2010, p. 111). They are the only group speakers of the Jê language family, among the 16 indigenous ethnic groups living in the PIX and the TI Wawi (De Souza, 2010; Galvão, 2013). The first records of contact with them were in 1884 by Karl Von den Steinen at the confluence of the Xingu River with the Suiá-Miçu River, where today stands the Diauarum Indigenous Post (Seeger, 1981; Villas Boas & Villas Boas, 1994). After successive conflicts with other indigenous groups, they 5  Me kin seji, as these Indians call themselves, means people who live in large circular villages who recognize their difference by the presence of a labial and auricular disc and by singing in a unique way. See De Souza (2010) and Seeger (1981). Other Jê groups in Brazil are the Xavante, Timbira, Khraô, Kanela, Kayapó do Norte, among others in the north (Seeger, 1980).

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were displaced at the end of the nineteenth ­century, and the Kĩsêdjê villages were built up the Suiá-Miçu River (Seeger, 1981). It was in the village Ngôkathátxi (Rio Cristalino ou Rio das Pacas, Figs. 4.4 and 4.5), where the Villas Boas brothers contacted the Kĩsêdjê in1959 (De Souza, 2010). Other Kĩsêdjê villages in the SMRB were founded along the Ngôtxi (Rio Grande, or Rio Suiá-Miçu), Ngôsakhatxi (Rio Branco, or Rio Paranaiba), Ngotxire (Riozinho or Rio Jandaia), Ngôwikahôntxi (Braço de Rio Grande, Rio Bifurcado ou Rio Darro), and Horenhongô (Rio das Taquarinhas ou Suiazinho). In those different contacts episodes, there was a great loss of adult men and a drastic decrease in population and, on the other hand, an increase in marriages with women of other ethnicities. At the meeting with the Villas Boas brothers, the Kĩsêdjê population was half that found by Von den Steinen (De Souza, 2010). After the 1960s, the population grew by up to 3% per year, counting large numbers of young in the villages, and there was a moderate increase in birth rates. However, mortality rates remained high among women, children under 1 year and adults over 50 due to parasite infections, and especially diarrhea, plus neoplasm, and congenital malformations in children (Pagliaro, Carvalho, Rodrigues, & Baruzzi, 2007). The Kĩsêdjê population (500 individuals, approximately) is distributed in five villages located on the course of the Pacas River and on the lower part of the Suiá-­

Fig. 4.4  The habitats along the floodplain of the Suiá-Miçu River are sources for provisioning of fish, fruits, medicinal plants, honey, and fibers. This figure shows buriti (Mauritia flexuosa) leaves for covering of the residential houses. (Source: R.A. Sanches, August 14, 2012)

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Fig. 4.5  Monitoring Suiá-Miçu expedition in the Suiá-Miçu River or Ngôtxi in the dry season. (Source: R.A. Sanches, July 5, 2007)

Miçu River in the Wawi Indigenous Land (or Terra Indígena Wawi, Fig.  4.4) and PIX. Upstream from the Ngôkathátxi village there are potato, yam, corn, banana, peanut, pequi farms, honey gathering, hunting, and fishing grounds. These and other natural resources appear in narratives at the margins of streams (hwaré), fields (rikha), in areas of dry land, of low forest (nhõpárihwĩre), or “taquarais” (horehusĩkhrô), springs (ngôjhwêre), waterfalls and rapids (ngôsôko), lakes and wetlands, or fallow agricultural areas. Fallow agriculture provides yams, pumpkin, cassava, and banana crops and the forests and wetlands provide fresh fruits and medicinal plants. Women devote much of their time to gardening, collecting, cooking, and caring for children, while men hunt and fish. The Kĩsêdjê men hunt and mainly fish in the floodplain of the Suiá-­ Miçu River and visit sacred and ancient villages (Fig.  4.5) along the Ngôtxi (De Souza, 2010). The men also prepare the gardens (felled to clear the fields) and build houses collectively. They also make canoe paddle in the men’s house, where they talk about the changes that took place in the territories, surrounded by extensive farming areas. The surplus food from these activities is distributed among the other family members (Seeger, 1980). The successive interethnic relations with the upper Xingu indigenous groups, enabled the exchange of technologies and knowledge: baskets and ornithomorphic benches, a type of oval-shaped housing, cassava preparation techniques, and the

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manufacture of water plant salt, ceramics, and buriti nets (De Souza, 2010). The system of exchanging material goods and a barter economy has remained an essential part of the social relationships with non-indigenous neighbors. Natural goods can be exchanged for beads, tools, nets, and flip-flops (De Souza, 2010) among them or with khwẽkhátxi (Whites or non-indigenous people). They maintain their social organization, and long periods with vast ceremonial repertoires, which depend on the large number of men to reproduce them for months and in different years (Seeger, 1981). The ceremonies take place during the initiation of young men or women and are related to uxorilocality. When a child is born, the man (father) leaves his residence and goes to live in or near his wife’s family house (comprising his wife’s parents, single brothers and sisters). The ceremonies comprise elaborate events accompanied by the performance of Kĩsêdjê singers. These are special forms of communication and a main vehicle for the transmission of their values, besides a fundamental part of social life (Seeger, 1980). Official institutions transform or re-signify the lifestyle of the Kĩsêdjê and other peoples. The pacification between different ethnicities, the administrative and political circumscription in indigenous territories with the creation of the PIX have promoted the sedentary lifestyle and the intensified use of natural resources in these areas (De Souza, 2010). In addition, there was the loss of their territories, one of the main factors for social organization transformations. The writing down of the spoken language, the increase in fluent Portuguese speakers (there were only three persons in the 1970s speaking rudimentary Portuguese) and the easy access to cities by younger people has meant changes that led to a greater number of speakers of Portuguese (Seeger, 1981). Scientists as A. Seeger (pers. comm.) have found also that women often understand and speak Portuguese far more fluently than before, especially true of women in the chiefly houses, wives or daughters of teachers, health workers, and other cases. The Kĩsêdjê chief also speaks good Portuguese, but he usually speaks in native language to make a point of their difference and autonomy. But few men are able to translate the speech of the leaders, even though there was a lack of official translators. In addition, the elderly and children under seven rarely speak Portuguese.

4.4.4  T  he Categories of Analysis in the Narratives of the Kĩsêdjê The constitutive elements for understanding historical facts in Kĩsêdjê narratives come mainly from ethnographic research (Seeger, 1981; De Souza, 2010). We devoted careful attention to the indigenous categories of analysis in order to ­understand the Kĩsêdjê perspective. It was also due to the difficulty of translation, the poor fluency of the investigators in their idiom; and the importance of categories of thought that are not part of settler culture for understanding how the Kĩsêdjê view the environment, the problems of land use and deforestation, and the Suiá-Miçu River water quality.

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The main landscape changes were not specifically dated and were identified in the speeches mainly of Kĩsêdjê village men, and narrated during hunting expeditions and the gathering of natural resources in the upstream camps of the present village on the Suiá-Miçu River. After being transferred to the PIX, the Kĩsêdjê men began to observe the trail of the non-indigenous occupation by the khwẽkhátxi (this term designate “white people”), with the clearing of forested areas, changes in the color and quality of river water and of the fish consumed. The suspicion of the environmental impacts on the SMRB has become a matter of concern among women amidst their daily activities and the direct care of children and elderly people in the village. The analysis of the narratives in the mother tongue was made possible by transcription and translation into Portuguese by indigenous interpreters selected by Kĩsêdjê. In order to guide the understanding of the narratives, the analytical categories were adopted according to De Souza (2010) and Seeger (1980, 1981). During the interviews, they reported aspects of the ’Y Ikatu Campaign, as well as the extent and limits of land use of the Kĩsêdjê territories. First, we take care of the use of the present tense in the description of events witnessed in the past, or the so-called ethnographic present (Seeger, 1981), because this distances events from their historical context since the Kĩsêdjê do not count time. Second, we attempted to avoid a normative description in the narrative about an event that may not have been the norm at all. The broad categories for space-time are the following. (i) Space: khôt (“in that place”), paj tá (“place that has a lot of things”) and mbrajtá (“place that has only one thing”); (ii) Time: ra thãm (“now, today, nowaday”), tharam, athũm ma kthã (“future, present of the future”), and itharo (“now, present”). There are references to an ancient or not very old time, such as tharam pá ra mbet nhy” (“before the woods were good”), or to a present time: ráthãm wa nho ngô ra arêkmã khasák hwan arêkmã (“nowadays our rivers are all bad”). Other elements in Kĩsêdjê narratives differentiate expressions between those who simply “speak” from those who “tell a story,” or from those who have the authority of speech, or from a leadership speech. The speech represents different levels of Kĩsêdjê discourse, or verbal genres, and adult and prestigious men are allowed to use long sentences (Seeger, 1981). Thus, speaking, praying, and singing are important social acts that identify the political power among its representatives and speakers. Oratory represents the verbal art of political leaders, whose speeches are always delivered in a large central plaza of the village. It represents the tradition and social position of the speaker among village individuals (Seeger, 1981). In general, the verbal genres are classified as ngere, a communicative act, or a ceremony that, in its complexity, is only known and conveyed by the “owner-­ controller of the word.” This speech of experienced older men can be presented in several parts or in its entirety (Seeger, 1980, p. 85). It can last for hours during a day, several days, or years. The echoing of these verbal genres allows us to identify in Kĩsêdjê narratives who knows what one sees, those who know by hearing what the

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other person says and follows, who the leaders are, or who can influence the major political decisions of the community. The differentiation of these discourse, or verbal genres, contributed to confirm the narrated facts and indicators of land use change at SMRB. They are singing, or ngere, the oratory, or kapẽrẽ, the narration, or sarẽn, and the myth, as shown by some of the expressions related to these and other genres. The kapẽrẽ is the speech of the discourse, or public speech, and represents the power of the speaker. Expressions such as khumbá and sõmun denote meanings such as “understanding, hearing, knowing, seeing, following”: (i) Khumbá: listening, understanding, knowing. (ii) Kapẽrẽ: speaking, exhorting, speaking in the plaza, speaking formally, speaking of leaders. (iii) Sõmun: see, observe, follow. (iv) Sarẽn: say something and tell things someone sees. It can be the narration of myths, the formal exhortation or speaking to the children. (v) Ngere: involves ceremonial chanting. (vi) Sangéré: involves healing songs. The presence of these linguistic elements also made it possible to differentiate speeches from leaders who influence decisions with representatives, or from the village chief. Our interviews were also identified from these verbal genres. The expression sarẽn in the speech of female leadership means an exhortation, an instruction on how “a child should behave” (Seeger, 1980), or the narration and reporting of events on an expedition. It does not have to be delivered in the village courtyard. There is no specific time or place to occur. The following narrative by one of these leaders demonstrates some examples of these verbal genres: (…) Ne wa ikapẽrẽ sĩ re, tharãm kárá mã aja khwâjê ra itha khôt pa kumenkhêt rin wa, tharãm jo ithõ kapẽrẽ wyrák ne sarẽ nhore swârâ ipãm me txêjê me aji hwêt ri aj mo (…)6 (emphasis added). Translation: (…) I’ll speak to you a little bit: a long time ago, when there weren’t many of your relatives walking around here, I, a long time ago, I’ll speak just like what my cousin was saying to you, me and my dad, my cousins, my families, we went to get the taquarinha.

Another recurring expression is khumba, which means listening, understanding: (…) ráthãm ire tá mun ndan wa wi amã saren itha, ne ka nen jô hõ mbrytwân wit na wawi mbaj txi kumen ne, pá khêt ta mun txi kumen ne Rosely, itha wit na wa amã sare, ne ka nennhyry ra ro sôk to then nen arêkmã wi kê arâk me ndijê mban, arâk aji mã tá jaren ndo then, nhyry ran wa amã sare Rosely, ka khumba, waj tât tá ra yne waj wa wi ire itha wit sare mã (…) nenhy Khôkhôsĩ jô kare tá mbaj hrãm itha wa ire kê mbaj hrãmã7 (emphasis added).

 Male, indigenous leader, approximately 50 years old.  Female, indigenous leader, approximately 45 years.

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R. A. Sanches and C. Futemma Translation: (…) these things that I said to you, it is from today (current), I heard more about soy, I saw a lot of the destroyed forests, Rosely, that’s all I tell you, and you’re reporting about all this, and you always have to remember women, keep explaining things to us, that’s what I tell you, you have to hear that, there are many things, but I think I’ll just say that (…) that’s how Khôkhôsĩ, as you wanted to know these things I also wanted to know (…)

There are also opposing elements in the expressions (Seeger, 1980, p. 46), such as in anhi mbaj khêrê, the way the women usually use the phrase when related to khwẽkhátxi (Whites), which means “not to listen-understand-know” and behave inappropriately or badly (A. Seeger, pers. com.) (…) aji mã ikapêrê mbaj khêrê ne ku thât tho wa kapẽrẽ kôt anhi thon soja ra khre khêtnhy ngô ra mberi.8 (emphasis added). Translation: (…) they won’t listen to our claim, hence we can keep speaking about it, but how are they going to end up with soy for the river to get well?

4.5  T  he Changes in the Landscape of the Suiá-Miçu River Basin in the Perception of the Kĩsêdjê Following their transfer to the PIX, the Kĩsêdjê were aware of the arrival of the khwẽkhátxi on their former territory and claimed it at the SMRB, adjacent to the PIX demarcation. They visited these areas on expeditions by land and by river, by boat from the mouth of the Suiá-Miçu River (or Ngôtxi) up to its headwaters in the Canarana and Ribeirão Cascalheira municipalities. In its middle and upper course, some of the oldest Kĩsêdjê representatives were born (Sanches, 2015). In the 1980s, an action planned by the Kĩsêdjê during their expedition along the Suiá-Miçu River led them to discover the dredger excavating the Darro river (Ngôwikahôntxi) bed inside a large livestock farm. The Kĩsêjdê highlighted in this episode the open trails to the Suiá-Miçu riverbank in three of their traditional villages: Hwĩntxithãmã, Horenhongô, and Tamakavi, the name of a stream and the current location of a farm with the same name: Nenhy ne Rosely nhy wâtâ ra tharãm Hwĩntxithãmã khãm aji pa khãmã wa hore swârâ hore swârâ aj mo, itxêjê me wit aj moa. Kárámã Wethẽmẽ sĩre khãmã, Wethẽmẽ nda Nhotâtxi wyrák janthã nhotâtxin arâ amu sakhre janthãwaj wetem nda kárá mã sĩre ne wa aj khwã mo. Atha katyp atha katyp kárá mã mu ra khôt fazenda ngô mu ra khôt ngô mu ra khôt fazenda ra picadawit to witatwârâ ro thẽ hry wiri hry wit hry wit hry wit, hry ra thẽm kamã Horenhongô khôt hry raarâk thẽ. Nenhy khwẽkhátxi ra arâ Brasil Novo khãm, Brasil Novo khãm arâ pá khán tho khrã (…) (emphasis added).

 Chief of the village.

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(…) Brasil Novo khãm aj pá khárá akambát khãm asu swârâ aj sõmu. Nen aj thusêt khôt aj pãrã ro aji moro kamã, nen aj hry rwâk mã tho aji katho, nenhy hry rwâk khãm ndêkhrêt ta khrĩ, kharên nhy sõ khrytxi ra wit khrĩ waj sõmun, aj mon Tamakavi khãm, atha khãm arâ khwẽkhátxi ra aj pẽrẽ pá khán tho kê tho khrã (…)9 (emphasis added). Translation: Well that’s it, Rosely, a long time ago when we lived in Hwĩntxithãmã, we went to get taquarinha with my family only. When Wethẽmẽ was a child, Wethẽme he was as Nhotâtxi maybe, or Nhotâtxi is a little bit bigger than he is, or if I’m not mistaken Wethẽmẽ was too young, we traveled over there. At that time, that river; in that river the farmers only opened trails to the river’s edge, it was just trails, just trails, trails, trails, just trails going into Horenhongô and so on. And by Brasil Novo, the whites had already cleared the woods and burned them (emphasis added). (…) we saw at dawn the clearing in Brasil Novo, then we were going up the river and smelling like burning until we got to the port of that farm. In the port were their things like: smoke and the food we had there that we saw. On that trip, we saw on Tamakavi that the white started to put down there, and it just burned too (emphasis added).

The oldest farms were in Hwĩntxithãmã, as Brasil Novo, Roncador, and Tamakavi, in the years 1950–1960; this place is between the Brasil Novo Settlement and the Tamakavi farm (north of the municipality of Querência). In this place, the Kĩsêjdê located another ancient village and probably inhabited it until the 1950s. The Horenhongô, above the confluence of the Suiazinho and Suiazão rivers, is another place where they collect hore, a type of small cane used to make arrows. In Table 4.1, we highlight some of the events and changes in the SMRB during the “before” and “after” periods of contact with the Villas Boas brothers, in 1950.

4.5.1  Changes in Water Quality of the Suiá-Miçu River We considered the recent environmental changes, by the late 1990s, when Kĩsêdjê lived in the Rik-hô village within the PIX. They began to see changes in the quality of fish, water of rivers and lakes, and riparian forests of the SMRB.  Then, the Kĩsêdjê decided to move to Ngôjwhêrê, an old village site at the boundary of TI Wawi and the ranches. There they could monitor more closely the approach of deforestation, the turbidity of waters, and to feel the deterioration of the rivers physically. Moving villages closer to the boundaries of indigenous land with the surrounding farming areas was one of the decisions taken to exert a greater control over borders. The Kĩsêdjê describe changes in the color of water, and the silting of river beds and relate them to the deforestation of the riparian forests, the construction of bridges and embankments, the increased flow of cars and trucks that carry heavy loads and grains, as the following excerpts exemplify:  Indigenous male, approximately 60 years old at the time of the interview (2011–2015).

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Table 4.1  Expressions used from narratives of Kĩsêdjê men and women that indicate environmental and biophysical changes in the SMRB Before contact with Villas Boas brothers   • tharãm nhyry khêrê (“it wasn’t like that old days”)   • tharãm pá ra mbet nhy (“in the old days, the woods were good”)   • ngô ra mbet nhy (“the water was good”)   • thep ta pa nhy mbry ra pa nhy ne (“a lot of fish and also a lot of animals”)   • tharãm mẽ pa khãm nhyry khêrê pá ra mbet ne khãm sák ta khatxin (“in the old days, it wasn’t like that, there were many birds in these places”)   • aji nho ngô ra tharãm mberi (“our river was good in the old days”)   • aji nho ngô ra mberi ngô ra mbet ne (“our river was clean”)   • ngô ra mbet nhy mẽ ra thep khãm khrwa ro thep hwa (“the river was clean and people could kill fish with the arrow”)   • “Rosely tharãm aji khwâjê (...) nda ra pa khãm aji nho ngô itha ra khatá re” (“Rosely, in the past our people (...) lived in this river, the river was very transparent”)   • wa mbut-thu khôt aj riri hen nenhy wi mã aji khwâjê ra mã khwã ngô kathatxi nen (“we used to see things very far way through the water in the river, that’s why people called it river transparent water with a yellowish color at the bottom)

After contact with Villas Boas brothers   • ráthãm ngô ra nhyry khêrê (“today the river is not like that anymore”)   • ráthãm wa nho ngô ra arêkmã khasák hwan arêkmã (“today our rivers are all bad”)   • ráthãm ngô ra khasáká (“today the river is bad”)   • Ngôtxi ngô khôt arêkmã thep thõ ra ngô khôt thẽm thõ khêrê (“in the Suiá River, you don’t see the fish stirring the water anymore”)   • mbry thõ mun khêt ne sák thõ ngô jamkhát to pa nhy swârâ wa ka thoro thõ khêt ne (“we don’t see the animal, nor do we find the birds in riverbanks”)   • sõmun aji mã khĩn khêrê (“we saw it, and didn’t like it”)   • ráthãm na wi aji nho ngô itha ra thyk txin (“now that our river has this dark coloration”)   • khre thyk txin waj khãm aji pa ra ro nhy jáwi anhi thon khre thyk txin sumba kumeni (“the color was very dark indeed, not because when we lived here, it became that way, it—the color—turns dark and we are afraid of this color—afraid of diving”)

Source: Adapted from Sanches (2015). Note: Emphasis added (…) nenhy ne, khôkhôsi nenhy ne jo tharãm ithaj aji pa khãm aji pa ndyt khãm ngô ra mbet-txi wa aji pa (…) nhy nen nda ra thãm nhy ngô ra khatho re nhy nen jo ni ra khôt hry rêrê ra ro hwykha ra rêrê pa nhy mã ngô ra hwykha ra mã ngô khãm mboko nhy mã aji nho ngô ra ndentxin ndentxin ne waj sõmun aji mã nhyry ra khïn khêt10 (emphasis added). Translation Well, that’s that, Khôkhôsi, that’s that a long time ago, when we lived here, the water was clean, and we remained here some time (…) when the rain falls, it begins to flood a little, there where there was a bridge and the car crossed it, where a lot of earth fell into the water, where we saw that the water was red, red and we saw that and we didn’t like it (…) thore aj sõmun mã hõnen aj hwykhá khãm aj mun aj sõmun aj hwe, hen mbut-thu aj hry ro nhy wi wa nho ngô itha ra sĩhwêt to aj ngô ro (…) rên neni tho hwykhá ro mã rê nhy nen hwykhá ro hwykha ra ngô khãm mbok neni, hen nenhy wi wa nho ngô ra tũmtxi nen

10

 Female, wife of the chief.

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nen nhy wa aji mã khĩn khêrê, ngô kasák tá jo wa nho ngô aji nho ngô itha kasák ta aji mã khĩn khêrê, nenhy nenhy ne, atha wit na wa wi khumba nenhy ire ngô khôt imbraj ne ire sõmun khêrê indjên wit na wi khôt mbra ne wa arâk na wa wi ithaj mbran tha wit mu. (emphasis added). Translation (…) ‘then the people went there to observe the whites driving a car and saw it. They said that the white people built the bridge at the headwaters of our river and that’s why when the car crosses it, a lot of earth falls into the water, ‘that’s why our river is very polluted and we didn’t like it’, we do not accept that our river is spoilt, that’s it, that’s all I know, but I didn’t follow the rivers to know, only my husband walks there and I stayed here and that’s all I know (…) jo kare aj sarẽn nda kôt aj ngô nhihwêt to pá khren, nhyry nhy ngô mã mbrytwân rõn hwê kare aj pá ndêt pá khre ro athum nda, atha ra mberi, atha ra mberi nenhy, mbrytwân kapê ro kôre jo hwykha ro nhyry ne ndêt saj to thëm mãn wa thârâ, jo hõ nhyry ne rik-txin tho hõ nhyry ne kôre mbrytwân ndêt aji nho. (emphasis added). (…) the one you were telling about, of planting forests for the protection of rivers, planted forests to avoid this soybean crop so it didn’t run directly to the river, that’s a good thing, that is a good thing, so that they left earth (to avoid erosion) in riverbanks, that’s what we want them to do, so that they made it real high, so that the poison of soybean didn’t do straight to

The following narrative explains the attempt to dialogue to convince the farmers to plant riparian forests. (…) wa thât aj tho nhyry mã thât aj khwã sarẽ thã nhy wi aj tho nhyry khêrê, itha wit na wa wi aj imã khĩn khêrê, kôt aj mbrytwân ndêt ngô ndêt kê tho nhyryn hwykha hwyn twârân mãn wa thât, tharãm indjên nda aj khwã sarẽ thã nhy aj tho nhyry khêt wa nen (…). (emphasis added). (…) we told them that, so that they would do it, but they didn’t do it, that’s all we didn’t like, so that they left the earth to avoid the “things” of soybean from running straight to the river, that’s what we would like them to do, but they didn’t do it, before my husband had already spoken about it, but they didn’t do it (…)

These narratives explain views against the impacts of agribusiness such as river silting, erosion of margins and embankments, and river bridges “itha ra thât mbet-­ txi thã nhy nen jonihaj aj põn txi ro rê nhy nen mã kê nihaj mbrytwân nda hwykhá ra tho pa nhy mãnihaj ngô ka thõthõg nhy nen mã itha ra arâ kê aji wê khasák txi thẽ” (“that river was good, but then the white people built the bridge above it, this is why when the truck passes over the bridge carrying the soybean, and when the trailer falls with the soybean in the river, this river is already starting to spoil,” emphasis added). Women also raise suspicions about the consequences of the spoiled river in the health of their children: “thoj khõm mã kê mã khãm aji thik tán” (“when we drink that, we also get diarrhea”) and “(...) aj ikhrajê ra mã khãm sinkangô nene, hõne itha wit na wa sarẽ” (“our children get a lot of diarrhea, that’s all he said”) (emphasis added).

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The origin of the most frequently occurring diseases is not entirely clear in the narratives of Kĩsêdjê adult men and women, despite they mentioned that before the arrival of khwẽkhátxi, there was no flu or malaria. For example, they know why some people leave the village to be treated at health posts in the cities of Canarana and Querência. They justify it by the easier access, good road conditions and medicines of the khwẽkhátxi, perhaps able to cure the diseases that are of the white people (De Souza, 2010). So, this possible threat to their health and rights of survival was not solved with the creation and ratification of the Wawi Indigenous Land, with the approach with the surroundings, even with the inclusion of technological goods, infrastructure, and services.

4.5.2  W  hen the Obligation to Support Turns into Health Indicators Unbalanced environmental factors from Kisêdje narratives can become objective and investigative variables in IAD framework (see Fig. 4.3), such as deforestation of riparian forest, the excess of erosion and the poison that can contaminate waters or aquifers, or the increase in the number of bridges and landfills in the SMRB. In the narratives, there are some indicators that the SMRB system may not be operating well. Bringing indicators together in a thorough investigation of health issues can help to understand if the impacts are affecting the well-being of the population. Considering the variables and the IAD framework of environmental governance of Xingu River’s springs (Fig.  4.3) allow analyzing the dynamics of SMRB and develop strategies for its protection. Monitoring the SMRB environment can contribute also to the quality of the restored PPAs, as evaluative criteria in the IAD framework. During their journeys outside their land, the Kĩsêdjê followed a long path to open a permanent dialogue with the farmers as a way to monitor the approach of non-­ indigenous peoples. In their daily leaders’ speeches, or in their instructions to the young, they narrate and explain what they feel and what comes from the biophysical changes in the SMRB and the health of the population. The evolution in the land use (1999–2009) shows that deforestation has consumed almost 40% of the SMRB original vegetation cover (Maeda et al., 2008; Sanches & Futemma, 2019). In a similar situation, the marine biologist Rachel Carson provided a wealth of technical information about the contamination of ecosystems and the rivers in the United States, and profoundly questioned the costs and benefits of tons of chemicals systematically released over the years. The author showed the risk and the contamination, based on reports of rural and urban dwellers, and public authorities and farmers struck by the chemical cloud to fight “pests and weeds,” impacting various life forms by organochlorine products—such as aldrin, endrin, toxafen, paration, and DDT (or dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane). The molecules of these unreactive compounds remain in the environment for a long time and accumulate in riverbeds,

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animal fat, and throughout the food chain. In the book chapter “The Obligation to Endure,” she criticizes the economic benefits that the green revolution has provided, combining high agricultural productivity with the synthesis of organic chemical compounds that affect human health on a global scale. Carson (2010) also demonstrated how the molecules of these pesticide, herbicide, and fungicide compounds disrupt the metabolic systems of biological organisms whose disastrous, long-term effects can be lethal. Indeed, as Schiesari et al. (2013, p. 2) assert, “pesticides are compounds deliberately designed to negatively impact organismal survival, development, growth and reproduction, and as such can adversely affect a broad range of non-target species.”. The action on human health, with its bio-accumulative effects on the food chain, is also unknown to the Kĩsêdjê population. Seventy years ago, Carson described the silence of a spring morning when birds were no longer heard singing after they copiously died because of the widespread use of organic chemicals. The Kĩsêdjê and people around SMRB may be taking bad water, or what they do not see. During fieldwork (1999–2008), we investigated the previous land use and former cattle ranches systems where rotation alternating pasture and rice profusely used chemicals against “plagues.” Women who lived in and around the administrative headquarters of neighboring farms noted that many birds died because of the insecticides on rice fields. The changes described by Kĩsêdjê in their main river Ngotxi (Suiá-Miçu) include a concern that somehow they may harm their children, or all children’s future of the headwater of Xingu River. This statement also corroborates the phrase of an indigenous Kawaiwete leadership said during the announcement that “the head of the Xingu” was “sick.” We still need to know the footprints of the intensive use of chemical inputs, and whether or not there has been contamination of rivers with insecticides, herbicides, and a variety of synthetic products released into lands, waters, and air in different regions of the Suia-Miçu River Basin. Schiesari et al. (2013, p.4) has shown that expansion of soybean in the neighborhood farms “was accompanied by a significant increase in the total mass of pesticide formulations applied—from 2.4 to 13.7 tons per cycle” and also a “marked and monotonic increase in dosage (…) applied per unit area increased fourfold between 2003/2004 and 2008/2009.” The path of technological revolution has become a necessary alternative for integrating the Midwest and the Amazon into the global marketplace, to the detriment of human health, the Kĩsêdjê traditional inhabitants of the SMRB are not optimistic about any changes to protect the rivers. Their narratives reaffirm the abrupt changes in land use caused by deforestation and the destruction of “riverbank” forests. In the perception of the men and women interviewed in contrasting landscapes inside and outside the indigenous area and the once-abundant forests no longer exist. The elders do not clearly understand how diseases arise, whether by the wrath of the spiritual beings who inhabited the felled forests, or by contamination of rivers and diseases linked to the poor quality of water consumed by the population. The lessons from Silent Spring title are not only about awareness of environmental impacts, but about how human health is an important and sensitive measure of

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chemical pollution of water and air. If they affect the health of indigenous peoples, as in the case of the Kĩsêdjê, certain diseases also afflict forests and their spirits, making all those who depend on these resources sick, these factors must also affect the non-indigenous population. Didn’t we realize it? On the scientific view, as Brondízio et  al. (2009, p.  254) emphasize, we may examine “the vertical interplay of institutions representing groups competing or cooperating for authority over common resources requires one to look at questions of subtractability.” In the Xingu case, this would be whether resource appropriation by one user reduces its availability to others. And the question of exclusion, i.e., how costly it is to keep potential beneficiaries out of the benefit stream, is an important concern. The SMRB quality depends on its different inhabitants and it affects the Xingu River’s springs region, a territory of economic and historical importance to indigenous and non-indigenous uses, where there is coexistence between socioculturally heterogeneous ways of life (Sanches & Futemma, 2019). Together, the inhabitants of Suiá Miçu can help to monitor and thus mitigate existing problems, or reducing the costs to conserve its sources.

4.6  P  lanting the Forest for River Protection: Final Considerations for the Future of the Xingu The Xingu River basin and, particularly, the Upper Xingu constitute “over 20% of the Brazilian Amazon and are the most important barrier to deforestation (Heckenberger et  al., 2008, p.  1217; Nesptad et  al., 2002). Considering this scenario, what are the warnings that the Kisêdje give to our society about the Suiá-Miçu River, and how can their perceptions contribute to environmental governance of the Xingu River’s springs? The main warnings that the Kĩsêdje give to our society about the environmental governance of the Xingu River’s springs are: Ngô ndêt pá khre, the speech of Kĩsêdje women about the Campaign ’Y Ikatu Xingu. The Xingu “of the Indians” has already served the purposes of the state’s national, geopolitical, cattle ranching, and soybean farming over the Amazon. It also serves the different pre-historical societies and currently local economies as the basis for the use of natural resources from bio-­and agrobiodiversity. But, it is therefore a territory of use of common resources and of coexistence between socioculturally diverse ways of life and protected by the Brazilian laws. The Kĩsêdjê voices have already established themselves in permanent dialogue with social agents, as non-governmental organizations and public authorities. The markets that support their actions, however, need feedback on the health and the future of the Suiá-Miçu River and the Xingu River itself. Since 1994, they have been involved in projects with indigenous and non-indigenous local communities, articulated with the support of public, non-governmental and private organizations, as

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well as researchers by universities, local producers, and indigenous people. These social agents are part of direct and indirect actions for the protection and conservation of the Xingu River’s springs, supported by the Xingu Seed Network. For the Kĩsêdjê, the results of these actions can be insufficient or inefficient in protecting river quality or promoting a change in behavior of the khwẽkhátxi. There is a recurring concern about the effects in SMRB from modernization: land use intensification and chemical inputs applied to crops. Their perception is true and we would know about this invisibility of an ongoing process, which can be the progressive harming of the springs. More than half a century of uses consolidated in the region, scientists may be able to help for answer more quickly about the water conditions of the Suiá-Miçu River. The protection of common resources is fundamental for the environmental governance of the Xingu. We invite the readers of this chapter to reflect on the Kĩsêdjê alert to monitor the Xingu River’s springs region and to be understood by all. Acknowledgments  The authors are grateful for the support of many people to their research, including interviewees, farmers; indigenous, academic and non-profit organization researchers, and to the indigenous community of the Wawi Indigenous Land. We thank the Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI) for legal permission (no. 10/AAEP/12, Process no. 17741/11), to the Coordination of Improvement of Higher Level Personnel (CAPES) for the grant awarded (2011– 2015) to carry out our research. We gratefully acknowledge Manaiu Suyá Kĩsêdje and Kawiri Suyá Kĩsêdê for translating Kĩsêdje language into Portuguese; and Priscila Porchat de Assis Murolo and her team at Insight, for translating into English. We especially acknowledge Professor Anthony Seeger (Director and Curator emeritus, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Smithsonian Institution) and Professor Mario De Vivo (Biological Sciences) for their precious suggestions and comments on the manuscript. This manuscript benefited from the constructive criticism of two anonymous reviewers.

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Sanches, R. A., Rossete, A. N., Rezende, A. C. P., Aves, H. Q., & Villas-Boas, A. (2012). Subsídios para a proteção das áreas úmidas da bacia do rio Xingu (Mato Grosso, Brasil). Revista Árvore, 36(3), 489–498. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0100-67622012000300011 Schiesari, L., Waichman, A., Brock, T., Adams, C., & Grillitsch, B. (2013). Pesticide use and biodiversity conservation in the Amazonian agricultural frontier. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 368, 20120378. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2012.0378 Schwantes, N. (2008). Uma cruz em Terra Nova. Brasília: Edição do Autor. Seeger, A. (1980). Os índios e nós: Estudos sobre sociedades tribais brasileiras. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Campus. Seeger, A. (1981). Nature and society in Central Brazil: The Suyá Indians of Mato Grosso. Cambridge: MS Harvard University Press. Tucker, C. M. (2010). Learning governance in forest management: Lessons from recent research. International Journal of the Commons, 4(2), 687–706. https://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.224 Urzedo, D.  I., Vidal, E., Sills, E.  O., Piña-Rodrigues, F.  C. M., & Junqueira, R.  G. P. (2016). Tropical forest seeds in the household economy: Effects of market participation among three sociocultural groups in the Upper Xingu region of the Brazilian Amazon. Environmental Conservation, 43(1), 13–23. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892915000247 Villas Boas, O., & Villas Boas, C. (1994). A marcha para o Oeste. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Globo.

Chapter 5

Synergy Between Innovation Niches and Transdisciplinarity: The Case of Coffee Producer Families and their Organizations (Southeastern Mexico) Obeimar Balente Herrera and Cristina Guerrero Jiménez Abstract  The dominant regime in coffee growing regions has been molded by multilateral entities’ policies together with transnational food corporations and national governing bodies, which in turn are driven by unsustainable production chains fed by unorganized farmers. This regime has managed to maintain low-­ priced commodities, thus leaving in poverty 75% of the rural population in coffee growing regions in Chiapas, Mexico. As a result, innovation “niches” have been formed—such as fair trade initiatives launched by Coordinadora Mexicana de Pequeños Productores de Comercio Justo (CMCJ, Mexican Coordinator of Fair Trade Small-Scale Farmers)—which focus on coffee growing families searching for better prices in coffee and looking to improve their quality of life. However, most often, the academic sector has implemented scientific policies that favor disciplinary research in relation to enterprises within the “regime.” This situation has led to the scarce development of capacities to face complex socio-environmental problems that haunt farmer families within innovation “niches,” where multidisciplinary, reliable, and socially sturdy knowledge is needed. In this regard, the present study aims to identify key elements to build this type of knowledge by means of analyzing two critical case studies, namely, the collaboration between the Research Group on Coffee-Producer Regions of ECOSUR (GIEZCA) and Fair Trade on one side, and the collaboration of GIEZCA with the Institute of Coffee of Chiapas (INCAFECH) on the other. Our results show that in the latter case study, the process of knowledge generation was of the type “mode one” or academic science which tends to be disciplinary. In contrast, results of the former case study reveal that niche integration, multidisciplinary research groups and the “quadruple helix”—in an ongoing social learning process enlivening the territory—are key components to help these farmers cope with coffee crises due to volatile prices and agricultural pests.

O. B. Herrera (*) · C. Guerrero Jiménez Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Mexico e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_5

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Keywords  Agri-food regime · Poverty · Coffee growing regions · Socio-­ environmental innovation

5.1  Introduction Coffee cultivation in Mexico involves more than 500,000 families directly, generates more than 100 million USD annually, offers three million jobs, and its role regarding climate change is more important everyday as nurtured jungle ecosystems (SAGARPA, 2017). The importance of Mexican coffee cultivation has diminished significantly in the past couple of decades due to recurrent attacks of pests and diseases associated to climate change and to a poor handling of coffee plantations, and especially to the limited investing opportunities that coffee growers have due to this commodity’s low prices which the dominant regime has maintained. This governing regime began to take shape in the late 1970s when the Mexican government went through an external debt crisis, consequently turning to other international loans as an attempt to seize it. These credits, as Parra-Vázquez et al. (Chap. 1, this volume) report, were subject to the “conditionality lending” mechanism (de Moerloose, 2014; Vordtriede, 2019, p.  1); that is, multilateral bodies granted loans under the condition that the Mexican government carried out structural adjustments in several productive sectors including coffee cultivation, leading to the vanishing of state-­owned companies such as the Mexican Institute of Coffee (INMECAFE). The disappearance of this entity was justified based on the following: (a) INMECAFE being inefficient and unnecessary, (b) indigenous and rural coffee growers being able to produce, collect, process, and sell in a free manner and with advantages in an open market, and (c) the stock market and large coffee suppliers setting prices, quality, overprices, and future sales. The INMECAFE provided technical assistance to coffee growing families, group work training support, and commercialization of Mexican coffee in the international market. Nevertheless, since the end of the 1980s, “the coffee sector is characterized by greater price volatility, lower overall income for farmers and a concentration of power in the hands of traders” (BASIC, 2018, p.  4). Thus, the current agri-food sector regime was established.

5.2  Theoretical Framework Currently, the dominant regime in coffee grower regions (RAZCA) is driven by the “conditionality lending” policies (Vordtriede, 2019, p. 1) of the multilateral bodies in coordination with transnational food enterprises, followed by national governing entities’ programs as previously identified by Parra-Vázquez et  al. (ibid). The

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RAZCA presents itself across coffee cultivation territories in the shape of structures made up of entities that generate knowledge, investments, values and norms for production, commercialization, and consumption, whose institutional inner-entities and materials form dominant and stable dynamics as to develop economic activity, as well as to organize participation and decision-making in the sector’s governance by means of a recognized institutionalism by the State (Parra-Vázquez et al., ibid; Pigrau Solé, 2015; Smith, Voβ, & Grin, 2010). The governance and set of rules determined by the entities with influence over the RAZCA form the policies that local governments carry out; for example, the governmental regulations, support programs for coffee cultivation and commercialization, industrial infrastructure programs, and available ground knowledge and technology (Geels, 2002; Smith et al., 2010). The regime has direct impact on families, communities, and their organizations present across coffee growing regions, as it defines the means and the value that they can appropriate (Parra-Vázquez et al., ibid). The RAZCA has managed to maintain low prices for coffee as a commodity in New York’s stock market, consequently, in several countries the families’ income has reduced down to 20% in comparison to what they received a decade earlier (BASIC, 2018); by doing so, the families across the coffee growing regions have less and less capability of purchasing basic goods (food, clothing, footwear, etc.). Therefore, the presence and dominance of the RAZCA is associated to a scandalous and permanent social poverty of more than three quarters of the population in the coffee growing regions of Chiapas, Mexico (CONEVAL, 2016; PNUD, 2014). Meanwhile, the academic sector keeps feeding the regime by implementing scientific policies that favor disciplinary research in relation to large corporations that have as their main criteria peer reviewing and the economic viability of technologies and generated knowledge. In this manner, the present director of the National Board of Science Technology and Innovation (CONACYT) of the Mexican federal government (2018–2024) pointed out that during past administrations, most of the public budget was aimed at pursuing collaboration between science (CONACYT) and private enterprises for product innovation (Sánchez, 2019). Rearrangements, disarrangements, and incremental retaliations are generated within the regime due to internal dynamics inside the regime itself, or else due to changes at higher levels (Raven & Verbong, 2007) or through interactions with associated regimes. These sources of dynamism and tensions open windows of opportunities for alternative initiatives to the regime as to compete for attention and influence (Smith et  al., 2010). The alternative initiatives are known as “niches.” Niches are places where actors’ networks experiment and adapt forms of organization and alternative technologies to the regime in order to change or substitute it (Smith, 2007). An example of this dynamism is shown by the “Fair Trade” (FT) initiative, founded as a response to the RAZCA initially supporting the process of organization of the Zapoteco coffee growers which turned into the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Istmo Region (UCIRI), accompanied by Frans Van der Hoff and later by Nico Roozen from the Dutch Solidarity Foundation, who laid down the

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bases to create the Maax Havelaar initiative that sought a more equitable south-­ north relation. FT was inspired by the words of Isaías Martínez, Zapoteco leader: “we are not interested in receiving donations. We are not beggars. If you paid us a fair price for our coffee, we could defend ourselves without any more support” (Roozen & Van der Hoff, 2002). As a result, the FT movement planted its seeds during the decade of the 1980s. In accordance with what Schot (1998) and Spath and Rohracher (2010; cited by Smith et al., 2010) pointed out, external social actors may be important niche indicators; however, it is the contribution of established actors within the regime that may enable the niche’s success in transition and change processes. The wider the circle of actors that adhere to niches, and the major the power they have within the circle itself, the better the opportunity niches will have in order to gain changes in the regime. Other authors call attention to the significance of the forms of communication and the cultural media specifically for adopting and early experimenting of niches (Bos & Grin, 2008; Grin, Felix, Bos, & Spoelstra, 2004; Roep, van der Ploeg, & Wiskerke, 2003). Other than coffee grower organizations, participation in the FT initiative also includes investment companies and consumer organizations, as well as the recent contribution of universities and public research centers through FT’s latest campaign to scale up its influence: “universities for fair trade.” This initiative aims to “create a network of Latin American and Caribbean universities that support fair trade through numerous academic activities of social extension and direct linkage to the small producer fair trade organizations” (CLAC, 2018). It is within this context that the convention between FT and El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) is signed and established. Within this latter collaboration, participants identified the necessity to develop capacities to face complex socio-environmental problems that haunt farmer families within innovation “niches,” where multidisciplinary, reliable, and socially sturdy knowledge is needed. Multi- and transdisciplinarity are trendy concepts in academic and project development spaces; these are central notions of this chapter and thus the need to establish and analyze them. Problems faced by universities and research centers are no longer defined only within research spaces but rather in direct collaboration with society (Parra-Vázquez et  al. Chap. 1, this volume). Consequently, research agendas are shifting from discipline-­linked topics to problems addressed in a multidisciplinary manner and in other fewer cases, through transdisciplinary processes. Today’s common practice is to pass through topics or problems being addressed in a partial and disciplinary manner, which have parallel agendas with no communication between disciplines. According to Lawrence and Despres (2004), this could be referred to as multidiscipline. Currently, transcending these issues involves developing transdisciplinary processes characterized by research agendas defined in a joint manner with society (Parra-Vázquez et al. Chap. 1, this volume). These may address structural problems within systems, turn into projects orientated towards problem-resolution, and generate results and learning experiences that communicate in a transparent and

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innovative manner so they can be appropriated by all agents involved (Lawrence & Despres, 2004). This way, Zscheischler, Rogga, and Lange (2018) emphasize that cooperation and social relevance concepts are central to transdisciplinary processes, but at the same time these are weak when compared to the typical criteria of scientific excellence: high impact publications and many doctorate graduates. Likewise, Said et al. (2019) point out the importance of professional participation with d­ ifferent training backgrounds in transdisciplinary processes, as well as an essential leadership from the problem/opportunity holders allowing for social appropriation of the knowledge generated by the people by means of an assertive communication. Researchers such as Parra-Vázquez and Díaz-Hernández (1985) identified a series of lessons learned from coordinating pioneer multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary projects back in their time. Among the most relevant ones is the configuration of teams of few people who know each other and are used to working together. These core groups may start off larger research groups considering a process of inducement. In relation to fund management, they argue it is difficult, time-consuming, and underestimated work, yet essential for the group’s continuity. Concerning work organization, Parra-Vázquez and Díaz-Hernández (1985) suggest the need to differentiate the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research group’s participants in terms of expertise, work pace, compliance standards, group-work participation (dialogue, tasks, etc.), and interest in the work itself. In the carrying out their research project stage, Parra-Vázquez and Díaz-­ Hernández (1985) mention various challenges such as the fact that group work requires constant discussion at different levels, which in turn is time-consuming. From there, the needs to speed up and plan in detail all meetings in order to generate a clear product for every session. Afterwards, in the research analysis stage, problems may appear due to a deficient background review, a poorly constructed theoretical framework, hypotheses badly laid out, and insufficient or poorly gathered data. However, it is important to define copyright issues before writing papers since decisions a posteriori may be unfairly judged. Lastly, Parra-Vázquez and Díaz-Hernández (1985) note that in order to increase the research group’s resilience it is important to establish and improve the type of organization dynamics which give the research system certain capacity of resilience. For instance, it is essential to maintain the group’s ground parameters—such as the relations with organizations and communities—in spite of changes that may occur during the project period: authorities changing, administrative rigidity, coming and going of the group’s members, etc. In this sense, the same authors recommend taking social learning actions and taking the time to establish the necessary monitoring dynamics after each research phase, where objectives and intended goals are checked against the actual findings as well as the unexpected results. It is important to announce a minimum set of recommendations in order to direct efforts in the coming phases. Finally, at the end of the complete research cycle it is necessary to consciously analyze lessons learned and the way to incorporate new coming cycles.

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This background and previous revision identifies the problematic generated by the consolidation of the agri-food regimes and disciplinary market-oriented research duo, in the face of challenges to create “niches” in collaboration with multi- and transdisciplinary research processes. Therefore, the present study aims to recognize the key elements to build this type of knowledge by means of analyzing two critical case studies, namely the collaboration between the Research Group on Coffee-­ Producer Regions of ECOSUR (GIEZCA) and FT on one side, and the collaboration of GIEZCA with the Institute of Coffee of Chiapas (INCAFECH) on the other.

5.3  Methods In the present work, we analyze two case studies under the approach of a comparative analysis. At the same time, this is a method of control that allows the understanding and interpreting of a proposal’s key factors (Sartori, 1994). By “case studies” we refer to a real-life phenomenon where individuals, organizations, communities, and the present authors participate in; that is, what is being built is not only an abstraction (Yin, 1981), but rather a contextualized research study on a social event relatively unified and delimited, given in a historic and actual experience in terms of the theory or an analytic category in discussion; multi- and transdisciplinarity in this case. Scholz, Lang, Wiek, Walter, and Stauffacher (2006) indicate that it is necessary to evaluate the multi- and transdisciplinary processes within their historical and territorial context since case studies, which precisely focus on their context and history (without neglecting pieces of information that could be processed in a qualitative and quantitative manner) are appropriate for analyzing multi- and transdisciplinary processes. These processes are themselves acts of action-research as they imply a process of collaboration between researchers and the protagonists of the problem or opportunity, for instance, local organizations (peasants and other smallholders). This alliance shapes the action-research project based on the agreement on operating concepts, aims, questions, tools, fieldwork, systematization, and analysis of results (Greenwood, 2000). Provided the methodology above mentioned, the collaboration between GIEZCA and FT is denominated as the transdisciplinary case study, while the cooperation with INCAFECH is denominated as the disciplinary case study (Fig. 5.1). The latter acts as a control and comparison mechanism that, according to Sartori (1994), enables the finding of distinctive elements that explain and interpret key components of a multi- and transdisciplinary proposal associated to a niche.

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Fig. 5.1  Study communities in coffee growing areas of Mexico. (Source: Own elaboration)

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5.4  Results and Discussion In this section, the case studies are presented and afterwards, the conditions that follow multi- and transdisciplinary research processes are described; moreover, this section concludes by connecting the findings with the theoretical framework of regimes and niches.

5.4.1  Processes of Collaboration The Research Group of ECOSUR on Coffee-Producer Regions (GIEZCA, Grupo de Investigación de ECOSUR en Zonas Cafetaleras) was brought together in 2001 with the purpose of joining efforts between researchers, coffee growers and their organizations, and other social actors to study, design, and promote sustainable strategies across coffee growing regions (Barrera, Herrera, & Pohlan, 2016). The main research project developed by GIEZCA from 2014 to 2018 was named “Socio-­ environmental innovation (ISA for its acronym in Spanish) for the reduction of vulnerability in coffee-producer regions.” The main goal of the project was to design, evaluate, and validate ISA of information and social learning in the coffee growing regions of Chiapas. The project’s theoretical framework is based on the concepts of socio-environmental innovation (ISA), resilience, and adaptive governance. ISA is understood by the processes that aim to respond creatively to the interrelated problems of local development and natural resource conservation, and to generate the type of social learning that leads to autonomy amongst its actors (Bello, Naranjo, & Vandame, 2012). In the context of this GIEZCA-ISA partnership, 18 graduate students carried out their research projects, which were initially presented to coffee growers and their organizations in internal workshops. During these workshops, it was identified that the research protocols of three of the students strongly reflected the topics of diversification, renovation, and resilience. Thereafter, there was a general agreement on the creation of a single fieldwork instrument. The construction of this combined instrument started with a draft generated by the students, being then revised by their Supervisory Committees, and later on presented to the wider group of GIEZCA. The latter work allowed going from three questionnaires, which altogether summed up to more than a hundred questions, to a single one containing 35 questions, making fieldwork more effective. A few months after the beginning of this multidisciplinary work with students, FT proposed to GIEZCA to jointly carry out a study on “climate change and productivity amongst small fair trade farmers.” As a result, round table discussions were carried out during initial approaches and exchanges of interests between GIEZCA and FT.  During these moments of dialogue, the project’s participants recognized similarities between current topics and the multidisciplinary work they had previously carried out; therefore, the students’ theoretical-methodological proposals

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Fig. 5.2  Methodology of the GIEZCA-FT transdisciplinary collaborative work. (Source: Own elaboration with input from Saldaña, Herrera, and Tinoco (2017))

were taken as a ground base for the new project, and from there onwards, Supervisory Committee members and FT farmer leaders were able to sum up their interests to it. Overall, this consensual instrument triggered interest and support from the technical and promoter groups of 20 organizations as to carry out fieldwork (Fig. 5.2). The methodological instruments used for the case study were: questionnaires aimed at interviewing coffee growing families and open interviews with key actors (Fig.  5.2). The questionnaires contained the following sections: problems prioritized by family groups and the actions they are implementing to tackle them; ­identified climate change effects by the family groups and the coping strategies and actions they are carrying out; organizational capacities in relation to fair trade, income and diversification, and lastly, opportunities and problems that the family groups recognize for the next decade. In the open interviews, the same issues were addressed but in a more flexible question modality. The information was rapidly processed and presented back to the organizations in workshops, allowing for interest to be maintained amongst the coffee grower organizations; it also served to give real-time feedback to students; and lastly, it was used as an input to write down a socially sturdy report with solid data, as Gibbons et al. (1997) pointed out some time ago as a critical aspect for future research on coffee production. In this way, the shared results and exchange of information risen up during the workshops led to informed decision-making about personal and organizational risks, what Dewey (1941) refers to as justified reliability (Fig. 5.2). In order to socialize findings with the family groups and their organizations, four regional workshops took place where every organization received the systematized

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information from their interviews, which was soon after analyzed from a regional perspective. A general closing workshop took place where results were presented and future lines of actions were collectively constructed. These moments of analysis and discussion were enlivening to the wider territory by means of exchange of ideas and joint initiatives amongst the organizations emerging from generated collective learning. The way in which social actors from the coffee productive sector, organized civil society, and academic sector participated in this multi- and transdisciplinary study, shaped what Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (1995, 1998, 2000) call “triple helix” (TH, university–industry–government relations) and what Herrera, Guerrero, and Rubio (2019) characterized and named as “quadruple helix” (CH) since their study holds characteristics not present in TH. Amongst the new attributes of the quadruple helix study are: its social purpose; a consideration of the economy of the participant social enterprises as well as the role of civil society in fomenting that coffee growers themselves need to work in association (in a collaborative way), representing the coffee productive sector itself, and fostering of markets. The research project cycle is currently closing up with the publication of its findings; this chapter being proof of it. Other disseminated results include the “Decalogue of coffee preparation,” a short video about coffee rust, and a published article in a national newspaper. All these elements meet the necessity of innovative communication since the production of dissemination materials are a way of communication with unspecialized participants. Alongside the CMCJ leadership, a search for funding is being done in order to support the coffee growing families and organizations as for them to carry on with the recommendations resulting from the project. Meanwhile, GIEZCA manages its own financing to carry on with its research initiatives regarding FT family groups and organizations. The priorities recognized in the present study were gathered into a collaborative agenda between GIEZCA and FT, which aims at contributing for knowledge and practices in order for the organized small-scale coffee growers in fair trade to have a major capacity of response in the face of climate change. The components taken into consideration are as follows: organizational strengthening as a strategic main element; coffee plantation renewal as to maintain young and strong plantations; coffee plantation management considering a holistic management of pests; water and soil management as a long-term strategy; diversification of production considering goods for both self-consumption and the market; social inclusion considering women, youth, and children; food security, and appropriation of the production chain value. Thus, a collaborative multi- and transdisciplinary demand was established between the academic sector and a niche of innovation. The aforementioned components account for a process of social learning that took place during the whole process where all actors involved—and not only scientists—had access to the generated knowledge and were able to use it and experiment with it, in such a way that this collective learning amplifies its base of knowledge put to practice to face forthcoming problems. In the second case study, concurrently with the first one, GIEZCA worked together with the Coffee Institute of Chiapas (INCAFECH), a government institu-

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tion commissioned to lead actions of research, innovation, transmission, and implementation of coffee-culture development programs in the state of Chiapas. The INCAFECH programs include: coffee plantation renewal, crop enhancing, technical training and assistance, production infrastructure, marketing, and financial and commercial consulting (POELSC, 2014). INCAFECH invited GIEZCA to co-­ develop the project “Design, construction, equipping, and put into operation a regional center of innovation and technology transmission for coffee-culture in Chiapas”; the invitation came about through an INCAFECH adviser, a retired researcher from a well-known research center who had been previously acquainted with the GIEZCA members and their line of work. Subsequently, personnel from GIEZCA and INCAFECH made an agreement on the planning and development of the proposal. As to counterbalance GIEZCA’s participation, researchers from the Universidad Autónoma de Chapingo (UACh) contributed with their specialty fields: coffee varieties and quality. GIEZCA and UACh worked together in two important moments convened by INCAFECH as to exchange information and evaluate progress in the project. Furthermore, both institutions constantly shared information and initiatives since both work with common research networks on coffee cultivation national territories. GIEZCA then took the initiative to organize two forums addressing problems and opportunities in coffee-culture, where there was a significant participation from social organization representatives, coffee grower cooperatives, and people from the academic and governmental sectors. The project results are as follows. A regional plan of innovation and coffee technology transmission in Chiapas; a plan of research, technological development and transmission of technology from the State Center of Innovation and Technology Transmission towards the Coffee-culture Development of Chiapas (CITYCAFE); a strategy of development and technology transmission targeted to social actors along the coffee production chain; a market intelligence portfolio; two handbooks about coffee production in Chiapas; five informative leaflets about pest control, disease control, sustainable production practices, organoleptic quality, and use of varieties resistant to coffee rust; a state plan of short and medium-term training, and the completion of ten integral training workshops for 300 coffee growers and technical team members; and five scientific papers related to the coffee chain of production. In this case study, it is easy to identify that GIEZCA contributed to the RAZCA ground knowledge and technology considered—by the RAZCA itself or not—in the policy design and implementation, depending on the type of problems laid out by the population that this sectorial regime responds to. A part of GIEZCA members contributed, according to their multidisciplinary abilities, with articles, handbooks, and leaflets, meanwhile, other specialized members focused on developing the plans. The products compromised by GIEZCA were handed in on time and in due form, according to the submission protocol, to the person responsible for the project of INCAFECH, whom in turn merged the reports for submission to the financing source of the state of Chiapas government and CONACYT. Complementary to the agreed products and results, GIEZCA and INCAFECH co-hosted two forums on coffee-culture where participants included INCAFECH government officials,

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coffee grower organizations, fair trade representatives, and people from the academia. Similarly, INCAFECH officials and technicians attended workshops on the agro-­ecological handling of coffee plantations. These moments of discussion and analysis during workshops and forums turned into moments of convergence and enlivenment of coffee grower territories since a variety of participants were present such as coffee growing people, organization technical groups, government operators, scholars, and civil association executives. Although in this second case study, actions were determined and aimed at a major participation from and interaction with non-scientific actors in the process of knowledge generation, it continued to be what Gibbons et al. (1997) calls “mode one” or academic science. This type of research is disciplinary (Jiménez-Buedo & Ramos, 2009) and even though the demand was posed by INCAFECH, the definition of the research project was posed and fully developed by the academic group, governed by scientific norms including quality control through peer reviewing as well as a unidirectional transmission of knowledge and technology (Jiménez-Buedo & Ramos, 2009).

5.4.2  A  Joint View to Search for Conditions of Processes of Multidisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research Various authors have proposed desirable situations in terms of multi- and transdisciplinary research processes; for instance, Said et al. (2019) claim the following as important: active participation from farmer families as well as professionals of different fields of knowledge, social appropriation of generated knowledge, and assertive communication. However, few efforts are made for identifying and analyzing the key elements and conditions needed to develop processes of multi- and transdisciplinary research. The analysis of these two case studies has enabled the identification of the following key components in order to face the problems before mentioned: 5.4.2.1  Generation and Strengthening of Niches The contributions made by the multi- and transdisciplinary case strengthened the fair trade niche, particularly in terms of creating ground knowledge suited to the problems raised within the niche. An example of this is the research for generating socio-environmental innovations that contribute to solving complex problems of local development and natural resource conservation. Another example is the strengthening and development of local capacities through social learning, together with the constant search of means to finance these actions. It is still too brief time to comprehend the extent to which this niche is strengthening, contributing to the present multi- and transdisciplinary study, will be significant in propelling the changes that the fair trade niche is looking for in order to substitute the RAZCA.  In the

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d­ isciplinary case, the ground knowledge and technology that GIEZCA provided for the regime is still to be evaluated by INCAFECH, as to determine which part of this contribution will be incorporated into INCAFECH’s public policies. 5.4.2.2  I ntegration and Strengthening of Multidisciplinary Research Groups which Work with Social Organizations The research groups composed of natural and social science researchers have major capacity of collaboration with social organizations belonging to a niche which, according to Said et  al. (2019) and Lawrence and Despres (2004), face complex problems without a clear divide between the social, environmental, and governance fields. This is the case for the work developed by GIEZCA during the last 15 years in coffee growers territories. The collaboration between GIEZCA and the coffee growing families and their organizations in the multi- and transdisciplinary case has dealt with complex problems which has led to break traditional disciplinary borders, thus making easy and equally important for both social and natural scientists to provide their contribution. On the other side, in the disciplinary case, the INCAFECH was the one which made the sectorial coffee collaborative proposal to GIEZCA. GIEZCA’s sustainability for more than 15 years has been possible due to its core group endorsing initiatives in terms of its relation with different actors and means of financing, as well as encouraging the incorporation of new members with capacity of a valuable contribution, just as Parra-Vázquez and Díaz-Hernández (1985) suggest. 5.4.2.3  Quadruple Helix Integration In a context of high rates of both poverty and biodiversity that characterize the coffee growing regions of Mexico, civil society and religious organizations play an important role in promoting association amongst farmers, and in the marketing itself, just as Vázquez (2005) and Herrera et al. (2019) argue. Meanwhile, the government plays a significant role without being the main actor. In turn, the academia falls into the “weak link” role since it upholds the joint work and communication between government and coffee grower organizations which have been formed as a response to the government. In this way, the quadruple helix is founded, that is, a scheme of collaboration with greater capacities to counter the socio-environmental issues characteristic to the biodiverse and poor regions in the south of Mexico (Herrera et al., 2019). The quadruple helix was present in the multi- and transdisciplinary case study as the four following actors were present: organized civil society, coffee productive sector, governmental sector (in some of the activities), and the academia. In these types of associations, just as Said et al. (2019) argue, the problems addressed intersect among the social, the environmental, and the governance fields. This last char-

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acteristic present in current complex problems is precisely what justifies social actors working through a quadruple helix perspective. In contrast, in the disciplinary case study, even when some interactions between different actors were achieved, it was not able to integrate processes of collaboration in terms of the quadruple helix, since it could not generate benefits which could contribute to solve problems of society such as complementarity of capacities and resources, higher social and economic impacts of the scientific and technological research study, closer proximity to the population, and less environmental damage. 5.4.2.4  Development of Socio-environmental Innovations The development of socio-environmental innovations is understood as a process that aims at generating solution pathways that harmonize local development with the conservation of natural resources, and simultaneously generate social learning processes that lead to reach social actors’ autonomy (Bello et al., 2012). In the face of coffee grower organizations coping with climate change effects, the socio-environmental innovations were their most appropriate responses as part of the collaborative project with FT. While in the disciplinary case, although the socio-environmental innovations are part of the public policy proposal incorporated to the different plans suggested, these will be taken into consideration inasmuch as the population working with the government entity (INCAFECH) demands them. 5.4.2.5  Development of Social Learning (SL) Capacities Currently in coffee growing regions, work is being done in order to find new coffee varieties resistant to coffee rust as to renew old plantations. However, just when the latter issue is being looked after, a new one arises: the loss of shade in these sites due to the sowing of new coffee varieties. Thus, problems become socially constructed and are not totally solved; they are merely transformed and/or substituted by other problems (Friedmann, 2001). SL starts and ends with an intentioned action where knowledge is generated emanating from the change put into practice (Cazorla, De los Ríos, & Salvo, 2013). In this manner, the different types of knowledge are jointly validated between social organizations’ actors belonging to the same niche and external actors. It is not simply about generating new coffee varieties or new management proposals in the face of climate change in research centers, but rather stimulating experimentation by the coffee growing families themselves, for them to weigh up these alternatives in their own plots of land. In this sense, the niche organizations, in collaboration with external actors, generate appropriate solution pathways to the constant and changing problems of the coffee grower regions inasmuch as there is social learning along the way, just as Gallardo, Herrera, Parra-Vázquez, and Guizar-Vázquez (2016), Said et al. (2019), and Parra-Vázquez and Díaz-Hernández (1985) suggest. SL involves firstly new human relations between external and local actors (Cazorla et al., 2013;

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Ponce-Palma Chap. 14, this volume), and thus the development of new ways of systematizing and sharing information according the actors being addressed, and naturally new ways of learning among all the participants involved in the niche and academia. This form of interaction can occur in multi- and transdisciplinary studies since it is part of the ground work in this type of research—just as Parra-Vázquez and Díaz-Hernández (1985) suggested four decades ago—as opposed to d­ isciplinary studies that function according to a hierarchical, vertical, and rigid scheme (Gibbons et al., 1997; Jiménez-Buedo & Ramos, 2009). 5.4.2.6  Innovation in Communication The ways and moments of communication in multi- and transdisciplinary research require the inclusion of novelties by fostering communication among people who have expectations, ground knowledge, means of exchange, and different cultures (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 1995, 1998, 2000). While in disciplinary research, only the standard way of doing scholarly activities, in terms of schedules and communication channels, is used. Communication with coffee growers needs to be done immediately after data systematization is completed as to proceed to the joint analysis of them. Also, it is worth considering the need of participation from new professionals in order to create dissemination materials that convey the results to the people, for instance, graphic designers and multimedia producers, amongst others. On the other side, it is worth mentioning that Zscheischler et al. (2018) note that multi- and transdisciplinary projects are relatively weak compared to the typical scientific way of communicating within academia, that is, high impact publications as the main evaluation criteria of scientific projects. 5.4.2.7  Joint Management and Enlivening of the Territory Collaboration in joint management between coffee grower organizations and scholars corresponds to the growing requests of having a social impact of scientific work, which at the same time coincides with a higher demand of traceability towards coffee growers, added to the rapid changes occurring in the environment and markets. Nonetheless, following an important principle about processes of collaboration between scholars and farmer family groups, it is not only about obtaining, distributing, and spending financing, but rather identifying and mobilizing actors based on the available resources and capacities characteristic of the territories, in order to broaden these capacities and relations of the social organizations within the territory. In a wider sense, Caspar, Farrel, and Thirion (1997) referred to this as territory enlivenment. The participant actors in the analysis of these two case studies contributed in providing meetings and moments of discussion and reflection as to enliven the territory; however, the role of the weak link is played by the academia.

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5.5  Conclusions The enactment of the agri-food regime in coffee grower regions (RAZCA) has entailed farmer family groups’ impoverishment due to the increasing concentration of value in the last couple of links of the productive chain of coffee, which are dominated by a few enterprises at the expense of weakening the primary productive phases held by the family groups. In southeastern Mexico, and in Chiapas particularly, these coffee growing families have responded before this regime, through the formation of various niches, where fair trade is one of the most significant ones. Multi- and transdisciplinary research to address complex problems as well as the array of people participating within the fair trade’s niche provide useful ground knowledge and technology, which at the same time strengthen the niche itself. This does not occur in disciplinary research, since it is the regime’s agents that decide what part of the produced knowledge is incorporated in the coffee productive process. Multi- and transdisciplinary research enables the generation of reliable knowledge from a scientific and socially sturdy perspective; aspects which are crucial to the future of our research. The latter does not occur in disciplinary research since it is only evaluated through scientific criteria. Informed decision-making that people or social organizations carry out, based on the knowledge generated by multi- and transdisciplinary studies, create a reliability which is justified in terms of all what is invested in it. This type of research strengthens quadruple helix processes facing complex problems in the junction of the social, environmental, and governance fields, hence providing solutions to socio-­ environmental issues characteristic to the biodiverse and poor regions of the south of Mexico; this will hardly be true in disciplinary studies. Multi- and transdisciplinary research is necessary in order to develop socio-environmental innovations that harmonize local development with the conservation of natural resources. Yet, achieving these innovations by means of social learning to new solution pathways open up in accordance with constant and changing problems in coffee grower regions. This will barely happen in disciplinary work set within hierarchical, vertical, and rigid schemes. However, novelty introduction in processes of communication is required as to ensure proper understanding among the actors participating in multi- and transdisciplinary research since they belong to different sectors with different expectations, ground knowledge, means of exchange and culture. Without this type of communication, such processes may not develop. Locating niches favors the collaboration with academia in order to overcome future challenges, one of them being climate change. In turn, this complex problem becomes a challenge to scholars who traditionally work in a disciplinary manner. In Mexico, increasingly better conditions are given to carry out multi- and transdisciplinary research. On one side, technology transmission is no longer reduced to the academia-enterprise relation, as it now involves social impact studies where farmers’ organizations with more and more complex problems are accommodated, and whose response cannot be disciplinary. On the other side, the perspective of socially distributed knowledge is increasingly gaining strength in decision-making

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at national and international levels. Thus, promoting the previously mentioned key components for developing an agenda of collaboration between academia and farmers’ organizations with a transdisciplinary perspective is transcendental. The transdisciplinary research carried out during our case study became more efficient and effective compared to how it would be if it were to be done in a disciplinary manner. This breaks with the common thought idea that individual and disciplinary work is more effective. Currently, ECOSUR is jointly developing project funding and management with CMCJ and Universidades Latinoamericanas por el Comercio Justo (CLAC) through different entities, so that opportunities open for new cycles of niche and transdisciplinary synergy. The prospect of multi- and transdisciplinary collaboration as well as the benefits before mentioned, does not exclude the request for disciplinary co-work that INCAFECH has recently stated once again. In this way, the academia moves in a continuum working space that goes from disciplinary to transdisciplinary levels. Acknowledgments  This study was funded by the project titled “Multidisciplinario y Transversal: Innovación socioambiental en Zonas Cafetaleras para la Reducción de la Vulnerabilidad” (MT # 1106311262) from El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Mexico. This chapter benefited from the constructive criticism of two anonymous reviewers.

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Part III

When Culture and Traditions Matter

Chapter 6

The Milpero of the Macehual Mayan Normative System vis à vis with Global Laws and Policies of Agricultural Fire Ma. Eugenia García Contreras, Axayácatl Segundo Cabello, and Abraxas Segundo García Abstract  Our study addresses the Macehual Mayan Normative System and the Quintana Roo’s Forest Fire Prevention Law (LQPIFQ), which are two legal systems that regulate both the right of using fire in slash, burning, and shifting cultivation (Milpa), and the way this fire is being used within Milpa plots at the rainforest of the Mayan Zone in the center of Quintana Roo, Mexico. Our results show that the LQPIFQ law addresses the problem of global warming, which—in the case of a preventive measure of “using fire” in forests, it is aligned to a global policy that from an international level controls the agricultural burnings and any use of fire in forests in general. Nevertheless, at the time of aligning the Mexican regulations to the international policy, the Macehual Maya Normative System was not taken into consideration. From a legal perspective, both the ancestral knowledge of the Macehual “milpero” (Macehual peasant) and the legal norm of the Mayan Milpa were omitted. The Macehual milpero—who the literature acknowledges that maintains young and productive jungles, was not recognized as a natural component of the Mayan Milpa which has been part of the natural rainforest in the Mayan area during the past three millennia. Due to the restrictive law imposed on the Macehual milpero by the LQPIFQ, he lives a constant legal persuasion against Milpa’s burning that reduces his tranquility while pursuing slash-and-burn shifting cultivation. From a legal analysis, we found that if the milpero comply with the Mexican regulations regarding agricultural burnings, his social organization and economy of self-­ consumption would be disrupted; his life would be irreparably damaged; his jungles

M. E. García Contreras (*) División de Ciencias Sociales y Económico Administrativas, Departamento de Ciencias Jurídicas, Universidad de Quintana Roo, Chetumal, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] A. Segundo Cabello Área de investigación, Centro Regional de Educación Normal Javier Rojo Gómez, Bacalar, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] A. Segundo García Interdisciplinary Maya and Nature Studies Group (EIMyN), Chetumal, Mexico © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_6

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would age, his production would fall and the new young milperos would look for another way of life detached from the context to which they belong. As the two legal systems (the Mayan and the Mexican laws) are recognized by the Mexican ­constitution, our study points out that Mexican laws and any policy regulating traditional agricultural burnings should match the Mayan normative law—in a way as to avoid the negative consequences that current regulations have on the Macehual Mayan people. Keywords  Global warming policy · Milpa · Mayan normative system · Milpero · Restrictive law

6.1  Introduction Based on a study which addressed the situation of traditional agricultural work of the Macehual Maya “milpero” (as it is locally referred to the Mayan peasant who pursues the slash-and-burn cultivation called Milpa), we assessed the Quintana Roo’s Forest Fire Prevention Law (LQPIFQ). From a legal perspective, the latter is regarded as a law of restrictive character and of vulgar origin. The hypothesis of our study is that this law is an instrument of power to maintain control, through mechanisms that punish the milpero and limit him in using the rainforests. Given this condition of the law, we found that any legal protection is contradictory both to the organization of the Mayan Milpa and the natural resource of the rainforest. The objective of our study is to describe how the power of the Quintana Roo’s restrictive law (LQPIFQ) wraps itself with a systematic and formal discourse to present the idea that using fire in traditional Macehual Mayan agriculture damages the environment. The latter idea, which is used throughout the different levels of government, attempts to cover up the fact that fire is used by the Macehual milperos of the Mayan Zone at the center of Quintana Roo, Mexico, as a tool, not only for agriculture, but also for the management of the Mayan rainforest. Focusing on a perspective of legal sciences, we used a mixed methods approach— including literature review and social surveys with interviews and qualitative analysis to assess the mismatch between two legal systems recognized by the Mexican constitution, the Mayan Milpa as a traditional legal institution (within the Macehual Mayan Normative System) and the Quintana Roo’s Forest Fire Prevention Law. Our results contribute in providing valid legal arguments to indigenous Macehual Mayan people to present them into courts, so that the Mayan Milpa norm—which supports the principle of using fire as a tool in slash-and-burning cultivation, be recognized as a traditional legal institution within the Mayan Normative System. Our study results provide unequivocal evidence of how deterrence puts the Mayan Milpa in a situation of extermination by the government and deficient Mexican laws which align to the regime of climate change which addresses global warming (see Chale-­ Silveira et al. Chap. 8, this volume).

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6.2  T  he Macehual Maya Milpero: Space, Time, and Social Organization With respect to time and space, the Macehual Mayan milpero from the common holding (ejido) “Xhazil Sur y Anexos” organizes his rainfed traditional agricultural activity in “three communities: Xhazil Sur, Uh May and Chancah Veracruz that comprise the ejido Xhazil Sur y Anexos, located in the central part of Quintana Roo” (Bello & Estrada, 2011, p. 31) (Fig. 6.1). In this territory known as the Mayan Zone, the milperos and their families (called domestic groups) identify themselves as “descendants of the nineteenth-century rebel Maya” (Reed, 1964/2002, p.  33) and call themselves “Macehual Maya,” which means “common people” (Reed, 1964/2002, p. 16). When these people cultivate their land, they use fire as a cultivation tool and apply their Mayan ancestral technique called “roza, tumba y quema” (slash-and-burn shifting cultivation). In the words of these people, “the Macehual Maya [people] apply their knowledge to keep the forest young and in production” (M. Poot Cruz, personal communication, August 25, 2018). With respect to its social organization, there is scientific evidence that the Mayan Milpa is in itself a Macehual Mayan institution (Segundo et al. Chap. 3, this volume) but also a process of social, political, and economic construction that

Fig. 6.1  Study area. The ejido Xhazil Sur y Anexos, Quintana Roo. (Source: elaborated by the authors)

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“­ combined with the tropical rainforest form a single territorial process” (Bello & Estrada, 2011, p. 15). This process involves several activities, one of which is traditional agriculture for self-consumption. Mayan Macehual people tend to organize themselves into groups of men, and all “tend to sow for each spouse with his wife” (De Landa, n.d., p.  46). In the center of Quintana Roo, the domestic group is a Mesoamerican traditional form of the Macehual Mayan people’s organization (Estrada, 2011). The main characteristic of a domestic group1 lies in the “patrilineal principle which is the basis for the grouping of related male individuals” (Bello & Estrada, 2011, p. 35). Mr. Poot Cruz mentions (personal communication, August 25, 2018) that the milpero in any given year performs several ceremonies with a religious character which are useful to give thanks and offering to the gods; they have a legal character to give certainty to the agreements made by men within the domestic group and in relation to other groups. Related to Milpa practices, it also uses forms of social treatment to protocol its acts, for example; “They all do together for their part and rate for everyone else and won’t leave until everyone’s part is done” (De Landa n.d., p. 46). He also states that each farming plot has a measure of 400 feet which they call Hum uinic, measured with a 20-foot rod, 20 in width and 20 in length (De Landa n.d., p. 46). Poot Cruz says that they make different Hum uinic, some of them are worked on to get meat; others to obtain beans, squash, and corn and the last one is destined for agricultural recreation activities (personal communication, August 25, 2015).

6.3  T  he Macehual Mayan Agricultural Legal System as a Component of the Macehual Mayan Normative System We found that the Hum uinic is also a Macehual Mayan legal norm with a principle that literally states: “the Milpa walks” (la milpa camina). This Mayan customary rule means that the traditional agricultural work of milperos start in a Hum uinic, i.e., in a plot that has 20 years of fallow, which the milpero then brushes, slashes, and burns, and during consecutive 2 years he will stay and work the same Hum uinic; and then again will let it fallow for another 20 years and return. If a milpero had started his domestic agricultural work at age 10, then a Hum uinic will be abandoned by him at age 12 and he will then begin his first lap of the “walking milpa,” to return to the same place when he is 32; then he will return to the same site at age 54 and after that, will return at age 76. However, most likely, the fourth lap of working a Hum uinic will not be completed due to the advanced milpero’s age of 98. The form of a Hum uinic is shown in Fig. 6.2: the green box located at the center of Fig. 6.2 represents a single Hum uinic whereas the arrows represent the direction 1  “Social unit based on a model of primary kinship and common residence” Robichaux (cited by Bello & Estrada, 2011, p. 29).

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Fig. 6.2 The Hum uinic and the domestic laps (arrows) of the milpero. (Source: elaborated by the authors)

of its “walking”; in other words, the arrows represent an “unwritten rule denoted rumbo” (Estrada, Bello, & Velazco, 2011, p. 99) which serves as a guideline to a specific domestic group signaling the area where men can pursue their milpa. Moreover, each square from Fig. 6.2 represents a single Hum uinic and the number in each square represents the age of a milpero who—we have assumed—had started his domestic working path at age 10. In pursuing his traditional agricultural work, the Macehual Maya milpero imitates nature; time passes by equally for his cultivation system as it does for him; he “travels” the domestic working path that once traveled his father, grandfather, and his kin. The milpero and his ancestors are the only ones who know where their domestic path crosses in the tropical rainforest; that is to say, they know where does their “Milpa walk.” As Fig. 6.2 shows, only three times throughout his life will a milpero be able to travel the path; then his son, grandchildren, and other descendants. According to Estrada et al. (2011, p. 75) in this case, “the space is inherited.” To all, the milpero, fauna and flora, the time passes by equally; hence, Mayan people refer to a sense of building a cultivation system and a form of socio-political organization legally called: “Milpa—domestic group—that walks—a domestic path.”

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6.4  The Milpero Facing the Mexican Legal Regime The Macehual Maya milpero is the axis of this study’s analysis; he is the main interest of our research given the way things unfold, day by day, under the dominance of restrictive and vulgar laws published by the Mexican legal regime in the federal penal code (Código Penal Federal), (DOF, November 8, 2019b). In particular, Article 418 of this code states that it is a federal offense if anyone slashes down or destroys the natural vegetation which could be punishable by 6 months to 9 years of prison and a fee equivalent to 100–300 units of measure. Likewise, the General Law for the Environmental Equilibrium and Protection (Ley General del Equilibrio Ecológico y la Protección al Ambiente, LGEEPA by its Spanish acronym), in its Article 101, fraction II, adds to the previous law that slash-and-burn shifting cultivation should be substituted by other agricultural techniques which don’t damage the environment (DOF, December 13, 1996); and the Quintana Roo’s Forest Fire Prevention Law (Ley de quemas y prevención de incendios forestales para el Estado de Quintana Roo, or LQPIFQ by its Spanish acronym) regulates the use and form of using fire and agricultural burning along with these previous laws and the international treaty of global warming (POEQR, April 30, 2012). In carrying out a legal analysis of the aforementioned milpero’s condition, we wanted to obtain founded legal arguments which demonstrate how the restrictive and the so-called vulgar laws from a preponderant legal regime—the Mexican side—could destroy a less dominant legal regime like the Macehual Mayan one. The former could inadvertently and subtlety banish the latter through the dominance of the active subject, the milpero from de Macehual Mayan Milpa. The medium for it to happen is through daily deterrent persuasion until the milpero stops thinking or even altogether halts cultivating maize under its traditional forms as well as participating in their social organization of Mayan Milpa. We contend that the milpero will withstand the legal Mexican system’s front until his resistance2 breaks, when he decides to no longer live under the threat of the deprivation of its liberty; when he no longer wants to be singled out as a delinquent, and when its Mayan legal system no longer has inherent power over the tropical rainforest. Until then, Mexican authorities or private parties will be able to control the southern Mexican’s rainforest ecosystem through a hegemonic legal system. This study presents legal arguments that contribute to defend the Macehual Mayan’s traditional agriculture under the slash-and-burn cultivation technique which is practiced through the social organization of the Mayan Milpa. In fact, this social organization is the legal institution that governs the right to use fire in agricultural activities carried out by the Maya milpero, who lives in communities of the Mayan Zone at the center of Quintana Roo, Mexico. Thus, with the Macehual

2  The resistance lies in “a liturgical form that is a set of possible procedures, verbal or not, through which what is presented as true is brought to light” (Foucault, 2009/2017, p.  19): solemnities, protocols, procedures acts “traditional ways and conceptions of interacting with nature” (Pare & Sánchez as quoted in Bello & Estrada, 2011, p. 26).

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Mayan milperos’ case as an example, the elements of identifying the effects that cause the existence of a restrictive and vulgar law are obtained. In the following paragraphs, we describe how laws are used as an instrument where others’ opinions, visions, and discourse circulate in our society. Our study can be regarded as an example on how a law can be used as a means to exercise power by anyone interested on abrogating and consuming the weaker regimes—as is the case of Xhazil Sur y Anexos, located in the Mayan Zone at the center of Quintana Roo, Mexico.

6.5  The Milpero Facing the Executive and Legislative Power In order to continue with our legal analysis, we ask what were the underlying intentions the Mexican legislator had at the moment he redacted the text of both the LQPIFQ and LGEEPA laws? As a hypothesis, let’s assume the legislator’s intentions started with making the milpero “invisible” by assigning some legal characteristics:—farmer/peasant; spaces/farming parcels, things; fire as a dangerous factor; and social forms: common holding or “ejido”—which by the way it doesn’t correspond with the reality of the milpero as is Hum uinic; fire as a tool of cultivation, and Mayan Milpa. Now, in favor of the legislator, let’s say his acts are due to a refusal of listening how reality is since he lacks the understanding and comprehension of the reality related to the Mayan milpero. Facing this possible scenario, we could say that in this case the milpero is not facing a legislator but rather a dictator which, like any other dictator, puts his/her reason in the text of a law. If this was true, the milpero is left with no other option then to adapt to the whimsical domain of his/her dictator. Another argument in favor of the legislator is: if his actions were supported by what Kelsen (2009) states about concerning the law—LQPIFQ and LGEEPA—that it becomes valid since a law validates itself thus, it does not require the milpero’s behavior in order to exist. Faced with this argument, the commitment of the Mexican authorities to protect the rainforest, culture, and the reduction of global warming is in jeopardy. The question that remains is how to comply with global regulations if a law is only valid in the legal field, but not in the real plane of agriculture, culture, and natural resources? Thus, to accept the argument of a legal validity of a law implies accepting that in Mexico the authorities do not comply with the commitments of international agreements. If the criteria of legal validity were to be used to draft the restrictive law without taking into account: scientific and Macehual Mayan knowledge, the construction of life in communities and native towns, and nature’s law as a guide to their legal intuition, then, it is justifiable that the milperos see the legislator as someone with whom they must be careful and fearful. In this sense, the legislator instills fear to the milpero. It could be argued that the legislator does not instill fear to the milpero, since they are not in a visible face to face confrontation. It can also be argued in favor of the legislator that, since the creation of the LQPIFQ in 1996, there has not been a

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milpero serving a sentence for cultivating through slash-and-burn technique; and it can be added that even the Assistant Secretary for Environmental Protection and Technical Planning from the Department of Ecology and Environment (Secretaría de Ecología y Medio Ambiente—SEMA), “knew how to explain what type of sanctions are applied for uncontrolled fire” (Castañeda, 2017). Even though the legislator is not visible, the authority on environment is clueless on the types of sanctions that would apply to the milpero, and there is a non-existent penalty sentence yet; however, it does not exempt the milpero from feeling watched and menaced with being deprived of its freedom, identified as a criminal, and threatened with ceasing his agricultural activities. But if we really want to explain the milpero’s fear, then we must analyze the law outside its legal field and see it as a medium in which a field has been created, that is, a space of visibility and total transparency, where one sole opinion reigns and exists, that is: using fire and the fire itself is the equivalent to damaging the environment and contributes to global warming; the slash-and-burn cultivation should be replaced for something that does not damage the ecosystems. Taking into consideration the milpero’s opinion, even if the aforementioned opinion is real, it does not exist in his reality or field where using fire in Hum uinic is regarded as a cultivation tool, which he knows through slash-and-burn cultivation regenerates the rainforest. However, the legislator’s tactic is to put the former opinion into the Mexican law, use it as a message, in a very subtle way gradually achieving the milpero to desist using fire as a tool; eventually he will give up living within his form of social organization of the Mayan Milpa. This will be achieved to the extent that the inhabitants of the common holding Xhazil Sur y Anexos feel immersed in that legal field of visibility and transparency that has been created. The opinion, vision, and discourse from the external others, are “sown” in the Macehual Maya communities through messages in the form of laws, reaching the point of preventing the organization of the Mayan Milpa; driving the milpero to the extreme of stopping activities he knows he cannot stop doing, and accepting that the traditional agriculture he practices is something harmful although it might be contrary to his beliefs and worldviews. Through time, it can be observed that the Mexican authority has shifted from imprisoning the milpero to more importantly cease all inherence from the southeast tropical rainforest of the country and eventually release the possession of it. Alluding to Foucault (1979) where he states that people, in this case the milpero, must be driven to the point where they feel submerged, immersed, in a field openly visible to others but absolutely invisible to themselves, a field in which the opinion from others; the perception of others; the discourse of others—the legislative-executive power—prevents them from doing wrong or doing what is harmful. To that extent, as Foucault mentions, people, in our case the milpero, will stop using the slash-and-­ burn technique and their social organization the Mayan Milpa will become a harmful organization, even if the knowledge and experience from the Macehual Mayan indicate otherwise.

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6.6  The Milpero Under the Severity of the Law From a legal sciences perspective, any law that is restrictive in nature must contain the principle of the severity rule, that is, “the penalty must intimidate the one who is tempted to commit a crime” (Foucault, 1979, p. 47). In this chapter, the law—represented by LQPIFQ and LGEEPA—is considered as a restrictive law, since at the time of drafting it, the legislator only took into account the effect that the sanction— an accessory element of the law—will cause in its recipient, the milpero. We argue that the current punishment of the law—6 months to 9 years in prison— for using “damaging fire” in agricultural activities is not dictated in proportion to the need for the conservation of the rainforest, but in proportion to the resilience of the milpero, as to how much a milpero can resist and continue doing traditional agriculture, after receiving the threat of the deprivation of his freedom and hefty fee. How much can the Mayan Milpa resist if the milpero knows he can be reprimanded; how long can he resist without practicing his traditional cultivation technique after it has been labeled as a crime; slash-and-burn shifting cultivation becomes a harmful action for the others, and the destruction of natural vegetation. The severity rule of the restrictive law may increase the effect of fear if it imposes the obligation to perform acts impossible to comply with, like replacing the slash-­ and-­burn cultivation technique. The legislator not only ignores the knowledge and experience of the milpero, but does not even allow the natural law (ius naturale) to guide his legal intuition. The laws he dictates contain obligations impossible to fulfill by the milpero as well as statements beyond scientific reasoning like: fire is a factor of damage, a lie that must be accepted and rejects any Mayan truth that bounds fire as a cultivation tool. Under this scenario, the milpero has the obligation to substitute the slash-and-burn cultivation for another technique which does not exist; therefore, it is simply an obligation impossible to carry out. A law that orders what is not subject to compliance, it halts the use of slash-and-burn cultivation leaving no possibility of a dignified life; it is restrictive and severe rendering it only useful as a means to generate fear; as a form of intimidation to stop committing the crime of slash-and-burn cultivation and it dissuades anyone from doing so until it breaks with the social organization of the Mayan Milpa; as a means to extinguish the slash-and-­burn cultivation by the milperos themselves.

6.7  The Milpero Under the Sweet Law To understand how the sweet law applies to the case of the milpero, it is pertinent to paraphrase Foucault (1979, p. 47), in his idea that, in applying the law, if the executive power (in the Mexican case represented by the president of Mexico) acts with a severity that the legislative power (Deputy and Senator Mexican Chambers) has not authorized, then it makes an illegal deprivation; but if the legislative power authorized the punishment, the result is that the executive power does not sentence

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s­ omeone to prison, but it does incarcerate him/her. For example: you don’t condemn me to death, but you make me die; you don’t condemn me to prison, but you incarcerate me. This is the idea underlying the sweet law. How does incarceration happen in the case of the milpero? Well, when the milpero faces the law under the focus of the prison sentence, a penalty that has not been applied since the creation of the LQPIFQ in 1996, and up to this day, there has not been a prison sentence issued by Quintana Roo’s judicial power (law Mexican courts) incarcerating a milpero for breaking the law. In other words, for making use of fire during agricultural activities and even though there has not been a sentence, the milpero is threatened, watched, and labeled for using fire; that is to say, he lives incarcerated within his community (sensu Foucault, 1979). With regard to the sweet law that Foucault (1979, p. 47) alludes to, it consists in the ideal type of imprisonment of the reus (offender)—the milpero in this case— which refers to an act in the daily work of agricultural labor; in an apparently free, open, and transparent agricultural event, even if it is far from the reality, since the dignity of his designation, character, vision, opinion, and discourse of fire is disregarded and ostracized. The anguish of the milpero lies in the sentiment of feeling ignored, marginalized, and inexistent. The sweet character of the LQPIFQ law lies on its related actions, forms, and ways that provoke an environment of fear to the milpero and increase the sentiment of him feeling ignored, marginalized, and inexistent. The way it happens includes the following: altering the name of Macehual milpero to campesino; changing the meaning of fire as a tool to fire as an environmental damaging factor; regarding the Hum uinic as a simple plot; altering the Mayan communal work to an individual activity; substituting the formality of use with the land owner for a format addressed to an authority. In summary, it is no longer necessary to confine the milpero in jail since sweetly changing his surroundings is enough to exterminate him.

6.8  The Milpero Under a Scrupulous Prison When the legislative-executive power issued a severe and sweet restrictive law—the LQPIFQ and LGEEPA—it did so on the social organization called Mayan Milpa, which regulates the traditional agriculture in parts of southeastern Mexico. In doing so, it generates an imaginary, incorporeal prison, that is, it cannot be seen or touched. The law is built with precision, well defined, the target space is delineated, and the milpero can always move. The people from the community at every moment show the milpero where these restrictive spaces are: common holding (ejido), campesino, farmer, land plot, permit, fire management, prescribed burning, authority, among many others. As it was mentioned in previous paragraphs, these types of prisons have an imaginary form. Nevertheless, an imaginary prison is a rigorous prison, as is the case on the milpero—reus (offender)—forcing to name, think, and conceptualize the space differently; that is to say, the Macehual Mayan space gradually disappears: Hum uinic, milpero, domestic group, “walking Milpa,” slash-and-burn

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shifting cultivation, “lord” of the rainforest (deity Señor del monte); and they turn into: farming plot, ejido, campesino, permit, fire management, economic incentives, programs, general assemblies, prescribed burning, and ejido commissioning, among others. This conversion can only bring the constraints to the milpero and the destruction of the social organization system called Mayan Milpa. According to Foucault (1979, p. 47) the type of imaginary prison is built to “counter figure,” where the reus is the milpero or as Margadant states (Margadant, 1960/2001, p. 308) the “obligatus,” that is, the “tie-up,” the responsible, the prisoner not between walls, but between the opinions of others; the vision of others; the discourse of others. The milpero is forced to accept an agricultural hegemony imposed by a legal regime composed by the restrictive, sweet, and severe law which originated within the Mexican legislative and executive power. This imaginary social prison can only take place if the milpero becomes a sort of hostage, inadvertently tied up within his own social organization of Mayan Milpa. Beyond this organization, it is unthinkable and incoherent, since there is already an agricultural hegemonic regime that dominates in most of Mexico. Therefore, the imaginary social prison must take place within the Mayan Milpa where the space is susceptible to change; this space becomes the prison of the milpero. The milpero becomes the restrained one in guarantee of the fulfillment of the sanctio, a punishment from the LQPIFQ that could be applied when the executive-­ legislative power considers losing its domain; but not because the milpero could have violated the law—which orders a replacement of the slash-and-burn cultivation by another cultivation technique. Since the milpero cannot infringe nature he is permanently restrained. The sanctio according to Margadant (1960/2001, p. 47) is the determination of the consequence of violating the operative part of the law; the sanction then consists in a punishment to the transgressor. We argue that attempting to stop the slash-and-burn cultivation could be compared to trying to remove all the stones from the Yucatan Peninsula wherein its natural composition is more stone than soil. If anyone attempts to comply with removing all the stones from that area, it will lead to the disappearance of the Yucatan Peninsula. Similarly, in the words of Macehual Mayan people, attempting to stop the milpero from doing the slash-and-burn cultivation is wishing the Macehual Mayan traditional agriculture to disappear (M.  Huicab, personal communication, August 25, 2015; A. Cauich Poot, personal communication, August 25, 2015) (see also Barrera, Gómez, & Vázquez, 1977; Macario & Sánchez, 2011). Until this analysis we are aware that the Mexican legal regime has generated a type of legal domain which lacks any physical appearance and border; it is imperceptible to the eye and touch. Within this domain, there are message-laws, which become the means to spread a domain ruled under the threat of punishment. They are legal, subtle, refine, and perfect; they slowly infiltrate the Mayan Milpa reaching the milpero through the LQPIFQ wherein an opinion, concept, and vision are imposed on the milpero. The dominance that is exercised through these means is so effective; the whole Macehual Mayan community absorbs it, but the effect is only for the milpero. It does not require any physical prison, tied up, because since the

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creation of the LQPIFQ in 1996 to date, there has not been any Macehual milpero facing a trial in court.

6.9  The Macehual Maya Milpero Is a reus in Agony The incorporeal form adopted by the imaginary prison does not imply the absence of torture given the punishment it imposes. For the milpero, the anguish is suffered within the “cell” that holds him thus making him a prisoner. The cell is composed by idealized walls similar in character yet built by incorporeal things—Margadant states (Margadant, 1960/2001, p. 232) “incorporeal things, depending on whether it can be touched or not.” The cell’s incorporeal material is concocted by “the vision of the others, the discourse of the others and the opinion of the others” (Foucault, 1979, p. 15). But who exactly are the others? From the milpero’s eyes, those are the Mexican government—in all its different levels and powers like the legislative, executive, and judicial types; the international groups advocating for global warming; and the inhabitants of their community, by adopting the opinion, vision, and discourse promoted by those so-called others. The milpero’s anguish resides then, in listening, repeating, formulating opinions and perceiving the way that others do, where he feels anxious to abandon his knowledge and experience of the use of fire as a cultivation tool which he continues to practice in agricultural activities in Xhazil Sur y Anexos, Quintana Roo, Mexico. The torture reaches the point of even feeling impelled to comply with the law—LQPIFQ and LGEEPA—above its own need. The torture then becomes: it is about listening to the discourse of the law until the Milpero feels the desire to adopt the opinion that fire is a damaging factor that deteriorates ecosystems; he is feeling able to live by abiding the law; he is forgetting its own need for life; he is willing to accept and internalize the international globalizing discourse as its own: The Kyoto Protocol on climate change (United Nations, 2005). The function is fulfilled when the speech is repeated—hour by hour, day by day, during years, on the radio, television, newspaper, magazines, brochures, events. Coming from nearby voices including children, wives, neighboring relatives, teachers, or forest technicians. Foucault (1979, p. 47) describes this act as an ordeal and states: “the torture does not occur in an instant, but rather slowly, horribly and for many years.” The discourse must then be evoked as often as possible since it is the way in which its deterrent effect works. Under Foucault’s idea (Foucault, 1979), the executive-legislative power exercises dominion over the legal Macehual Mayan regime in matters of agriculture and conservation of the rainforests from the southeast of Mexico. In this sense, it can be said that the legislative-executive power does exercise dominion, not by a sentence or a resolution, but by the simple fact that the milpero is aware and knows that he can be deprived of his freedom if it were to use the slash-and-burn cultivation. He also knows that his community has a collective lookout on his person, immediate, and anonymous. That is to say, he feels constantly watched, suffering the force implied by being observed. In the idea of

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Foucault (1979), the milpero can experience the sensation of living in a hellish world from which no one, neither he nor his community can escape.

6.10  The Milpero’s Crisis The crisis of the milpero begins when he sees no possibility of leaving the imaginary prison. His custodian is the legislator who puts the law’s forum in the space of the milpero, the Mayan Zone at the center of Quintana Roo. The legislator usually goes on stage to “destroy” the milpero because without being a farmer, he/she questions the milpero as well as his acquired principles, and the social organization from which they support the Mayan Milpa. The legislator as a jailer is presented on the scene with several keys, all of them to “tie the milpero up,” such as the LGEEPA (DOF, December 13, 1996); the LQPIFQ (POEQR, April 30, 2012); the Law on Climate Change Action in the State of Quintana Roo (POEQR, October 30, 2015b); and the Law for the Environmental Equilibrium and Protection for the State of Quintana Roo (POEQR, January 9, 2015a). All of them summarize their political discourse in a document titled “Wildfires: A practical guide for communicators” (CNF, 2014). In this document, both the milpero and the Mayan Milpa are being questioned. It offers a contrasting proposal; putting forward a new agriculture under a divergent agricultural technique from the traditional agriculture model of the slash-and-burning cultivation system. Therefore, this is what causes the Milpero crisis; his suffering is real. In a sense, it is physical because the restrictive law destroys his social organization of Mayan Milpa; and it is symbolic because the planted discourse through the message-law strikes its traditional Mayan agricultural conceptions and principles. The legislator, like a chameleon, acts among the organization of the Mayan Milpa, mimics himself to extend his physical and symbolic domain to the entire Mayan community; he studies and introduces preventive engineering, education, and legal supervision actions. Among others, the ways to prevent the milpero from escaping from the prison that ties him up are as follows: Engineering work: To reduce prescribed fires. Educational activities: to reassess the importance of natural resources and acquire habits of caring for forested areas—information campaigns, training, and technical assistance for the use of fire in rural and urban populations, etc. Legal supervision: to verify compliance with laws, regulations, and regulations regarding the use of fire in the national territory (CNF, 2010, p. 17).

The legislative-executive power, which observes and verifies the control of the milpero’s behavior to guide it where it is desired, can contribute to detect the condition of the things that are lived when it is detected that the law covers a double function, as a law and a message. If the community of Xhazil Sur y Anexos is converted to adopt the opinion that fire is a factor of harm, then the legislator, together with the members of the community, can be co-authoritative and co-vigilant; both sanction, legitimize, and approve or disqualify what the milpero does. The legislator will

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always seek to interact, with subtlety, finesse, and legitimacy for the domain with which he/she subdues the milpero, thus, the crisis: the impossibility of cutting such a bond of extermination.

6.11  The Deterrence of the Macehual Milpero To deter the milpero, through the law-message of the legislator and the ceaseless vigilance of the community, is to lose the ability to continue living, the lack of desire to continue doing agricultural activities under the social organization of Mayan Milpa; it is to make him understand that what he does is harmful and that it means to commit a crime. The executive-legislative power, with restrictive laws— LQPIFQ (POEQR, June 16, 2014) and LGEEPA (DOF, December 13, 1996)—as a means to send the message of fire as a factor of damage, constrains the milpero to lose the will from doing the harmful thing—doing Milpa using slash-and-burn cultivation. Already the thought of wanting to do maize field begins to disappear from Mayan young people. To prevent the milpero—to make Milpa—removing the desire to wish for it, is to dissuade him from it. In summary, Foucault acknowledges (Foucault, 1979), deterring is leading to the situation of wishing not to be able and not wanting to do what is labeled as harmful. What is harmful? The answer is being everything that the legislator has mandated based solely on his/her reason and not on the scientific and Mayan Macehual knowledge—the milpero or the researchers conducting studies related to traditional agriculture, the jungle, social organization, cultures, law and customary legal systems. When the law—LQPIFQ and LGEEPA—is used as a means and channel to send messages from afar, then, it can only be valued for what it is, a message, because even if the law has not been applied in the state of Quintana Roo on trials where it has been used to support a resolution, it does not imply that it cannot generate other effects on its recipients that also deserve to be discussed in the legal field.

6.12  The Rupture of the Macehual Mayan’s Milpero A rupture occurs when the milpero, over time, feels the weight of the message sent by the legislator: fire is a factor of environmental damage. After having heard it so many times, even from the milpero’s relatives, he ends up internalizing the law-­ message and resurfaces in the legal scenario as an individual willing to comply with the law and stop doing criminal acts as indicated by the legislator. At this point, the Macehual Mayan milpero “breaks” and he then becomes an ejidatario (common holder) or a peasant. The breakup carries with it a very large burden; it implies going against the Mayan community and against the milpero himself. When this rupture is a general condition in the whole community, not only in young people, but also in adults, then, the rupture is at a population scale, not individually from a

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milpero. If this happens the community will now be the one that monitors that ­traditional agricultural and slash-and-burn cultivation technique ceases to be carried out. The rupture of the milpero implies the rupture of the social organization of the Mayan Milpa, its own community and its Mayan culture. This rupture has different stages. The first is to have a cynical legislator and rector who dictates vulgar restrictive laws based on reason and with a poor or null knowledge on forests, traditional agriculture, and Mayan culture; second, to have a formal protocol which denominates the creation of the law where the message will be created; third, the message-­ law is sent globally from a distant site; fourth, the message impacts in the Mayan Zone at the center of Quintana Roo, Mexico; and finally, the purpose of making the opinion, vision, and discourse is distributed among all the caretakers or guards of the community, including the milpero. Only then it becomes possible to understand that the main objective that the legislator seeks, in sanctioning the LQPIFQ, is not precisely the legal protection of forests and culture. Foucault (1979) states that the penalty lies in the greatest force. In the case concerning the sanctio of the law-­ message, it is given in proportion to the strength of resistance by the Macehual milperos in relation to the legal rigor from the treatment they receive.

6.13  A Milpero’s Erosion The Macehual Mayan milpero has yet to receive a sentence from the judiciary power; he has not been prosecuted, never been sentenced to prison, but the legislative-­executive power has imprisoned him, it has submitted him, although not to the law, but to the international opinion that is instilled within his community. In our study, the legal domain is determined by: 1. The opinion of others: from the various International Conferences on Sustainable Forest Management and particularly, the FAO Forestry Committee (COFO) meeting held in March 2005, the international community has established principles and actions to organize, preserve, protect, and make sustainable management of forest resources. Mexico included these principles within its Forest Program, on the National Strategy for Climate Change and in the “ProArbol” program (CNF, 2010, p. 32). 2. The vision of others in several themes: with respect to the use of fire; biodiversity conservation; the smallholders and rural communities’ necessities that use fire and the concern of those affected by them (CNF, 2010, p. 32); and 3. The discourse of others: summarized by the guidelines concerning the use of fire dictated by the CNF (2010), p. 32); an established schedule or season for using fire (in Quintana Roo), and resource management; fire management in natural and protected areas and reserves; arrangement and education about fire; fire preparation, including technical training; activities prior to the fire season, and applying the fire schedules.

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The opinions, visions, and discourses listed above reach the people of the community through the law. Every day the milpero carries the torture of listening to messages on television, radio, newspapers, and brochures. These means eventually constrict him so much, to the degree of making the milpero forget about how to apply the slash-and-burn cultivation technique or lead him to give up attempting to make traditional cultivation. The milpero becomes a reus within his own community, its own people acts as a sentry, watching over him while taking care of the martyrdom for his punishment.

6.14  A False Discourse for the Milpero The new order for agriculture could not be implemented without the destruction of the old order, namely the Mayan Milpa’s Legal Institution and its legal norms. To do this, the strategies used with this restrictive and vulgar law—LQPIFQ and LGEEPA—are the following: (1) making the old Macehual Mayan legal system invisible, in such a way as imposing opinion, concepts, perspectives, and other forms of agriculture to condition upon the traditional life; (2) creating imaginary spaces over existing ones, “without borders nor large constructions” (Foucault, 1979, p. 117) is enough to transparent and make visible what is established by public opinion; and (3) replacing prisons with clandestine graves in the name of humanism, transparency, and visibility as a strategy to silence opponents of the new regime. With respect to the study of false discourse materialized in a law, three questions arise. First, how can it be possible that a people with character, such as the Macehual Mayan people, have not been able to gain the recognition of the legislator? To put it in another way, how can it be that the legislator who hears Mayan people, lacks the condition to listen, understand, and recognize the milpero? Second, what interests the legislator pursues, as an authority, that makes of the law an instrument to create false statements as if they were true to the Macehual Mayans of Quintana Roo? And finally, the State which creates its own jurist, with human functions, commendable to protect the culture, the resources and take care of the diversity of spaces, but when he/she reaches a position of power, takes advantage of the society’s needs hiding behind his/her privileged position and false discourses that later become speeches of vulgar laws.

6.15  The Message Towards a Milpero Through a Law Form A message in the form of a law is, for example, to state in the text of the law— Article 101 of the LGEEPA—that slash-and-burn cultivation deteriorates ecosystems since it does not allow its natural regeneration and alters the processes of ecological succession. This is a false message written in a law because there is scientific evidence exposed by Barrera et al. (1977, pp. 47–61) who state that the slash-­

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and-­burn shifting cultivation system is an intelligent handling of vegetation that was part of the ancient Mayan forest management and it responds to the ecological ­conditions and regeneration of the forest as well to a social organization that avoids the intensive use of the forests’ soils for agricultural purposes. Therefore when the law—LQPIFQ and LGEEPA—is backed up by a false message, this law can only be a restrictive and vulgar means useful to generate dominance and control. The dominance, “is a form of superiority that manifests in the conscience, habits and social acts” (Valencia & Marín, 2017, p. 513). A dominance, which establishes “the probability of finding obedience within a given group for specific mandates (or for all kinds of mandates).” (Weber as quoted in Valencia & Marín, 2017, p. 513). Under this perspective, the aforementioned law is a means that provokes obedience, and its false message is the mandate that guides social events. In other words, this law is the specific message addressed to the Macehual Mayan community on how they should now conceive agriculture; the new concepts of fire as a damaging factor; a calendar for burning, ejido, farmer, and land plot, among others. The law’s objective is to impact on the customs and actions of the Mayan Milpa. Although the message-law is also global and is aimed at the whole community, in reality, it is only aimed at impacting the milpero, his person, knowledge, experience; all of him will be exposed to his own community and his people; from now on his people will be the ones who keep an eye on him, judge him but with the vision, opinion, and discourse of others—of the legislative-executive power. This is going to happen until the absolute dominance of indigenous peoples and communities is achieved, as is the case in the ejido Xhazil Sur y Anexos in Quintana Roo, Mexico.

6.16  An Impossible Order for the Milpero As it was previously mentioned, the fear that the milpero feels is to be exposed to the possibility of being deprived of freedom; it is the daily condition of which he lives with and eventually causes his crisis, his break down. The milpero works with fear of carrying out his traditional agricultural activities outside the law because he knows that he can be punished. Fear and hate come together to those who use different economies; they take advantage of violent means and methods because they want control of their natural resources. The environment of fear increases its effect when laws of different hierarchy come together—the LQPIFQ; Climate Change Action Law in the state of Quintana Roo (POEQR, October 30, 2015b); Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection of the state of Quintana Roo (POEQR, January 9, 2015a); the Law of Rights, Culture, and Indigenous Organization of the state of Quintana Roo (POEQR, July 4, 2017); and the LGEEPA—all to establish the legality of its punishment. All laws constrict the milpero to do impossible acts; if he omits them, he has the threat of being punished. The impossible act is the one established in the LGEEPA, where the milpero is ordered to replace the slash-and-burn cultivation:

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ARTICLE 101.- … II.- The progressive change of the practice of slashing, burning and shifting cultivation to other activities that do not imply the deterioration of the ecosystems, (…) or that do not alter the processes of ecological succession. (LGEEPA, DOF, reform of December 13, 1996).

In turn, the Macehual milperos argue that even the authority itself could not fulfill the mentioned mandate of change of 101 fraction II because there is no agricultural technique equal to or better than the slash-and-burn cultivation; the milperos recognize that it is an unwritten law found within the conscience and reality of what they think because the validity of their cultivation technique or its existence, is not from today or yesterday; however, the authority of the Mexican government does not listen nor recognize it. The Mexican legislator, through the law, orders that the slash-and-burn cultivation technique be replaced by another that does not involve the use of fire; the problem is that there is none. In addition, he lies by stating, through the law, that fire is a damaging factor which does not allow the regeneration of the forest. “Even satellite images and studies show reliable evidence that it is not true; but rather, the fire is a tool of Macehual Mayan cultivation, and what it does is allow the regeneration of the forest, it does not avoid it” (Cauich Poot, personal communication, August 25, 2015) (see also Almada et al., Chap. 10, this volume). A basic guide for communicators published by the National Forestry Commission states that “fire can have a positive influence on nature, as it helps to maintain the biodiversity” (CNF, 2014), while “as a society we were educated to associate [fire] in many occasions with destruction and damage” (CNF, 2014). The guide elaborates on this topic by adding: “…the truth is that fire and ecosystems have established relationships, where even some ecosystems have developed adaptations to depend on their effects, such as reducing weed competition, sanitation and/or disease control between plants, release and incorporation of nutrients and in some cases, the germination of some seeds.” (CNF, 2014, p. 11).

A fact for the Macehual Maya milpero is that fire has been a cultivation tool for hundreds of years; despite this, the agricultural life of the milpero is currently amongst acts and modes, restrictive forms unnoticed and imposed by both the legislative and the executive powers in the restrictive and vulgar law. The right to use agricultural fire is approached by the Mexican government from the formal scope of its legal system because the formalities it executes that should be observed differ from the Macehual regulatory system, and its presence is also in international conventions—the Kyoto Protocol (United Nations, February 16, 2005) and the International Labour Organization Convention 169 (DOF, January 24, 1991)—even though these conventions are not properly ablating regulatory systems. The Macehual Mayan Normative System exists in accordance with articles 2, section A, sections I, II, and III of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States (DOF, June 5, 2019a); in concordance with the Agreement 169 of the International Labor Organization on Indigenous and Tribal Communities in Independent Countries (DOF, January 24, 1991); and from the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN, June 27, 1989); by virtue of

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its constitutional recognition along all the regulatory systems of the 62 indigenous communities from Mexico, related to the agricultural regulation of their territories and their habitats, must be considered integrated into the Mexican legal system, by norms that, like those emanating from a legislative process, share the characteristics of having the same general function: making sustainable use of the resources, of reducing global warming and of bringing an integral development of their culture. Local Mayan normative regulations are intended to establish the bases or the process for which the tropical resources that make up the habitat will be used and managed, through the development and promotion of institutions—the Mayan Milpa—established to regulate the forms of social organization and because their forestry systems are based on an ancestral knowledge and experience of the management of tropical forests through the use of fire, seen as cultural tool; where its rainforest is always young; that is, the preservation of the earth’s good condition where the forests are, the “lungs” to which, the Macehual Maya people ever since unmemorable times have been addressing the problem of global warming.

6.17  The Restrictive Law and Its Milpero Receptor A legal norm lacks spirit when it suffers from any legal institution; when it is said to be restrictive and is usually accompanied by an accessory element called punishment. In the case of the law—LQPIFQ and LGEEPA—where the Macehual Mayan milperos, in accordance with the Mexican Constitution (DOF, June 6, 2019a), bear the right to govern their territory under their own local regulatory systems, so the milperos use their legal institutions starting with the Mayan Milpa to govern their rainforests under the slash-shifting cultivation system. Currently, there are only a few rainforests left in the world; the wealth of its resources has made them the “apple of discord” in the world; 47% of them are in the Americas and the rest are in the remaining countries. The rainforest is normally inhabited by native people such as the Macehual Mayans in Quintana Roo. The restrictive law seeks to have the domain of the resource, not to protect it, so it makes the milpero invisible.

6.18  A Vulgar Law and the Macehual Milpero’s Knowledge Our specific case is a source of Law, which was recognized by jurists since the pre-­ classic era of Law. Margadant (1960/2001) describes the form of jurisprudence’s record, where he states that “it is the opinion expressed by experts in Law based on the knowledge of the good and the bad and the fine instruction of the just.” The author continues by saying: These opinions were used to solve cases or to formulate abstract rules inspired by a specific case. Centuries later, the answers, expert opinions and opinions were collected, discussed

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and compared, thus forming a set of formulas registered in the pontifical libri. (Margadant, 1960/2001, p. 54).

The jurisprudence is a form of manifestation of the law which external history of Roman law gave the category of formal (Margadant, 1960/2001, p. 45). Under this conception, the specific case of the milpero becomes a formal legal source from which such principles emanate. As an example of the legal characteristics of the Mayan milpero is as follows: Legal institution: the Macehual Mayan Milpa. Rule: Slashing, burning, and shifting cultivation. Subject: the Milpero. Formality: Social organization within the Mayan Milpa and its social practices. Scope of application: the Domestic group, Hum uinic place. Validity: 500 years. Protected legal asset: the Mayan Milpa—because it avoids intensive land use and that of the rainforest; because it maintains the forests’ ecological condition, its natural regeneration, and its permanent state of youthful reproduction. The last statement can be observed by means of satellite images of the Mayan cultivation areas; such images can be compared with agricultural works carried out under the ejido system. In contrast, the LQPIFQ and LGEEPA laws are vulgar laws born out of rhetoric, reason, palaver, and what is thought or believed; such laws can only minister restriction and punishment by a cynical legislator towards Macehual Mayan people. The vulgar law exterminates the legal Mayan Milpa institution.

6.19  Fire, Its Handling, and the Milpero’s Endurance We argue that fire, as a damaging factor, is a false discourse placed in the LGEEPA and the LQPIFQ; this discourse is related to the globalization and in particular the global warming phenomenon involving the following statement: fire is an environmental damaging factor that, as an idea, it was promoted by the internationally formed powerful groups. Those groups turned the discussion towards the global warming problem, creating world forums and instigating the idea of “fire as a factor of environmental damage.” Thus, State representatives who signed these global agreements began to constrain each other to do acts that were fined in their good faith. The first thing was to fulfill the pact—regulate the emission of gases into the atmosphere; Mexico, as a participating state, fulfilled the obligation to modify or create laws that were relevant to these agreements. In 2014, the Mexican Supreme Court of Justice established the criteria on international agreements, conceding that such agreements were to be found at the same level of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States, without exceeding it, and above all general law and of all the separate State laws. Thus, both the LQPIFQ and the LGEEPA resume the idea of fire as a factor of environmental

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d­ amage from an international scope. Regarding the misbelief of this discourse, it should be said that it becomes evident when it confronts the local idea of fire as a cultivation tool for the rainforests on the southeastern part Mexico where slash-andburn cultivation is the legal norm in the local Macehual Mayan regulatory system from the Mayan Zone at the center of Quintana Roo, Mexico.

6.20  Conclusions Both the LQPIFQ and the LGEEPA are restrictive laws from the vulgar law that are based on the principles of severity and sweetness; headless, lacking spirit and without a legal institution to minister it to society where the objective is to dominate the natural resources (forests) of the communities and people from the Mayan Zone located in the center of Quintana Roo, Mexico. The legislator of these laws is a jurist who does not allow nature to guide his/her intuition; making the recipient (the milpero) invisible. He is rhetorical by nature while placing misleading text within the law; sends messages instead of legislating; does not and will not listen, and in utter disregard to the milpero while constantly disapproving his knowledge and experience since the legislator only seeks the satisfaction of his/her own interests instead of defending traditional agriculture, natural resources, and indigenous communities and its people. Against this type of domain and as a result from our study the following legal arguments are proposed. (a) The milpero is under a situation of resistance; he lives with the legitimate threat of being deprived of liberty, being designated as a criminal and creditor to the total closure of his agricultural activities. (b) The legislator uses the law as a message, a message that subtly legitimates and leads the milpero to surrender from doing the Mayan Milpa. (c) The restrictive, vulgar, sweet, and severe law that orders what is not subject to compliance is useful for generating fear and dominance. (d) The sweet character of the law lies in the acts, forms, and modes that provoke fear and incite the feeling of being ignored. (e) There is an obligation to accept a single global homogenized agriculture imposed by restrictive, vulgar, sweet, and severe laws. (f) The subtle, fine, legitimate way in which the legislator holds down, generates a crisis and a breakdown of the milpero, leaving him no way to exit such a bond of extermination. (g) The milpero is in torment, because legislator and law force him to be as the others are, to the point of abandoning his ancestral agricultural knowledge and experience.

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POEQR (Periódico Oficial del Estado de Quintana Roo). (2015b, October 30). Ley de Acción de Cambio Climático en el Estado de Quintana Roo. Quintana Roo, México. Chetumal: Periódico Oficial. POEQR (Periódico Oficial del Estado de Quintana Roo). (2017, July 4). Ley de Derechos, Cultura y Organización Indígena del Estado de Quintana Roo Quintana Roo, México. Chetumal: Periódico Oficial. Reed, N. (1964/2002). La Guerra de Castas de Yucatán. (11st reprinting). México D.F.: Era. UN (United Nations). (1989, June 27). Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. Geneva: United Nations. UN (United Nations). (2005, February 16). Kyoto protocol to the United Nations framework convention on climate change. Kioto: United Nations. Valencia, G. J. F., & Marín, G. M. S. (2017). El panóptico más allá de vigilar y castigar; Dedicado a: Marxismo en América Latina a 150 años de El Capital. Kavilando, 9(2), 511–529.

Chapter 7

The Interaction Between Mayan Honey Producers and the Global Agri-Food Regime Lilia Betania Vázquez González

Abstract  This chapter aims to describe and analyze the agricultural activities in Mayan communities of the center of Quintana Roo, Mexico, and the relation between a network of Mayan agricultural practices with the agri-food regime. This analysis presents Mayan communities as a niche that interacts with the regime as a particular and unique model. The methodology included a mixed methods approach of qualitative nature, including in-depth interviews, focus groups, and discourse analysis, based on grounded theory. The interaction between the regime and the Mayan communities is observed in three aspects: (1) In the activities of honey production, (2) In the activities of traditional agriculture, and (3) In the forms of social organization of the communities. The traditional agricultural systems in the communities coexist and interact with the regime, which is the dominant actor. In the activities of honey production, the agri-food regime imposes strict rules about the know-how of production and “transfers” technological packages and technical knowledge to the Mayan peasants, thereby displacing traditional practices and knowledge, for example, with respect to breeding native bees. Both in agricultural activities and social organizations, the regime does not dominate the communities because peasants maintain cultivation of the milpa (i.e., the slash-and-burn cultivation) and because community social organizations have a high degree of consolidation. Keywords  Agri-food regime · Slash-and-burn cultivation · Beekeeping · Mayan peasants · Traditional social organization

L. B. Vázquez González (*) TecMilenio University, Merida Campus, Mérida, Mexico © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_7

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7.1  Introduction Key moments in the history of food production are read by academics as agri-food regimes where power relations maintain control of food production among nations. Between the 1950s and 1970s, a regime characterized by agro-­industrialization, the use of green revolution technologies and production chains as the model of development were the guide of dominant nations and would have to transfer it to less developed countries (McMichael, 2009). The current regime that initiated at the end of the 1980s is the neoliberal regime whose purpose is to facilitate the free market. This regime uses the transfer of state power to the world trade organizations regarding the decision-making on how to produce food (Pechlaner & Otero, 2008). In Mexico, the end of trade barriers with the United States and Canada as a result of the Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 and the consequent entry of imported food products, meant changes in the way of life for Mexican farmers. Although there are open demonstrations against the neoliberal1 regime such as the Zapatista National Liberation Movement (Pechlaner & Otero, 2008), there are other subtle resistance from indigenous people observable in their way of producing food. This chapter’s aim is two-fold. It first describes the agricultural activities in Mayan communities of the center of Quintana Roo, Mexico, and secondly, analyzes the interaction of Mayan agriculture—including beekeeping, milpa cultivation, and traditional forms of organization—with the agri-food regime.

7.2  Material and Methods2 Data gathered comprise 39 interviews with honey producers carried out in three communities of Quintana Roo: Filomeno Mata, Presidente Juárez, and Kampocolché, during May and June 2015 (Fig. 7.1). All 39 interviewees were male beekeepers, who were honey cooperative members. I used a mixed methods approach including a qualitative methodology described in Denzin and Lincoln (2011). I used the focus groups technique and in-depth interviews, which were recorded and transcribed (Taylor & Bogdan, 1987). I codified the interviewees’ texts (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996) and afterwards, I made a discourse analysis following the method of Jørgensen and Phillips (2002). The interviews addressed the issue of honey production, in which beekeepers reported when they commenced in honey production and how their parents and 1  I understand the term “neoliberal”—a characteristic of neoliberalism—according to Harvey (2006, p.  145): “Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices which proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, free markets and free trade.” 2  The research and data contained in this chapter are part of the fieldwork carried out in the Yucatan Peninsula by the author to complete her PhD thesis in El Colegio de la Frontera Sur.

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Fig. 7.1  Study area. Communities of Filomeno Mata, Presidente Juárez, and Kampocolché in Quintana Roo. (Source: Elaborated by the author)

grandparents raised bees. All interviewees described the transition from conventional honey production to organic honey, and the interviewees’ children—who had observed the breeding of native bees while accompanying their parents pursuing this activity—described their own experience3 in this activity. It is worth mentioning  I did not deliberately interviewed children; rather, this activity was occasional and was done under the children’s parents’ supervision. 3

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that at present there are very few people who participated in the production of native bees. I conducted a focus groups gathering in Kampocolché in September 2016, in which 12 ejidatarios of this community participated, all of them were peasants dedicated mainly to the cultivation of the seasonal cornfield and to beekeeping. During this gathering, a dynamic was carried out with the participant people that allowed producing data on the community’s social capital. At the beginning of this dynamic, we asked the group of farmers to list the groups, organizations, cooperatives, and other groups in which members of the community of Kampocolché participate. Once formal and non-formal organizations had been listed, the peasants categorized them according to their degree of consolidation and strength. The categorization scale used was from level 1 to 5; where 1 represented a group about to disappear or recently created, with very low level of organization, no clear objectives or goals. Level 2 represented the groups with low level of organization, few members, and no favorable results to continue with their existence; however, they have managed to remain for 2–4 years to receive external resources. Level 3 were organizations with favorable results, which have been in existence for 5 to 10  years, however, they continually have disagreements that lead members to enter and leave the group. In the case of productive groups, they are organizations that sell their products to intermediaries, without having control of the commercialization. Level 4 are more consolidated organizations that have more than 10  years of existence, in the case of being economically productive, they have control of the commercialization of their products, at least at the local level. Level 5 are organizations that have more than two decades of existence and their continuity in the future is safe, in the case of productive organizations are those that have national or international market activity with control from the community.

7.3  Results and Discussion 7.3.1  Beekeeping and Meliponiculture The breeding of bees in the Yucatan Peninsula has a long history that dates back to the pre-Hispanic Maya. The Mayans have historically produced honey from stingless bees, including honey from “meliponas” (Melipona beecheii). This is a native bee that was raised on large wooden trunks called “jobones,” within which it stores its honey in small wax spheres (Pat, Anguebes, Pat, Hernández, & Ramos, 2018). There are testimonies that assure that the population of meliponas descended until a 93% at the end of the 1980s (Villanueva, Roubik, & Colli-Ucán, 2005), and although the causes of the decline have not been determined, researchers point out the deforestation, the competition with the Apis mellifera and the over extraction of honey as probable causes of this decline (Villanueva et  al., 2005). In the imaginary of the peasants who observed the decline of the “xunan cab” (royal bee or lady bee in the

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Mayan language) is the fight between the bees Apis mellifera stealing the honey from the stingless bees, and the reduction of the population of the last because of the increase in foreign bee populations: I had up to 80 xunan cab. Now it is an African bee, but before it was European. Xunan cab is over because the American bee came in, they fought, they killed each other. When we extracted honey from xunan cab hives’, the African bees came to steal honey. The African bee has stingers while the xunan cab has only ‘tongs’. They are not missing but they are not enough. About 50 years ago came the African bees, where there are African bees there are no xunan cab. My grandfather had about 300 ‘jobones’. Now they say we should use wooden boxes [not ‘jobones’]… Now melipona honey is more expensive (Interview with a beekeeper in the community of Presidente Juárez)

The beekeeper refers to the technicians when he says “they say we should use wooden boxes.” Due to the almost extinction of the melipona bee, researchers and civil society organizations have undertaken actions for the rescue of them. Among the activities aimed at reaching this task are the extension courses to groups of beekeepers in Yucatan, the development of specialized technology for these bees, the control of their parasites and the search for market niches for their products (González-­Acereto, Quezada-Euán, & Medina-Medina, 2006). This has increased the interest of groups of farmers and women to raise these bees, due to the high price that m ­ elipona honey can reach in niche markets such as hotel restaurants in Cancun. Even so, the production of melipona honey is very small. The production of honey with European or Africanized bees is different from the breeding of native bees. For this production, specialized equipment and technology of American origin is required, which is why training courses are also required to teach the farmers the specialized techniques for the intensification of the production of honey, wax, and queen breeding. Ninety-five percent of honey production of Apis mellifera in the Yucatan peninsula is destined to export mainly to Europe and the market demands a greater efficiency and quality in its production (Güemes, Echazarreta, Villanueva, Pat, & Gómez, 2003). Currently, beekeeping in the Yucatan Peninsula is carried out by farmers who have among their multiple productive strategies the production of honey. The main reason that farmers prefer this activity is because it offers them quick access to cash with less investment in equipment and labor, compared with other activities. This is how the peasants explain it: The beekeeping leaves more [money] for example: 6 months of harvest and then 6 months of attention but the cost for maintenance is not much, for example you spend up to 5 or 6 thousand pesos of maintenance of the 6 months but in the long term the first 6 months of you recover it and the rest is only profit. Not like the cattle, the cattle if you have 10 or 12 animals, with a cow that every 2 years gives you a calf, that's a lot of work and you'll say that the price of wire is very exaggerated! it is 800 pesos for 170 meters, it's a lot of investment! (Interview with a beekeeper in the community of Presidente Juárez). I realized that with beekeeping I was making money, to keep my kids [children], one of them will become an engineer, he is studying for it. Because being a farmer, ‘hacer la milpa’ [cornfield] sometimes the harvest is lost, the drought comes and the hurricane comes, and the harvest is lost. So if I have bees there I defend myself [he gets cash], I look for the way

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to get some honey to sell and that’s it, I have a bit of that to support the family, that's why I decided to work. Here in the ‘ejido’ there are many people who are dedicated to work the bees (Interview with a beekeeper in the community of Filomeno Mata).

The first quoted interview, from above, shows the low investment that beekeepers can make in their productive activities. The first one makes a comparison between investing in cattle against the investment in bees, where the farmer argues that only the cost to fence the cattle is high, exemplifying that the cost of 170 m of wire is 43 US dollars, in addition it is necessary to invest in food and care. Therefore, he prefers to invest up to US $ 320 in all his bee production. We estimate that the gross income of the peasants in this area is $ 2921 US dollars per year, therefore, they have a narrow investment margin. The second quoted interview, from above, explains the motivation of beekeepers to dedicate themselves to the production and sale of honey, which is to obtain income to pay for the education of their children, which often includes the maintenance in cities several kilometers from their community of origin. For these communities, the income from honey production amounts to 58% and they complement it with government support that contributes up to 33% (Vázquez-González, Parra-­ Vázquez, & Gracia, 2018). Therefore, the dependence on income from the sale of honey is high for Mayan families. The historical change in the way of raising bees leads to transformations in the power relations because the peasants being economically dependent on the production of honey as a source of income from their sale for export, must adhere to the demands of quality established by the buyers and so they are continuously transforming their ways of producing.

7.3.2  Transition to the Production of Organic Honey The transition from conventional honey to organic honey is another example where the food and environmental regime establishes conditions for the change in the activities of the Maya people. The organic production arose in response to the demand of consumers concerned about their health and interested in the care of the environment. So, the increased interest in this type of products also increased the requirement in the certification of their production processes. Beekeepers have received training courses where they learn the standards and techniques to achieve organic certification. Beekeepers understand organic honey as a cleaner product: The international buyer is the one who demands how to produce, Now, after the advice, I use that [stainless steel equipment], they claim us. When you have a cold and cough you cannot go to work because they say: you can contaminate the product! We cannot urinate there [near to the apiary], we should wash our hands… (Interview with a beekeeper in the community of President Juarez).

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Certifications are instruments that support the social construction of quality for certain groups of consumers (Hernández & Villaseñor, 2014). Although there are other certifications such as fair trade that aims to get farmers a better price for their products, it cannot be ignored that these requirements come from external opinions to communities and traditional forms of food production, and therefore leave farmers subject to the agri-food and environmental regimes. Organic certification requires guidelines that members of cooperatives must fully comply with so that their products maintain the organic seal. These guidelines prohibit the artificial feeding of bees with conventional sugar; given the difficulty to obtain organic sugar in the study region, beekeepers must separate a part of the honey for feeding the bees in the time of scarcity of nectar in the rainy season (months of June, July, August, and September). This prohibition on artificial feeding limits some local innovations that beekeepers make. Some farmers look for local foods such as seasonal fruits of their crops (orange, pumpkin, and mango) and corn flour to offer in their apiaries, which provides them with a decrease in input costs. According to Gupta (2014, p. 507): “Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society.” This author lists the technological innovations made in beekeeping from different roles such as beekeepers, students, scientists, and ­corporations. He recognizes that indigenous knowledge is a source of numerous innovations for bee breeding and that the introduction of exogenous technology has problems of adaptation to local conditions.

7.3.3  T  raditional Agriculture and Diversified Productive Strategy In the Maya region of Quintana Roo, there are many communities with a traditional agri-food system, which is part of their way of life. This system is a network of subsystems, including milpa, backyard fattening of pigs and birds, breeding of bees and management of the forest, all of them are used by Mayan families as a whole. The Mayan milpa is a polyculture that includes corn, beans, and squash. The farmers in these communities do not use herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, or pesticides, due to the high cost that these inputs represent for the low family income and for the diversity of crops that exist in the same space: We do not use herbicides to kill grass … they are expensive, if we put a herbicide that kills the weeds unfortunately it kills squash, beans and ‘ibes’ [a kind of legume] in the ‘milpa’ [cornfield]… herbicide is not recommended, it kills everything… I can use paraquat or belfosato, they do not affect the corn but affects what is inside: pumpkin, beans. We take care not to damage the corn, but there is another liquid that will affect us, so I mostly do not use those types of liquids just to kill herbs. But right now it's very expensive… it’s 100 pesos. This saves us work but we need about six liters, it’s a lot. (Interview with a beekeeper in the community of Presidente Juárez)

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In this dialogue, the farmer explains that the use of herbicides would reduce the time they invest in weeding their land; however, several herbicides could not only eliminate the grass but also the crops they keep next to the corn. And although he recognizes his knowledge of agrochemicals and his desire to obtain them, he also recognizes that he cannot invest in them because of their cost. The backyards of Mayan families are areas where they grow chilies, tubers, and fruit trees. Also in this area, the farmers raise domestic livestock: chickens, turkeys, and pigs, all of them adapted to tropical conditions. Another benefit of Creole animals is the low cost of feeding because they eat insects, herbs, fruits, and food remains of families, so they do not need commercial feed. These animals are fattened for religious celebrations in which the entire community participates. In some cases, the peasants interact with the local market, but not with the agri-­ food regime. A farmer explains the following: Also in my backyard I have pumpkin flower and coconut trees, to be able to water it, they are together and they are not affected. I also had ‘xpelón’ [a type of bean] but I already sold it, I have a bit of everything, I had green chile, habanero chile, all that is money! Right now I sold everything! I also have orange and tangerine. A gentleman comes to buy coconuts, he takes them to Tulum and Playa [del Carmen]. He knows who has coconuts and we sell him 700 or 800 coconuts, at 2 pesos [each] (Interview with a beekeeper in the community of Presidente Juárez)

This farmer describes the variety of crops they have in their land and the way they change them as the price in the market improves. Even so, the earnings of these peasant families are very low and continue to be subsistence activities because the prices paid by intermediaries for the goods are very low. In the text above, the farmer expresses enthusiasm for the payment he receives in exchange for 800 coconuts, which is 85 US dollars. The enthusiasm he demonstrates is that he does not have a real estimate of his production costs, so his profit for him represents a quick access to basic supplies to feed his family. The peasants require this multiple productive strategy to obtain economic income. They agree that the “milpa” is a very risky subsistence activity because it is exposed to total loss due to adverse weather conditions. In addition, they perceive a variation in the usual climatic conditions, with the consequent increase of droughts and delay in the arrival of rains: The pumpkin seed sale pays well; the cornfield leaves no profit… but if you plant beans it does… seed of small pumpkin pays you a good price. Right now the pumpkin seed has a price of between 35 or 40 pesos per kilo (2 US dollars per 35 oz) … This year there was no corn harvest, but the beans, the ‘hibes’ and the squash were achieved. There was also a honey harvest… in case you missed the harvest of all this but you have a little honey. Every 15 days we can harvest [honey]. Also, I have cattle, I have 12 animals… (Interview with a beekeeper in the community of Presidente Juarez).

The paragraph above shows the interaction of agriculture with the regime. This interaction is different from that of beekeeping because agriculture is a niche that works independently of the regime. This agriculture includes the network of strategies such as cattle, pigs, and poultry sold on a small scale in local markets or used for family consumption.

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Within this multi-country strategy, there are relevant elements, such as the “milpa.” The “milpa” is not competitive for the market since its production is intended for family consumption, so in the context of the global market it is considered of little value (Martín-Castillo, 2016). However, it should be considered that the importance of the “milpa” for peasant families does not lie in its commercial value, but that in addition to providing legumes, cereals, tubers, roots, and Cucurbitaceae, it is an inseparable part of its identity (Martín-Castillo, 2016).

7.3.4  Traditional Organization Vs. Imposed Organization The trainers, project promoters, and government representatives promote the peasant organization. Cooperatives are the official form of organization, through which farmers can access technologies, markets, and credits. This form of organization also facilitates marketing, obtaining better prices for inputs and provides a less aggressive tax treatment. In Mexico, there are cooperatives that have improved their competitiveness in the market due to the strength shown by their organizational form. An example of this is the Cooperative “Tosepan Titataniske” which means in the indigenous language “together we will win,” which is made up of men and women from marginalized communities now dedicated to the production of organic coffee, honey, or pepper. Their production has diversified to the sale of products such as soluble coffee or honey candies; they have even opened a hotel for visitors attracted by ecotourism. They can also offer their members a system of savings and credit loans (Toscana, 2011). Despite the success of some cooperatives, we cannot talk about the success of cooperativism in Mexico since most of the groups split up after some time. In the case of the present study, the main causes of the stagnation of the agricultural cooperatives are their low adherence to the cooperative principles since they are seen as a quick access to public resources and the lack of loyalty among the partners, since some of them decide to sell their production to intermediaries with such to get an immediate payment. In the communities, there are other informal groups that often go unnoticed by technicians. These groups conform mainly with the objective of maintaining the Mayan-Catholic traditions, which in their activities include prayers, rituals, ceremonies, and festivals. These activities are so complex that they require the participation of several people who prepare them months before: they fatten pigs and birds for the dishes that will be served at parties and separate a part of the corn and honey from their crops. Figure 7.2 shows the groups in Mayan communities, where 5 represents the maximum degree of strength and 1 are not yet consolidated groups. This figure shows ten concepts corresponding to ten active groups in the Kampocolché community. Traditional organizations are those that were formed from the interests of the Maya peasants and have lasted for decades. These organizations are called as follows: Mayan dignitaries, burn practices in agriculture, communal work, traditional community celebration, Christmas eve, Virgin of Guadalupe celebration, and

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L. B. Vázquez González Community groups Mayan dignitaries 5 Irrigation unit

4

Traditional community celebration

3 Beekeepers Cooperative

2 1

Burn practices in agriculture

0 Communal work

Female group

Christmas Eve

Epiphany Virgin of Guadalupe celebration

Fig. 7.2  Formal and non-formal organizations in traditional Mayan communities. (Source: Elaborated by the author)

Epiphany. The last three refer to the main holidays in the Catholic calendar, according to the Saints who are revered in the Kampocolché community. These parties, as mentioned above, involve all Catholics in the town (above 90% of the population); due to this, roles are assigned each year to those responsible for organizing these events. This is the function of these traditional groups, making sure that all the elements: food, drink, rituals, dances, masses, and prayers occur according to tradition. The group called “burn practices in agriculture,” aims to organize and give burning permits within the community ejido, protecting the safety of people and land, so that controlled burning does not become a fire. The group called “communal work” ensures that people within the community participate in tasks such as cleaning parks, roads, and other areas of common use. This graph shows that the traditional organizations are most solid, while the organizations imposed by external agents have a lower degree of consolidation or are close to disappearing. The group with greatest consolidation is the group of Mayan dignitaries. This is an example of supra-community organization that emerged in the “The caste war” with rebel communities that formed ceremonial centers with religious and military officials (Gabbert, 2011). The Mayan dignitaries are guardians of the Sanctuary of the Holy Cross every day of the year, and they rotate weekly the guard of the sanctuary (Meza, 2012). Other groups whose organizations work and stay are those of the community festivals for the important dates in the catholic calendar. Likewise, agricultural activities involve community work and maintain a traditional form of organization.

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The organizations with difficulties are those whose origin is due to promoters outside the community carrying projects with resources and forcing associations, such as the women’s group, “Beekeepers Coperative” and “Organizing group for the irrigation unit”, which do not respond to genuine interests of the population.

7.3.5  T  he Interaction Between Mayan Multi-Strategy and the Agri-Food Regime Government policies in Mexico aim to convert family farming into a more competitive one that meets the demands of the international market. However, this transformation implies that farmers change their local resources for those imposed by the external market, in order to obtain higher economic returns. The processes of change in honey production are examples of these cultural changes. Government institutions, until 2018, supported the transformation towards intensified beekeeping and organic beekeeping. The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, and Fisheries (SAGARPA for its Spanish acronym) provided cash for the owners of Apis mellifera hives. The United Nations Development Program also supported the implementation of organic beekeeping in the Yucatan Peninsula. Both governmental and international institutions are aligned to the agri-food regime. The theory of cultural control (Bonfil-Batalla, 1991) argues that in an indigenous territory there is a process of cultural control when cultural elements and decisions cease to be within indigenous peoples and become decisions of agents external to them. When indigenous peoples decide to maintain their own cultural elements despite the external pressure to change them, we are talking about a process of resistance. The system of peasant production is a kind of resistance process against the neoliberal agri-food regime. However, new forms of production are introduced into peasant livelihoods. Example of this statement is beekeeping, which displaced the meliponiculture and now is part of the productive system of the Maya. Honey production is now linked to the global market in an inseparable way and its destiny largely depends on the decisions of market and actors outside the communities. Within the peasant livelihoods, we disclose some activities that reveal the passive resistance to the agri-food regime: the cultivation of their food and their forms of organization, both in a traditional way. The set of patterns of adaptation and processes described by Ingram (2015) distinguishes five modes of adaptation between the innovation networks for sustainable agriculture and the agri-food regime. The agricultural practices of the Mayan families adapt partially and in parallel mode with the regime. The production of honey is a practice that is aligned with the productive system, but occasionally seeks to integrate new actors, rules, and interactions. Traditional agriculture and animal husbandry act in parallel mode as the motivations of the peasants are strongly linked to their values.

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Modernization demands that the peasants become a Homo economicus, that is, that they are guided by economically rational decisions and seek to increase their capital and their private assets (Vázquez-González et al., 2016). However, the logic that farmers follow to make their decisions about their productive activities is strongly rooted in their cultural values and their community life. Also, the logic that farmers follow in their multi-strategy is complex because it not only considers factors such as ecological constraints and unforeseen natural events, but also seeks animal and plant diversity (Toledo, Barrera-Bassols, García-Frapolli, & Alarcón-­ Chaires, 2008). Some researchers report between 300 and 500 plant and animal species that the Maya people use in their daily lives (Toledo et al., 2008) in different ways (food, medicine, animal food, and rituals), so multi-strategy pursued by the Maya is not primarily monetary.

7.4  Conclusions Mayan peasants maintain a diversity of productive strategies that are an example of a niche that remains alien to the agri-food regime. The peasant families maintain a production in parallel with the agri-food system since their production of agricultural products is mainly for self-consumption and occasionally they sell them in the local market. Beekeeping interacts with the regime while the peasants allocate most of their production for export. The beekeepers’ cooperatives have not been successful in the production of organic honey due to limitations in their organization and their lack of competitiveness. However, the regulation of certified organic beekeeping limits the endogenous technological innovation and does not take advantage of the indigenous knowledge of the beekeepers. Traditional organizations in Mayan communities remain stronger than imposed organizations. Although cooperatives are the means by peasants could organize themselves to achieve competitiveness in the sale of their agricultural products, it is necessary to transmit to farmers the principles of cooperativism and take advantage of traditional organizations to generate cooperatives that last over time. In this way, they could maintain their community values. Beekeeping provides them with the economic income necessary for their minimum maintenance, they require innovative organizational strategies to achieve greater payment for their products.

References Bonfil-Batalla, G. (1991). La teoría del control cultural en el estudio de los procesos étnicos. Estudios sobre las Culturas Contemporáneas, 4(12), 165–204. Coffey, A., & Atkinson, P. (1996). Making sense of qualitative data: Complementary research strategies. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

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Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2011). Qualitative research manual. Volume 1: The field of qualitative research. Barcelona: Gedisa. Gabbert, W. (2011). Los juzgados indígenas en el sur de México. In V.  Chenaut, M.  Gómez, H. Ortiz, & M. T. Sierra (Eds.), Justicia y diversidad en América Latina: Pueblos indígenas ante la globalización (pp. 443–463). México: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social. González-Acereto, J. A., Quezada-Euán, J. J. G., & Medina-Medina, L. A. (2006). New perspectives for stingless beekeeping in the Yucatan: Results of an integral program to rescue and promote the activity. Journal of Apicultural Research, 45(3), 234–239. Güemes, F. J., Echazarreta, G. C., Villanueva, G. R., Pat, J. M., & Gómez, A. R. (2003). La apicultura en la península de Yucatán. Actividad de subsistencia en un entorno globalizado. Revista Mexicana del Caribe, 8(16), 117–132. Gupta, R.  K. (2014). Technological innovations and emerging issues in beekeeping. In R.  K. Gupta, W. Reybroeck, & J. W. van Veen (Eds.), Beekeeping for poverty alleviation and livelihood security (pp. 507–554). Dordrecht: Springer. Harvey, D. (2006). Neo-liberalism as creative destruction. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 88(2), 145–158. Hernández, M. M. C., & Villaseñor, A. (2014). La calidad en el sistema agroalimentario globalizado. Revista Mexicana de Sociología, 76(4), 557–582. Ingram, J. (2015). Framing niche-regime linkage as adaptation: An analysis of learning and innovation networks for sustainable agriculture across Europe. Journal of Rural Studies, 40, 59–75. Jørgensen, M. W., & Phillips, L. J. (2002). Critical discourse analysis. In M. W. Jørgensen & L. J. Phillips (Eds.), Discourse analysis as theory and method (pp. 60–69). London: SAGE. Martín-Castillo, M. (2016). Milpa y capitalismo: Opciones para los campesinos mayas yucatecos contemporáneos. LiminaR. Estudios Sociales y Humanísticos, 14(2), 101–114. McMichael, P. (2009). A food regime genealogy. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(1), 139–169. Meza, I. (2012). Lengua y cosmovisión. Elementos de resistencia y comunalidad en tres comunidades mayas macehuales de Quintana Roo. Cultura y Representaciones Sociales, 7(13), 96–153. Pat, L. A., Anguebes, F., Pat, J. M., Hernández, P., & Ramos, R. (2018). Condición y perspectivas de la meliponicultura en comunidades mayas de la reserva de la biósfera Los Petenes, Campeche, México. Estudios de Cultura Maya, 52, 227–254. Pechlaner, G., & Otero, G. (2008). The third food regime: Neoliberal globalism and agricultural biotechnology in North America. Sociologia Rural, 48(4), 351–371. Taylor, S.  J., & Bogdan, R. (1987). Introducción a los métodos cualitativos de investigación. Barcelona: Paidós Básica. Toledo, V. M., Barrera-Bassols, N., García-Frapolli, E., & Alarcón-Chaires, P. (2008). Uso múltiple y biodiversidad entre los Mayas Yucatecos (México). Interciencia, 33(5), 345–352. Toscana, A. (2011). Actores sociales en la gestión del territorio y riesgos ambientales en la sierra norte de puebla. Revista Geográfica de América Central, 2, 1–17. Vázquez-González, L. B., Parra-Vázquez, M. R., & Gracia, M. A. (2018). Transformaciones en la agricultura de los mayas peninsulares: Un contraste de los casos de Kampocolché y Xohuayán. Mundo Agrario, 19(41), e084. https://doi.org/10.24215/15155994e084 Vázquez-González, L. B., Parra-Vázquez, M. R., Gracia, M. A., Evangelista-García, A. A., Bello-­ Baltazar, E., & Estrada-Lugo, E. I. J. (2016). Subjectivation processes arising from the implementation of programmes of transition to organic honey production in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Nova Scientia, 8(17), 555–578. Villanueva, R., Roubik, D., & Colli-Ucán, W. (2005). Extinction of Melipona beecheii and traditional beekeeping in the Yucatan Peninsula. Bee World, 86(2), 35–41.

Chapter 8

The Environmental Regime for Climate Change and the Effects of Climatic Variability on Maya Livelihoods in Quintana Roo, Mexico Karina N. Chale Silveira, Minerva Arce Ibarra, and Laura Carrillo Abstract  Climatic variability is affecting rural and indigenous agricultural rainfed systems worldwide. This study aims (a) to determine how the national environmental regime for climate change operates in Quintana Roo, including the Maya Zone; (b) to assess the effects of climatic variability upon Maya livelihoods dependent on agricultural and forestry systems; and (c) to determine whether any of these effects of climatic variability on livelihoods are reflected in public policies at national and state levels. The study used a transdisciplinary approach combining natural and social science theory but also scientific and indigenous knowledge. Our results show that, in Mexico, the national regime for climate change is strongly linked to efforts at the global scale, but weakly linked to those at the local scale. Moreover, it was found that Maya rainfed agricultural and forestry systems are impacted to different degrees by droughts, extreme rains, and hurricanes, with slash-and-burn agriculture (milpa) being highly impacted by all three events. This situation not only affects the food security of the Maya people but also their ancestral cultural practices and indigenous knowledge. Moreover, 20–30% of the interviewees in this study seek alternative employment outside their communities as a coping strategy whenever meteorological events critically affect their livelihoods. The results of the review of both national (PECC) and the state-level (PEACCQROO) programs for climate change show that they currently fail to include specific lines of action on adaptation and mitigation strategies to cope with the effects of climate change on agricultural rainfed systems or its consequences for the rural Maya people. Keywords  Climatic variability · Agricultural rainfed systems · Maya livelihoods · Climate change policy

K. N. Chale Silveira División de Ciencias e Ingeniería, Universidad de Quintana Roo, Chetumal, Mexico M. Arce Ibarra (*) · L. Carrillo Department of Systematic and Aquatic Ecology, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_8

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8.1  Introduction Latin America is not among the world’s poorest regions, but is the most unequal (NU, 2018). Inequality not only refers to cash income, but also to different economic and social aspects of daily life, including inequalities in gender, territorial development, and environmental factors (CEPAL, 2016). Added to these inequalities, climate change and climatic variability impact most severely on the poorest people who live in marginalized areas and have less capacities to cope with these challenges (NU, 2018). Climate change (hereafter CC) and its regional or short-term component, climatic variability, are currently affecting smallholders and traditional agricultural rainfed systems worldwide, with both long- and short-term impacts (Conde, Ferrer, & Orozco, 2006; Jacka, 2016; Márdero-Jiménez, 2011). In Latin America (LA), rural and indigenous people who practice these agricultural systems have to face the frequent loss of staple crops, affecting their food security. In the lowland Maya area of Mexico in particular, where communities have a close dependency on local landscapes for subsistence, Maya campesinos report that “due to environmental changes (e.g., scarcity of rains during the rainy season), the practice of milpa [or slash-and-­ burn agriculture] has become more and more difficult, and that they now practice it at smaller scales” (Puc-Alcocer, Arce-Ibarra, Cortina-Villar, & Estrada-Lugo, 2019, p.  306). Moreover, the Maya people’s knowledge and perceptions of patterns of rainfall and dry seasons indicate that the arrival of the rainy season is now uncertain and frequently delayed compared to the “normal” period they were accustomed to in the past (Infante-Ramírez & Arce-Ibarra, 2019). In some regions of the world, such as the tropical highlands, the impact of CC on people’s livelihoods seems to be less severe than in the lowlands (Byg & Salick, 2009) or in ice-covered lands. In general terms, people present a portfolio of coping and adaptation strategies in response to CC, depending on their particular geographical setting (see Jacka, 2016; Márdero-Jiménez, 2011; Perea Blázquez, 2011). Despite these differences in impact, the literature acknowledges that the short- and medium-term impacts of climatic variability and CC open spaces and opportunities to devise new public policies (CEPAL, 2016). The argument of our study is that the development of these new policies must take CC into account in terms of its effects on society and productive systems, but should also consider the environmental perceptions of the local people (Soares Moraes & Vargas Velázquez, 2012), as well as their cultural practices and worldviews. The latter is because recent research on CC has shown that there is an impact not only on the indigenous people’s food security but also on their ancestral cultural practices and related indigenous knowledge (Infante-Ramírez & Arce-Ibarra, 2019). The global environmental regime for CC, which dictates the “norms, values, and structures of authorities” that must be established by member states of the United Nations (sensu Parra-Vázquez et al. Chap. 1, this volume), comprises several ­entities

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including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC1), the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). On these global platforms, many global-scale negotiations, international conventions, and frameworks have been developed based on scientific evidence from six assessment reports (AR) and several special reports (SR). From these, a multi-level regime for CC is expected to reach national, state, and ultimately municipal adaptation and mitigation programs. In this sense, in addition to coping with problems of poverty and other challenges typical of their unequal development, low- and middle-income countries must now also work on devising adaptation plans for addressing CC mitigation and adaptation (Estenssoro Saavedra, 2010). Mexico endorsed the UNFCCC in 1994 and signed the Kyoto Protocol in 2005. At national level, the regime for CC is represented by the creation of the Inter-­ Secretariat Climate Change Commission (CICC) in 2005. The CICC is led by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) and the National Institute on Ecology and Climate Change (INECC) and was followed by the National Strategy of Climate Change (ENCC), published in 2007. Afterwards, public policy on CC developed formally and the Climate Change Special Program (PECC) for the period 2009–2012 was published (DOF, 2009). The latter entities and programs were created to contribute to the creation of mitigation and adaptation programs at regional levels, organized by productive sectors, health and education into which pre-existing actions with a different origin than the CC programs were integrated. Moreover, the year 2012 saw the commencement of the National General Law of Climate Change (LGCC) and from that date, multiple federal, state and local programs and actions have been developed to support CC policy. With regard to Mexican regions vulnerable to CC, Orellana, Espadas, Conde, & Gay (2009) reported that Quintana Roo has a propensity to suffer damage from CC scenarios, with negative consequences for both livelihoods and biodiversity. To adequately inform the civil society of Quintana Roo about CC issues and public policy, research is required in order to identify how the global regime for CC is applied at national, state (Quintana Roo), and municipal levels. Of particular interest are the marginalized zones where indigenous Maya communities are settled (hereafter referred to as the Maya Zone). Research is also necessary in order to establish whether and to what extent the livelihoods of Maya people, which are dependent on rainfed agricultural and forestry systems are being affected by climatic variability, and if any of these effects are taken into account in current public policies at national and state level. To address these research needs, the specific aims of this study are, (a) to determine how the national environmental regime for CC operates in Quintana Roo, including the Maya Zone; (b) to assess the effects of climatic variability upon Maya livelihoods dependent on agricultural and forestry

1  From here onwards, initials ad acronyms used in this chapter have to do with their original names in English and Spanish, accordingly, and will be used in parenthesis after its full name has been first mentioned.

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systems; and (c) to determine whether any of these effects of climatic variability on livelihoods are reflected in public policies at national and state levels. The first and third objectives are completed using a literature review, while the second is based on social surveys of Maya campesinos who manage rainfed productive systems and are therefore able to perceive and address the impacts of the extreme meteorological events that regularly impact the Maya Zone. The results of this study are useful for decision-makers, policy planners, and academics from local to global levels. They are also useful for the local authorities in Maya communities who need to be informed on how CC policies operate at state and municipal levels, and which new policies are required in the region. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the theoretical framework, including basic concepts used in the study; Sect. 3 introduces the methods used; Sect. 4 presents the research results and discusses their implications; finally, Sect. 5 presents some concluding remarks.

8.2  Theoretical Framework In LA countries where rural communities are entrusted to use and manage the forest, local livelihoods are either fully or partially reliant upon a combination of agricultural and forestry systems. Since the majority of these production systems depend largely on the rainy season, an inherent characteristic of them is seasonality. This imposes a dynamic pattern, implying an uncertain production system and therefore uncertainty surrounding household incomes (Berstein, 1992). These processes occur in the Maya Zone of Quintana Roo, where livelihoods depend on a combination of rainfed agricultural and forestry systems (Bello Baltazar, Estrada-Lugo, Macario-Mendoza, Segundo-Cabello, & Sánchez-Pérez, 2002). The Maya people represent a thousand-year-old culture with an indigenous knowledge and belief system regarding the use and management of agricultural and rainforest systems (Toledo & Barrera-Bassols, 2008; Estrada-Lugo, 2011). With regard to the milpa, first the ancient and now the modern Maya people are skilled in the management of fire during traditional agricultural burning (Nigh & Diemont, 2013; García et al., Chap. 6, this volume). Moreover, research carried out in rural Maya communities report that, throughout the year, several Maya cultural practices—ritual and ceremonies—are closely related to the production of corn in milpa plots (Bello Baltazar & Estrada-Lugo, 2011; Velazco-Té, 1999). In years of drought, rituals and ceremonies invoking rain form an essential part of these practices, demonstrating that droughts have been a feature of the Maya culture throughout history (Scarborough, 1998). With regard to epistemology, our study used a combination of several theoretical lenses to create new knowledge, including “bridging” or interdisciplinary concepts with which to connect them (Arce-Ibarra & Gastelú-Martínez, 2007). The various fields of knowledge used in this study are development studies, policy sciences, meteorology, geography, social anthropology, and the knowledge of the Maya people. The rationale behind the use of these fields is as follows. The first field is due

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to an interest in putting the poorest first (Chambers, 2013) as well as making the marginalized indigenous Maya people more visible. The second field is to discuss the importance and necessity of devising new CC policies in Quintana Roo; the third is in order to understand the general context of weather and climate change (Neelin, 2010); the fourth is because our research uses the Maya people’s environmental perception of climatic variability through perception geography (VaraMuñoz, 2008); and the fifth and sixth fields serve to include the local people’s view in our research, as well as their indigenous knowledge, with their own concepts, categories of classification, measurements, and values (Puc-Alcocer et al., 2019). Through the lens of development studies, our study uses the interdisciplinary concept of livelihood (Arce-Ibarra & Gastelú-Martínez, 2007), which connects all of the remaining involved fields of knowledge. This can be defined as a way of life that includes secure rights and reliable access to local resources and wage-income; such that the stocks and flows of food, and social justice required to meet basic needs are maintained and enhanced in the long term (Arce-Ibarra, 2007). According to Berstein (1992), rural livelihoods are those most often exposed to stress and shock. Stress refers to temporary or continuous perturbations to livelihoods, which are cumulative and to some extent predictable; e.g., reduced soil yields, environmental degradation and declining rainfall, among others (Chambers & Conway, 1992). Shock refers to perturbations that are sudden, unexpected and traumatic, such as droughts and hurricanes (Chambers & Conway, 1992). In the common property (“ejidos”) of the Maya Zone, the two concepts can be readily exemplified as follows. Since 2002, researchers have reported that milpa yields are gradually declining in the area, leading to growing concern among the local people. Hence, rural Maya people are coping with a stress related to diminishing yields of their milpa (Bello Baltazar et al., 2002). In addition, the fieldwork and observations of Arce-Ibarra (2007) recorded in 2004 and 2005 noted that Maya Zone livelihoods were severely affected by shocks in the form of droughts. With respect to policy sciences, our study uses the concept of public policy, which usually varies according to cultural contexts and political regimes, but a general definition would be “a meeting of State rationality with social will” (Cabrero-­ Mendoza, 2000, p. 193). In terms of theory on meteorology, several concepts must be introduced. We refer to weather as the state of the atmosphere and ocean at a given moment in time, while climate is defined as the average condition of the atmosphere, ocean, land surfaces, and the ecosystems that inhabit them. In this sense, the interconnectedness of the climate system implies that it requires global study (Neelin, 2010). Climate changes through time, for instance, from 1 year (or decade) to another, and anomalous fluctuations (above or below) in the average values, known as climatic variability (Neelin, 2010), can be observed. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of climate change is referred to as a significant global change, mainly in temperature, wind patterns, precipitation, and sea level rise, producing very wide climatic variability with extended drought periods, extreme rains, and more frequent and severe hurricanes. In summary, our study combines natural and social science theory but also scientific and indigenous knowledge. It is located within the disciplinary-­

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transdisciplinary continuum that can be useful when addressing complex problems (Choi & Pak, 2006; Max-Neef, 2005; Said et al., 2019). In particular, our research seeks a transformation of current CC policies by means of a government-academiasociety transdisciplinary dialogue (Parra-Vázquez et al., Chap.1, this volume).

8.3  Methods 8.3.1  Study Area This research was carried out in the Maya Zone of Quintana Roo state, Mexico, which comprises well-conserved tracts of rainforest located within a karstic landscape in which the only sources of water are small lakes and water-filled sinkholes (“cenotes”). The Maya Zone is composed of four municipios, in which nearly 60% of its total population can speak the Maya language. Our study was carried out in Noh cah and X-Maben (Fig. 8.1), two rural common property or ejidos (hereafter ejidos), located in the municipio of Felipe Carrillo Puerto that in terms of poverty, present medium to high degrees of marginalization (INEGI, 2010). Ejido Noh cah presents a single, eponymous community with 75 inhabitants (INEGI, 2010). Its land area is 2600 ha, with 28 recognized common property holders (“ejidatarios”) who form the top authority (“Asamblea general”) of the ejido. This authority is responsible for decision-making regarding the access, use, and management of land for rainfed agriculture and forestry activities. X-Maben is composed of seven communities; it has a land area of 73,400  ha, with 482 common property holders forming the top authority of the ejido. Details pertaining to the total area and location of milpa plots for both studied ejidos have been published elsewhere (Puc-Alcocer et al., 2019). In this study area, three overlapping seasons can be observed per year (Arce-Ibarra & Charles, 2008): “dry” (February to May), “rainy” (June to October), and northerly cold fronts or “nortes” (November to February).

8.3.2  Approach Our research used an observational, qualitative case study approach (de Vaus, 1999) including a portfolio of research methods such as social surveys—with in situ open and semi-structured interviews, participant observation and field-diary recordings, field trips to visit the productive areas in the forest, and a review of secondary sources. The latter included previously published and unpublished research carried out in the study area, and reviews of documents of the CC regime and associated public policy. Moreover, the impacts of climatic variability on Maya livelihoods dependent on agricultural and forestry systems were assessed, considering three

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Fig. 8.1  Study area. Ejidos Noh cah and X-Maben in Quintana Roo. The Sian K’aan Biosphere Reserve is located nearby. (Source: Compiled by Saida Ochoa Huchin (ECOSUR))

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extreme meteorological events that occur in the study area, including droughts, hurricanes, and extreme rain events.

8.3.3  Field Studies The Noh cah and X-Maben ejidos were visited in early February 2015, when their respective authorities granted previous and informed consent to undertake this study on their lands. The main fieldwork was carried out from February to August 2015 and the literature review of public policy on CC was conducted during 2017 and 2018. Fieldwork was divided into two stages and had the assistance of a campesino guidetranslator (Maya-Spanish). During the first stage, an exploratory social survey was completed in the Noh cah community. This survey examined whether the Maya people had local terminology referring to different aspects of weather in the Maya language. The information recorded in this stage is currently published elsewhere (InfanteRamírez & Arce-Ibarra, 2019) and served two purposes; firstly, to assist the guidetranslator who would then know how to address his translation context, and secondly for the production and application of the final questionnaire as part of the second stage. All interviewees also individually granted prior and informed consent to participate in the research. We used two criteria in order to select participants from the two studied ejidos; in Noh cah, the criterion was to invite people who pursued any productive primary activity in the rainforest (including milpa, bee-keeping, hunting, latex— “chicle”—harvesting, and fishing, among others). However, since the single community of Noh cah only presented 22 households in which the heads pursue primary activities in the rainforest, all heads of households were invited to participate in the research. In X-Maben, in addition to the criterion used to select participants in Noh cah, a second criterion was applied. This involved the selection of heads of households who had previously participated in research carried out by Arce-Ibarra (2007) and Arce-Ibarra (2004 and 2005, unpublished data) in which a qualitative study was conducted to assess the impact of hurricanes on the livelihoods of 63 households of this ejido. During these years, this author also recorded Maya discourse and knowledge concerning droughts. These 63 previously studied households in X-Maben were therefore visited in order to invite them to participate in the present research. To have a complete picture of their livelihoods, the interviewees were first asked to list all activities they pursued throughout the year. Our research team then asked the interviewees which of their listed livelihoods could be potentially impacted by the three extreme meteorological events in question.

8.3.4  Data Analysis Following de Vaus (1999), data collected from the social surveys were compiled in a matrix by cases (interviewees) and variables (i.e., the topics covered by the research objectives). To estimate the impacts of droughts, extreme rains, and hurri-

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canes on livelihoods, interviewees were asked whether, and to what extent, these phenomena had an impact on their annual list of livelihoods. To assess the degree of impact of the three events, a simple Likert-scale was devised, in which the numbers 0, 1, 2, and 3 represented different levels of impact on livelihoods, as follows. A value of 0 signified no impact; 1, a low impact; 2, moderate impact; and 3, high impact.

8.4  Results and Discussion 8.4.1  T  he Environmental Regime for Climate Change in Quintana Roo In accordance with the eighth Article of the LGCC, which establishes that states should devise, conduct, and assess public policy on CC in alignment with national policies (DOF, 2012), our study found that in order to coordinate national and state policies and actions on the prevention and mitigation of GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emissions, as well as actions on CC adaptation, the Government of Quintana Roo established the state’s Commission on CC (Comisión Estatal sobre Cambio Climático de Quintana Roo) in 2010 (Pereira Corona, Prezas Hernández, Olivares Mendoza, Fragoso Servón, & Niño Torres, 2013). Moreover, in 2013, both the Law for Action on CC in the state of Quintana Roo (Ley de Acción de Cambio Climático en el Estado de Quintana Roo) and the State Program of Action in response to CC (PEACCQROO) were published (Pereira Corona et al., 2013). To show how the different levels of the regime for CC were interconnected, we devised a timeline (Fig. 8.2) detailing the establishment of the regime for CC from global to municipal level. Figure 8.2 shows a CC program (called REDD+) that reached two municipios of the Maya Zone, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, and José María Morelos, which together referred to in this figure as the Maya Zone (Fig. 8.2). Since 1990, the IPCC has produced biannual Assessment Reports (AR) (Fig. 8.2) in which the global CC situation is described and delivered to all member countries of the UNFCCC.  In this regard, all members of UNFCCC are informed on the CC issues and are expected in turn to inform civil society. In the last decade, the civil societies of high-income countries have been actively participating in themes and issues pertaining to CC. Likewise, in some LA countries such as Brazil, civil society (i.e., NGOs and social movements) has been informed on CC themes and policy and has therefore become organized with respect to CC issues (Kiessling, 2019). This type of civil organization and participation does not yet occur in Mexico, where the norms and laws on CC are devised by the legislative power composed by deputies and senators. Issues pertaining to this topic are discussed primarily in academic arenas and by economic elites (Sosa Rodríguez, 2015), but CC themes and issues do not seem to appear in either the

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Fig. 8.2  The regime for climate change over time and across scales, from global to local. (Source: Compiled by the authors using literature review)

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social movement scene or the rural sector (see Soares Moraes & Vargas Velázquez, 2012). For instance, in general assembly meetings in the Maya ejidos of Quintana Roo, common property holders frequently claim monetary compensation from the government whenever a new highway crosses their land, but the topic and issues of CC do not seem to feature in their claims, despite the fact that droughts and hurricanes frequently impact their livelihoods (Chale-Silveira, 2016). Despite the low participation of civil society in CC issues, our study found several CC initiatives launched in Quintana Roo (Fig. 8.2). Since this state has wellconserved areas of rainforest, one particularly clear action of CC mitigation that has reached local actors in the Maya Zone is that of pilot projects derived from the international framework of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) (Moure Peña, 2013). It has been reported that 12% of global GHG emissions are related to agriculture, therefore REDD+ was established to reduce tropical deforestation, but also has implications for rural development and adaptation to CC, particularly in vulnerable areas of the world. Moreover, in relation to carbon sequestration by forests, at national level, the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR) adopted and operates the REDD+ program that now reaches several rural areas in Mexico. In this regard, the Consultative Technical Council for REDD+ was established in Quintana Roo in 2012 (Pereira Corona et al., 2013). To investigate the performance of the REDD+ pilot projects launched in the Maya Zone, Moure Peña (2013) carried out field studies in four of these projects. After interviewing Maya campesinos from four ejidos (two each in the municipios of Felipe Carrillo Puerto and José María Morelos), the author reports that few people actually understand what an REDD+ project involves. This result demonstrates that there is still a need for further dissemination of the purpose of the REDD+ projects in the Maya Zone. Moreover, streaming of these projects should be carried out in both Spanish and Maya languages. We found one more CC initiative that is considered a public policy: the National Program against Drought (PRONACOSE), which entered into force in 2013. This is aimed at devising programs with measures and strategies to prevent and cope with drought at the watershed level (Arreguín-Cortés, López-Pérez, Ortega-Gaucin, & Ibañez-Hernández, 2016). It is a regional instrument, which is coordinated in this case by the Yucatan Peninsula Watershed Council (CCPY) with members from Quintana Roo, Campeche, and Yucatan states. At the national level, PRONACOSE operates under the legal umbrella of the General Law of CC (CONAGUA, 2018) while at the global level it is related to the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Convention against Desertification (UNCCD).

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8.4.2  E  ffects of Climatic Variability on Maya Livelihoods Dependent on Agricultural and Forestry Systems In Noh cah, 22 households were visited, but only 19 of these were inhabited. These heads of household were therefore invited to participate in the study. Of the 19, only 14 (73.7%), of ages ranging from 37 to 85 years, accepted the invitation. Of those who accepted, 13 were men and 1 was a woman. In X-Maben, 63 households were visited but only 58 were currently inhabited by people who had participated in the previous research. These 58 heads of households were therefore invited to participate in the study, of which only 39 (67.2%) accepted the invitation. Their age range was 37–73 years. Of those who accepted, 33 (84.6%) were men and 6 (15.4%) were women. 8.4.2.1  Maya Livelihoods in Rural Settings Our study recorded a total of 34 livelihoods in the two studied ejidos. Of these, 30 were recorded in X-Maben and 23 in Noh cah (Table 8.1). In both cases, livelihoods were grouped into the following five categories: (a) primary activities; (b) secondary activities, (c) tertiary activities, (d) work outside of the community, and (e) welfare programs, which we refer to as governmental subsidies (Table 8.1). Of the entire list of livelihoods, only 18 and 26  in Noh cah and X-Maben, respectively, could be affected by extreme meteorological events; thus, only these livelihoods were considered in the present assessment. According to our results, the most frequent livelihood pursued by interviewees of the two ejidos was the milpa (Table 8.1). Our results also demonstrate that interviewees primarily base their livelihoods on a portfolio of primary activities, with eleven activities recorded in X-Maben and ten in Noh cah (Table 8.1). Among these, the three most frequently pursued livelihoods in both ejidos were the milpa, domestic livestock rearing (e.g., chickens, turkeys, pigs) and orchards or domestic gardens. The livelihoods of many people from the Maya Zone are based on primary activities; in this regard, with the impact of ongoing processes of climatic variability and CC on this area, these have become impacted in different degrees (Infante-Ramírez & Arce-Ibarra, 2019). There are several hypotheses to explain the diversification of rural livelihoods. One of these considers that livelihood diversification is a way to take into account the seasonality of the resource base (Berstein, 1992). Another hypothesis regards livelihood diversification as a result of the impoverishment of people by ill-planned public policy and development (Ramos Pérez, Parra Vázquez, Hernández Daumás, Herrera Hernández, & Nahed Toral, 2009), contending that more impoverished and marginalized people seek to increase their range of livelihoods. Our study suggests that, since the degree of marginalization increased in the Maya Zone from 2005 to 2010 (INEGI 2005, 2010), a combination of the latter two hypotheses is the most likely explanation of current livelihood diversification in this area. Nevertheless, since the design of our study does not allow us to test this hypothesis, we suggest its further exploration in future studies.

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Table 8.1  Livelihoods of the heads of household (including Governmental subsidies) in Noh cah and X-Maben No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Livelihoods Primary activities Milpa Domestic livestock rearing Orchards Palm leaves gathering Hunting Bee-keeping Freshwater fishing Vegetable cultivation Pole gathering Livestock farming Latex (“chicle”) harvesting Secondary activities Mow the lawn Carpenter Butcher Tertiary activities Bricklayer Grocery store Handmade crafts Work as local authority Motorcycle repair Foreman Employee Cargo carrier Field guide Baker Tailor Taxi driver Riffle repair Bicycle repair Work outside of the community Migratory work Remittances Governmental subsidies “Procampo” “Prospera” “Sin hambre” “Compensación de adultos mayores”

Noh cah (n = 14)

X-Maben (n = 39)

14 11 9 7 6 3 6 3 1 1 0

34 29 31 11 11 10 5 4 7 5 1

5 0 0

24 1 1

4 2 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

8 7 15 0 0 0 5 3 2 1 1 1 1 1

2 1

11 0

13 12 2 3

32 30 7 4

Source: Elaborated by the authors with data obtained during fieldwork

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In most of the rural areas of Mexico, campesinos and other rural farmers pursue multiple livelihoods on a yearly basis. For instance, research carried out in the Maya highlands with the Tzeltal people, and in Oaxaca with the Zapotec people, report that while they depend heavily on local resources, they pursue multiple livelihoods including milpa, coffee growing, and orchards (Peña-Azcona, Estrada-Lugo, Arce-­ Ibarra, & Bello, 2020; Ramos Pérez et al., 2009). 8.4.2.2  Impacts of Droughts on Livelihoods As stated above, the dry season in this area lasts from February to May and is followed by the rainy season. However, Maya campesinos report that “for several decades now, rains don’t arrive on time” (interview with C.E. in 2004 by ­Arce-­Ibarra unpublished fieldwork). This means that, during some years, the dry season extends beyond May and produces a drought. In the following paragraphs, we introduce our results of examining the impact of droughts on livelihoods in the two studied ejidos. In Noh cah, the interviewees acknowledged that, of the 18 livelihoods recorded in their ejido that could be affected by meteorological events, 11 (or 61.1%) could be impacted during droughts, with low to high degrees of impact severity (Fig. 8.3). Despite the fact that drought can impact primary, secondary, and tertiary activities, the impact on primary activities encompasses nine of the ten associated activities reported in table (Table 8.1). Among these, milpa, livestock farming, and orchards are those that could suffer a high impact (Fig. 8.3), while the remainder could suffer low to moderate impacts.

Level of Impact

3

2

1

0

Livelihoods Fig. 8.3  Impact of droughts on livelihoods in Noh cah. A value of 0 signified no impact; 1, a low impact; 2, moderate impact; and 3, high impact. (Source: Elaborated by the authors with data obtained during fieldwork)

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Level of Impact

3

2

1

0

Livelihoods

Fig. 8.4  Impact of droughts on livelihoods in X-Maben. A value of 0 signified no impact; 1, a low impact; 2, moderate impact; and 3, high impact. (Source: Elaborated by the authors with data obtained during fieldwork)

The interviewees in X-Maben acknowledged that, of the 26 livelihoods in their ejido that could be affected by meteorological events, 17 (or 65.4%) could be impacted during droughts, with low to high degrees of impact severity (Fig. 8.4). Among all affected livelihoods, the primary activities are those that could be most strongly affected, with all eleven activities being affected during droughts. Among these, six activities are those that could suffer high impact (level 3  in Fig. 8.4), whereas the remainder could suffer from low to high impacts. Droughts are considered frequent events that historically have impacted on several regions of Mexico, most often resulting in the loss of crops. Our study did not assess the type of droughts that the Maya people have coped with. In this regard, future studies addressing droughts in the Maya Zone should also use hard data and scientific variables to assess which drought types (i.e., within the classification of moderate to exceptional drought) (CONAGUA, 2018) have impacted Quintana Roo over recent decades. This type of research could help to better understand the dynamics of the drought phenomenon and elucidate its potential consequences for rural people and their productive systems. 8.4.2.3  Impacts of Extreme Rainy Events on Livelihoods Extreme rain events occur whenever the rainy season extends beyond its expected period (June–September)—as was the case in the year 2013—or whenever the rains within a given season are very abundant. In this case, the interviewees of Noh cah commented that 14 (or 77.8%) of their 18 livelihoods are usually affected during extreme rains, with moderate to high degrees of impact severity (Fig. 8.5). With respect to the impacts on primary activities, these could encompass all of the ten recorded activities

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Level of impact

3 2 1

Ba

cky

ard

live

sto

ck

rea rin g

0

Livelihoods

Fig. 8.5  Impact of extreme rainy events on livelihoods in Noh cah. A value of 0 signified no impact; 1, a low impact; 2, moderate impact; and 3, high impact. (Source: Elaborated by the authors with data obtained during fieldwork)

Level of Impact

3 2 1 0

Liveli hoods Fig. 8.6  Impact of extreme rainy events on livelihoods in X-Maben. A value of 0 signified no impact; 1, a low impact; 2, moderate impact; and 3, high impact. (Source: Elaborated by the authors with data obtained during fieldwork)

(Fig. 8.5). Among these, milpa and five other livelihoods are those that could suffer a high impact, whereas the remainder could suffer moderate impacts (Fig. 8.5). With respect to the impact of extreme rains on livelihoods in X-Maben, the interviewees responded that 24 (92.3%) of their 26 livelihoods are usually affected during this type of event, with low to high degrees of impact severity (Fig.  8.6).

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Moreover, all of their eleven primary activities could be affected. Of these activities, there are nine, including milpa, that could suffer a high impact, whereas the remainder could suffer moderate impacts (Fig. 8.6). 8.4.2.4  Impact of Hurricanes on Livelihoods With regard to the impact of hurricanes on livelihoods in Noh cah, the interviewees commented that 15 (or 83.3%) of 18 livelihoods could be affected, with moderate to high impact severity (Fig. 8.7). Moreover, all their ten records of primary activities could be affected. Among these, all activities, except fishing, could suffer high impact (Fig. 8.7). In X-Maben, hurricanes could impact 23 (or 88.5%) of the livelihoods (Fig. 8.8). The impact severity ranges from little to high impact. Similarly to what was recorded in Noh cah, all primary activities in X-Maben, except freshwater fishing, could suffer a high impact whenever a hurricane hits the area (Fig. 8.8). In summary, our results regarding people’s perceptions in the pursuit of primary activities in the Maya Zone show that, in Noh cah, the three analyzed meteorological events, droughts, extreme rains, and hurricanes, impacted 61.1%, 77.8%, and 83.3% of livelihoods, respectively. In X-Maben, the same events impacted 65.4%, 92.3%, and 88.5% of livelihoods, respectively. Moreover, primary activities can be impacted by the three events to different degrees, with milpa being highly impacted in all three cases, thus affecting the Maya subsistence food base. With respect to the

Level of impact

3 2 1 0

Livelihoods Fig. 8.7  Impact of hurricanes on livelihoods in Noh cah. A value of 0 signified no impact; 1, a low impact; 2, moderate impact; and 3, high impact. (Source: Elaborated by the authors with data obtained during fieldwork)

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Level of Impact

3 2 1 0

Livelihoods

Fig. 8.8  Impact of hurricanes on livelihoods in X-Maben. A value of 0 signified no impact; 1, a low impact; 2, moderate impact; and 3, high impact. (Source: Elaborated by the authors with data obtained during fieldwork)

three most frequent livelihoods pursued by the interviewees (milpa, orchard, and domestic livestock rearing), the highest impact would be felt when a hurricane hits the area, with these three livelihoods impacted to a high degree in both studied ejidos. During extreme rains and droughts, the impacts on those livelihoods varied, with the second and third highest impacts in both ejidos being felt with extreme rains and extended droughts, respectively. Worldwide research on CC and climatic variability in the context of livelihoods show that these impacts are global (Hastrup, 2016). For instance, research carried out on the perceptions of rural farmers in several countries, including Papua New Guinea and Tibet, report that extreme meteorological events (e.g., frost and drought) and the El Niño Southern Oscillation affect local people’s food base, causing shocks for rural people (see Byg & Salick, 2009; Jacka, 2016). Overall, several prognostics of CC and climatic variability scenarios for the Yucatan Peninsula suggest that temperatures will continue to increase and that rainfall patterns will be erratic, most likely with declining quantities of rainfall (Orellana et  al., 2009). The impacts recorded in our study are therefore most likely to continue in the short and medium terms. For this reason, the Maya people and other rural communities of Quintana Roo require capacity building in terms of the topic of CC and awareness of what the future scenarios of CC are likely to be in this region in the next decade or two (Infante-Ramírez & Arce-Ibarra, 2019). 8.4.2.5  Local Responses to Climatic Variability Given the ongoing process of global CC, rural people must adopt coping and adaptive strategies for survival (Jacka, 2016). In this regard, our research also examined whether the interviewees migrate or leave their communities in search of an alterna-

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Table 8.2  Number of interviewees from Noh cah who look for alternative jobs outside their community as a coping strategy during extreme meteorological events Response “Yes” “No” Number of interviewees

Droughts 4 (28.6%) 10 (71.4%) 14

Extreme rainy events 5 (35.7%) 9 (64.3%) 14

Hurricanes 4 (30.8%) 9 (69.2%) 13a

Subtotal of people across columns 13 28

In one interview, the response was Not Ascertained (NA) Source: Elaborated by the authors with data obtained during fieldwork

a

Table 8.3  Number of interviewees from X-Maben who look for alternative employment outside their community as a coping strategy during extreme meteorological events Response “Yes” “No” Number of interviewees

Droughts 7 (17.5%) 33 (82.5%) 40

Extreme rainy events 4 (10.0%) 36 (90.0%) 40

Hurricanes 9 (22.5%) 31 (77.5%) 40

Subtotal of people across columns 20 100

Source: Elaborated by the authors with data obtained during fieldwork

tive livelihood as a coping strategy following an impact on their livelihoods by any of the three meteorological events analyzed. In both ejidos, the interviewees responded to a closed question—“yes” or “no.” Most of the people of Noh cah commented that it is unusual for them to leave their community to seek alternative employment once their livelihoods have been affected by extreme meteorological events. However, under critical circumstances, whenever the majority of their livelihoods had been affected, nearly 30% of interviewees responded affirmatively to our question (Table 8.2). In total, 13 people from Noh cah responded that if their livelihoods were critically affected by extreme meteorological events, they would leave their community in search of an alternative livelihood (Table 8.2). Of this sample, three people commented that their alternative livelihood could be to “mow the lawn” (“chapeo” using a machete) in neighboring communities. Moreover, some would move to tourist centers (such as Playa del Carmen, Puerto Morelos, and Akumal) to work constructing huts (similar to their traditional Maya houses) for use as restaurants. Some other people responded that they do seek alternative work such as motorcycle repairs, whereas others would move to tourist centers to work as bricklayers. In X-Maben, a total of 20 people (or 20%) responded that they leave their community to seek an alternative livelihood whenever their livelihoods are critically affected by meteorological events (Table 8.3). Of this sample, seven people commented that they would seek work as bricklayers, either in the city of Felipe Carrillo Puerto or in tourist areas such as Playa del Carmen and Tulum. Other alternative livelihoods included working in greenhouses in Carrillo Puerto City or gathering and selling “poles,” plus building huts in tourist centers such as

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Playa del Carmen. With regard to people coping with a delayed rainy season in order to pursue milpa, recent research reports that Maya people have also modified their labor schedule at their milpa plots, including moving the sowing periods from May to July–August (Infante-Ramírez & Arce-Ibarra, 2019).

8.4.3  A  re There Public Policies in Quintana Roo to Mitigate the Climatic Variability’s Effects on the Maya People’s Livelihoods? For several decades, the Maya communities of Quintana Roo, and the agricultural and forestry systems on which they depend, have been studied in many academic publications; however, apart from the doctoral thesis of Infante-Ramírez (in prep), we found no study that had specifically assessed the impacts of CC and climatic variability on these systems. Our study found that the regime for CC currently operating in Quintana Roo and the Maya Zone is aligned with national and global initiatives. Therefore, the national and Quintana Roo state laws on CC together constitute the legal instruments which will support the planning and devising of new public CC mitigation and adaptation policies, as suggested by CEPAL (2016). Considering our research objectives, the review of both the national and state special programs on CC revealed the following. The latest PECC 2014–2018 (DOF, 2014) does consider two objectives that deal with productive sectors. Objective 1 was established: to reduce the vulnerability of the population and the productive sectors as well as to increment their resiliency and resistance of the strategic ­infrastructure (DOF, 2014). This program includes strategy number 1.4, which was devised “to promote adaptation actions in the productive sectors” (DOF, 2014, p. 31); however, its five corresponding lines of action do not explicitly consider or even mention campesinos and small farmers (or non-mechanized agriculture), for whom production is dependent on the rainy season. Such rural farmers are found across Mesoamerica, including the karstic lands of the Yucatan Peninsula. Moreover, the PECC’s Objective 2 was established “to increase the productivity of workers and corporations as well as the producers in the country.” In this case, strategy number 2.4 was devised “to establish integral programs aimed at increasing the productivity of rural producers, principally of smallholders.” However, the only line of action associated with this strategy deals solely with the improvement of the producers’ infrastructure in order to improve market access. In turn, the PEACCQROO contains four objectives to be met in Quintana Roo. Of those, the objective most closely related to our research is the first, which aims “to establish strategies and lines of action in the short, medium and long term to prevent and mitigate the adverse effects of climate change in Quintana Roo” (Pereira Corona et al., 2013, p. 3). In general terms, this document was devised considering the CC scenarios for the Yucatan Peninsula reported by Orellana et al. (2009). From the latter study, the PEACCQROO considered two extreme climatic scenarios for

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which society in Quintana Roo should be prepared. The first is a scenario of extreme dryness located in the western portion of the state, and the second relates to a general increase in rainfall in the southern part of the state. From these, this program considered the four following extreme events for which the future lines of action of Quintana Roo on CC must be appropriate, namely (a) hurricanes, (b) storm surges, (c) flooding, and (d) fires. In order for people to adapt to the impacts of those four extreme events, the PEACCQROO recommends promoting the use of greenhouses and using an alternative agricultural technique called slash-and-chop cultivation (“roza-tumba pica”). The latter implies a move from the traditional pursuit of milpa (slash-and-burn cultivation) to this alternative farming technique. Moreover, for enhanced food security in the Maya communities, promotion of the traditional Maya orchards and gardens (see Caballero, 1992) is encouraged, as well as sowing of cultivars in the backyards of Maya households. The program also recommends encouraging community savings in order to cope with future impacts as well as creating a fund to be used for disaster prevention and recovery strategies. In the Civil Protection (“Protección Civil”) sector, the plan recommends improving the alert system for extreme meteorological events, as well as building more hurricane refuges. Finally, it acknowledges that there is still a need to review and reinforce the legal framework on CC and highlights the need to align sectoral programs related to economic, social, and environmental aspects that are currently implemented by different state ministries of Quintana Roo. Our study regards the PEACCQROO as a baseline of actions on CC for Quintana Roo. However, in view of our results on the impact of climatic variability on Maya livelihoods, an updated PEACCQROO would need to devise more specific lines of action on several themes, notably capacity building and raising awareness of the vulnerability of rural and urban communities to CC. Moreover, it must consider the impacts of droughts on Quintana Roo and the rural settings in which milpa is pursued. More importantly, it should acknowledge and include the importance of the legacy of Maya culture and the vulnerability of the rural Maya communities, in which, according to INEGI (2005, 2010), levels of poverty have increased from 2005 to 2010. The current version of PEACCQROO does not acknowledge the global relevance of indigenous cultures of Quintana Roo, despite the fact that Mexico not only endorsed the global regime on CC, but also the international agreement 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO) (ILO, 1989). Therein, the ILO recognizes the rights of indigenous people to be consulted, as well as to permit their participation in initiatives that involve their own well-being and development. Indeed, before implementing any alternative farming such as slash-andchop cultivation, which would replace the ancestral Maya milpa, the Maya people must be informed and consulted. This is due to the fact that recent research reports that the milpa of the Maya Zone is part of the Maya’s customary law, which is acknowledged as such in the Mexican constitution (see Estrada-Lugo, Bello, & García Contreras, 2006; García et al., Chap. 6, this volume). The results of our study can be regarded as an input to the PEACCQROO published in 2013. They contribute to the line of action on generation of scientific infor-

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mation to further the knowledge regarding adaptation to CC and integrated risk management (Pereira Corona et al., 2013, p. 76). They also contribute to the research program in the National Program against Drought (PRONACOSE), particularly in terms of studies into the perception of droughts (CONAGUA, 2018). The frank response to the question posed in the heading of the present section (Are there public policies in Quintana Roo to mitigate the climatic variability’s effects on the Maya people’s Livelihoods?) is no. To date, although there are several programs for CC, including the REDD+ launched in Quintana Roo, we found no public policy targeted towards mitigation of the impact of CC on livelihoods in the Maya Zone. This is not to say that the government fails to provide support to people whenever extreme meteorological events occur in Quintana Roo. Indeed, the Government of Quintana Roo and the Civil Protection (Protección Civil) sector provide very good support to urban and rural communities whenever extreme meteorological events get close to or hit the state; however, the discussion here is centered on devising new public policy for CC as suggested by CEPAL (2016). In view of our results and the current contents of the PECC and PEACCQROO documents, our study further contributes in providing the following recommendations. At national level, we propose that the next updated PECC (DOF, 2014) should review strategy number 1.4, “to promote adaptation actions in the productive sectors,” in order to include explicit actions for small farmers managing rainfed agricultural systems in Mexico. The suggested modification to this strategy should take into consideration the new information and data on people’s environmental perceptions as well as the campesinos and small farmers productive sectors, which have been reported by academia in the last two decades (e.g., Chale-Silveira, 2016; Conde et al., 2006; Infante-Ramírez & Arce-Ibarra, 2019; Márdero-Jiménez, 2011; Perea Blázquez, 2011; Schroth et al., 2009). At state level, we support CEPAL’s recommendation in terms of devising new policies to address the CC issue. These policies should consider that all rural people practicing non-mechanized cultivation and ancestral Maya milpa in Quintana Roo are vulnerable in terms of food security, to the decreasing rainfall patterns suggested by Orellana et al. (2009). Moreover, in order to devise public policies that take into account the needs of people (Soares Moraes & Vargas Velázquez, 2012) and because Mexico has endorsed agreement 169 of the ILO, the rural and Maya communities should actively participate in policy development. Indeed, local communities are well aware of their local contexts and traditions and can therefore provide input for policies that are sensitive to cultural practices and worldviews. In devising these new policies, there should be transversal communication among federal, state, municipal, and local authorities. It would also be useful to invite other stakeholders such as the private sector, academia, and NGOs, as well as experts in policy planning.

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8.5  Concluding Remarks Our results show that in Mexico, the national regime for CC is strongly linked to efforts at the global scale but weakly linked to those at the local scale. Despite this, the national and Quintana Roo state laws on CC together constitute the legal instruments that will support the planning and devising of new public policies on CC mitigation and adaptation (see CEPAL, 2016). The global regime for CC, through the IPCC, produces a biannual Assessment Report (AR) in which the worldwide situation pertaining to CC is introduced and delivered to all member countries of the UNFCCC. In this regard, Mexico and all UNFCCC members are informed on the CC issue and are expected to inform their respective civil societies on this matter. Compared to news from other sectors, for instance, the daily news on the Mexican economy and its Gross Domestic Product, CC themes are scarcely addressed by the national and Quintana Roo state media. Despite this situation, Maya campesinos who have observed the weather and climate for decades, perceive that the rainy season is scarce and no longer arrives in time to be useful to the production of staple food in the Maya Zone. Therefore, despite the fact that people are inadequately informed by the news media about CC, they are aware of the ongoing process of regional climatic variability. With respect to the results of the effects of climatic variability on Maya livelihoods dependent on agricultural and forestry systems, this study shows that the Maya people pursue multiple livelihoods throughout the year, the most frequent of which are milpa, orchards and domestic livestock rearing. Moreover, from their own life experience in pursuing primary activities in the rainforest and in their households (domestic livestock rearing and orchards), the interviewees were able to assess the degree of impact severity that droughts, extreme rains, and hurricanes have on their livelihoods. It was found that, of all of the listed livelihoods, primary activities could be impacted by the three events to different degrees, with milpa being highly impacted in the three cases. The milpa is also one of the key cultural practices of the Maya Zone as well as an essential part of the Maya customary law. With respect to national and state CC policies, we recommend that the PECC and PEACCQROO should both be updated to include specific lines of action to incorporate campesinos and smallholders’ food security. At state level, the government of Quintana Roo uses Civil Protection to assist people whenever an extreme meteorological event approaches or hits the state. However, there is a need for explicit public policies on CC mitigation and adaptation that can reach community level. More specifically, the PEACCQROO needs to be updated because its current version overlooks the importance of preparing rural and indigenous campesinos to cope with droughts and other extreme meteorological events which impact on their food security. It must also acknowledge the relevance of the Maya culture’s legacy to current development as reflected in agreement 169 of the ILO, which has been endorsed by Mexico. In devising new CC policies, there should be transversal communication among federal, state, municipal, and local authorities, as well as an invitation extended to the private sector, academia, and NGOs.

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Acknowledgments  Authors are grateful to people of the Maya Zone for the support given to this research. This work was partially funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grant/file number 895-2011-1017) through the CCRN project from Saint Mary’s University. This manuscript benefited from the constructive criticism of two anonymous reviewers.

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Part IV

The Multiple Roles of Natural Protected Areas

Chapter 9

Trindade and the Struggle for its Territory: A Trajectory of Community Empowerment and Self-Governance in Southeastern Coast of Brazil Luciana Gomes de Araujo , Péricles Vinícius Gentile, and Juliana Rezende Torres Abstract  Trindade is a Caiçara community situated in the municipality of Paraty, southeastern coast of Brazil. Its livelihood is based mainly on tourism and small-­ scale fishing. This chapter gives an account on how people of Trindade have been responding to land tenure pressures since almost 50 years now. The main objective of this chapter is to unveil Trindade dynamics favoring community self-organization and empowerment as coping strategies for territorial autonomy. We focus on answering how the capacity of self-organization and empowerment of the community of Trindade towards its territorial autonomy contributed to the establishment of a community school, named as the School of the Sea. A qualitative case study was used. Data was collected through interviews, participative and direct observations as well as secondary data. Results show that Trindade’s history on self-organizing follows a clear pattern of events which have triggered responses reinforcing self-­ organization and empowerment of the community. These events are defined by land invasion over the territory of Trindade; tourism boom; implementation of protected areas; reform of a local Festival; and the death of a young resident of the community. The most recent response to these events has been the establishment of the School of the Sea. This initiative was made possible due to the organizational conditions of the community-based organizations of Trindade; the demand of a group of mothers of Trindade; the development of an Education Program in other Caiçara communities of Paraty, among others. The School of the Sea emerges as a tool for L. Gomes de Araujo (*) Institute of Energy and Environment, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] P. V. Gentile MZUSP, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] J. R. Torres Department of Human Sciences and Education, Federal University of São Carlos, Sorocaba, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_9

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strengthening, empowering, and emancipating the community through the involvement of children and teenagers disconnected from the memories of the history of Trindade. Keywords  Self-organization · Social organization · Land tenure · Caiçara people · Protected areas

9.1  Introduction Trindade is a Caiçara community situated in the municipality of Paraty, southeastern coast of Brazil, where the Atlantic Forest surrounding this region is well conserved and sought for tourism. Caiçara people are a mixed heritage group of Indigenous people, Portuguese, and Africans living along the southeastern coast of Brazil. The historical context of occupation and the economic cycles that were developed in this region have great influence on the formation of Caiçara’s livelihoods. As at least the nineteenth century, these populations have been inserted in the national and regional economy with connections to ports and urban centers (Adams, 2000). Until the middle of the twentieth century, Caiçara’s livelihoods were based on shifting cultivation (manioc, corn, beans, sweet potatoes, rice, and sugarcane), fishing, collecting forest products, and hunting. Their population density was low and the spatial distribution of their households was scattered. In the second half of the twentieth century, Caiçara’s economy moved from shifting cultivation, as its main activity, to fishing on board and soon after from the 1980s on, tourism started to occupy an important place in the local economy (Adams, 2000; Begossi, 1998). Trindade was quite isolated until the early 1970s when an important highway was opened along the coast. After that, this region has been facing rapid social, economic, and environmental changes, including territorial disputes, tourism development, real estate speculation, environmental conservation actions, and oil exploration (Araujo, 2014; Plante & Breton, 2005; Siqueira, 1984). In the 1970s and 1980s, two protected areas (PAs) were established in the region—Serra da Bocaina National Park and Cairuçu Environmental Protected Area—both of them overlapping land and sea areas of Trindade (Araujo, 2014). In Brazil, PAs were established since the 1930s, based on scientific knowledge and international norms emerging from the western thinking of separation between pristine nature and biodiversity in one side, and human-modified habitats in the other. The establishment of PAs of restricted access and use, known as no-take PAs, has transformed large well conserved areas in territories controlled by the State (Anaya & Espírito-Santo, 2018; Bensusan, 2014). In this sense, the organizational and institutional arrangements guiding the establishment and management of PAs in Brazil can be seen as a socio-environmental regime based on norms emerging from international agreements, and implemented as policies, laws, and other types of regulations in national regimes (Ingram, 2015; Parra-Vázquez et al., Chap. 1, this volume).

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In the entire territory of Brazil, the establishment of no-take PAs has caused conflicts between environmental agencies and local communities living in these areas for generations. These conflicts regard issues of access and use of natural resources and land tenure rights in different social-environmental contexts of Brazil (cf. Sanches, 2001; Vivacqua & Vieira, 2005; Thorkildsen, 2014; Bavinck et  al., 2017; Anaya & Espírito-Santo, 2018, Almada et  al., Chap. 10, this volume). Trindade is not an exception to this situation since Serra da Bocaina National Park, a no-take PA which overlaps part of the community territory, was created without consulting the local population. In 2000, the National System of Protected Areas (acronym in Portuguese: SNUC)1 was established as the federal law regulating all PAs in the country (Brasil, 2000). After the SNUC, the State avoided the creation of no-take PAs in territories occupied by traditional people, but the past problems regarding no-take PAs and traditional populations remain unsolved in a large number of cases (Grabner, 2014; Prates & Sousa, 2014; Santilli, 2014), including Trindade. This study focuses on understanding how people of Trindade have been responding to land tenure pressures since the 1970s. The main objective of this chapter is to unveil community dynamics favoring community empowerment and self-­ governance as a coping strategy for territorial autonomy. Specifically, we focus on answering how the capacity of self-organization of Trindade towards its territorial autonomy contributed to the establishment of a community school, named as School of the Sea (in Portuguese—Escola do Mar). To analyze the capacity of the people of Trindade to self-organize and get empowered to respond to territorial pressures, we aim to answer: (a) What are the events that triggered the trajectory of self-organization at the community level since the 1970s? (b) What are the elements of this trajectory that have contributed to the current development of the School of the Sea? (c) How the establishment of the School of the Sea strengthens community empowerment towards the autonomy of Trindade over its territory?

9.2  Theoretical Approach This study is based on the framework of Social Ecological Systems (SES) as complex adaptive systems emphasized by the perspective of human beings and society as part of the natural world (Berkes, Colding, & Folke, 2003; Holling, 2001; Ostrom, 2009; Walker et al., 2006). SES are linked in the real world (Berkes et al., 2003; De

1  The National System of Protected Areas (SNUC) distinguishes two categories of PAs in Brazil: no-take PAs and sustainable use PAs. The former, which includes National Parks, does not allow human settlements and the use of natural resources is permitted only for scientific, educational, and recreational purposes. The latter allows human settlements and activities according to sustainable development principles (Brasil, 2000).

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Vos, Biggs, & Preiser, 2019), therefore any separated analysis of these coupled systems is artificial (Berkes et al., 2003). The SES framework is defined by a broad set of variables and their linkages to explore connections and feedbacks among nature and social elements of real-world systems (Anderies, Janssen, & Ostrom, 2004; De Vos et al., 2019). In addition, SES are made up of variables and subsystems distributed in multiple levels (Ostrom, 2009) and affected by different external drivers (Nelson et al., 2006; Preiser, Biggs, De Vos, & Folke, 2018). Perturbations, interventions, and changes arising in different levels or subsystems can have significant cascading effects resulting in multiple modes of reorganization or regime shift of a system. This means that global and regional events have impacts on local ecosystems and communities and, behaviors and decisions emerging at local levels result in cumulative changes that have impacts globally and locally (Preiser et al., 2018). As complex systems, the identity and functions of SES are explained more by the interactions among their constituent components than by the components themselves. This means that the behavioral patterns of an SES are a result of nonlinear dynamic processes that cannot be understood based solely on information of the individual components, but by different properties emerging from the interactions among them (Preiser et al., 2018). Self-organization is one emerging property of SES that helps to explain how these systems can adjust their behavior as a response to changes in their environments (Preiser et al., 2018; Seixas & Davi, 2008). The capacity of a community to self-organize relates to whether a community has (a) a pool of individuals enough to become active; (b) enough resources to be capable of effective actions; and (c) a rich institutional tissue of local organizations capable of enabling people to connect among them (Denters, 2016). For example, Seixas and Davi (2008) point that the involvement of key individuals, economic incentives, and partnerships are among a set of ingredients helping to explain how communities self-organize through well-succeeded conservation and development projects. Self-organization can be conceptualized as the spontaneous coordination of actions performed by different agents (or components) of a system, making actions more synergetic (Cilliers, 1998). It is a collective process distributed over all the components of the system, resulting in a dynamic ongoing activity (Heylighen, 2008). Among the social components of the SES, we can assess human values, perceptions, memories, knowledge, and history to address self-organization (Anderies et al., 2004; Berkes & Folke, 1998; Chapin, Folke, & Kofinas, 2009; Cilliers, 1998). The history of a system co-determines the structure of the system as history itself is continuously transformed through self-organizing processes (Cilliers, 1998). In its turn, memories, which have both ecological and social contents, favor communities to understand changes and build knowledge based on accumulated experiences. Thus, they can be accessed to understand self-organizing processes as mechanisms enhancing the ability a system has to reorganize (Berkes et al., 2003). In this chapter, the community of Trindade is analyzed as an SES. Here the concept of community is defined as “a social unit in which social interactions and co-­territorial relationships can be observed” (Parra-Vázquez et al., Chap. 1, this volume). A territory configures a space with a history, where social and natural processes take place and social groups continually try to appropriate themselves of it (Parra-Vázquez et al.,

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Chap. 1, this volume). Trindade can also be described as a Local Socio-Environmental System (LSES) which is a complex adaptive system that has its territory as a common ground. Following the concept of LSES (Parra-­Vázquez et al., Chap. 1, this volume), Trindade can be characterized by four subsystems: (a) the landscape of the Atlantic Forest biome and the Atlantic coast; (b) the Caiçara population living in Trindade and its livelihoods; (c) the social groups and networks acting in collaboration with Trindade, and (d) the economic-politic groups represented by government and private actors affecting the autonomy of the local population to its territory. In this study, we address self-organization processes as a system property emerging from specific events that trigger social organization in Trindade. In order to analyze community self-organization in Trindade, we first identify trigger events that pushed the community towards decisions and actions by individuals and organizations to guarantee their autonomy over their territory. Second, we analyze community initiatives as self-organizing processes reinforcing community empowerment and autonomy to its territory. Third, to understand how community empowerment enhances self-organizing processes at the community level, we highlight how the trajectory of community self-organization nurtured the emergence of the School of the Sea as a strategy to strengthen territorial autonomy. We consider trigger events as “the motives or events, which led people to get mobilized around an initiative” (Seixas & Davi, 2008, p. 103). It is motivated by individuals or groups who envision changes to improve the community. A trigger event can be represented by a perceived problem that must be solved in the present, a crisis coming in the near future, a demand from an outside agenda, or a window of opportunity that one takes advantage of it (Seixas & Davi, 2008). Community initiatives represent a strategy that social groups make use of to provide solutions for territorial problems. The chances for community initiatives being well-succeeded are connected to the availability of individual and group motivations; human, social and financial (income) capitals; time; access to participatory arenas and cultural conditions nurturing community self-confidence (Denters, 2016). Here, empowerment refers to the process by which people gain influence and control over their lives and, consequently, become autonomous. In this study, we use the approach of emancipatory empowerment, which is the process by which individuals, organizations and communities raise resources that allow them to have voice, visibility, influence, and capacity for action and decision, in order to rebalance the power structures in society (Baquero, 2012). Freire and Shor (1986) propose the concept of social class empowerment, which deals with individual liberation as a social act. In this perspective, empowerment generates critical thinking in relation to reality, favoring the construction of personal and social capacity to transform social relations of power. Community empowerment is the process by which individual or collective actors of a community, through participatory processes, develop actions to achieve their collectively defined objectives. Community empowerment involves a process of reflection and awareness by marginalized groups or individuals to articulate their interests, seeking to fully achieve citizenship rights, defend their interests and influence State actions (Baquero, 2012). The next section presents a brief description of the community of Trindade. After, data collection and

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analysis are introduced followed by the results and discussion sections. Results are organized following the guiding questions presented above. At the end, to close the chapter, the main conclusions are drawn on the process of self-organization in Trindade.

9.3  Study Area Trindade is a Caiçara community probably originated in the 1700s (Plante & Breton, 2005). Currently, its livelihood is based mainly on tourism and small-scale fishing. The community is situated between two important urban centers—São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (Fig. 9.1). Its entire territory is within the Cairuçu Environmental Protected Area, a sustainable use PA, and a portion of the community overlaps the Serra da Bocaina National Park, a no-take PA. This portion includes an important marine area for fishing and fishers’ boat shelter. Approximately 1000 people live in Trindade (Bussolotti, 2010) and at least five community-based organizations (CBOs) were established in Trindade, representing residents, small-scale fishers, boatmen, surfers, and education issues. Among them, two are more developed and active: the Residents Association (Associação de Moradores da Trindade—AMOT) and the Trindade Boatmen and Small-Scale Fishers Association (Associação de Barqueiros e Pescadores de Trindade—ABAT). There is one public school in Trindade that serves the first 4 years of the school cycles, for children from 6 years old.2 For the older students to have access to school, it is necessary to drive to the two nearest cities around the community: Paraty and Ubatuba, which are about an hour from Trindade. Trindade has being struggling to guarantee the ownership over its territory at least since the 1970s when interests of private companies forced several occupations over this land (Lhote, 1982; Plante & Breton, 2005; Siqueira, 1984). At that time, a tough conflict over land tenure emerged between the community and the international company Adela-Brascan,3 which was claiming for the property of Trindade’s land (Plante & Breton, 2005). The company Adela-Brascan, who stated to have bought the land where the population of Trindade was settled, tried to remove its residents outside their land (Lhote, 1982; Plante & Breton, 2005). This acquisition was connected to a strategic plan by the federal government to develop this region through tourism business. In the 1960s, the Brazilian Tourism Company (EMBRATUR), linked to the federal 2  The integral school cycle in Brazil is consisted of four stages: Early Childhood Education (up to 6 years old); Elementary School I (6–10 years old); Elementary School II (11–14 years old); and Middle School (15–17 years). 3  In the 1970s, this company was denominated as the binational organization Adela-Brascan, represented in Brazil by its subsidiary Paraty Territorial Development (in Portuguese Paraty Desenvolvimento Territorial Ltda.). Adela-Brascan was sold to the company Cobracinco and later to the company Bonfignoli, both formed by national capital (Lhote, 1982; Siqueira, 1984).

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Fig. 9.1  Trindade location on southeastern coast of Brazil. (Source: Elaborated by Ivonne San Martin-Gajardo. Geographic coordinate system: Datum SIRGAS 2000, cartographic base: IBGE (2019))

government, implemented a project to assess the touristic potential of the region where Paraty is situated. This project was pushed by the opening of the highway connecting the city of Rio de Janeiro to the main port of the country (Porto de Santos). It had big companies from the real estate, hotel, and tourism sectors as its target audience (Plante & Breton, 2005). The main purpose of Adela-Brascan in Brazil was to search for business opportunities in accordance with national economic and territorial development plans. This company’s interests in the region of Paraty were to carry on the implementation of facilities such as luxury hotels and condos (Plante & Breton, 2005). Nowadays, Trindade people face land tenure pressures arising from real estate speculation and restrictions over access and use of space and natural resources by PAs. In response to this trajectory of pressures over the land, Trindade created diverse initiatives to enhance collective actions, sense of self-determination, individual capacities, and local cultural esteem. Today, these initiatives include the development of active CBOs, having seats on Advisory Councils and strengthening partnerships and networks (Araujo, Castro, De Freitas,

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Vieira, & Seixas, 2017; Bahia, Chamy, Rosa, & Almeida, 2018; Bockstael, Bahia, Seixas, & Berkes, 2016; Cortines et al., 2018).

9.4  Data Collection In this research, a qualitative case study approach was used comprising interviews, non-structured conversations and, participant and direct observation (Bernard, 2006) of community day-to-day life and meetings, between 2010 and 2018. The first author (LGA) has been doing research and outreach activities in the area from 2009 to 2018, as part of the activities of the Commons Management and Conservation Research Group, of the University of Campinas. This long contact with different individuals in Trindade, developed in periodic visits to the community, has provided involvement and trust with the community. Part of the data presented in this chapter, specifically on the process of creation of the School of the Sea, is part of the undergraduate dissertation by PVG, which was supervised by JRT and co-­supervised by LGA. From 2010 to 2018, one of the authors (LGA) carried out direct observations of 18 meetings of the Residents Association (AMOT) and Management Councils of Cairuçu Environmental Protected Area and Serra da Bocaina National Park. During the same period, LGA and PVG carried out participant observations in two local Festivals (2014 and 2017) and daily activities of boatmen in one beach of Trindade. Ten interviews were completed in 2017 and 2018 by PVG (n = 8) and LGA (n = 2). We supplemented the data gathered with information from non-structured conversations with local leaders and key informants, and historical documents.

9.5  Results 9.5.1  T  rindade Historical Trajectory Towards Territorial Autonomy Trindade has a history of social organization as a strategy to guarantee the rights over its land and sea territories. This history can be described in a trajectory of events that triggered community actions. For each of these events, we connected community actions that emerged as self-organizing processes. This trajectory starts in 1973 with the land occupation over the territory of Trindade by the company Adela-Brascan (called by the community as the “Company”). This invasion lasted 9 years, from 1973 to 1982, with many violent events forcing part of the population of Trindade to migrate to the neighboring communities and cities (trigger #1). As a response by the community, in 1979 a lawsuit was imputed against the Company to demand the community rights over its territory and the eviction of the Company from Trindade. This lawsuit has had the support of tourists that became friends of

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community members and also important attorneys from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro cities, who represented the defendants. In 1982, the community and the Company signed a legal agreement guaranteeing the ownership of part of the community area to its residents (Lhote, 1982; Siqueira, 1984). Despite the victory of the community, the company still retained the right over a portion of land. It was in this context that the residents of Trindade created their first CBO, the Residents Association (AMOT). There are other four events that triggered actions that can be explained as self-organizing processes: the tourism boom from the 1980s onwards (trigger #2); the implementation of the Serra da Bocaina National Park from the first decade of the 2000s onwards (trigger #3); the reform of the concept of Trindade Festival (in Portuguese: Festejo de Trindade) in 2014 (trigger #4); and the death of a young resident of the community in 2016 (trigger #5) (Table 9.1). The tourism boom of the 1980s, intensified in the 1990s, has represented profound changes in the community livelihood (trigger #2). From the 1990s onwards most of the inhabitants of Trindade engaged in tourism activities such as lodging, food, and boating services (Araujo, 2014; Plante & Breton, 2005). This shift in the community livelihood has represented an economic opportunity and cultural change at the same time. This later can be explained by the constant presence of tourists from various

Table 9.1  Trigger events and self-organizing processes by the community of Trindade from the 1970s to the present # Trigger event 1 Land invasion over the territory of Trindade by an international company (1970s) 2 Tourism boom (1980s) 3 Implementation of Serra da Bocaina National Park (2000s)

4 Reform of Trindade Festival (2010s)

5 Death of a young man of the community (2010s)

Emergent self-organizing processes  – Lawsuit against the company  – Foundation of AMOT  – Foundation of ABAT  – Development of collaborative actions with the head of the Serra da Bocaina National Park  – Coordination of AMOT and ABAT by young community leaders  – Empowerment of young leaders (access to information, training, and support)  – Development of new partnerships  – Organizational development of AMOT and ABAT  – Representation of Trindade in different councils by CBOs  – Opening the new headquarters of AMOT  – Establishment of the Caiçara National Coordination  – Activities to rescue and value Caiçara culture  – Public protest rallies  – Establishment of Dão’s Square  – Appropriation of a community parking lot in Dão’s Square  – Formal authorization to make the communal use of Dão’s Square  – Development of the School of the Sea

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parts of the country and the world, detachment of traditional livelihood, and infrastructure and social problems, such as lack of water, sewage treatment, and the drugs consumption in the community. In the initial phase of tourism development, men did boat trips individually but as the transportation of tourists have become a considerable part of the boatmen and fishers’ income, they realized the requirement to establish collective rules for this activity. For this to happen, they created the Trindade Boatmen and Small-Scale Fishers Association (ABAT) in 1996 (Bahia et al., 2018) and formalized in 2007 (Possidônio 2015 pers. commun.). As of 2007, the Serra da Bocaina National Park started to implement enforcement actions in Trindade (trigger #3). This situation generated many conflicts between the community and Park officers and also within the community, between those in favor of the Park and those against it (Araujo et  al., 2017; Bahia et  al., 2018). These conflicts, in turn, forced the community and the Park officers to dialogue and develop collaborative actions to seek solutions to those conflicts (Araujo et al., 2017; Bockstael et al., 2016). The pressure engendered by the enforcement actions of the Park and the need to establish negotiations with its officers pushed young community leaders to take over the management coordination of the two main CBOs of Trindade—AMOT and ABAT. As dialogue and negotiation with the Park have intensified, the young leaders began to seek for information, training, support from new partnerships and better institutional conditions to the CBOs, in order to address issues of their interest concerning autonomy over Trindade’s territory (Moraes et al. in prep). Today, AMOT and ABAT are formally represented in different Advisory Councils including the Advisory Management Council of the Serra da Bocaina National Park. Both CBOs have strengthened their connections with different organizations such as Universities, independent researchers and consultants, and specially with the Forum of Traditional People4 (Portuguese initials: FCT). Since 2010, the members of ABAT have been carrying out a continuous process of negotiation with the Park to ensure their rights to manage boat trips in the marine area of the PA. This has been done with the support of universities, technical experts, and funding agencies (Bahia et al., 2018). Another fact that has triggered community actions was the reform of the concept of Trindade Festival in 2014 (trigger #4). This is an annual festival that celebrates the victory of the ownership of part of the community territory in 1982, and for many years it was configured in a festival characterized by exogenous elements, such as music and food. Consequently, the Festival lost its connection with its initial motivation of celebration and ended up attracting people who had no connection with the community. In 2014, a group of community leaders decided to rescue the original meaning of the Festival and organized the 2014 Trindade Festival to be a truthful Caiçara Festival celebrated within the community realm. The 2014 Trindade Festival joined Caiçara people from all southeastern coast of Brazil in a meeting to establish the Caiçara National Coordination which has the

4  Created in 2007, the Forum of Traditional People (FCT) plays an important role in representing the rights of the Caiçara, Quilombola, and Indigenous populations in the north coast of São Paulo State and south coast of Rio de Janeiro State.

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role to represent Caiçara people interests in arenas at the national level. In this Festival, other activities took place such as local theater presentation and canoe race. From 2014 onwards, several activities were carried on aiming at bringing together elders, young people, women, and children of the community. They were performed during the Festivals and in the period between them, through activities such as fishing, manufacturing cassava flour, canoe races, and building wooden canoes with the intent to rescuing, learning, and valuing local knowledge. In 2016, a young man lost his life while working on his agricultural plot. This specific piece of land is in dispute; the family of this young man claims for the property of this land while the Company that occupied Trindade in the 1970s still questions land tenure in court (Trindade Vive e Mulheres na Luta por Trindade, 2016). Currently, there is a legal accusation of crime on an employee of the Company as being the person who took away the life of the young man. This event created a commotion and outrage in the community (trigger #5). The community has reacted immediately with several public protest rallies and the occupation of part of the Company area ever claimed by Trindade as belonging to the community. In this area, the CBOs created a community collective space named Dão’s Square in reference to the young man’s nickname. This event revived the past struggle for autonomy over the community territory (Gentile, 2019). After the occupation of Dão’s Square, the community made several interventions in the place, starting with the demolition of the physical structures of the Company. Then they built a play area with playground and a sports court, and activated a community parking lot along the summer season (managed by AMOT). All these activities were done in a joint collective effort, which characterizes the traditional way of Caiçara collective work (in Portuguese, “mutirão”5). In 2017, during the Trindade Festival the community joined in a collective action to build a traditional house that would become the first headquarters of a community school focusing on a differentiated education, based on local history and Caiçara culture—the School of the Sea (Gentile, 2019). In 2019, the community obtained formal authorization from the National Protected Areas Agency6 for the community use of Dão’s Square.

9.5.2  T  he Emergence of the School of the Sea in a Trajectory of Community Self-organization The School of the Sea is a community initiative born in a context of many ongoing self-organized actions by leaders, groups, and CBOs of Trindade, engaged with many outside partners and in different collaborative networks. Embedded in the

 “Mutirão refers to a large-scale mutual-help organization, comprising group activities for clearing a forest patch, planting, weeding, and harvesting.” (Thorkildsen, 2014, p. 917). 6  The National Protected Areas Agency refers to the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (In Portuguese, Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade— ICMBio). 5

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historical struggle of Trindade for its territory, the School of the Sea is the continuity of a long trajectory of responses to crisis and opportunities towards its territorial autonomy. The purpose of this School is to provide children and young people with learning that embraces the traditional Caiçara knowledge and culture. It represents an innovative traditional institution aiming at rescuing and signifying Caiçara values and knowledge. The efforts to seek education for their children were experienced since ever by those who conceived the School of the Sea, when they were younger. In the 1990s, AMOT supported the transportation for children to attend schools in the cities near Trindade. At that time, children participated in the camping collective cleaning effort, which generated revenue for AMOT to invest in this transport (Gentile, 2019). Those children of the 1990s are now adults who carry memories of stories, testimonies, and sensations lived by their parents and grandparents clamming for an autonomous community. Part of these adults went to the universities in the big cities and returned to Trindade with the understanding of the importance of keeping alive the culture and identity of Trindade. The idealization of the School of the Sea emerged from the perception that the community population is disconnected to the local culture. Old people, called by the younger as “mestres” (in English, masters), who has retired from their work, no longer find everyday spaces where knowledge used to be shared and transmitted, such as the construction of wooden canoes and fishing techniques (Gentile, 2019). Children and teenagers of the community are connected with urban and global contemporaneity and do not express interest in accessing the history of the community. Community leaders are concerned with forming new leaders from the young individuals, which in some cases are being attracted to drug use. The opportunity to establish the School of the Sea was perceived by community leaders who are integrated into the contemporary day-to-day life, although have experienced another livelihood in a recent past, based on fishing and shifting agriculture. They witnessed their parents and grandparents telling stories about the land occupation in the 1970s. For them, something should be done to make room for the old to share and transmit their knowledge and testimonies to the young. Building the first headquarters of the school in Dão’s Square became the central activity of the 2017 Trindade Festival. It was built based on Caiçara architecture, made of clay, wood, and thatch (“sapê”). It was set up collectively by young people, children, elders, adult women and men from the community and from outside (Fig. 9.2). Different elements developed along the trajectory of community self-­organization have contributed to the emergence of the School of the Sea. First, we point the perception of community leaders concerning the role of historical and cultural memories as mechanisms able to strengthen community identity. Another element regards the existence of human capital among the community represented by individuals that aggregate local, technical, academic, and political knowledge. These individuals envisioned the School of the Sea and have gathered resources to realize this initiative. Adding to these elements, Trindade has demonstrated a strong capacity for collective actions reinforced by the financial support of its two main CBOs. AMOT have produced income with camping and parking services and ABAT have in the boat services the source of its financial resources. In 2017, AMOT inaugu-

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Fig. 9.2  The School of the Sea at Dão’s Square. (Source: Photo by PVG)

rated its new headquarters equipped with courses, exhibitions, and kitchen’s facilities, making it available to serve as the second headquarters of the School of the Sea. Several other factors have contributed to the establishment of the School of the Sea: (a) agency of the Parents’ and Teachers’ Association of the public school of Trindade; (b) strengthening of the group of Mothers of Trindade; (c) parents’ desire for a differentiated education based on the Caiçara culture; (d) development of an Education Program in other Caiçara communities of Paraty; and (e) unfavorable conditions of the public schools in the city of Paraty (Gentile, 2019).

9.5.3  Education as a Path for Empowerment Many community leaders have the School of the Sea as an empowering mechanism that is going to access local culture and knowledge through formal education. The community’s effort to build a local school carries with it the purpose of strengthening the community’s capacity to act and decide on its own destiny (Gentile, 2019). This effort is part of the struggle against the regime, which is expressed by the absence, at least partially, of the State to guarantee the rights of the community. Currently, children and teenagers’ mothers, organized in the Parents’ and Teachers’ Association and in the group of Mothers of Trindade, do not want their sons and daughters to go to Paraty to complete their school education due to urban violence and precariousness of the schools in the city. These parents are mobilizing resources to develop the School of the Sea through an existing social network. This

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network connects these parents to members of ABAT, AMOT, FCT, Observatory of the Sustainable and Healthy Territories of Bocaina (Portuguese initials: OTSS),7 Paraty Municipal Secretary of Education (MSE) and Fluminense University. In 2016, the development of an Education Program in other Caiçara communities was initiated in Paraty by OTSS and enhanced by a collaborative partnership including the MSE and Fluminense University. This initiative continues to be implemented, having created a very important synergic condition for the advancement of the creation of the School of the Sea. Despite all the potential for the successful implementation of the School of the Sea, there are many challenges, such as: (a) complying with the educational legislation and a huge bureaucratic process to its implementation; (b) having financial resources to expand the school headquarters and to hire teachers; (c) training teachers based on Caiçara culture and; (d) involving children’s parents in the development of the School (Gentile, 2019). The leaders of the implementation of the School of the Sea are aware of these challenges and have been searching for opportunities to overcome them.

9.6  Discussion The trajectory of social organization in Trindade is pronounced by community responses to crisis, given by initiatives emerging from the community itself in order to adapt to specific situations or to transform them. These initiatives can be seen as processes of self-organization at the community level that have emerged from complex interactions among social (e.g., partnerships), cultural (e.g., traditional ecological knowledge), and ecological (e.g., landscape) elements. In the case of the School of the Sea, it has been the result of the concert of several components of the community system such as the organizational capacity of the CBOs of Trindade, the social capital accumulated in different social networks, knowledge attached to Caiçara livelihoods, technical and scientific knowledge accumulated by different individuals working in the community, municipal public policies endorsed in face of the pressure by different actors representing Caiçaras interests, among others. Many community leaders are aware about the importance of transforming these components into an initiative capable of strengthening community identity. The experience of bringing elements of the community history, memories and livelihoods to Trindade Festivals proved to be a powerful mechanism for collective action and community empowerment. In this context, the School of the Sea emerged as a powerful arena to nurture these elements towards individual and community empowerment. 7  The Observatory of the Sustainable and Healthy Territories of Bocaina (OTSS) is an arena for the generation of critical knowledge, based on the dialogue between traditional and scientific knowledge. It works to promote sustainability, health, and rights for the well-being of traditional communities in the municipalities of Angra dos Reis, Paraty, and Ubatuba.

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One cannot explain the consistency of the purpose of the School of the Sea without understanding the whole trajectory of social organization of Trindade, built on complex interactions among cultural, historical, social, political, and ecological elements. The processes of self-organization in Trindade cannot be supported only by identifying these elements. It is fundamental to interpret community initiatives emerging in Trindade as products of complex interactions among elements and interactions built throughout its history. The School of the Sea is capable of gathering knowledge of the elders and other types of knowledge in order to attract the interest of the young, as a strategy to reframing local culture in the context of contemporaneity and towards community autonomy. The cultural control theory classifies territories based on the ownership of local key resources and the decision-making capacity over those resources (Bonfil-Batalla, 1991). Following this classification, Trindade struggles to move towards more autonomy over its territory and power to decide upon its interests (Bello-Baltazar et al., Chap. 21 this volume). The community initiatives presented in this study have direct and indirect effects on the ownership of Trindade land and sea, which are partially controlled by the Serra da Bocaina National Park and Cairuçu Environmental Protected Area. External organizations, at the municipal, state, and federal levels, such as the Paraty City Hall and the National Protected Areas Agency reinforce the trajectory of community social organization, whether through conflict or collaborations, as they interact with community actors. The negotiation of the concession of boat services in the marine area of the ​​ Serra da Bocaina National Park is an example. The obligations required by the Park for ABAT to be authorized to carry out boat services forced this CBO to develop organizationally and institutionally (Bahia et al., 2018). In its turn, the organizational improvement of ABAT made its members more able to negotiate with the Park and collaborate with community initiatives, as the support to the establishment of the School of the Sea. All the aspects connected to the development of the School of the Sea function as feedback mechanisms to reinforce community self-organization and empowerment. In turn, self-organization and empowerment reinforce actions to seek emancipation and autonomy across the territory. The School of the Sea is a very insightful strategy because it has been able to involve children and teenagers together with their parents towards community actions that will reinforce the history of Trindade and the local identity of its people. In addition, the School of the Sea reinforces communication and the exchange of experiences with other Caiçara communities, as a feedback mechanism of empowerment with external agents.

9.7  Conclusions Community initiatives carried out in Trindade represent the capacity to innovate through collective actions in a citizen exercise that characterizes a form of self-­ governance based on self-organization and empowerment towards autonomy. The

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processes of self-organization in Trindade are related to crises that have activated social mobilization, resistance, and action, in a dynamic process intrinsically linked to the history of Trindade. In this dynamic process, cultural and territorial identity were developed and enriched. The combination of Caiçara livelihoods, Trindade history, emancipation of many leaders through formal education, and financial autonomy of CBOs allowed for the establishment of a local regime that fights against different types of oppression. The School of the Sea emerges as an institution for strengthening and emancipating the community. The School of the Sea represents an educational initiative based on local culture, but also a space for the formation of new leaders aware of their histories and traditions. And more important, it embraces children and teenagers disconnected from the memories of occupation of the 1970s and livelihood practices prior to the tourism boom. The entire legacy of the struggle for the community territory, since the 1970s and retaken with the Dão’s death, highlights many elements that have triggered self-organization and resulted in the creation of the School of the Sea.

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Chapter 10

Burning Reasons: Traditional Land Management Using Fire and Environmental Conflicts in Serra da Canastra National Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil Emmanuel Duarte Almada, Ana Beatriz Vianna Mendes, and Aderval Costa Filho Abstract  Several traditional communities in Brazil use fire as a constitutive element of their agricultural management system and such practice is, thus, an important aspect of their culture. However, government environmental agencies often regard traditional management using fire as a technique that should be overcome by management practices based on conservation biology. The imposition of environmental management regime forms based on modern science upon traditional communities’ cosmology results in significant impacts on the territory, not only on the people, but also on the environment. In this chapter, we present an investigation into the conflict between the traditional communities that live in Serra da Canastra National Park, located in southeastern Brazil, and the federal environmental agency, which claims to be responsible for biodiversity conservation in that area. Local ecosystems, predominantly savannas, have been managed by such communities over the last three centuries, and fire is considered by them a central element in the dynamics of the landscape, especially for the renewal of pastures. The establishment of a protected area in their territories, in 1972, and its expansion into other traditional areas, since 2005, resulted in several conflicts related to the management using fire, among other reasons. According to the communities’ reports, the new procedures imposed by the state aiming at restricting the use of fire as a management method has caused both an alteration of pasture areas and a decrease in local biodiversity. Although environmental agencies have recently begun to incorporate traditional knowledge about fire as a way to manage the territory, overcoming govE. D. Almada (*) Kaipora - Laboratory of Biocultural Studies, Department of Biological Sciences, Minas Gerais State University, Ibirité, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] A. B. V. Mendes · A. C. Filho Department of Anthropology and Archeology, School of Philosophy and Human Sciences, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_10

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ernmental reason remains a challenge, so as to ensure the territorial rights of traditional communities and the conservation of biodiversity. Keywords  Brazilian savanna · Traditional ecological knowledge · Traditional management using fire · Protected area · Territorial rights

10.1  The Reasons for the Fire Many studies have showed the importance of fire as a fundamental element in the maintenance of ecological processes in several terrestrial ecosystems (Bond & Keeley, 2005). In Brazil, the Cerrado—and also the southern fields—are biomes with a long history of adaptation to fire, which is confirmed by the presence of numerous morphophysiological adaptations in plant species to fire (Coutinho, 1990; Figueira et al., 2016). However, only recently management using fire has been consistently used for the management of Brazilian protected areas (Ramos-Neto & Pivello, 2000; Schmidt, Fonseca, Ferreira, & Sato, 2016; Souza et al., 2017). Fire is a central element in the socio-ecological system of various indigenous peoples and traditional communities around the planet (Fowler & Welch, 2018). Management using fire allows for the preparation of food, hunting techniques, as well as techniques related to agricultural systems, both in forest and savanna environments. In the savanna ecosystem of central Brazil, locally named Cerrado, fire has played a fundamental role in structuring the plant community, as well as in the livelihoods of human populations that have inhabited it since the first waves of occupation, tens of thousands of years ago. The destructive character of fire, however, as it is understood from the perspective of the conservation biology theory, has led, especially in the last three decades, to its control and even prohibition, thus becoming a central concern for nature protection policies (García et al. Chap. 6, this volume). This perspective and the associated public policies have generated innumerable environmental conflicts over different regimes of knowledge concerning management using fire. On the one hand, indigenous peoples and traditional communities understand fire as a more-than-human element that inhabits and transforms the ecosystems, as well as the rainfall, the soil, and the living species (Fagundes, 2019; Pedroso, Murrieta, & Adams, 2008; Posey, 2002); on the other hand, conservation biology theory, in its eagerness to protect biodiversity, normally regards fire control and/or prohibition as a way to maintain a presumed normal functioning of ecosystems. In the last decade, some advances have been made toward recognizing the effectiveness of traditional fire management systems by the government and academics. This process is slowly leading to changes in public conservation policies. This recognition may be explained not only by a deeper understanding about the role of disturbances in the regulation of ecosystems and in the maintenance of biodiversity itself, but also by the strengthening of the political organization of the

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indigenous peoples and traditional communities. One of the main struggles of indigenous peoples and traditional communities around the world has been the reaffirmation of their traditional ecological knowledge and their world views as elements that have to be recognized and protected by the states in order to protect social diversity and alterity. Such reaffirmation shall lead to the respect of different reasons (such as the right to traditional management using fire), and to the right to use and defend their territories. In this chapter, we present a study on the conflicts that occur between a protected area1 and rural communities whose livestock production system has been based on traditional management using fire for more than three centuries. The study has been conducted in the region known as Serra da Canastra, which is located in the state of Minas Gerais, southeastern Brazil. This study is the result of a research that had been requested by the Federal Justice, in the context of a lawsuit filed by the Public Defender of the Union in favor of those rural communities. Serra da Canastra National Park was created by the federal government, in 1972, and, at that time, about 30% of its area was seized by the state and thus became public land destined for nature conservancy. Out of the 200,000 hectares of area set forth in the park’s creation decree, only about 71,000 ha consisted of land whose previous owners had been indemnified (Fig.  10.1). Since 2005, the environmental agency has added another 130,000 ha (about 60% more area) to the park, an area which overlaps several traditionally managed territories. It meant, among other things, restrictions to the traditional management practices that used fire, as well as direct impacts to hundreds of families. Suddenly, the activity of management using fire had to undergo an extremely complex, costly, and ineffective authorization procedure. Our purpose is to delineate the complex system of traditional management using fire of the canastreiros2 and the implications of the imposition of the governmental reasons in the conservation of the biocultural diversity of their territory. In other words, this chapter aims to present the context surrounding the conflict between the traditional management carried out by the canastreiros and the government conservation practices in the region of Serra da Canastra. A field survey was conducted by a multidisciplinary team, in 2016 and in 2017, across the park’s expansion area, which covers approximately 130,000  ha and 6 1  In the context of Brazil, the term “áreas protegidas” (protected areas) covers various types of management and protection rules. Indigenous and quilombola lands, hilltops, areas situated on the banks of watercourses, and conservation units (“Unidades de Conservação”, UCs) are all deemed to be protected areas. National Parks, such as Serra da Canastra National Park, are a type of conservation unit that must be created by the public power authority, by means of law, and consist of defined areas, delimited and managed by the State, aiming at “the preservation of natural ecosystems of great ecological importance and scenic beauty, allowing for the performance of scientific research and for the development of activities of education and environmental interpretation, recreation in contact with nature and ecological tourism” (Brasil, 2000, art. 11). They integrate the set of UCs that are in the public domain, and therefore, the ownership of the land that may be located in its perimeter must be identified and transferred to the state. 2  Canastreiros is the word that the traditional people from Serra da Canastra use to name themselves and, thus, designates a traditional group of the region.

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Fig. 10.1  Serra da Canastra National Park location, where the studied traditional communities live. (Source: Elaborated by the authors)

municipalities. Eleven field surveys were conducted in order to collect data. We had 212 questionnaires filled out, conducted 73 semi-structured interviews, took 583 georeferenced culturally relevant sites, constructed several mental maps, performed ecological walks, and used participant observation as data collecting methods. In addition, historiographical and bibliographical research, analysis of documents provided by the environmental agency and research both in public and private archives were carried out. Finally, after having processed and analyzed the collected data, 6 workshops were held, with an attendance of approximately 350 community members in total, being 3 workshops on territorial and identities rights and 3 workshops aimed at giving feedback on the results of the research for the purposes of validation and complementation.

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10.2  S  erra da Canastra: A Territory In-Between Cerrado Conservation and Traditional Peoples The region of Serra da Canastra is located in the phytogeographical domains of Cerrado and stands out for its high biological richness and uniqueness in terms of ecosystemic characteristics (IBAMA, 2005). All this biodiversity is deeply related to the way of life of the local communities, which constitute a unique and singular biocultural heritage3 (Fig. 10.2). Similar to other protected areas, the creation of Serra da Canastra National Park (PNSC, Federal Decree 70.355 of 1972) had the preservation of local biodiversity and ecosystem processes as one of its main objectives. However these objectives did not consider the role played by human communities in the ecosystems and biodiversity dynamics. After the establishment of the PNSC, most of the traditional activities were prohibited, the use of fire in grazing management among them. The Cerrado covers about 24% of the Brazilian territory (Marquis, 2002). Since the 1950s and 1960s, it has undergone dramatic transformations, with much of its extension converted into export-oriented monocultures and pasture areas (Klink & Machado, 2005; Mazzetto Silva, 2009). The biome is a biodiversity hotspot, due to its high species richness, high degree of endemism, and the degree of changes in its original characteristics (Klink & Machado, 2005). Hence, conservation measures, such as the creation of protected areas, became more and more urgent as the industrial agricultural model and other high-impact activities, such as mining, progressed. Since the 1990s, there has been a greater openness to biodiversity conservation policies and actions based on traditional ecosystem management employed by local communities, associated with the safeguarding of their territorial and identities rights (Mendes, Costa Filho, & Santos, 2014). All that is part of a broader change in recognizing the importance of traditional ecological knowledge in biodiversity protection and production, and it has been reflected in laws, conventions, and scientific forums worldwide. In Brazil, lots of groups have been recognized by the state as traditional peoples. Indigenous peoples and quilombolas are the ones with more political and historical recognition as traditional groups, but there are lots of other identities that have been struggling for recognition in the country. Only in Minas Gerais, there are several social groups in the Cerrado who establish different and specific relations to the territory, such as the geraizeiros, the vazanteiros, the catingueiros, the quilombolas, and the apanhadores de flores sempre-vivas.4 The canastreiros are a traditional

3  The concept of biocultural heritage encompasses the knowledge, techniques, and memories of a particular culture, people, or community about the ecosystems and species of the places where they live (Gavin et al., 2015). It stresses the impossibility of proposing biodiversity conservation policies without considering the cultural and historical processes that have generated and maintained biodiversity over time. 4  Different ways in which traditional peoples call themselves in the Cerrado of Minas Gerais State. Normally, the name is related to the ecosystem managed by each group.

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Fig. 10.2  1 Casca D’Anta Waterfall, of great cultural importance for the communities of the region. 2 rupestrian fields traditionally managed by communities; 3, 4 cattle herd feeding on natural pastures; 5, 6, 7 participatory diagnostic activities; 8, 9 typical houses of the Serra da Canastra traditional communities; 10 artisanal cheese produced in the region of Serra da Canastra. (Source: Elaborated by the authors)

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c­ ommunity identity which has emerged to nominate the rural people that have been constructing, over the centuries in Serra da Canastra, a peculiar way of life. What all those categories have in common is that they have been articulating themselves in the defense of their ways of life, generally against some large predatory industry, privately or publicly owned, that tries to seize their lands (Costa, 2005; Dayrrell, 1998; Fávero & Monteiro, 2014; Mazzetto, 2005; Nogueira, 2017). The main vegetation types of the Cerrado biome are present in the PNSC, being the cerrado sensu stricto, rupestrian fields, “cerradões,” “campos limpos,” and “campos sujos” the most representative ones (see Fernandes, 2016), also presenting forest formations typical of the Atlantic Forest. With a seasonal tropical climate, rainfall in the region is concentrated between October and March, with a historical average of 1200–1800 mm (IBAMA, 2005). The presence of rupestrian fields, in particular, represents an element that highlights the importance of the region in terms of biodiversity conservation. This vegetation type is characterized by the predominance of herbaceous and shrub vegetation associated with quartzite or ferruginous rock outcrops, occurring generally at altitudes above 900  m. The vegetation of rupestrian fields is typically xeromorphic, being subject to daily temperature fluctuations and associated with oligotrophic soils and low water availability (Fernandes, 2016). In Minas Gerais, rock ecosystems have a restricted distribution, occurring mainly along the Espinhaço Mountain Range. Although they occupy a limited extent of the Cerrado domains (less than 3% of the total area of the biome), rupestrian fields harbor a large part of the biome’s floristic diversity, as well as a high rate of endemism (Barbosa & Fernandes, 2016). The local biodiversity is notable for its high plant diversity, with more than 1000 plant species, several of them endemic to the rocky areas of the region (Romero & Nakajima, 1999). The region is also important because it houses the source of the São Francisco River, one of the main Brazilian rivers. In addition, this landscape was the basis on which indigenous cultural systems of the first human occupations were constituted, and where the traditional management systems of local communities that still live in the territory have been both transformed and maintained. Thus, the conservation of local biodiversity should involve understanding techniques and cultural forms of appropriation of natural resources by these communities over time, including the transformations arising from the successive socio-economic events they have experienced, especially the creation of PNSC.

10.3  T  he Traditional Ecological Knowledge and the Biocultural Heritage of the Serra da Canastra Communities The PNSC region, like the entire Cerrado domain, has a long history of human occupation, dating back to a period well before the three centuries of occupation by today’s populations (Klink & Moreira, 2002; Prous, 2000; Resende & Prous, 1991).

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According to Barbosa and Schmitz (2008), the consolidation of the area currently occupied by the Cerrado, after the climatic changes of the Pleistocene, allowed the consolidation of the so-called Itaparica Tradition in the Cerrado region (Resende & Prous, 1991). According to these authors, the occupation of the Cerrado was due to the migration of populations from the Colombian savannas that arrived there following the displacement of the terrestrial megafauna existing at the time, approximately 12,000  years ago. The indigenous occupation of the Cerrado of Minas Gerais in the period of the arrival of the European invaders consisted mainly of peoples of the Macro-Jê indigenous linguistic trunk (see Ribeiro, 2005). The traditional ecological knowledge of the communities of Serra da Canastra is a result of this long process of encounter between cultures, which covers only the last 300 years and, therefore, the arrival of the first Portuguese/Brazilian colonizers. Despite the considerable geographic distance, the traditional ecosystem management systems found in Serra da Canastra can be compared to the ones used by the communities that live along the entire Espinhaço Mountain Range, both places being characterized by a relief made up of high and low lands, which are handled in multiple ways by the local communities (Almada, 2012; Almada, Anaya, & Monteiro, 2016; Anaya & Souza, 2014; Giulietti, Giulietti, Pirani, & Menezes, 1988; Monteiro, Pereira, & Gaudio, 2012). The use of the landscape includes extractive practices of native plant species (for medicinal use, food, the manufacturing of artifacts and handicrafts, and construction), agricultural management of farmland and the management of natural pastures for the release of livestock, predominantly bovine.

10.4  A  gricultural Systems and Agrobiodiversity of Serra da Canastra The traditional communities of Serra da Canastra have developed a complex system of multiple and highly diversified uses of local ecosystems. Although socio-­ cultural transformations have led to considerable erosion of managed agricultural varieties, the associated biocultural memory remains active and is an important element for socio-ecological adaptation to new environmental and economic scenarios. A large number of native species are used for a variety of purposes, such as health care, housing, artifact manufacture, food, and handicraft production. As shown by the interviews, at least 234 native plant species known and used by families were recorded during fieldwork. Although marginally registered in our field surveys, 179 species of animals (96 birds) were recorded as components of the communities’ biocultural heritage. Those numbers are extremely significant considering that the research methodology used did not have, as the main goal, an exhaustive survey of the species used by the communities. Traditional farming practices in the communities of Serra da Canastra have long maintained a large number of varieties, especially of rice, maize, beans, cassava, coffee, and sugarcane. Fourteen cultivars, only of beans, most of them rarely found

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today, have been reported. The maintenance of a large number of agricultural varieties, characteristic of traditional and indigenous peasant agriculture, is an important element for the strengthening of the food sovereignty of communities and the more efficient use of resources available in the environment (Pereira, Lopez, & Dal Soglio, 2017). Each variety has morphological or physiological characteristics that impart better adaptive capacity to the different soil types and conditions of the region, also allowing farmers the possibility of adjusting the productive systems in face of the annual variations in the rain regime and even of the climatic changes in the last decades (Bhattarai, Beilin, & Ford, 2015). However, the systematic adoption of the technological package of the Green Revolution, more intensively in the 1980s, has led to a successive material erosion of this agrobiodiversity in rural and traditional communities around the world, which is also true for communities in Serra da Canastra. The erosion has not only been of agrobiodiversity, but also of the knowledge that exists in these communities, which, in turn, was again the result of such agrobiodiversity.

10.5  T  he Classification of the Landscape by Traditional Communities The communities of Serra da Canastra have a rich ecological knowledge about the classification and characterization of the diverse vegetation formations that occur in the region. Two main landscape units are recognized: the plateau (“serra”) and the gaps, or valleys (“vãos”). Along this altitudinal gradient, communities recognize the occurrence and pattern of distribution of cerrado, field, forest, forest patches, “capoeiras,” and “restingas.” Cultivated land is generally restricted to areas closer to watercourses or to areas dominated by forest patches. In Table 10.1, we summarize the local classification of ecosystem units. The left-hand side of the table provides the name of each listed landscape whereas the right-hand side gives its definition. A graphical profile of the main landscape units that depicts the species that are recognized as typical in each environment is presented in Fig. 10.3.

10.6  The Agrobiodiversity and the Ecological-Agricultural Calendar of Serra da Canastra The construction of the territories of rural and traditional communities is linked to their production processes, involving ecological, agricultural, and religious events, which are interrelated in a cyclical time frame. Such time frame, inserted in the historical and socio-economic dynamics, is also the result of transformations in which modern elements are incorporated and re-elaborated, generating new temporalities. Agricultural systems in rural and traditional communities are based on detailed

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Table 10.1  Landscape classification by the traditional communities of Serra da Canastra Landscape Field (campo)

Definition Formations featuring grasses that predominate in the plateaus, but also in regions of higher altitude valleys Riparian forests (mata Forest formations near watercourses ciliar) Forest patches (capão/ Islands of forest formation in the plateaus capões) Hillside vegetation Forest formations that occur on the slopes of the plateaus, following (mata de grota) watercourses or places of greater accumulation of humidity Cerrado Savannas that predominate in the valleys Restingas Dense forests patches occurring in the lowlands

Fig. 10.3  Profile of the main landscape units that compose the traditional ecosystemic management system of the communities of Serra da Canastra. (Source: Elaborated by the authors)

knowledge of local ecological processes, interrelationships between species, soil types, agrobiodiversity, and spatio-temporal patterns of biodiversity distribution. In order to characterize agrobiodiversity and the traditional agro-ecological knowledge of Serra da Canastra communities, several participatory diagnostic techniques have been used, such as the collective construction of an ecological and productive calendar, walks with local informants, interviews, and observations recorded in a field notebook. We have had biologists and anthropologists on staff who worked together to define the methodology, collect and analyze the data gathered during the fieldwork. The ecological and agricultural calendar in Fig. 10.2 shows not only the agricultural production of rice, beans, maize, cassava, coffee, and sugarcane, but also the stages of production and the rain and drought periods, especially the “capim gordura” (Melinis minutiflora) rain period, St. Peter’s rain period, and mango and Ipê flower rain period (Fig. 10.4).

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Fig. 10.4  Ecological and agricultural calendar of the communities of Serra da Canastra, indicating the period of planting and harvesting of the main cultivated species as well as its association with ecological events. (Source: Elaborated by the authors)

These temporal markers not only command the production, but are also indicative of the religiousness of the groups, involved in practices of cooperation and solidarity among families, local groups, and communities.

10.7  T  raditional Livestock and Knowledge About Management Using Fire Livestock and milk production play a central role in local livelihoods. The communities of Serra da Canastra have historically developed a complex ecosystem management system in response to climatic seasonality and landscape heterogeneity. At the same time, livestock farming developed in the region is part of a long history of building knowledge on the management of natural pastures developed by traditional communities of the Cerrado (see Carvalho, 2014). Reports from 1847, produced by the naturalist Auguste de Saint-Hilare (1975), described occurrences of pastures burning by the communities themselves aiming at renewing the pasture for livestock feeding. In his work “Viagem às Nascentes do Rio São Francisco” (“Journey to the sources of the São Francisco River”), as he describes his crossing the Serra da Canastra region, the naturalist informs us that “the fire was not yet fully extinguished, and I could see red and crackling flames

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here and there scurrying through the grass and rolls of smoke rising slowly to the sky” (de Saint-Hilaire, p.107). Several studies of charcoal and pollen grains indicate the effect of fire in the Cerrado even before the arrival of the first human populations (Guidon & Delibrias, 1986; Ledru, 2002; Salgado-Labouriau, Barberi, Ferraz-Vicentini, & Parizzi, 1998; Salgado-Labouriau & Ferraz-Vincentini, 1994). Cerrados, like other savanna biomes, can be considered as fire-dependent pyrophytic ecosystems (Fidelis & Pivello, 2011; Pivello, 2011). According to reports of the community, until the 1970s and 1980s, natural pastures were practically the only source of food for cattle, which fed on the various herbaceous and shrub species present in the country’s formations. Traditional management using fire was mainly associated with rainfall. At the end of the dry season, the cattle were taken to the higher areas, where the pasture was renewed by management using fire. During the rainy season, the dairy cattle were again taken to pasture areas in the valleys when the grasses had already sprouted with the onset of the first summer rains. While it is undeniable that fire, at certain levels of incidence, may play a negative role in the population dynamics of many native species, there is a lack of studies that assess the effects of management using fire in the Cerrado within the context of traditional management (Borges, Eloy, Schmidt, Barradas, & Dos Santos, 2016; Melo & Saito, 2011; Neves, Bedê, & Martins, 2011; Schmidt, Sampaio, Figueiredo, & Ticktin, 2011). The interviews that were carried out with the communities, however, indicate a clear concern with preserving the forest formations from the action of fire, both forest patches and riparian forests. They also indicate the methods that they apply in order to start and to prevent the fire from advancing into the forests and springs. Controlled burning was usually a community activity. Joint efforts were carried out for the controlled burning, taking into consideration the rotation of the areas, as well as the protection of the forests, patches, and springs. Several informants reported some general principles of management using fire that aimed to delimit the area to be burned, such as performing the burnings at night, the time of the day with lower temperatures and preferably after the occurrence of rains on the previous day, all of these being applied as measures to prevent fire from reaching the forest areas. Other relevant information refers to the use of native plants as natural dampers during fire management. Two plants were cited: the enjeca (Hedychium coronarium) also known as “são josé” and embira (unidentified species). Firebreaks,5 traditionally constructed during the rainy season, correspond to another important mechanism of traditional management using fire employed by these communities. During the period of the year when the cattle were taken up the mountain, some residents also lived in “retiros,” a rough temporary dwelling, which would allow for greater control of the herd, the providing of health care and animal feeding. One of

5  Firebreaks are strips of land where the vegetation is removed through burning or cutting so as to act as a barrier to the spread of fire.

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the concerns, still recurrent with regard to cattle, was the danger of snake bites and intoxication from the consumption of some plants such as the herb (Palicourea marcravii), timbó and coirana (unidentified species). In periods of drought, with the reduction of pasture availability, the cattle would more often enter these areas in search of food, increasing the risk of intoxication. Against both risks, the blessing (benzeção6) of cattle and/or pasture was frequent (and it is still practiced). As we were informed, “when the pasture is blessed, the herb grows weak.” The establishment of PNSC, in 1972, imposed a new dynamics on the landscape, making it impossible, among other things, to maintain the traditional management system using fire. Most of the uplands have been integrated into the park area, and lots of families have lost the alternation system between uplands and lowlands for cattle management. Those higher areas stopped being subjected to management using fire, as it had then become an illegal practice within park areas. Since then, the communities have been noticing an increase in the frequency and intensity of wildfires due to the prohibition of traditional management practices by the environmental authorities. According to several residents, what happens in these cases are wildfires, which are distinct from the controlled burnings that used to be carried out in the past. Wildfires are largely natural, caused by lightning, but are eventually accidental (caused by visitors to the protected area) and more rarely criminal. In all cases, there is great difficulty in controlling the fire, due to the increased presence of organic matter (litter) in the area, and the consequences thereof are great losses of biodiversity, both flora and fauna. This issue will be revisited. The ban on the traditional management of natural pastures has also intensified the use of exotic grasses as an alternative for cattle feeding. Although fat grass has already been recorded in the region, since the colonial period, Brachiaria and other African forage grasses only arrived in the region in the mid-1980s. The replacement of natural pastures with planted pastures has transformed the traditional cattle breeding system. In other words, it can be said that the replacement of native species with Brachiaria is also a response to the prohibition against accessing areas which had traditionally been used for the release of cattle, notably the plateaus (uplands). In addition, the gradual substitution of creole cattle breeds for genetically improved breeds have also had an impact upon the management system as a response to the prohibition against using fire for pasture renewal. Huffman (2013) conducted a major review of the common features found in traditional management systems using fire across the globe. The author lists 69 elements that are present in the 35 case studies analyzed in order to characterize this traditional knowledge on management using fire, of which at least 42 elements can also be found in the traditional communities of Serra da Canastra (Table 10.2). 6  Literally, “blessings.” This term refers to practices of care and management based on cosmological systems, according to which it is considered possible to cure and/or prevent diseases and risks by means of rituals intermediated by prayers and specific performances. The capacity for blessing among the people is widely disseminated in the region although some people say they do not have this gift or only have it in case of certain threats.

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Table 10.2  Elements of traditional knowledge about fire found in the traditional communities of Serra da Canastra (adapted from Huffman, 2013) Element Geology, topography, soil Type of soil, humidity Slope

Traditional ecological knowledge about management using fire Classification of soil types Assessment of the effect of the slope in the fire control capability Lowlands, gaps, and mountains

Elevation Vegetation, fuels Humidity of fuels, alive or dead Effects of climatic variations on the combustion capability of the vegetation Plant or animal phenology Perception of the effect of burning on the reproduction of animals and plants Fuel composition, species Knowledge about the composition of species of the fields, cerrados and forests Fuel volume Perception of the effect of the accumulation of litter on the intensity of the fire Structure of fuel or vegetation, Constructing firebreaks to control the spread of the fire from arrangement, continuity one pasture area to another Height Effect of litter height Fuel consumption: Degree, The fields were divided into sections and each section was speed, distribution burned in a biannual regime Vegetation type Fire is basically set to the fields, sparing the forested areas Climate Season Fires take place at the end of the dry season Beginning or end of the rainy Fires used to take place from August to September, before the season, dry season, time of rain summer Wind direction and source “August is the time of dry wind, it blows from east to west” Air humidity, day “the fire, if it has rained, two or three days later, you can set the fire” Amount of rain “the fire, if it has rained, two or three days later, you can set the fire” Lightening Knowledge about the source of the fire, whether it was caused by lightning or not Frequency, return interval, time Biannual fires since fire Size of the fire, extension (area) It is calculated on a community and family basis Type of fire (surface, ground, “fogo de facho (beam fire) is the one used when the amount of canopy) litter is high” Natural extinction Based on the assessment of the source, size, and location of the fire, it is possible to predict the natural process of the extinction of fire Airborne sparks and embers “the carumba is a type of ember that is released on an old burned log and can cause the spread of the fire” Fire operations Control Control is performed collectively (continued)

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Table 10.2 (continued) Element Barriers Time of day Landscape pattern, size of the area to be burned Tools for preparation, ignition, control Size of the groups, help from neighbors Space-time sequence of fires, also for prevention Danger, risk, destructive potential Planning, monitoring conditions before the burning Preparation of the area Fire duration Effects of fire Effects of fire on vegetation Effects of fire on animals

Consequences of not burning The governance of burnings and other social factors Gender roles in management through fire Land management, care, control space Transmission of knowledge

Traditional ecological knowledge about management using fire Constructing firebreaks Burning performed at night or in the early evening The area to be burned varies according to the kind of use, location, and availability of human resources for fire control Use of enjeca and embira as dampers for fire control Burnings are performed collectively Constructing firebreaks around forested areas to avoid the spread of the fire Assessment of the proximity of forested areas, the distribution of firebreaks and the slope of the terrain Taking into consideration climatic variables, availability of human resources and topographic aspects of the area Constructing firebreaks When a fire has started at night, it is usually contained at dawn Peoples’ perception of the benefits of fire to herbaceous and shrub species “the ema (Rhea americana) makes a nest near the water. When it notices the fire, it throws water around the nest so as to protect it from the fire” Negative effects related to the accumulation of biomass

Fires are predominantly male activities Constructing firebreaks

The transmission of knowledge occurs both horizontally and vertically Fires are internally regulated by The owners of bordering lands participate in the control of the the community area to be managed using fire Record of fires as a result of conflicts with PNSC The fire as a tool of social resistance, protest, local conflict

Therefore, traditional knowledge about management using fire in the communities inhabiting Serra da Canastra involves knowledge about the dynamics of local ecosystems and a clear perception of the negative effects of both the prohibition of fires and the high frequency of fire. Often, during the interviews, informants reiterated the distinction between community-controlled fires and wildfires that are not subject to any efficient control mechanism. Based on occasional observations, Mistry and Bizerril (2011) point out that traditional management using fire in Serra da Canastra took place mainly between December and January, during the rainy

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season. However, what we found out in the field survey is that, in this period, which could extend from December to May, when the rainfall levels are higher, the communities dedicate their energies to the maintenance of the firebreaks. Burnings used to take place at the end of the dry season. Although it is a more critical period and with greater risks of fire propagation, traditional management techniques, including the construction of firebreaks, allow for effective fire control, containing the effects of fire within the desired areas. According to the communities, the prohibition of traditional management using fire causes the litter (dry, highly flammable organic matter, formed by the accumulation of dead grasses and shrubs) to increase, thus providing a large volume of fuel and making it almost impossible to control a wildfire, whether a natural one, caused by lightning, or an intentional one. Although, in recent years, there has been an effort not only by the government environmental agency in charge of the national parks, but also by other organizations to better understand the role of fire in the ecosystem and in the dynamics of the culture. According to this, the total ban on the use of fire for management has brought more damage than benefits to the protected areas. Alves and Silva (2011) and Fidelis and Pivello (2011) write on the fire control performed by government environmental agencies, as follows: Often, the fighting is carried out against natural fire that occurs in native vegetation, adapted to fire and distant from areas of livestock or woods. This can cause an accumulation of dry organic matter, which, when finally ignited, causes a more intense fire, affecting even adapted species. This accumulation may also favor the dominance of high grasses of C4 metabolism, drastically reducing the populations of hundreds of species, threatening these with extinctions (Alves & Silva, 2011). In the Cerrado, the establishment of protected areas leads to changes in the fire regime, usually excluding it. This causes accumulation of combustible material throughout the years of exclusion, resulting in great risk of uncontrolled and intense fires from sparks generated by human activities (Fidelis & Pivello, 2011).

Between 1988 and 2008, according to Magalhães, Lima, and Ribeiro (2012), the burnings carried out for the purpose of “pasture clearing” were responsible for 10.50% of the occurrences, equivalent to 9.31% of the area burned in PNSC. On the other hand, the fires resulting from lightning corresponded to 40.18% of the occurrences and 12.41% of the area burned. Radiated fires are concentrated in the rainy season and generally reach low extensions of area. The burnings carried out by the communities cover larger areas, corresponding to the pastures, and occur more frequently at the end of the dry season. Medeiros and Fiedler (2004) conducted a similar study in PNSC, focusing on the period from 1987 to 2001. Already at that time, the authors not only show their utter ignorance concerning the traditional systems of management using fire carried out by the communities, but have even proposed activities, such as environmental education, as a tool for firefighting, and have yet stated that “educational activities should be directed to surrounding communities because they use fire as a tool for agricultural management and provide uncontrolled fires that would cause the main fires in PNSC” (Medeiros & Fiedler, 2004). Although the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation and Fires: Cerrado (Plano de Ação para prevenção e controle do desmatamento e das queimadas: Cerrado), proposed by the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment

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(MMA, 2011), recognizes the need to ensure the territorial rights of traditional communities, it fails to address the need to incorporate their knowledge about management using fire for the conservation of the biome. On the other hand, in the scope of the government environmental agency, there is a growing openness for debate on the subject, although, in the case of PNSC, the relationship between its management staff and the community has been historically marked by authoritarian stances, according to which the validity and legitimacy of the traditional knowledge has been ultimately denied. In 2011, the journal “Biodiversidade Brasileira” (Brazilian Biodiversity), published by the government environmental agency, dedicated a thematic issue on the topic of Fire Management in Protected Areas. We regard the recognition of the ecological knowledge of traditional peoples and communities is an important step not only toward the management of the territories, but also toward safeguarding their rights and autonomy in the face of the hegemonic model of biodiversity conservation.

10.8  Final Considerations The statements taken from the members of the communities expose a conflict between two forms of management and knowledge: on the one hand, the traditional management, based on long observation of and close relation to the natural processes, and, on the other hand, academics’ and the government environmental agency’s management, based on a decontextualized and homogenizing approach to the principles of management using fire. According to the communities, the ban on traditional management using fire has had serious consequences for local ecosystems. If from the government environmental agency’s perspective, fire was traditionally regarded as an alien element to the ecological system, for the communities, fire is as natural (and cultural) as the fields, forests, and cerrados in Serra da Canastra—all of them in relation to the human and non-human being existences. In this context, it is not only the rocky fields that are on fire but the governmental reason itself, anchored in certain preconceived modes of management of protected areas. In uncontrolled wildfires in fields formerly managed by communities, the traditional knowledge regimes, denied and violated by the state for the sake of environmental conservation, are also on fire.

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Ramos-Neto, M. B., & Pivello, V. R. (2000). Lightning fires in a Brazilian savanna national park: Rethinking management strategies. Environmental Management, 26, 675–684. Resende, E. T., & Prous, A. (1991). Os vestígios vegetais do Grande Abrigo de Santana do Riacho. Arquivos do Museu de História Natural da UFMG, 12, 87–111. Ribeiro, R.  F. (2005). Florestas anãs do sertão: o cerrado na história de Minas Gerais edn (p. 480). Belo Horizonte: Autêntica. Romero, R., & Nakajima, J.  N. (1999). Espécies endêmicas do Parque Nacional da Serra da Canastra, Minas Gerais. Revista Brasileira de Botânica, 22(2), 259–265. Saint-Hilare, A. (1975). Viagem às Nascentes do Rio São Francisco (p.  190). Itatiaia: Belo Horizonte. Salgado-Labouriau, M. L., Barberi, M. B., Ferraz-Vicentini, K. R., & Parizzi, M. G. (1998). A dry climatic event during the late quaternary of tropical Brazil. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 99, 115–129. Salgado-Labouriau, M. L., & Ferraz-Vincentini, K. R. (1994). Fire in the Cerrado 32,000 years ago. Current Research in the Pleistocene, 11, 85–87. Schmidt, I.  B., Fonseca, C.  B., Ferreira, M.  C., & Sato, M.  N. (2016). Implementação do programa piloto de manejo integrado do fogo em três unidades de conservação do Cerrado. Biodiversidade Brasileira, 6(2), 55–70. Schmidt, I. B., Sampaio, M. B., Figueiredo, I. B., & Ticktin, T. (2011). Fogo e artesanato de capim-­ dourado no Jalapão–usos tradicionais e consequências ecológicas. Biodiversidade brasileira, 2, 67–85. Souza, R. O., Fieker, C. Z., Reis, M. G., Bruno, S. F., Ribeiro, P. V., & Carvalho, C. M. S. (2017). Estratégias de integração entre pesquisa e manejo do fogo no Parque Nacional da Serra da Canastra como parte do desenvolvimento de um Programa de Manejo Integrado do fogo. Biodiversidade Brasileira, 6(2), 205–219.

Chapter 11

Interculturalism and Power at the Margin of Environmental Governance: An Approach from the Selva El Ocote Biosphere Reserve (Mexico) Carla Beatriz Zamora Lomelí Abstract  This chapter analyzes power relations involved in environmental governance in the Selva El Ocote Biosphere Reserve (REBISO) in Chiapas, Mexico. In order to identify elements that shape power relations, the study aims to examine the perceptions of local actors while observing the role of the operators of the entity responsible for administering REBISO.  We used a transdisciplinary framework including the concept of perception as a “bridging concept” among various fields of knowledge. Also, we used qualitative research methods including the case study approach as well as interviews and focus groups in four communities that inhabit the buffer zone of REBISO. Finally, in order to strengthen the practice of governance and consider the dimensions of social and environmental sustainability in an integral manner, the study points to the need for establishing an intercultural approach to operation of the environmental regime of the REBISO and of protected natural areas in general. Keywords  Power relations · Intercultural approach · Environmental governance · Tsotsil people · Zoque people

11.1  Introduction Mexico is a megadiverse and multicultural country. Its richness in flora and fauna species has made possible environmental conservation projects that since the late 1970s established conservation schemes that have gradually incorporated the social perspective. Overall, we refer to protected natural areas (PNA) as territories destined to the conservation and protection of biodiversity but also seen as places where C. B. Zamora Lomelí (*) Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Mexico e-mail: [email protected]

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complex social processes occur. Most often, the space destined to PNA tends to coincide with indigenous territories and communities, which generate tensions and conflicts between indigenous peoples and the administrations of these areas (Barragán, 2008, p. 4). In this chapter, we analyze the dimension of power relations1 among actors in the natural protected area called Selva el Ocote Biosphere Reserve (REBISO by its acronym in Spanish). Our argument is that the incorporation of an intercultural approach to operation of the environmental regime of the REBISO and of PNAs in general would lead towards the sustainability of both conservation and community development objectives. In order to analyze power relations, it is necessary to consider the relations nature-society from the conjunction and complementarity of different actors and disciplinary fields (Urquijo Torres & Barrera, 2009, p. 229). It is necessary also to analyze these relations as a continuum, that is, from a unity formed by society and environment (social-environmental), starting from the complexity and interdependence among its elements based on transdisciplinary work2 that addresses the socio-­ environmental systems. In this order, conservation should not be understood outside of the relationship between nature and society. It implies recognizing an array of actors that intervene in the conservation process, from government administrators to the inhabitants of the territories declared as PNA. For this purpose, “a PNA is, first and foremost, a process of territorialization, which, although it has a legal qualification at its core, is relevant because it is the result of interaction between a set of actors who, over time, produce specific forms of material and symbolic appropriation that as a whole form or configure (or rather: reconfigure) a territory” (Azuela, Cano Castellanos, & Rabasa, 2019, p. 31). Thus, a range of diverse actors with different levels of interaction come together to decide regarding the territory; given that “the territory is a concept very clearly linked to power relations is always linked to power and to the control of social processes through the control of space” (Haesbaert, 2013, p. 13). In this sense, the management of a PNA must guarantee that all the mechanisms of administration consider the agrarian, environmental, economic, and social rights of local actors, together with the institutional conditions for environmental management. In other words, the PNA as a territory for conservation where multiple actors converge is a legally regulated area but implies the constant dynamic interaction among those who inhabit the same space, those who execute social intervention projects, and those who carry out academic research in the territory. This dynamics results in different gradients of 1  Power relations will be seen on the basis that “the power has to be analyzed as something that circulates, or rather, as something that does not work but in chain” (Foucault, 1992, p. 152). In this sense, power implies a relation of forces where there is the possibility of modifying the present or possible actions of the other and it is an action that is exercised, not possessed. This relationship is understood only from the emergence of the resistances it generates; therefore, it is a dynamic process. 2  In this book, transdisciplinarity is understood as collaborative work to solve a problem which integrates the local perspective and that of external researchers and other actors as well as the different types of knowledge, the scientific and the traditional and indigenous knowledge (ParraVázquez et al. Chap. 1, this volume).

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power relationships, as we will see in the results section. Therefore, it is important to review and understand recent discussions on PNA: The current scenario of conservation in protected natural areas is characterized by environmental institutions and local populations starting from different epistemic bases, which accompany actions and discourses on the natural environment. Of course, conservation requires the creation of spaces for mutual understanding that foster pertinent and negotiated decision-making. An argument in favor of intercultural dialogue requires favorable conditions and a new language based on shared ideas, in which the different conceptions of nature and the world are discussed. Citizen participation would have to be the central axis of environmental policy and should be framed in a context where the most diverse interests coincide; however, Mexican environmental policy reflects more the perceptions, visions, and interests of decision-makers than those of the local population, which affects the success or failure of a program or public policies (Bello & Estrada, 2012, pp. 220–221).

A concept that addresses and seeks to balance power relations among actors for decision-making is that of environmental governance, conceived as the “process of formulation and refutation of images, designs and execution of procedures and practices that configure access, control and use of natural resources between different actors” (De Castro, Hogenboom, & Baud, 2015, p. 18) and that through different mechanisms can influence environmental decisions. However, this governance approach lacks the dimension of power and conflict among actors, which is important to analyze from the Local Socio-Environmental Systems approach that includes the interaction of the territory and the environmental regime, as it is argued in this book (Parra-Vázquez et al. Chap. 1, this volume; Bello-Baltazar et al. Chap. 21, this volume). In order to identify elements that shape power relations in a PNA, this chapter aims to examine the perceptions of local actors while observing the role of the operators of the entity responsible for administering REBISO.  This objective is framed in the analysis of the actors involved in environmental governance and how the configuration of power relations is created with respect to the territory of the REBISO. For this purpose, we used qualitative social research techniques framed within a transdisciplinary framework to identify the perceptions of a sample of people living in four localities of the buffer zone of the REBISO, along with an analysis of networks to broaden the spectrum of actors involved in the aforementioned PNA conservation model. In this way, we take up the scope with respect to the ethnic and cultural diversity of the people living in the territory and the possibilities of environmental governance from critical interculturalism. In doing this, we want to unveil “complex relations, negotiations and cultural exchanges, and seek to develop an interaction between people, knowledge, practices, logics, rationalities and principles of life that are culturally different, and that starts from social, economic, political and power asymmetries” (Walsh, 2009, p. 45). Finally, the chapter points towards the consideration of “the observance, promotion and guarantee of the rights of indigenous peoples to participate in the processes of planning, management and administration of natural resources” (CNDH, 2016, p. 159) to contribute to more inclusive and democratic environmental governance.

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11.2  Methods 11.2.1  Study Area The Selva El Ocote Biosphere Reserve (REBISO) is located in the northwest of the state of Chiapas, Mexico, with more than 101 thousand hectares; it is home to one of the few remnants of sub-perennial rainforest and lowland deciduous forest vegetation in Mexico. This area was declared a Biosphere Reserve on November 27, 2000. Its area partially covers the municipalities of Ocozocoautla, Cintalapa, Jiquipilas, and Tecpatan (Fig. 11.1). In general terms, similarly to other PNAs, the REBISO plays a relevant role in the preservation of the biosphere because it is a forested area and a refuge for wildlife; it houses species of flora and fauna considered threatened, in danger of extinction and subject to special protection. This increases the importance of preserving it in the face of the expansion of agricultural areas, the plundering of precious woods such as cedar (Cedrela odorata) and mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla), and the persistent danger of fires in the region which have been processes that have contributed to the loss of primary forest cover in the reserve. This territory is inhabited by

Fig. 11.1  Study area. Selva El Ocote Biosphere Reserve (REBISO). (Source: El Colegio de la Frontera Sur—Geographic Analysis and Information Laboratory)

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a population of about 8017 people (Cano, 2019, p. 244) who live in 32 communities within the buffer zone, where 72% of the inhabitants are indigenous Tsotsiles, followed by indigenous Zoques and mestizo inhabitants. These localities have an ownership of common property (ejido), with the exception of two communities that are governed under communal ownership (comunidades agrarias) of land (interview with the director of REBISO, 2015). These are communities whose main activity is agricultural and livestock work where the practice of extensive cattle ranching has represented a threat for conservation purposes since deciduous forests are cleared to give way to pastures (SEMARNAT & CONANP, 2001) although there are mechanisms to regulate such practices and even alternatives have been developed from sustainable intensive cattle ranching (Gómez-Castro et al., 2012), but it has been recently found that due to the degradation of the soil by cattle farming, the REBISO’s core zone has been moved. In addition, there is “an environmental and productive conflict, since it has little land with agricultural potential and is not used in an optimal manner, together with the pressure of land scarcity, land not suitable for agricultural activities is dismantled” (SEMARNAT & CONANP, 2001, p.  2), which together with the population growth of around 4% per year, represents a risk for conservation purposes.

11.2.2  Q  ualitative Social Research Within a Transdisciplinary Framework This study was carried out between 2015 and 2017. In the research approach, we used local people’s environmental perceptions focused on those who live in the buffer zone of the REBISO. The perceptions framework poses a holistic relationship between nature and society where, far from geographical determinism, the environment influences people’s perception, that is, “people and their individual and social processes are shaped by the environmental conditions of the place where they live, for this reason it is fundamental to study processes such as perceptions within the ecological contexts where people’s interrelations with their environment occur” (Benez, Kauffer, & Álvarez, 2010, p. 136). It is an approach based on the subjectivity of individuals, their discourses and attitudes that are mediated by their generic, and ethnic attributes but also cultural, social, and political, “in this way the concept of environmental perception articulates the individual and collective aspects, contexts, feelings and comprehensions, for the consent of the local points of view that will allow the construction of dialogues” (Sánchez & Martínez, 2017, p. 600). The concept of perception has foundations in philosophy and psychology, and gradually it has become an interdisciplinary concept (sensu Arce-Ibarra & Gastelú Martínez, 2007) or “bridging concept” (sensu Parra-Vázquez et  al. Chap. 1, this volume) that serves to conjugate anthropology, sociology, and environmental sciences to account for complex social processes. In this study, by taking the focus on people’s perceptions, we also intended to progress in transdisciplinary praxis

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through work carried out with local people of different ethnic origin. Thus, we have prioritized the dialogue of knowledge and used focus groups and 25 interviews with key actors of four communities located in REBISO: Veinte Casas, San Joaquín, Nuevo San Juan Chamula, and Emilio Rabasa, all belonging to REBISO’s region 1 according to CONANP, which has established four work zones in the PNA. Interviews were conducted on topics such as the origin of the inhabitants, the relationship with the REBISO’s administrators, appropriation of the conservation, benefits of the territory, limitations of the PNA, and community development proposals. Transdisciplinary context was made possible by designing workshops first with the interdisciplinary combination of ecologists, anthropologists, and sociologists in dialogue with PNA operators and local authorities. To do this, it was necessary to define what would be the sample of interviewees in communities with a history of working with CONANP in order to guarantee the security and viability of the research. However, after the four aforementioned communities had been chosen, and as part of the study area is a high-conflict area where some inhabitants control groups close to organized crime, security conditions in nearby areas such as in Oaxaca and Malpaso Dam (El Encajonado) prevented the investigation from continuing because people who lives there threatened the researchers by burning the boat and firing bullets into the air. The collected data were processed to get various categories of analysis on environmental perceptions. At an analytical level, this allowed to identify the categories of power relations in the management of a PNA. The resulting categories were analyzed using the criticism of environmental governance complemented by an intercultural approach to the operation of REBISO.

11.3  Results and Discussion 11.3.1  Territorialization and Poverty Overall, the territorial configuration (or territorialization) of our study area shows a historical process where until the fifteenth century AD, the Zoque ethnicity occupied the entire western part of Chiapas, a territory that was gradually decreasing during the following centuries due to the arrival and invasions of other groups of people (SEMARNAT & CONANP, 2001); therefore, it has been a territory inhabited in different historical periods by various indigenous groups and mestizos. In more recent times, the populations that now form part of the REBISO’s buffer zone have their origin in the dynamics of agrarian distribution in Chiapas, where inhabitants of communities in the Los Altos area demanded land from the federal government, which has been gradually granted since the 1960s in the land that today comprises the REBISO.

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The process of land ownership occurred due to the arrival of people from other municipalities to work as laborers on cattle ranches or as workers on hydraulic infrastructure such as the Nezahualcóyotl (or Malpaso) Dam. The history of the colonization process in the region refers that: Towards the 1950s, the presence of cattle ranches that supplied labor from Tsotsiles populations of Los Altos, as well as the attraction of the population of this ethnic group towards the end of this decade, when the construction of the Nezahualcoyotl Dam, locally known as Malpaso Dam, began. Apparently, part of the Tsotsil population that was used as labor for the construction of this dam, after the flooding of the lands decided to settle in the region, although in other cases the arrival of Tsotsil families was related to the expulsions of Protestant population from Los Altos, in the 1970s. Thus, since then a process of colonization and application for ejidos and New Ejidal Population Centers began, today located in the northern and southwestern part of the conservation polygon, in addition to the titling of small properties located mostly to the east of the reserve. Within this panorama, for 1996, it was also reported the occupation of national lands, as well as the presence of uncultivated lands. In these first years of the establishment of the Biosphere Reserves, the work of managing these areas took time to take pace, just as the populations took time to know and/or accept that they were within or in the vicinity of a conservation polygon, the relationship between the personnel in charge and the local populations was marked by a lot of tension, specifically expressed in threats to officials who dared to go to the localities to talk about conservation (Cano, 2019, pp. 252–253)

Many of the first settlements derived from migration from one municipality to another took place between 1968 and 1994, that is to say, in some cases they were spaces granted by ejidal endowment prior to the REBISO decree. In this way, the inhabitants of the zone have had to tie a rural way of life linked to the REBISO’s decrees and restrictions imposed by environmental regulations, which, from the natural-society relations perspective, results in different areas of opportunity to tie the correspondence between the population and its territory. However, it has been reported that: The low productivity characteristic of the rural sector correlates with the extreme levels of poverty that predominate particularly in the south, southeast, and east of the country, establishing a vicious circle of poverty and survival behaviors that negatively impact the nation’s ecological capital (SEMARNAT & CONANP, 2001, p. 34).

With respect to poverty levels, 85% of the people who live in the area are regarded as poor people. It is a structural problem that has been partially combated by government agencies and non-governmental organizations that come to REBISO. Despite efforts to channel programs, sustainable development becomes a banner as men from the local communities continue to migrate to the United States and to other states in northern Mexico because in their places of origin they do not have sufficient economic means to reverse their condition of poverty. In the words of the director of REBISO, communities “continue to be abandoned, and it is curious because at this point in time, they should already be communities with a little more opportunity. Ironically, and this is what we say to the people of the communities: you live in an area with a lot of wealth and a lot of poverty” (interview with the Director of REBISO, 2015). Therefore, these are

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c­ ommunities whose exercise of fundamental rights is very limited because they lack the basic rights to health, food, and a dignified life, which places them at the lowest level of the pyramid of power relations over the territory. Overall, the process of territorialization has changed because the local people cannot economically support itself from agricultural work in the area, but at the same time its economic strategies are limited, as the director of REBISO points out: “With the hardening of the current migration policy [elsewhere], people are returning [and staying in their communities], but within the communities there is an agrarian process where the ejidatarios do not have land because they sold the land or gave it to their children, and if [financial] resources from government programs arrive [locally] they are not invested in the territory but used for other things because they no longer have land” (interview with the Director of REBISO, 2019). In short, wealthy territories with poor people seem to be the basis on which conservation projects in NPA are sustained, which translates into power relations among actors where the administrative decisions of the territory are in constant tension with the daily needs of those people who live there.

11.3.2  Actors, Perceptions, and Power Relations in REBISO Due to their legal nature and the importance that the territory represents for conservation, a wide range of actors converge in the PNAs; for the purposes of this chapter, we identify the following actors: 1. institutional actors, responsible for administering and executing environmental legislation in space and who in turn execute the policy that emanates from international agreements regarding climate change 2. global actors, which are the international organizations that observe and influence the definition of environmental public policies at federal and state levels, they can also finance local projects that seek to implement sustainable development 3. academics, mostly members of the Technical Advisory Council of the Reserve who use the space for research purposes 4. community actors, ejidatarios and avecindados,3 refers to the population that lives in the polygon of the reserve and whose historical processes of colonization of the territory give them particular cultural and social characteristics where the indigenous identity Tsotsil and Zoque prevails although all have their origins in some indigenous people but through generations the identity and culture has been lost.

3  In Mexico, agrarian legislation recognizes the figure of the ejido as social or common property. The ejidatarios are the members of the ejido who are owners with rights in common with other ejidatarios. Avecindados are those who have resided for a year or more in the ejido but do not have ejidal property rights.

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In view of all the actors involved, there is an administrative challenge regarding the characteristics of the indigenous population that leads to the revision of an intercultural approach in the design and operation of the conservation project in a PNA; it is directly related to the process of territorialization, inasmuch as an indigenous territory observes the right to free self-determination of the peoples, that is to say, it has a particular social and political character. In Mexico and in REBISO, the dynamics of power relations in PNAs flow in a pyramidal shape, starting at the top with the actors at the international level, where agreements are established from which actions are then derived, for instance, in the adaptation and mitigation of climate change regime in the state of Chiapas. Such agreements were adopted emphatically from the beginning of the twentieth century providing resources for conservation actions in areas decreed for such purposes, but without consulting the population living in the territories intended for that purpose. Along with the federal environmental policy, the actors arrive to NPAs to finance projects. In this case, REBISO has obtained economic funds from foundations and agencies such as “the International Development Agency (IDA), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), [the] European Economic Community (EEC), World Wildlife Found (WWF), Klamath National Forest (KNF-USFS), SEMARNAT, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), ARBORDAY Foundation, CONMPTON Inc, BIMBO Industries, Fondo Mexicano para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (FMCN) and the Government of the State of Chiapas” (SEMARNAT & CONANP, 2001, p. 5), among others. These funds are channeled through the national administrative entity, the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas (CONANP for its Spanish acronym) of the REBISO, which in turn coordinates with non-governmental organizations for the establishment of conservation and sustainable development projects; for example, through the Conservation Program for Sustainable Development (Procodes) to promote productive projects and conservation and restoration of ecosystems. The academic actors are allies of CONANP through their participation in the REBISO’s Technical Advisory Council, but also in supporting it with the formulation of research projects that provide scientific information for decision-making, and although they relate to the population of the communities for such projects, generally the level of involvement with these actors is instrumental, that is, there is little impact on improving the basic living conditions of the people who live there. Other government agencies work in the region to offer social assistance support such as educational scholarships or medical consultations, but there is little coordination with CONANP administrators to strengthen the impact of social development projects in the communities. As we have previously mentioned, at the base of these relations are the people who live in the REBISO’s polygon, but a distance is marked in the relations with instances such as project funders, academics, and policy definitions at the national and international regimes level. This is complemented by the perceptions of the inhabitants who, for the most part, reported to this research more difficulties than benefits when living under the conditions of a PNA. People’s latter opinion is as follow. 42% of the interviewees prioritized exposing the diverse problems they live

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35%

42%

Difficulties experienced Desired and changes

23%

Perceived achievements and benefits

Fig. 11.2  Main themes recorded using the interviewees’ perceptions in four communities of REBISO. (Source: Elaborated by the author)

25 20 15 10 5 0 with the with the land regulations

with plagues

with the with the by climate lack of harvest authorities change access to resources

Fig. 11.3  Main difficulties: according to the interviewees’ perceptions in four communities of REBISO. (Source: Elaborated by the author)

with in the REBISO, while 35% of them referred to the benefits they get, and 23% of them focused on exposing their future desires and yearnings with respect to the territory (Fig. 11.2). With respect to the people’s perceptions regarding the difficulties they have while living in the REBISO, the main one is a lack of access to economic resources, followed by difficulties related to climate change such as coping with extended drought periods and the loss of crops due to hydrometeorological phenomena (Fig.  11.3). In order of importance, a third difficulty is related to the regulations governing the REBISO. In this sense, several people expressed fear of being imprisoned if they violate any of the REBISO’s regulations (see also García et al. Chap. 6, this volume). Less frequently, the inhabitants expressed having difficulties related to their production systems or the characteristics of the land in karstic and stony soils. According to the theoretical-methodological approach of this work, from a transdisciplinary perspective it is important to retake the voice of the people who

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p­ articipated in this research.4 We have systematized some of the most significant people’s perceptions regarding the benefits and difficulties they identified with respect to their life in the reserve. These results allow us to understand the ­background of the people’s problems and in qualitative terms, correlate them with cultural, social, and economic variables that lead us to devise a proposal from the critical intercultural perspective related to the management and governance of the protected natural area in the case of REBISO. The voices of the community actors were as follows (Table 11.1): From the above testimonies we can see benefits people get related to the appreciation of the landscape and the quality of life in coexistence with a clean environment, as well as a vision for the future so that the territory conserves the richness of its biodiversity; but also the daily coexistence with wild animals implies dealing with fauna that impacts on the harvest of corn. Also, the demographic growth and the endowment of land is another difficulty that is observed in collected testimonies, given that the legislation establishes limits to the agricultural frontier and it is not possible to expand it more. Much of the population that lives in the REBISO is relatively young, that is, they are groups with no more than three or four generations of having arrived in the area, so although there is a process of reterritorialization, they continue appropriating the land. At this point, we could ask, what are perceived as difficulties by the inhabitants of REBISO and the decisions taken at the level of environmental policy, indicate an operational problem? We argue that all this comprises a form of vertical environmental governance where there is no recognition of cultural differences that could lay the foundations for intercultural dialogue in decision-making on the territory. The relationship between nature and society has not been simple since at first the people who arrived in the colonization process had to meet new animals and learn to work with stony terrain. The very social networks that people maintain have made migration to the United States and northern states of Mexico possible, in a cyclical manner. Also, between March and April, trucks arrive in the communities to transport the men to other spaces to work as agricultural day laborers. Our results also show that local communities show interest in working on sustainable development projects which could be an incentive for environmental governance; however, they consider that there is verticality in the REBISO’s institutional processes as expressed by the following interviewees’ opinion: “the dependencies bring guidelines that are made from the office, which is not the same to be in the office as to be here, they do not leave us a choice, or we take it or leave it, there are family needs that force to take programs that are offered although they do not make sense and do not serve” (interview with producers, San Joaquin, 2016)

4  The Social and Biological Vulnerability to Climate Change Project in the Reserve of the Selva El Ocote Biosphere, from which this chapter is derived, was attended by 19 researchers from at least five disciplines (biology, sociology, ecology, anthropology, and nutrition) from institutions such as El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Universidad de Science and Arts of Chiapas and the Secretariat of the Environment and Natural History.

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Table 11.1  Main perceptions of benefits and difficulties as people had expressed it in the workshops Benefit “I have my plot with trees, if I need for my house I have my plot from where to get firewood” “We have constant rain, a moist soil and almost all the time is harvested”

“The institutions take us into account”

Difficulty “We can’t trade species of [wild] animals or meat because if they see us they’ll take us to jail.”

When we make cornfields the [wild] animals come in and we don’t have anyone to demand that they eat the crops, it’s a disadvantage to live in the mountains, a hectare of cornfields isn’t enough because the animals come in, from the moment they are sown everything is pulled up Very limited projects, not enough to meet needs Children are growing up and they no longer have anywhere to work, so they have to go looking somewhere else Lack of employment, you have to go looking for work outside the community

“We have pure air, you can practice outdoor sports and it is good for health” “We have an unfinished road, we don’t have drinking water.” “We can hear the birds singing, see animals and there [Traditional] burning of stubble to plant corn and beans is are many edible plants” prohibited “We do not receive any resources for nature conservation” “I don’t have the resources to There are many formalities in the governmental institutions live in the city, here you can breathe fresh air and I take care of my apiaries.” He who sows corn sows poverty; he who sows trees sows wealth “The importance of conserving is to have animals, Wild animals attack domestic animals but seeing [them] is not eating” In the dry season there is not enough water, it rains but it is not Water availability through in milpa [slash-and-burn cultivation] time. streams and rain When Conanp arrived, they Maize doesn’t perform as well as in low-lying areas thought they were going to There are large trees [here] but they cannot be harvested because take away their land, but they they cannot be felled. saw that projects had arrived “One hectare of milpa is not enough for [feeding] the family, [and] it is not possible to commercialize plants or meat of wild animals.”

In other words, this derives from years of a way of exercising government through assistance programs, which can represent a threat to conservation projects if the development of the capacities of those who inhabit the reserve is not promoted, but above all, it distances itself from the ideal of environmental governance by omitting the imbalance of powers in environmental decision-making. Environmental governance also finds limits in the participation of the community base; only the transfer or travel of ejidal and community representatives to attend the meeting spaces of the administrators can be difficult due to the lack of economic resources to attend it; later, in the decision-making spaces, the voice of

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institutional actors, academics, and organizations tends to prevail over the representation of the communities that inhabit the reserve, if they manage to arrive, as one ejidal commissioner expressed: “it is not easy to go to CONANP meetings because they only give us for the ticket, but not for the food and that money is not enough” (interview with ejidal commissioner, Veinte Casas, 2016).

Another important aspect to take into account in environmental governance as an axis of public policies is the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic difference of the populations that inhabit the territories of the PNA and the relationship with the operators of institutions such as CONANP. In the field work of this research, we identified that it is necessary for staff to be trained and sensitized to work with indigenous peoples since one finds the exercise of power relations through those who represent a government institution: mestizo middle-class professionals whose attitudes towards the population are supportive. Thus, within the framework of General Recommendation Number 26 of the National Commission for Human Rights (Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos, CNDH) consultation with indigenous peoples regarding the management of the REBISO took place in 2017. However, this consultation partially met the international criteria for informing the inhabitants of the territory in their own language about the management mechanisms for conservation. When asking the operators about the importance of considering this ethnic population in accordance with the purposes of the PNA, they responded “why asking them if they are not even from here [referring to the earlier colonization of the area]” (interview with CONANP-­REBISO operator, 2018), which indicates denial of cultural diversity in the PNA, and could be a point of conflict between institutional actors and the population. Despite this, the motivation of the inhabitants to cooperate in conservation actions is more related to cultural factors, such as the close relationship of the indigenous community with its environment and with the notion of the future of the community: “[…] if I die today, my children will remain, conservation is for those who come, not for me, it is a benefit for them” (interview with ejidatario, Veinte Casas, 2015).

11.4  Final Considerations The framework of interculturalism cannot be addressed without looking at the dynamics in which power relations occur. In Mexico, historically indigenous peoples have been subsumed to institutional power structures (García et al. Chap. 6, this volume), and this is repeated in the operation of governmental programs, for example, relevant information to local people is not delivered by conservation institutions in indigenous language, instead, it is delivered in non-understandable language. Dominant institutional knowledge is imposed on local inhabitants without the ­rescue of local and indigenous knowledge. Moreover, a practice to people’s assis-

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tance (delivering money) is maintained through several stimuli and projects, which in the short-term reproduces vertical power relations. The case reviewed here shows that power relationships are dynamic and actors constantly appear to make decisions about the territory to be conserved. However, the population that inhabits the same space is the weakest link in the decisions chain because it is limited by environmental legislation and its capacities to decide on the territory are limited. We found also limitations in the PNA’s day-to-day operation, basically related to budget cuts for work where now there are fewer and fewer technical staff to remain in the field, which affects weak relations with the inhabitants of the REBISO, so this limits the possibilities for work with an intercultural approach. In this sense, the vertical nature of power relations derives from the concentration of power in the federal executive and the development model in place, where environmental issues are not always prioritized, leaving it open to the search for international financing where the national commitments acquired in terms of the conservation projects hardly cover the demands of the people who live in the REBISO buffer zone. The path towards the construction of environmental governance also requires working to reduce the gap of social inequalities and poverty in which the population living in the PNA lives, for which more than a sustainable development project or a government grant is needed; it is necessary to rescue the local and indigenous knowledge and according to the principles of interculturalism, the inhabitants will have to be acting subjects of their own development and of their relation with the environment in which they live. Acknowledgements  Author would like to express her gratitude to the National Council of Science and Technology for financing my research through the project PDCPN 2013/214650-Social and biological vulnerability to climate change in the El Ocote Selva Biosphere Reserve.

References Arce-Ibarra, A. M., & Gastelú-Martínez, A. I. (2007). Linking social and natural sciences methods using Mind Maps: A case study of human-nature interactions in Mexico’s Lowland Maya area. The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, 2, 39–52. Azuela, A., Cano Castellanos, I., & Rabasa, A. (2019). Estudios sobre el cumplimiento e impacto de las recomendaciones generales, Informes especiales y pronunciamientos de la CNDH (2001–2017). Tomo VI. Áreas naturales protegidas y Derechos Humanos. Coordinación de Humanidades. Mexico City: UNAM—CNDH. Barragán, L. (2008). Pueblos indígenas y Áreas protegidas en América Latina, FAO. Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Medio Rural y Marino de España. Bello, B. E., & Estrada, L. E. (2012) Cultura, conservación y áreas naturales: hacia una conservación incluyente. In G. Silva & M.R. Parra (Eds.), Patrimonio cultural y natural, desde los enfoques de la sustentabilidad y del saber local, (pp. 220–221). San Cristóbal de las Casas: Asociación Mexicana de Estudios Rurales, A.C./Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Benez, M. C., Kauffer, M. E., & Álvarez, G. (2010). Percepciones ambientales de la calidad del agua superficial en la microcuenca del río Fogótico, Chiapas. Frontera Norte, 22(43), 129–158.

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Cano, I. (2019). Las ANP Federales en Chiapas. In Azuela, A., Cano Castellanos, I. & Rabasa, A. (Eds.), Estudios sobre el cumplimiento e impacto de las recomendaciones generales, Informes especiales y pronunciamientos de la CNDH (2001–2017). Tomo VI. Áreas naturales protegidas y Derechos Humanos. Coordinación de Humanidades. Mexico City: UNAM—CNDH. CNDH (Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos). (2016). Recomendación general número 26 sobre la falta y/o actualización de programas de manejo en Áreas Naturales Protegidas de carácter federal y su relación con el goce y disfrute de diversos derechos humanos. Retrieved April 28, 2015, from www.cndh.org.mx/sites/all/doc/recomendaciones/generales/recgral_026. pdf. De Castro, F., Hogenboom, B., & Baud, M. (2015). Gobernanza ambiental en América Latina. Buenos Aires: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales. Foucault, M. (1992). Microfísica del poder. Madrid: Ediciones La Piqueta. Gómez-Castro, H., Guevara-Hernández, F., Hernández-Lopez, M. H., Nahed-Toral, J., Rodríguez-­ Larramendi, L., & Pinto-Ruiz, R. (2012). Analysis of cattle raising and institutional perspectives regarding collective action in the El Ocote biosphere reserve, Chiapas, Mexico. Journal of Animal and Veterinary Advances, 11, 831–840. Haesbaert, R. (2013). Del mito de la desterritorialización a la multiterritorialidad. Revista Cultura y representaciones sociales, 8(15), 9–42. Sánchez-Cortés, M. S. & Martínez-Alcázar T. Y. (2017), “Percepciones de agricultores tsotsiles sobre el clima, variabilidad climática y sus cambios en la localidad “Veinte Casas”, Reserva de la Biosfera Selva El Ocote, Chiapas” en: Ruiz-Montoya, L., Gordillo, G. D. C. Á., RamírezMarcial, N., & Cruz-Salazar, B. (Eds.). (2017). Vulnerabilidad social y biológica ante el cambio climático en la Reserva de la Biosfera Selva El Ocote. ECOSUR, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur. Pp. 593-622. SEMARNAT (Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales) & CONANP (Comisión Nacional De áreas Naturales Protegidas). (2001). Programa de Manejo de la Reserva de la Biosfera Selva El Ocote. Retrieved April 28, 2015, from http://centro.paot.org.mx/documentos/ ine/prog_manejo_selva_ocote.pdf. Urquijo Torres, P. S., & Barrera, B. N. (2009). Historia y paisaje. Explorando un concepto geográfico monista. Andamios, 5(10), 227–252. Walsh, C. (2009). Interculturalidad, Estado, Sociedad. Luchas (de)coloniales de nuestra época. Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar/Abya Yala.

Chapter 12

Territories for Conservation? Capitalist Strategies for Appropriating Nature in Los Glaciares National Park in the Argentinean Patagonia Sabrina Elizabeth Picone, Iris Josefina Liscovsky, and Alejandro Fabián Schweitzer Abstract  Starting in mid-twentieth century, a growing number of Protected Natural Areas were created with the purpose of conserving biodiversity. More recently, as economic values have prevailed over any other considerations, alternative tourism has developed in these areas, which amounts to the capitalist appropriation and commodification of nature. In Argentina, National Parks were the first form of nature conservation. In its early stages, this model of protection, which included human settlements and some productive activities, was seen as a strategy for upholding national sovereignty. More recently, and in line with international tendencies, sustainable tourism has become the only economic activity developed in national parks with the authorization of the Argentinean state. In order to analyze the dynamics of territorial appropriation and commodification of nature, this chapter focuses on the development of tourism in Los Glaciares National Park (LGNP). We use qualitative research methods to create territorially based knowledge through participatory processes. We combine archival work with individual and group interviews with key informants. Our first findings show that LGNP was created with the purposes of strengthen national sovereignty and protecting nature in the area. These initial goals have been gradually transformed with the incorporation of green economy strategies. We conclude with a discussion of the role of conservation against the backdrop of strategies of capitalist expansion. Keywords  Tourism · Protected natural areas · Commodification of nature · Territory · Argentinean Patagonia

S. E. Picone (*) · A. F. Schweitzer Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Centro de Investigación y Transferencia Santa Cruz (CONICET-CIT Santa Cruz), Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, Argentina e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] I. J. Liscovsky Instituto Superior de Formación Técnica Profesional (CENT N°40), Ministerio de Educación y Derechos Humanos, Viedma, Rio Negro, Argentina © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_12

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12.1  Introduction Capitalism growth and ecological crisis go together. This combination is hidden behind the technological and industrial development. Sadly, production processes need to increase the use of land and nature to continue expanding. This has not only pressured the availability and access of natural resources, but also has generated negative effects on the environment. In mid-twentieth century scholars started to identify a great number of ecological issues such as global warming, desertification, and biodiversity loss (Grinberg, 2012). This concern was shared by many governments, which in line with international consensus and agreements took actions to protect natural areas in their countries. Initially, political and academic discussions conceived the paradigms of conservation and development as contradictory. In this context, “industrialized” and “developing” countries rejected conservationist initiatives. Subsequently, in several international summits governments made decisions to address some environmental concerns while maintaining the development model (Grinberg, 2012; Rossi, 2008). In line with these concerns and policies, environmental agendas have been developed so as not to hinder economic development. Based on this premise, new concepts such as sustainable development, green economy, and alternative tourism have become themes in recent environmental conferences and global agendas (Barrantes & Fiestas Flores, 2013; Gudynas, 2015). Since late nineteenth century, a number of conservation spaces and actors emerged throughout the world. After the 1970s, the creation of Protected Natural Areas (PNAs) became a strategy for the protection of biodiversity. As the number of PNAs was growing and their characteristics were becoming more disparate, in 1978, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) established a classification, which included categories that “provide[d] the basis for clearly incorporating conservation into development (eco-development)” (IUCN, 1978, p. 10). This definition was the starting point of the flexibilization of criteria about the use of conservation areas. The IUCN’s classification coincided with initial views about National Parks (NPs) (inspired by the “Yellowstone model”). In NPs, tourism-oriented educational and recreational activities were to be allowed whereas economic activities and human occupation had to be prevented or eliminated (IUCN, 1978, pp.  14–15; Dudley & Stolton, 2008, p. 9). In other words, tourism was incorporated as a recreational or educational activity even though in most cases, its main purpose has been the generation of revenues to finance conservation actions. The creation of the first NPs in Argentina had geopolitical purposes, among them the strengthening of territorial control in border areas. Considered fundamental elements in the building of national sovereignty, NPs were initially located in border regions of the country. In 1934, Iguazú National Park was created in North East Argentina and Nahuel Huapi National Park in Patagonia. In 1937 four more NPs were created in Patagonia, among them, the Los Glaciares National Park (LGNP). As the international border between Chile and Argentina was not defined, this PNA

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marked the western limit of the national territory in the southern Patagonia region. Several decades after the creation of the LGNP (in 1994), the limits between both countries are established through an international court ruling. However, the demarcation of the border with Chile between Mount Fitz Roy and Mount Murallón has remained unsettled. Patagonia was integrated into Argentina’s national territory in a late stage of the consolidation of the country’s sovereignty, after the genocide of indigenous people, product of the military action known as “The Conquest of the Desert” (Coronato, Mazzoni, Vázquez, & Coronato, 2017; Fortunato, 2005; Vilariño, 2017). In this context, the national government created a territory emptied of unwanted settlers and ready for the implementation of development policies. This peripheral region was shaped (and still is) by dynamics generated in hegemonic spaces and connected to capitalist expansion over strategic spaces (Schweitzer, 2014). After the genocide, the national government promoted the settlement of European immigrants by granting them occupancy permits to raise cattle. The first productive policy developed in the region was sheep farming, associated with the production of wool for export to England. After some internal and external problems to the sector, the activity began a stage of crisis in second half of twentieth century that led to the desertification of large areas causing serious social-ecological problems (Vacca & Schinelli, 2015). This situation stimulates the permeation of sustainable development policies. Santa Cruz is the southernmost province of Argentinean Patagonia over the continental area. After almost 80 years of being a national territory, Santa Cruz is constituted as a province in 1957. Since then, LGNP has already have a central role as a political space of the central government of the country (Porto & Schweitzer, 2018). Starting in 1980, tourism was identified as an important activity in NPs due to its positive social and economic impacts, and its contribution to conservation (Porcaro, Vejsbjerg, & Benedetti, 2018). Ecological issues, however, were not taken into account. Godoy, Fasioli, Valiente, and Schweitzer (2013) identify tourism in Santa Cruz as the most recent circuit of appropriation and commodification of nature, following the footsteps of territorial domination and in line with international tendencies. Tourism valorizes the scenic beauty of landscapes and ecosystems, transforming them into commodities such as environmental services or products to be sold, and fostering the development of heritage sites and NPs (González Luna & Vázquez Toriz, 2017). Thus, this model associated with economic growth departs from the conservation goals that were at origins of the creation of PNAs. There is a wealth of scientific research that helps us to discuss the drive to stimulate tourism in PNAs. International study cases show that tourism generates undesirable ecological (Bringas Rábago & Ojeda Revah, 2000; Hernández Cruz, Bello Baltazar, Montoya Gómez, & Estrada Lugo, 2005), social-cultural (Buades, Cañada, & Gascón, 2012; Schweitzer, 2009), and economic (Moreno de Souza, de Faria Narciso Shiki, & Alves Rosado Pereira, 2015) transformations at the local level. In light of these research results, this chapter focuses on tourism in LGNP in the

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p­ rovince of Santa Cruz (Argentina) with the purpose of analyzing the dynamics of territorial appropriation and commodification of nature that occur therein.

12.2  Territorial Complexity Beyond Conservation For a long time, PNAs’ issues were considered the exclusive field of ecology professionals. More recent scholarships have adopted interdisciplinary (Leff, 2006) and complex perspectives that go beyond the simplification of problems pertaining to biological diversity and wealth. From a more complex perspective, territory is a space, which is socially appropriated, produced, and fraught with meaning. It is also multidimensional (political, economic, socio-cultural, and natural) and multi-scale (local, regional, national, and global) (Haesbaert, 2007), and a site of relations of power (Zamora Chap. 11, this volume; Bello-Baltazar et al. Chap. 21, this volume). Multidimensionality goes beyond the traditional dichotomy society-nature, acknowledging the existence of a relation between the political and other territorial dimensions (social, ecological, cultural, economic, etc.) (Mançano Fernandes, 2013). Geographic multi-scale allows us to acknowledge the importance of space and time scales. The first scale calls attention to the relations between the local and broader scales while the second acknowledges that space is a result of a dynamic social and natural construction. Perspectives that take into account space and time are useful to identify the ways in which relations of power are expressed in territories. These relations of power manifest themselves in patterns of access and control of natural wealth through the dynamics of appropriation/domination (Porto-Gonçalves, 2006). The study of processes of appropriation is important because it allows us to recognize the role of conservation policies within a territory, among others. Godelier (1989, pp. 75–76) describes processes of appropriation from abstract and concrete dimensions. He defines property as “a set of abstract rules governing access to and control, use, transfer and transmission of any and every social reality which can be the object of a dispute.” Property forms and rights (abstract dimensions) make possible the material appropriation of nature (concrete dimensions). In our research, we consider both dimensions in order to identify the forms of appropriation of nature. In our study, we employ a qualitative and participatory methodological strategy to obtain and construct data using the following secondary sources: regulations about the creation and functioning of the LGNP (Law 12,103/1934, Executive Decree 105,433/1937, Executive Decree 9405/1945, Law 22,351/1980, and 1997 LGNP Management Plan) and archival documents available at the LGNP superintendence in June 2018. We worked with key informants who were workers from different areas of LGNP (trails, public use, and cattle management) and National Park Administration’s top officials. We conducted five individual interviews with these key informants between February 2018 and January 2019, and two group

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interviews with the trail crew in charge of the northern administrative district of the LGNP in September 2017 and August 2018. We conducted participant observation at (i) two public hearings on land access and use held in September 2016 and 2017 in El Chaltén, with the participation of members of the local community, top officials and personnel of the National Parks Administration and, (ii) two open meetings on strategic planning held between December 2018 and February 2019 and attended by local actors. We identified our informants with a code to protect their identity. This coding of data combines randomly assigned, sequential numbers and capital letters that refer to their workplace and jurisdiction (NP = National Park; G = Government Agency; P = Provincial; L = Local).

12.3  Study Area In May 1937, Executive Decree 105,433/37 mandated the creation of LGNR. The decree established that four areas of Argentinean Patagonia would become NPs in the future (Lanín, Los Alerces, Perito Moreno and Los Glaciares). These areas were located near the Chilean border, in national territories under federal jurisdiction, which transformed them into strategic sites for asserting sovereignty in a moment in which sovereignty was understood as ownership and control over the territory. In 1971, Los Glaciares National Reserve became LGNP (Law 19,292), according to IUCN classification. In 1980 Law 22,351 established different criteria for the use inside National Parks through the zoning of two areas. One called national reserve (NR) where some productive activities and human settlements are allowed and the other one called national park (NP) with more restrictions to human activities. Los Glaciares National Park and Reserve is considered an extraordinarily beautiful and stunningly original landscape. It covers an area of 726,927 hectares (Administración de Parques Nacionales, 2019) and brings together features of the Andean-Patagonian Forest eco-region, mostly the Magellanic Subpolar Forest and to a lesser extent the Patagonia Steppe. LGNP includes lowlands with lakes (Viedma Lake at 200 m a.s.l. and Argentino Lake at 185 m a.s.l.) and mountains, which reach elevations of up to 3375 m (Mount Fitz Roy, also known as Mount Chaltén). The unique characteristics of LGNP led UNESCO to declare it a World Heritage Site in 1981. First, the park includes most of southern Patagonia Ice Field. Then, its reservoir of drinking water is the most important in the continent and the third one in the world, following Antarctica and the Arctic. In addition, the southern Patagonia Ice Field offers a wealth of information about past climatic periods. Because of its scenic uniqueness, the creation of LGNP has fostered economic and population development in Lago Argentino Department, province of Santa Cruz. The municipalities of El Chaltén and El Calafate are connected to the PNA and their main economic activities revolve around the provision of services to LGNP’s visitors (Fig. 12.1).

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Fig. 12.1  Study area. Los Glaciares National Park. (Source: Own elaboration based on Open Street maps, QGIS 2.18.23)

12.4  L  os Glaciares National Park and National Reserve: A Territory for Accumulation? Our research results are presented in the two following sections. In the first section, we analyze the regulatory system for access, use and control of natural wealth, including the principles, conditions for and restrictions to processes of appropriation of nature in the PNA. In the second section, we focus on the materialization of that process in the territory of LGNP.

12.4.1  Political-Historical Approaches to Natural Wealth: A Strategy for Conservation? Since the creation of PNAs in Argentina, regulations about these areas have been based on changing discourses. In this section, we examine the main laws and executive decrees pertaining to LGNP and the territorial Nation-State projects underlying them. PNAs’ institutional framework allows us to recognize the historical relation between conservation and development in Argentina. Law 12,103 passed in 1934 was the first regulation that defined NPs and their goals. It mandated the creation of the National Parks Office as NPs enforcement authority, which reported to the

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Agriculture Ministry. In 1945, tourism in NPs became associated with both conservation and the enjoyment of the working class (Executive Decree 9405/45). Then, the National Parks Office was transformed into the General Administration for National Parks and Tourism, an autarchic agency reporting to the Public Works Ministry. Finally, Law 22,351 sanctioned in 1980 during the military dictatorship banned all human activity except tourism in NPs. The enforcement authority was renamed as the National Parks Administration reporting to the Economy Ministry and maintaining its autarchy. As a result of the flexibilization of conservation categories, NPs kept their initial focus on defense and national security but became more open for tourism. This evolving institutional framework allows us to identify patterns of change and continuity in regard to conservation, development, and sovereignty. When it comes to conservation, the three regulations mentioned before identify scientific interest and the use and enjoyment on the part of the Argentinean Republic and its population as the purposes of NPs. In the following decades, there would be changes in the ways in which the connections between conservation and development are understood. In 1934, development was associated with public works, granting of agricultural lots, factories, and population settlements. In 1945, it was associated with the promotion of tourism. By 1980, it became connected to public infrastructure and tourism while other activities were limited to the national reserve zoning. Notions of sovereignty associated to human settlements have also changed over time. In 1934, in addition to the central objective of conservation of natural assets, the two main roles of the National Park Office were: on the one hand, the “eviction of intruders” and on the other hand, the layout of population centers within the NPs. By 1980, human settlements became limited to 10% of National Reserve areas. The recognition of LGNP as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1981 has been crucial for the development of tourism, as it has attracted international attention to the Perito Moreno Glacier and the entire PNA. In this context, management regulations for LGNP became necessary. In 1997, the Los Glaciares National Park Preliminary Management Plan (Plan Preliminar de Manejo del Parque Nacional Los Glaciares) was formulated. In this document, tourism was seen as a driver of conservation (Administración de Parque Nacionales, 1997). In line with this management plan, the National Parks Administration took pains to boost tourism and eradicate regional rural economic activities. It encouraged the transformation of cattle ranches into tourism ranches, giving ranchers the opportunity to buy the land where their houses and shearing sheds were located on the condition that they completely removed cattle and redirected their economic activities to the provision of services to visitors. In January 2019, the Argentinean State issued the Executive Decree 46/19 that authorized National Parks Administration to build a pier, a refuge, a viewpoint, and paths to cater visitors at the National Park zoning in LGNP. This is at odds with the clauses of Law 22,351, which state that visitor service centers should be restricted to National Reserve zoning. It is then safe to say that nature conservation goals, which were central to the creation of protected areas, are now increasingly displaced by the attention of tourism demands.

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12.4.2  W  orld Heritage Sites: Nature Conservation or Exploitation of Nature? Appropriation materializes in territories through uses, practices, and forms of organizing work. In our case, the National Parks Administration is a relevant agent for the implementation of policies and land use planning. In early twentieth century, European families obtained revocable land grants to settle in what is now the LGNP to raise cattle. Afterward, the creation of the PNA resulted in the implementation of more restrictive land use policies. Thus, revocable land grants were transformed into revocable settlement and grazing permits. After 1981, in line with World Heritage Site declaration, traditional cattle raising in the area began to decrease. There are now five active ranches in the jurisdiction of LGNP; two of them have joined the program to give up cattle raising and become tourism ranches (05NP). The other three ranchers have started to focus on tourism in exchange for the recognition of the ownership over their houses and surrounding buildings and have agreed to reduce their livestock and limit their grazing area. There is only one case in which a rancher and LGNP superintendence have reached an agreement to the satisfaction of both parties (05NP). Even though the enforcement authority has conducted individual negotiations with each rancher, there has been a general displacement of cattle raising and an intensification of tourism, in line with existing regulations. In 1957, Santa Cruz acquired province status. In 1989, the National Parks Administration made a donation of 135 hectares to the Province of Santa Cruz to create El Chaltén village with the purposes of establishing a permanent population settlement and reinforcing national sovereignty. LGNP’s donation to the province of Santa Cruz has yet to be legally ratified and the borders between local and national jurisdiction are not defined yet. This issue created boundary conflicts over land use between the municipality of El Chaltén and the Viedma district of the PNLG. The most significant is the urban expansion over jurisdiction of the protected area. As a part of the drive to prioritize services, National Parks Administration has encouraged the building of infrastructure and new roads in the region. Some of the most important public infrastructures were the bridge over El Calafate Stream (1947) and School Number 9 (1949). In 1947, the road between El Calafate and Río Mitre (the southern district of the LGNP) was improved. In 1958, the road was extended to connect Río Mitre and the Perito Moreno Glacier. In 2000, El Calafate International Airport was built and National Routes 40 and 41 were paved, thus encouraging traffic and communication between the southern and northern areas of LGNP, and between the NP and the towns connected to it. In the northern area of LGNP (Viedma Lake administrative district), the negative impacts of the growing number of visitors have become visible. A National Parks Administration’s environmental auditing report (2004) mentioned the erosion of core paths, the lack of control and regulation of the activities of unauthorized tourism operators and cattle ranchers, and the damage caused by the excess of visitors and visitors’ use of areas closed to public use. In addition, there are two other environmental problems in El Chaltén. One is the collapse of public services in high season due to the increase of

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population. The other one is the housing emergency caused by the lack of land and the profitability of the tourist rental. Starting in 1962, and for the following 10 years, the National Parks Administration explored cultural and educational tourism, encouraging young people, teachers, and pensioners to visit protected areas and organizing special events to receive them. In line with these initiatives, the first tourist season in El Calafate was opened in 1972. These initiatives show the clear goal of attracting national tourists with the expectation that the local population would also benefit from it. During the 1980s, El Calafate experienced population increases and the professionalization of tourism. As the number of tourists kept growing, the Perito Moreno Glacier’s observation area not only started to undergo processes of erosion but also presented risks for visitors due to the proximity of the ice mass and its natural dynamics. Due to these two facts the first walkways near to Perito Moreno glacier were built in 1988 with the economic support of the Tourism National Office. As tourism became more relevant and the population of El Calafate and El Chaltén increased to satisfy the needs of visitors, the services, and tourist activities in LGNP grew, which in turn led to increasingly flexible conservation criteria. Despite the limitations of regulation and control, the National Parks Administration has encouraged the intensification of tourism activities while reducing LGNP’s budget. For instance, the National Park Administration has promoted real estate investment in the “Hostería El Chaltén” in the Viedma district of LGNP (Administración de Parques Nacionales de Argentina 2018). This national policy offers the unique opportunity to build and manage a tourist accommodation inside the PNLG—Viedma district. However, this program intensifies the structural problems of El Chaltén, such as the lack of land for housing and the collapse of water, electricity, and sewer services during high season (02GL and 03GL). Besides, it has created conditions for real estate speculation. Furthermore, the National Parks Administration has stimulated real estate investment in NPs throughout the country, thus intensifying the private appropriation of the commons. Predictably, housing and land problems endured by the population of El Chaltén have become worse.

12.5  F  lexibilization of Conservation and Liberalization of Access to Natural Wealth In this chapter, we have argued that public policies are central to define conservation strategies. The territory of the Nation-State is shaped in line with “development models” that bring together socio-economic and ecological policies, which in many cases are defined beyond national borders. These models “determine the organization of the geographical space through the production of territory (see also Bello-­ Baltazar et al. Chap. 21, this volume). In the context of the hegemony of the capitalist mode of production, this creates and intensifies intractable conflicts” (Mançano Fernandes, 2013, p. 121). They also help to strengthen or weaken sovereignty.

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Our study has explored the connections between changes in the territory and the global dynamic of capitalist development and expansion, which results in the loss or the weakening of local and national sovereignty. The hegemonic developmentalist model’s planning has been imposed in contradiction with the initial goals of NPs. All in all, we argue that new territorial dynamics (urbanization, settlement, development of tourism, and public infrastructure) have displaced local actors as key agents in decision-making. Taking into account that territorial control and domination are conditions for the appropriation of the surplus from economic activities (Sánchez, 1991), places where the political decisions are taken are especially telling. Our findings show the ways in which National Parks Authority’s decisions and policies create inequalities in the distribution, use, and access to wealth. First, the “development model” has displaced cattle raising and limited the expansion of urban areas with arguments about their negative impacts on nature. Contradictorily, the National Parks Administration has encouraged the diversification and expansion of tourism in the region, despite its impacts on the territory. Then, tourism licenses have been granted through public tender processes with conditions and rules that are only suitable for a few large companies. Moreover, service providers operating in NPs obtain large profits for using the commons for tourism while protected areas receive only a very small share of these profits. The analysis of the circuits of capital circulation at different scales and spaces is of utmost importance in order to delve into existing inequalities. Recapitulating, it is worth asking whether conservation was a strategy for capitalist accumulation and appropriation in its early stages or has been gradually incorporated to the capitalist expansion. In this regard, Palafox (2016) argues that modern-world tourism aligned with the interests of international organizations constitute an instrument for the reproduction and accumulation of capital. In the case of LGNP in Argentina, tourism has been one of the National Parks Administration’s prerogatives since the sanction of the first specific regulations in 1934. This has reinforced the idea that conservation is linked to the development of tourism. But it was in 1980 that tourism—previously seen as an educational, social, and cultural activity—started to be seen as an economic activity. When the country adopted the international perspectives of the IUCN and adapted its national legislation accordingly, conservation goals changed. The flexibilization of legislation has favored the consolidation and persistence of the mode of production based on market hegemony (Palafox, 2016) while local populations have been displaced, and alternative models of building territories have been excluded. On a different note, it is important to recognize the role played by the State and its national sovereignty policy. Arreola Muñoz and Saldívar Moreno (2017) argue that the state, as a territorial actor, has called some aspects of sovereignty into question in the context of the changes brought about by globalization. In our study, we have identified a tendency to radically weaken national sovereignty based on the fact that decisions about use and access to natural resources in PNAs are now made at a global level while national states are only policy executors. As sovereignty weakens, places and social groups that inhabit and build them tend to recreate spaces in line with hegemonic accumulation strategies (Cañada, 2016). Because of the importance of sovereignty in

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decision-­making at local, regional, and national scales, the notion of border is relevant for the study of NPs. The creation of North American NPs has been associated with a strategy to set a “permanent border” that fostered the constitution of the US national identity (Fortunato, 2005, p. 317). In Argentina in mid nineteenth century, Perito Francisco P. Moreno, a key figure in the creation of NPs, led expeditions of the Argentinean-Chilean Border Commission to produce information about Patagonia’s natural resources and indigenous populations. Perito Moreno’s links to the genocide of the people who inhabited the region before the creation of the Argentinean and Chilean states is beyond doubt. Moreover, one of the functions of NPs was to “proceed to evict intruders” (Law 12,103, art.16, sub-section k) while European immigrants received revocable settlement and grazing permits. Finally, LGNP, which in its early stages was associated to sovereignty, social development, and the enjoyment of present and future generations, is now functional to an unequal development model furthered by large global capitals (as is the case of many PNAs throughout the world). Hence, the territorial model is telling and well known: flexibilization of the conservation to deregulate nature. The final question that concerns us is: at whose expense?

References Administración de Parques Nacionales. (2004). Auditoría ambiental área de uso público de El Chaltén—Parque y Reserva Nacional Los Glaciares. Buenos Aires: APN. Administracion Parque Nacionales. (1997). Plan preliminar de manejo parque nacional: Los glaciares. Buenos Aires: APN. Retrieved January 15, 2016, from http://repotur.yvera.gob.ar/ bitstream/handle/123456789/4491/RES.%20162-97%20HD%20PMjo%20Los%20Glaciares. pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y. Adinistración de Parques Nacionales de Argentina. (2018). Oportunidades Naturales de Inversión. Retrieved January 18, 2019, from government´s official web page, https://www.argentina.gob. ar/oportunidades-naturales/inversion/ecolodge/glaciares. Administración de Parques Nacionales. (2019). Plan de Gestión del Parque Nacional Los Glaciares 2019-2029. Buenos Aires: APN. Arreola Muñoz, A.  V., & Saldívar Moreno, A. (2017). De Reclus a Harvey, la resignificación del territorio en la construcción de la sustentabilidad Introducción. Región y Sociedad, 68, 223–257. Barrantes, R., & Fiestas Flores, J. (2013). El camino hacia una economía verde  : el caso de la infraestructura de turismo en áreas naturales protegidas. Apuntes: Revista de Ciencias Sociales, XL(73), 77–102. Bringas Rábago, N.  L., & Ojeda Revah, L. (2000). El ecoturismo: ¿una nueva modalidad del turismo de masas? Economía Sociedad y Territorio, II, 373–403. https://doi.org/10.22136/ est002000436 Buades, J., Cañada, E., & Gascón, J. (2012). El turismo en el inicio del milenio: una lectura crítica a tres voces. Madrid: Foro de Turismo Responsable. Cañada, E. (2016). Implicaciones socioambientales de la construcción del espacio turístico. Ecología Política, 52, 12–16. Coronato, A., Mazzoni, E., Vázquez, M., & Coronato, F. (2017). Patagonia: una síntesis de su geografía física. Río Gallegos: Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral.

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Dudley, N., & Stolton, S. (Eds.). (2008). Defining protected areas: An international conference in Almeria, Spain. Gland: International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 220 pp. Fortunato, N. (2005). El territorio y sus representaciones como recurso turistico: Valores fundacionales del concepto de “parque nacional”. Estudios y Perspectivas en Turismo, 14(4), 314–348. Godelier, M. (1989). Lo ideal y lo material. Pensamiento, economías, sociedades. Madrid: Taurus. Godoy, P., Fasioli, E., Valiente, S., & Schweitzer, A. (2013). Valorización de la naturañeza y disputa por el territorio en la provincia de Santa Cruz. Revista de Estudios Regionales, 9, 201–216. González Luna, L. A., & Vázquez Toriz, R. (2017). Megaproyectos turísticos y ecoturísticos: Del despojo al cercamiento de bienes comunes de comunidades rurales en México 1. Ecología Política, 52, 57–61. Grinberg, M. (2012). Ecofalacias: el poder transnacional y la expropiación del discurso “verde”. Rosario: Fundacion Ross. Gudynas, E. (2015). Derechos de la Naturaleza. Ética biocéntrica y políticas ambientales. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón. Haesbaert, R. (2007). O mito da desterritorializcao: do “fim dos territórios” á multiterritorialidade (3rd ed.p. 400). Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand. Hernández Cruz, R.  E., Bello Baltazar, E., Montoya Gómez, G., & Estrada Lugo, E. (2005). Adaptaciones sociales y ecoturismo en la selva lacandona. Annals of Tourism Research, 7(2), 236–254. International Union Conservation of Nature (IUCN). (1978). Categories, objectives and criteria for protected areas. Morges: IUCN. Leff, E. (2006). La ecología política en América Latina. Un campo en construcción. In H. Alimonda (Ed.), Los tormentos de la materia. Aportes para una ecología política latinoamericana (pp. 21–39). Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales: Buenos Aires. Mançano Fernandes, B. (2013). Territorios: teoría y disputas por el desarrollo rural. Novedades En Población, 17, 116–133. Moreno de Souza, J. W., de Faria Narciso Shiki, S., & Alves Rosado Pereira, P. (2015). Desarrollo Sustentable. Un índice para el Circuito Turístico Trilha dos Inconfidentes—Minas Gerais, Brasil. Estudios y Perspectivas En Turismo, 24, 547–569. Palafox, M. A. (2016). Turismo e imperialismo ecológico: El capital y su dinámica de expansión. Ecologia Politica, 52, 18–25. Porcaro, T., Vejsbjerg, L., & Benedetti, A. (2018). Áreas naturales protegidas, frontera y turismo en los Andes: comparaciones entre la región araucano-norpatagónica y la circumpuneña. In I. I. Araucania-Norpatagonia (Ed.), La fluidez, lo disruptivo y el sentido de frontera (pp. 153–197). Viedma: Editorial UNRN. Porto, J. L. R., & Schweitzer, A. (2018). Estrategias territoriales para la ocupación del continente sudamericano: inserción de la periferia e institucionalización espacial. Macapá/Río Gallegos: Universidade Federal do Amapá. Porto-Gonçalves, C. W. (2006). El desafío ambiental. México D. F.: PNUMA. Rossi, M.  L. (2008). Protección de la biodiversidad y política ambiental. Análisis iusfilosófico de la problemática a nivel nacional e internacional. In M. V. Lottici (Ed.), Conservación de la biodiversidad y política ambiental. Sexta convocatoria, premio de monografía Adriana Schiffrin-2007 (pp. 53–86). Buenos Aires: Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales. Sánchez, J. (1991). Espacio, economía y sociedad. España: Siglo XXI. Schweitzer, A. (2009). El lugar de la Información Geográfica en el Ordenamiento y Desarrollo Territorial. El caso de la provincia de Santa Cruz, 1, 99–108. Schweitzer, A. (2014). Frontera , recursos naturales y crisis en la Patagonia Sur argentina. In J. M. Sandoval & R. Alvarez (Eds.), Integración geoestratégica, seguridad, fronteras y migración en America Latina (pp. 33–67). Quito: Fundación Regional de Asesoría en Derechos Humanos, INREDH. Vacca, C., & Schinelli, D. (2015). La diversificación productiva en Santa Cruz para la superación del modelo de Estado rentista. Río Gallegos: Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral. Vilariño, M. R. (2017). El Lanín; entre lo sagrado, la conservación y lo deportivo. Revista Peruana de Antropología, 2(3), 152–169.

Chapter 13

Emancipatory Partnership and Advances in Citizenship: Struggles for a Sea-Land Territory in Brazil Deborah S. Prado

Abstract  The Brazilian coastal zone is a territory of economic dispute among several sectors, including oil and gas, industrial fishing, urbanization, tourism and, therefore, real estate development. This process of structural and economic change along the coast of Brazil has resulted in the expulsion of many traditional populations from their territories. Prainha do Canto Verde is a fishing community that has built its own resistance to numerous drivers of change over the last 40 years, especially predatory lobster fishing and land grabbing to support different projects of the tourism industry. In this chapter, I aim to retell this story of resistance, looking for the factors and actors that contributed to this community being successful in coping with the drivers and sustaining their territory and livelihoods. I carried out life-story interviews with 38 community leaders and semi-structured interviews with nine other stakeholders. In order to understand local organization and current governance processes, I also undertook participant observation of meetings, daily work of public managers and other community events for 45 consecutive days. We found there to be a long-term process of building citizenship, supported by emancipatory partners. The achievement of autonomy in managing projects has brought social learning and advances in citizenship and well-being, such as education, health, and housing. After more than 20  years of struggle and resistance, the community required the implementation of a protected area to guarantee the collective rights of the territory, their livelihoods, environmental conservation, and sustainable use of marine resources. Despite current local conflicts, the principles of liberation theology that guided resistance in the 1980s still persist in the community. The partnerships in this story are in contrast to short-term philanthropy or assistance and reflect political organization and the struggle for territorial rights. Keywords  Territorial rights · Land grabbing · Coping strategies · Extractive Reserve

D. S. Prado (*) Center for Environmental Studies and Research, University of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_13

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13.1  Introduction The history of Brazilian occupation has always been linked to its coastal zone, which today, despite its great extension, has the highest population density in the country—more than 10,000 km, 17 states, about 400 municipalities and 50-million people (IBGE, 2011). The region illustrates well a neoliberal socio-political regime, with economic disputes among several sectors such as oil and gas, industrial fishing, urbanization, the harbor sector, tourism, and real estate development. Several conflicts stemming from large projects in the coastal zone are currently underway in Brazil. In many cases, small-scale fisheries communities have been (and are being) displaced, loosing access to traditional fishing grounds, the beach and places where their fishing gear is stored (Diegues, 2018). Affected by these numerous drivers of changes, several fishing communities are resisting, trying to keep themselves attached to in the territory, which represents their space of material survival, as well as their symbolic and identity representation. In this chapter, I aim to present the territorial trajectory of a local social-­ environmental system (LSES) (Parra-Vázquez et  al. Chap. 1, this volume) in the Brazilian coastal zone, and the capacity local actors have had to respond to the pressures on their sea-land territory over time. The case-study presented in this chapter, Prainha do Canto Verde, allows us to illustrate how territorial-action groups, structured by emancipatory partnerships, can contribute to devising socio-technical innovations1 that culminate in the strengthening of their citizenship over time. This fishing community represents an LSES that deals with territory threats posed since at least the mid-1970s, and which were historically driven by a regime of speculation and land grabbing that is very common throughout Latin America (Guereña, 2016). In addition, part of the threat to their livelihood concerns illegal lobster fishing—their most valuable commercial fishing over decades. Coastal territories are under dispute and are the root of conflicts between residents of fishing communities and land grabbers, which are generally real estate speculators and/or tourism entrepreneurs. These areas are also considered, in general, to have good environmental conservation status with high levels of biodiversity, making them attractive for both tourism and the creation of protected areas2 (Castro, 2012; Sundberg, 2012). The appeal of tenure rights, local livelihoods, and 1  According to Parra-Vázquez et al. (Chap. 1, this volume), “those innovations are the result of the territorial configuration, traditional knowledge, environmental drivers (i.e., environmental threats and opportunities), the market, and current public policies in place. At the end, innovations are also the result of peoples’ capacities to respond to global changes.” 2  In many cases, the creation of no-take protected areas is a source of conflict and citizenship loss by local populations who can no longer use natural resources. Despite these situations, the call for environmental conservation in Brazil has also been a political weapon for protecting the livelihoods of traditional peoples. New models of protected areas that combine territorial rights, conservation, and sustainable production have been understood as territorial-environmental governance (Castro, 2012).

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environmental conservation guided the struggles for this sea-land territory in this case-study. Indeed, there is increasing linkage between environment and citizenship in Latin America. Research involving rural and indigenous peoples have probed relationships that link the politics of land, livelihood, and identity, as well as environmental justice crossing into questions of democracy and participation (Latta & Wittman, 2010, 2012). As will be discussed, many actions of resistance and strengthening of citizenship were possible in Prainha do Canto Verde through the contribution of emancipatory partnerships over time. International funders have advocated for participatory development and capacity development approaches in their programs and projects in the Global South (Angeles & Gurstein, 2000). Partnerships are highlighted in the literature of environmental governance as fundamental to inclusive arrangements involving local communities (Berkes, 2009; Carlsson & Berkes, 2005; Lemos & Agrawal, 2006), yet how partnerships and collaborative processes are developed and sustained is not necessarily well understood (Dodson, 2014). Over the years, these “collaborative” or “participatory” partnerships have been questioned for their long-term effectiveness in materially improving the conditions of the most vulnerable people or as a strategy for social change (Cleaver, 1999). As stated by Dagnino (2004), such partnerships may be the result of a perverse confluence between a neoliberal project and a democratizing and participatory project. “In ordinary language and in homogeneity of discourse, these nuances are diluted, reducing antagonisms that need to be highlighted” (Dagnino, 2004, p. 198). I refer to partners as emancipatory to differentiate them from “partnerships” based on development projects carried out in local communities by numerous external agents who claim to be “participatory” in theory (Angeles & Gurstein, 2000). In practice, this latter type of partnership excludes the participants’ influence over wider structural factors that shape the project. I argue that top-down capacity-­ building and goal-oriented clientelist collaborations may only be reinforcing neoliberal3 socio-political regimes worldwide, “making people fit in an established structure” (Bockstael, 2017, p.5). Emancipatory partnerships intervene with actions that enhance the capacity of individuals to improve their own lives and are politically oriented to the exercise of the agency of local individuals, looking to transform structures of subordination through radical changes in law, property rights, and decision-making (Cleaver, 1999). After presenting the case-study and research methods, I describe the responses to external pressures and the performance of partnerships along the LSES trajectory. Some factors that distinguish these partnerships from others that, in general, do not contribute to the emancipation of local populations against neoliberal regimes are also presented. 3  Neoliberal is an attribute of neoliberalism; and according to Harvey (2006, p. 145): “Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices which proposes that human wellbeing can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, free markets and free trade.”

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13.2  Case-Study and Methods In 2017, I carried out life-story interviews (Atkinson, 1998) with 38 community leaders, and semi-structured interviews with other nine external agents identified by the community as partners. I also reviewed scientific and gray literature, as well as documents relevant for the area, produced over the last 30 years. In order to understand the local organization and current governance processes, I performed direct observations (Bernard, 2006) of five meetings, daily work of public managers for 3 days, and participant observation (Bernard, 2006) of other community events over 45 consecutive days of fieldwork. In July 2018, I returned to the community of Prainha do Canto Verde (CE) for a research validation and feedback. This transdisciplinary approach was very important to confirm some interpretations, to update me and to join knowledge and collective practices. At the meeting, I did a review of the LSES trajectory, with the compilation of the main episodes of struggle and self-organization. The community feedback on the meeting was very positive and the material produced was made available to community leaders, who already used it at a 30th anniversary of the Prainha do Canto Verde Residents Association held in June 2019. Interviews were recorded with permission of the participants, who’s quotes are identified in this chapter with letters to preserve their identity (P = partner; C = community; G = government). The research was authorized by the Ethics Committee of State University of Campinas (n. 143359) and ICMBio (SISBIO n. 50519-1).

13.2.1  Prainha do Canto Verde and Their Sea-Land Struggle Prainha do Canto Verde is located 120 km from Fortaleza, the capital of the state of Ceará, in Northeast Brazil (Fig. 13.1). The metropolitan region of Fortaleza is home to more than 4 million inhabitants and is the sixth most populous region in the country. The coast of the state of Ceará is renowned for development projects associated with sun and beach tourism, shrimp farming, and wind power generation. Tourism has been defended as an economic sector of “natural vocation” of the region, considering its coastal landscapes of high scenic beauty. Several tourism projects have historically been encouraged by local governments, especially for the construction of resorts and condominiums (Lustosa & Baines, 2016). Although these activities are directly associated with the disruption of traditional fishing livelihoods communities (Lima, 2017), they are often linked to a positive image of development—the construction of roads, the provisioning of electricity and basic sanitation, and urbanization for tourism development—as great benefits for local populations (Lima, 2006). There are about 1000 residents and 389 households in the community of Prainha do Canto Verde, who still have small-scale fishing as their main economic activity. Community-based tourism (already recognized and awarded internationally),

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Fig. 13.1 (a) The state of Ceará in Northeast Brazil. (b–d) Terrestrial and marine location of the Prainha do Canto Verde Extractive Reserve, a sustainable use protected area created in 2009. (c) Sailing rafts (jangadas) and fishers after work. (e) Call for residents’ assembly in 1996, with one of the topics being the approval of local land use regulation (Lima, 2017). (f) Community center built in 1989, where most community meetings and events take place. (Source: Prepared by the author (2019))

h­ andicrafts, agriculture, and non-timber forest extraction are also sources of income and/or subsistence for families, as are a few local businesses and salaried activities. The search for diversification of activities has become more frequent with the crisis facing lobster stock because of intense illegal fishing. The illegal fishing of lobster has been serving the immediate interests of fishing entrepreneurs, who have invested in the use of compressors to remove resources from the community fishing spots. None of the fishers of Prainha do Canto Verde possess a motorized boat, with fishing being carried out using jangadas (sailing rafts) and equipment of less technological impact, in most cases by men. Actions in response to pressures and threats to community territory began to take place in the community with more effectiveness in the early 1980s. The struggles against real estate speculation and illegal lobster fishing are historically relevant in the context of Prainha do Canto Verde and responsible for unleashing the history of social organization by the community. For 27 years (1979–20064), the community of Prainha do Canto Verde resisted the pressure of land grabbing and real estate speculation, legally facing adverse

4  In 2006, the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled in favor of the community in a process against one real estate agent, giving the right of possession to the residents.

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p­ ossession actions, as well as continuous episodes of threats and violence against residents. Several cases of enclosure of the community by land grabbers and even burning of houses of residents were reported during this period. Even before the final judgement on community ownership of land, the community-­based organization (the Residents Association, created in 1989) made a formal request in 2001 to the federal environmental agency for the creation of an Extractive Reserve. Extractive Reserves are protected areas that allow for sustainable use by traditional people and are often established over territories of traditional commons in forest and coastal areas (including marine areas). The Extractive Reserve model was chosen by the inhabitants because of the possibility that their continental and marine territory would remain under communal regime (contrary to the logic of individualized land ownership in lots that is common for agrarian reform, for example). The dynamics of territorial planning had been previously conducted by the Residents Association with some efficiency. In 1996, the community consolidated two documents entitled “Lei da Terra” and “Lei da Pesca” (“Law of the Land” and “Law of Fishing”), which registered local rules built over the years on the use of natural resources and territory. The local rules were passed at community assemblies (without government participation or articulation) and determined, for example, that each native inhabitant of 18 years or older had the right to up to 300 m2 of collective communal property to live with their family, with sale to any person not native to the community being forbidden. In addition, each family could build a house for grocery (small markets), and vessel owners could build a fishing room (small houses built to store fishing equipment) since it was authorized by Residents Association. Fishing regulation by the community establishes, for example, the days and time allowed for lobster fishing, the minimum catch size, prohibition of diving fishing, etc. The regulation also includes sanctions applied by fishers themselves against non-compliance with the rules (such as a 15-day fishing suspension). The fishers showed knowledge and respect to the rules, some of which had already been suspended at some point, for failing to comply with agreed-upon rules. The document is renewed yearly during an assembly of fishers. In 2009, when The Reserva Extrativista Prainha do Canto Verde (Prainha do Canto Verde Extractive Reserve) was decreed by the federal government, a new governance arrangement for the territory was initiated. The land becomes the property of the State, and collective domain is granted to a community-based organization. The territory must be managed in a collaborative way, through a Deliberative Council chaired by the federal Protected Areas agency (Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade), with the majority of seats being occupied by community representatives, and with participation of other external agents (public institutions, NGOs, universities). Despite the supposed legal shelter of the protected area, the old threats have continued with new land grabbers until now.

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13.3  LSES Trajectory and Emancipatory Partners “Prainha always had a project. That is to defend the community for its residents, and to do their own business […] That step that Prainha took 30 years ago was a firm step of ‘I want the community for our residents, and I want that the business of the community be administered by us’. So, this step that Prainha took was a steadfast step and was sustained until today, that was the difference.” (C19).

As mentioned in the introductory chapter of this book, to understand the complexity of a LSES, territorial-action groups are fundamental for collective action. As highlighted in the last quote of a community leader, the history of socio-political organization of Prainha do Canto Verde, as a response to pressures on its territory, has always been marked by projects and partnerships, in differentiated cycles, but with common characteristics: continuous partners, politically oriented for the pursuit of citizenship rights, environmental conservation, and social transformation through the strengthening of participatory democracy. As emancipatory, most of these partnerships went beyond charitable or philanthropic projects, or actions disconnected from a political project demanded by the community. Because they were emancipatory, these partnerships brought essential elements for community autonomy and power, which was reflected in the qualified participation of individuals in the processes of collaborative governance of their territory, later institutionalized as an Extractive Reserve. The narratives of the interviewees revealed innumerable partners who have come together in territorial-action groups, some of which have special prominence precisely because of their emancipatory characteristics, strengthening community social organization up to the present day. Among these partners the following stand out: the Catholic Church, especially represented by Center for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights (Centro de Defesa e Promoção dos Direitos Humanos; CDPDH); two non-governmental organizations (Instituto Terramar and Associação dos Amigos da Prainha do Canto Verde) and the Federal University of Ceará (UFC). The trajectory of the LSES and the role of partners throughout the process will be described in the following sections.

13.3.1  Catholic Church The first partner of the community was the Center for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights (CDPDH), an organization from the Archdiocese of Fortaleza. The CDPDH work is based on the approach of Basic Ecclesial Communities— Comunidades Eclesiais de Base—linked to the Catholic Church. The Basic Ecclesial Communities emerged in Brazil in the mid-1960s and have always been articulated in pastoral teams, with grassroots movements that fostered reflection and production of political consciousness for social transformation (Galdino, 2014; Santos, 2006). It has always worked in counseling indigenous, quilombolas, and other

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t­raditional communities, with juridical and institutional support to populations in social and economic vulnerability. In the case of Prainha do Canto Verde, CDPDH was responsible for the beginning of social organization and was fundamental in the struggle against land grabbing. The actions of CDPDH in Prainha do Canto Verde involved legal support for ensuring attachment to the territory along with political capacity building, oriented by the agenda of agrarian reform and Liberation Theology.5 “All the work that was done, every event that was organized, had a moment of reflection, theology and reading of the conjuncture, after which we would discuss specific issues” (P5). It also included building capacities on how to express oneself, organize a meeting and articulate internally and strategically in smaller groups for the functioning of the social movement and for resistance to the pressure from speculators. “There was always a large group of 30–40 people who were discussing the themes, but there was also the small group of 4–5 people that articulated strategies” (C14). Even today, “this organization, these small groups, when they join their ideas, make the community more and more powerful in its project.” (C19). Rural seminaries, for example, were meetings among the communities assisted by the CDPDH in 1980s and took place periodically, as a moment of exchange between several rural communities and the construction of resistance strategies. Experiencing the reality of other communities also appears in several narratives of the interviewed leaders as a motivational factor to continue acting and defending the interests of Prainha. Other strategies have been maintained over time, such as musical animation. “I remember that in the 1980s when I was a child, there were lots of loud assemblies and we always played a song and calmed things down, and today the assemblies are sometimes a lot more fierce than they were, so we use the same strategy and it works” (C4). In 1989, the community-based organization was the representative entity in judicial processes and in actions of territory organization. With the advancement of the legal process against real estate speculation, assisted by CDPDH, and with an already consolidated and recognized community organization, another cycle of partnership took place in Prainha do Canto Verde with two NGOs—the Association of Friends of Prainha do Canto Verde (Associação Amigos da Prainha do Canto Verde) and Terramar Institute.

5  Liberation Theology defends biblical reflection integrated with historical process. The liberation is understood in three dimensions: liberation from economic and social situations of oppression and marginalization; personal and ethical transformation; and the liberation from sin. Theologians sought to unite faith and politics in a popular version that could create the conditions for an effective change in society through the awareness and analysis of social structures (Santos, 2006).

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13.3.2  Non-Governmental Organizations The Association of Friends of Prainha do Canto Verde (hereafter Friends Association) was led by a Swiss, who established himself in the community in 1992. He used to raise funds from international donors and was also considered a very important partner for the social organization of Prainha do Canto Verde. The projects transcended the issue of land struggle and addressed aspects related to production, income, health, education, and youth (Table 13.1). “When the Swiss arrived, we were already struggling and knew everything we needed. From the land we needed a lot, without it we could have nothing. It was the focus of the struggle. But we did not only need the land, we needed to improve everything and had no condition at all” (C2). The partnership with the Swiss brought a very important aspect to the discussion of collective action in traditional communities that were historically at the margin of state support and public policies. According to Galdino (2014), in this newly established cycle, the Swiss became the community advisor and financial coordinator of the social and productive projects of the community. “His relationship was with the Association. He was responsible for fund-raising and the Association managed the projects, but he was like a supervisor. A tremendously rigorous supervisor who even annoyed.” (C2). Projects carried out with Friends Association support have always involved the Residents Association and their community-based groups established since 1990s, such as Councils of Health (1993), Fishing (1994), Land (1994), Education (1994), and Tourism (1997).6 What differentiated this case from many other communities with timely action by NGOs is that the projects were fundraised and took place following the priority given by the local leaders, through decisions and demands made together with communities in assemblies (Galdino, 2014). There are also examples of direct involvement of villagers (not necessarily local leaders or elites) taking responsibility in project execution. An example is the case of a project to expand the school’s facilities. It was attended by a group of parents and young people from the community, who offered labor for construction as a counterpart to the resources financed by Friends Association. Another is a project on breastfeeding in the mid-­1990s, by which Prainha do Canto Verde became the first community in the state of Ceará to eradicate child mortality. Almost concomitantly, another strategic partner of Prainha do Canto Verde, the local NGO Terramar Institute (hereafter Terramar), was founded in 1993, based on the demands of the social movement of the community and on the action of militants and researchers from the Federal University of Ceará (UFC). The articulation for the creation of Terramar was born from the “SOS Survival journey,” a protest action claiming government actions against illegal fishing of lobster on the coast of 6  The groups were created as a new model of local decentralized governance, with the aim of reducing the centrality of the President of the association and investing in greater community participation in decision-making.

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Table 13.1  Survey of projects carried out in Prainha do Canto Verde prior to the creation of the Extractive Reserve (2009) and the main partners during that period Projects Production and commercialization of handicrafts and financing of a refrigerating chamber for fish Community sailing raft for collective fishing and social movement financing Construction of the Community Center Financing of 12 sailing rafts Community day-care “Peixinho Dourado” Community fishing warehouse

Family Planning and Breastfeeding Project Aid grants for 15 young people completing their studies Artificial Reef Project Children’s Choir “Um Canto em Cada Canto” Socially Responsible Tourism Project Community vessels and car for general transport Local school strengthening Project “Projeto Criança Construindo” Installation of a new building for the school with two classrooms 1st Coastal Leadership Training Course Cooperative and associative workshops—Capacity building for Tourism Council Expansion of school and construction of new facilities 2nd Coastal Leadership Training Course Paving of community access

Partners and supporters CDPDH and Religious Statistics and Social Investigations (CERIS)

Year of implementation 1984

Caritas

1985

Caritas Social Assistance Foundation of Ceará Friends Association and Terramar

1986 1991 1993 1993

CDPDH, Friends Association, Social Assistance Foundation of Ceará, Fisheries Union Z-11 Friends Association

1993

Friends Association

1993

Terramar and Federal University of Ceará Terramar and Association of Children’s Corals (ACIC) Residents Association, Terramar and Friends Association Bank of Northeast Brazil

1993 1994 1994 1996

Terramar and Brazilian Association 1996 of Toy Manufacturers Foundation (ABRINQ) Friends Association 1996 Terramar Federal University of Ceará

1999 1999

Friends Association, City Hall and State Secretary of Education Terramar

1999

General Fund for Tourism of the Federal Government 3rd Coastal Leadership Training Course Terramar Peoples of the Sea School Terramar Art-school Project; center for crafts Terramar training in the school

2000 2000 2002 2002 2004 (continued)

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Table 13.1 (continued) Projects Shipyard-School Project Water disinfection with solar energy, SODIS Project Computer Center in the school for students and community use Community Management of Waste Collection Training workshops for tourism development Continuing teacher training Project Generation Change World— youth between 14 and 24 years Education fund for scholarships for higher and technical education

Partners and supporters Terramar and Friends Association Federal University of Ceará, Caritas, and Friends Association City Hall; Fishing Secretary and Friends Association Friends Association and City Hall Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service Terramar Friends Association, Stanley Johnson Foundation and ASHOKA social entrepreneurs Friends Association

Year of implementation 2004 2004 2006 2007 1998–2003 1998 2007

2008

Source: Prepared by the author using own data with input from Galdino (2014)

Ceará, against real estate speculation, and for better living conditions for small-­ scale fishers. In 1993, a sailing raft with four fishers left Prainha do Canto Verde and traveled to Rio de Janeiro, in Southeast Brazil. Several fishing communities were mobilized along the route of the 74-day trip, and several actions triggered the creation and articulation of a regional-level fishing social movement. Since then, Terramar has had the objectives of contributing to environmental justice in the coastal zone. Also encouraged by the Swiss, part of the resources of Terramar came from Friends Association, and many of the projects mentioned were performed jointly. According to one of the Terramar advisors at the time, the action methodology was intensive (with more than three projects at the same time in a community) or not intensive. Terramar acted in Prainha for almost 10 years in an intensive and not intensive manner. “Prainha was a kind of laboratory” (P2). Terramar’s activities in the community were transdisciplinary and involved numerous fishing seminars (some of which were international); education projects, such as the implementation of a day-care center; the preparation of a differentiated education textbook; teacher training courses; the creation of the Escola dos Povos do Mar (School of Peoples of the Sea);7 and training courses for leaders in the community itself (with the participation of other community leaders in the region). Terramar also carried out numerous actions to structure community tourism in Prainha, which is considered a pioneer in the implementation of community-based

7  The Escola dos Povos do Mar was a project for young people and adults who stopped going to school because of fishing activities. It had its basis on popular education and the pedagogy of alternation, with schedules and teaching contextualized within the reality of fishers and adapted to the fishing calendar.

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tourism in Brazil. The community-based tourism of Prainha has been the focus of countless studies and was internationally awarded. Regarding the process of leadership capacity building, the partnership with Terramar is referred to as fundamental for strengthening the local social movement: “This project of Terramar lasted three years, promoting the exchange between communities and forming leaders, about how to make a report, how to behave in a meeting, how referrals should be given, what care one should have (…). Each year was a different class with 30 people or so. We had about 90 people on the coast who acquired this knowledge and strengthened the struggle of fishermen and fisherwomen” (C14).

13.3.3  University and Researchers In an integrated way, Federal University of Ceará was also mentioned in the interviews as a long-standing partner in research and outreach actions, and as part of the Deliberative Council of Extractive Reserve since its creation. Various departments of the University developed projects in Prainha, but the Department of Geography and the Institute of Marine Sciences (Labomar) were highlighted. To a large extent, the differential of the representatives of the university for emancipatory partnership could be attributed to their capacity to integrate traditional and scientific knowledge in a transdisciplinary way. The researchers instrumentalized the community according to local demands: in the defense of its territory, whether terrestrial, regarding the real estate speculation, or even coastal, investigating intense processes of beach erosion in the area. As mentioned by one of the professors interviewed, “the community knows the importance of scientific information. The community participated in forums and events and had links with numerous organizations. Claims were conducted from these two great dimensions: contact to the university and instrumentalization from academic information, which was the language of other partners and the government” (P4).

In addition to the continued action of partnerships in Prainha do Canto Verde, another notable aspect was the integration and political alignment among external partners themselves. “They [individuals] are also partners in the past 20-30 years of political struggle, since student activism,” (P5). In the same narrative, one of Terramar’s advisors mentions, for example, the logistical support among the partners with travel expenses to Prainha do Canto Verde, which allowed for the continued participation in meetings, even in periods of financial difficulty. The emancipatory partnerships of Prainha do Canto Verde continued in building collective actions within the new governance arrangement, as members of the Deliberative Council. The composition of the external members of the council reflected the choices that the community made in the planning process, and its advisers, were in line with the majority position of the community members (Lima, 2014). Resistance to pressures and threats also allowed scaling-up the social movement. The social movement developed in Prainha do Canto Verde strengthened and

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t­ranscended the local level, for instance, in the case of the creation of “Forum of Fishermen and Fisherwoman of the Coast,” which represent the interests of small-­ scale fishers of the state; and the creation of the Ceará State Network of community-­ based Tourism (Rede Tucum). As a reflection of the importance and magnitude of the partnerships, several local development projects carried out prior to the establishment of the Extractive Reserve (1984–2008) were compiled in Table 13.1. To a large extent, many actions related to education were not presented, but included formal and professional education, technical training, youth and adult literacy, as well as exchanges and sharing of experiences among other traditional communities. According to Galdino (2014), only between 1997 and 2009 “approximately 41 training courses, 16 thematic seminars, 28 pedagogical workshops, 23 meetings and 2 conferences were carried out in the community, accounting for an estimated workload of 3851  h in educational activities or events” (p. 202).

13.4  N  ew Land Grabbers: The Crisis as a Source of Mobilization? With the creation of the Extractive Reserve in 2009, part of the community felt safe for ensuring that the lands would not be threatened any more, and if threatened, they would have the support of a federal environmental agency in the territory. However, during the same period, a new agent appears in the land dispute. An entrepreneur claimed the possession of more than half of the continental area of the reserve. Pressure strategies from land grabbers have changed over the last decade. Instead of explicit violence, the new speculator has employed tactics of leader’s co-optation and has promoted intensification of internal conflict among residents. As part of his strategies of co-optation, are the funding for the creation of a new community-based association, called Independent Association of Residents of Prainha do Canto Verde. In addition, lawyers financed by the entrepreneur are often present in the community, attending the meetings of the Deliberative Council and providing legal advice to residents who had sold their houses to vacationers and/or built houses irregularly. Other examples of co-optation included the donation of an ambulance and school textbooks, and the establishment of an agreement term with the local municipal government for investment and “technical advice” regarding the local school. The most recent threat is a Law Project in the National Congress, aiming to remove the land demarcation from the Extractive Reserve, which would make the land freely available for sale. The capacity of local agents to respond to pressures has changed due to the authority and responsibility shared between the community leaders and the Protected Areas Agency. When the State takes on the responsibility of land use surveillance of the Extractive Reserve, for example, local leaders, who have always been at the forefront of this process, including applying locally agreed-upon sanctions, lose

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some legitimacy. At the same time, the continuous existence of threats favors the re-signification of the community struggle. The community’s identification of an external enemy generates a greater power of mobilization of its members. Although there is concern about engaging current generations in the struggle, it was possible to observe that, unlike other communities (Leite, Ross, & Berkes, 2019; Trimble, Araujo, & Seixas, 2014), Prainha do Canto Verde always had a focus on young leader’s capacity building and the strengthening of their identity. Besides that, the community has called on its partners to join forces against threats, for example, by organizing events at the local school, along with the Federal University of Ceará, or with legal advice from Terramar and political articulation with other partners against the project that is underway in National Congress. Finally, recognition of the injustices of land grabbing appears in several narratives of the interviewees and reveals an aspect of social awareness and non-­ subordination that has been acquired over time and that contribute to resistance: “We are poor, we deserve to have the land. We’ve lived here for so many years, we cannot afford to lose. My great-grandparents took care of this land and my parents too, and we must continue to fight for it, for the young, for the children that are still to be born” (C32).

13.5  Final Remarks “I am proud to live on the only beach I think still exists in Brazil that a native does not need to buy land to build a house, that no baron has taken our land and us, the harbor of our “jangadas” [sailing rafts], the beach to walk with our children and our wives.” (C27).

In response to the neoliberal regime of tourism development, real estate speculation and industrial fishing, Prainha do Canto Verde has fought for at least 40 years to maintain its territory and its livelihoods. The process of social organization and struggle provided the conquest of citizenship, with respect to negotiation and contestation to exercise rights, responsibilities, and their belonging to territory. Some of the innovations and actions identified as differentiating Prainha do Canto Verde from many traditional fishing communities were: (i) the consolidation of its social movement based on Liberation Theology and social transformation; (ii) the existence of projects that valued educational formation and internal political organization; (iii) the improvement of the quality of life of the families, reinforcing the continuity of the social movement and struggle for permanence in the territory; (iv) an environmental-territorial governance model such as the Extractive Reserve, which, despite the challenges, has ensured the inclusion of the community in the co-management of its territory and resisting to more real estate speculation; and finally, (v) long-term partners acting in synergy with ongoing projects, based on legitimate demands of the community. The maintenance of the territory occurred only by the constant struggle of the residents and the support of emancipatory partnerships, capable of acting in accordance with local and politically oriented demands for social transformation, guaranteeing the sovereignty of community and their citizenship. A Catholic entity, two

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NGOs and a university were considered significant partners in this process. Although they had fundamental roles in raising financial resources for projects and legal advice, the basic political formation allowed the community to be protagonists of its struggle process and to manage collaboratively many innovative projects: transforming health and education, strengthening production and income, and benefitting youth. This does not mean that many projects could be dissociated from the dominant neoliberal development logic that has been internationally based on the territories of Latin America (Dagnino, 2004). The implementation of a series of courses, for instance, is not a novel approach to mainstream capacity development, but this experience at Prainha do Canto Verde reveals the commitment to critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970), the clarity of what and for whom the capacity development was based, defining together the capacities needed and for what purpose, always guided by policy and structural transformations (Bockstael, 2017). The difference between the history of this LSES and many others was the political awareness and the sense of common good presented in the speech of most of the interviewees. In addition, the sense of belonging and community protagonism enabled for choosing projects that had to do with their identity, their own interests, and were tools of political struggle, not only philanthropic or charitable actions of NGOs, or even conservation projects oriented by an environmentalism of outcomes. The local regime of Prainha do Canto Verde still resists to external drivers based on the neoliberal regime. It is important to look at this history as a process of victories, crises, and conflicts. Instead of identifying recipes or key factors for local success stories in Latin America, it is essential to contextualize them. Part of this resistance comes at one hand from the process of building citizenship—often overlooked to most of Latin American people. Despite regional particularities, citizenship must be defined by those who feel excluded from it, so, on the second hand, building socio-political organization is very important. The engagement of emancipatory partnerships contributed and still contribute into both fronts. Acknowledgements  The author thanks all residents, struggling women and men of Prainha do Canto Verde for interviews and support in the fieldwork. D. Prado is also grateful to São Paulo Research Foundation (2015/19439-8), Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (finance code 001), and the two anonymous reviewers for their appropriate and constructive suggestions.

References Angeles, L., & Gurstein, P. (2000). Planning for participatory capacity development: The challenges of participation and North-South partnership in capacity building projects. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d’études du développement, 21, 447–478. Atkinson, R. (1998). The life story interview. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Berkes, F. (2009). Evolution of co-management: Role of knowledge generation, bridging organizations and social learning. Journal of Environmental Management, 90(5), 1692–1702. Bernard, H.  R. (2006). Research methods in anthropology: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Oxford: Altamira Press.

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Bockstael, E. (2017). Critical capacity development: An action research approach in coastal Brazil. World Development, 94, 336–345. Carlsson, L., & Berkes, F. (2005). Co-management: Concepts and methodological implications. Journal of Environmental Management, 75(1), 65–76. Castro, F. (2012). Multi-scale environmental citizenship. Traditional populations and protected areas in Brazil. In A. Latta & H. Wittman (Eds.), Environment and citizenship in Latin America: natures, subjects and struggles (Vol. 101, pp. 39–58). Oxford: Berghahn Books. Cleaver, F. (1999). Paradoxes of participation: Questioning participatory approaches to development. Journal of International Development, 11(4), 597–612. Dagnino, E. (2004). Construção democrática, neoliberalismo e participação: os dilemas da confluência perversa. Política & Sociedade, 3(5), 139–164. Diegues, A. C. (2018). Brazil: SSF, endless conflicts. Samudra Report, 78, 46–47. Dodson, G. (2014). Co-governance and local empowerment? Conservation partnership frameworks and marine protection at Mimiwhangata, New Zealand. Society & Natural Resources, 27(5), 521–539. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group. https://oi-files-d8-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/file_attachments/bpland-power-inequality-latin-america-301116-en.pdf. Galdino, J. W. (2014). Educação e movimentos sociais na pesca artesanal. UFC, Fortaleza, Brazil. Guereña, A. (2016). Unearthed: Land, power and inequality in Latin America. Oxfam International. Harvey, D. (2006). Neo-liberalism as creative destruction. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 88(2), 145–158. Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). (2011). Atlas Geográfico das Zonas Costeiras e Oceânicas do Brasil. Retrieved January 4, 2017, from http://biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/ visualizacao/livros/liv55263.pdf. Latta, A., & Wittman, H. (2010). Environment and citizenship in Latin America: A new paradigm for theory and practice. Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe/European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 89, 107–116. Latta, A., & Wittman, H. (Eds.). (2012). Environment and citizenship in Latin America: Natures, subjects and struggles (Vol. 101). Oxford: Berghahn Books. Leite, M., Ross, H., & Berkes, F. (2019). Interactions between individual, household, and fishing community resilience in Southeast Brazil. Ecology and Society, 24(3), 2. Lemos, M. C., & Agrawal, A. (2006). Environmental governance. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 31, 297–325. Lima, M. D. C. (2006). Pescadoras e pescadores artesanais do Ceará: modo de vida, confrontos e horizontes. Mercator, 5(10), 39-a. Lima, M. D. C. (2014). Espaço de Gestão Pública Compartilhada Em Resex No Ceará: Experiência do CDRPCV–Beberibe/CE. Extensão em Ação, Fortaleza, 1(6), 30–44. Lima, M. D. C. (2017). Reservas extrativistas no Ceará: direitos, processos e resolução de conflitos. Universidade e Sociedade, 59, 180–191. Lustosa, I. M. C., & Baines, S. G. (2016). Turismo, carnicicultura, usinas eólicas, e outros projetos em territórios indígenas-A luta dos povos indígenas no litoral do Ceará para a demarcação de suas terras. RURIS-Revista do Centro de Estudos Rurais-UNICAMP, 10(2). Santos, I. M. F. (2006). Luta e perspectivas da teologia da libertação: O caso da Comunidade São João Batista, Vila Rica, São Paulo: 1980–2000. Doctoral dissertation, Universidade de São Paulo. Sundberg, J. (2012). Negotiating citizenship in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala. In A. Latta & H. Wittman (Eds.), Environment and citizenship in Latin America: Natures, subjects and struggles (pp. 97–111). Oxford: Berghahn Books. Trimble, M., Araujo, L.  G., & Seixas, C.  S. (2014). One party does not tango! Fishers’ non-­ participation as a barrier to co-management in Party, Brazil. Ocean & Coastal Management, 92, 9–18.

Part V

From Clashes to Agreements: How to Get There?

Chapter 14

Social Learning by Small Ruminant Farmers in Granma, Cuba Isela Ponce Palma, Manuel La O Arias, José Nahed Toral, and Francisco Guevara Hernández

Abstract  With the objective to characterize sustainability of family-owned small ruminant production systems as well as conservation of Cuban Creole goats, we used a transdisciplinary approach that included participatory action-research with a social learning component in two rural communities (“La Concepción” and “26 de Julio”) in the Cauto Valley of Granma, Cuba. This study aims to characterize families’ livelihoods and agricultural systems using sustainability indicators. In addition, the region’s Creole goat population was characterized, and a process for conserving this type of goat was developed. Seventy families participated in community-­wide workshops to analyze families’ livelihoods and plan Creole goat conservation, as well as livestock fairs, and sustainable livestock raising festivals. Furthermore, farm families identified their common vision regarding extinction of Creole goats. Social learning facilitated collective action to promote the production of knowledge regarding the value and uses of small ruminants, technical knowledge regarding goat raising, sustainability, and livelihoods. This learning promoted development of farmers’ abilities to participate in the Creole goat conservation process and improve their relationships with the different actors in this process. Farm I. Ponce-Palma (*) Jorge Dimitrov Institute for Agricultural Research, Bayamo, Granma, Cuba Academia de Ingeniería Ambiental, Universidad de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas (UNICACH) Sede Mapastepec, Mapastepec, Chiapas, Mexico M. La O Arias Jorge Dimitrov Institute for Agricultural Research, Bayamo, Granma, Cuba Current address: Ganadería Ambiental, Universidad Autonóma de Chiapas, Villaflores, Chiapas, Mexico J. Nahed-Toral Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] F. Guevara-Hernández Facultad de Ciencias Agronómicas, Universidad Autonoma de Chiapas, Villaflores, Chiapas, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_14

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families who worked off the farm also participated with livelihood strategies in collective action oriented toward improving livestock raising systems in such a manner that they be adapted to the community’s sociocultural context. Keywords  Family farm systems · Small ruminants · Sustainability indicators · Goat conservation · Livelihoods

14.1  Introduction Due to development of agriculture in Cuba in the 1980s based on Green Revolution principles, the rural context in which farmers raise small ruminants in the Cauto Valley of Granma province is complex, as defined by Salazar and Rosabal (2007). These authors characterize the region’s agriculture as including a “hard” reality given degradation of—and limited access to—natural resources, as well as climate change and economic crises, and a “soft” reality involving sociopolitical and cultural problems, as well as peoples’ beliefs, knowledge, customs, and worldviews. It is within this context that Local Socio-Environmental Systems framework (LSES) (Parra-Vázquez et  al. Chap. 1, this volume), for the production of small ruminants (sheep and goats) are developed. The problem with our LSES is that the group of producers (farmers or peasants) do not know the sustainability of their productive systems, and that due to crossing with other breeds and loss of its habitat, they do not know that the Creole goat is in danger of extinction; and also they do not know some of the goats’ characteristics and there is a lack of methodological principles that govern the development processes for goat conservation in situ. Given this complexity, there is a need of using a transdisciplinary approach to analyzing Cuba’s agricultural development process. However, Cuban universities— as those of the rest of the world—have emphasized individual disciplinary education in both undergraduate and graduate studies. In this sense, Max-Neef (2004) points out that transdisciplinary universities do not exist, and that in the best of cases researchers attempt to carry out interdisciplinary research. In Cuba, the lack of transdisciplinary approaches in pursuing research has led researchers to carry out studies of agricultural, human, or ecological systems to address each of them from individual disciplines. While in the 1990s, with the aim of providing professionals with a broader training animal science was combined with veterinary science, as well as with agronomy; with respect to research, agronomy has continued to principally address crops and grasses, while veterinary science has addressed animal health and management. Despite these changes, transdisciplinarity was not achieved; sociologists who visited peasant families only focused on the family, while economists only attended peasants’ economic problems and veterinarians to animal management.

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The objective of this chapter is to characterize sustainability of small ruminant production systems and farm families’ livelihoods, as well as conservation of Cuban Creole goats, all by using a transdisciplinary perspective with a social learning process component. We used the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, as well as the Framework for Evaluation of Sustainability of Management Systems (MESMIS; Torres, Ramos, Lizazo, Monteagudo, & Noda, 2008) which uses relative ­sustainability indicators. These frameworks provide peasants with tools to discuss their productive system’s experiences in order to jointly analyze (with researchers and government officials) economic, social, and environmental problems related to their agricultural systems. By integrating different academic disciplines, in this study we developed a group approach to learning about sustainability, families’ livelihoods and their strategies so that our results will help peasant families in improving the use of local natural resources as well as to design more adequate livelihood strategies. By using a transdisciplinary approach, we systematized the process of conserving Creole goats. The community 26 de Julio provides a prototypical case study for conserving the Creole goat genotype. This conservation process was supported by the Latin American Regional Team of Rural Innovation Processes (PIR according to its Spanish acronym), which works in Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (Salazar & Rosabal, 2007), and the Global Environmental Facility’s international evaluation team. We systematized the process of conserving Cuban Creole goats in 26 de Julio in order to develop a theoretical basis for proposing a methodology for in situ conservation of this genotype.

14.2  Theoretical Approach There are many theories about social learning that have been developed in several countries. Albert Bandura (1984) developed his theory based on reinforcement, observation, and interaction with others, for his part Rotter (1954), had based his theory of social learning on the possibility that a given behavior occurs determined by the variables of subjective appreciation of the probability of reinforcing the behavior and the value of reinforcement for the person. However, Ruíz-Ahmed (2010) argues that learning is a change that develops in behavior continuously and permanently and reflects the acquisition of knowledge and skills from practice and observation. In this study, we follow Ruiz-Ahmed’s approach to social learning. The social learning model of innovation is conceived within agricultural development as socially constructed knowledge which is a product of collective learning (Guevara-Hernández et al., 2011; Rodríguez et al., 2009). Putting into practice this model through processes and strategies oriented toward farm families’ innovation and experimentation catalyzes annual cycles of individual and collective learning, which in each stage of the process culminate with analysis of lessons learned by the communities. The LSES responds to the diverse approaches made in several years ago to work on human–plant relationships, which were affected worldwide, so this

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paradigm proposes to expand research to understand the transformations that are currently underway and to consider LSES systems as subjects of study and LSES as complex systems composed of four subsystems: (i) landscapes and territories, (ii) rural families, (iii) territorial action groups, and iv) local governments, as agents of the regime (Parra-Vázquez et al. Chap. 1, this volume).

14.3  Methods 14.3.1  Area of Study The study was carried out in the Cauto Valley, in the Granma province, Cuba (Fig.  14.1). The area has a territorial extension of 4500  km2. In this region, 167,101 ha are dedicated to livestock, and 40.2% of the flocks of sheep and goats in the province (ONE, 2012). The most important economic activity in the region is the agriculture and within this the livestock.

14.3.2  Data Collection and Analysis This chapter analyzes two cases of social learning in the Cauto Valley of Granma, Cuba. The first case comprises the community 26 de Julio. From 2002 to 2009, researchers and peasants of this community worked to conserve Creole goats. The second case is the community La Concepción in which, from 2012 to 2014, research-

Fig. 14.1  Cauto Valley location, with communities “26 de Julio” and “La Concepción.” (Source: Compiled by Emanuel Valencia (ECOSUR))

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ers and peasants evaluated the level of sustainability of LSES and the livelihoods of farm families. In order to confront the challenge of sustainability and conserve Creole goats, taking into account farm families’ livelihoods in the complex context of the Cauto Valley, a team of researchers of various disciplines combined information to create a body of knowledge that is not specific to any one discipline (Said et al., 2019). In the community 26 de Julio, a systematization methodology was applied to learn about the learning process developed during the conservation of the Creole goat. The axes of systematization were participation and social learning. Three stages were developed in the systematization process. In the first stage, the events were organized chronologically and interpreted through the theory of rural innovation processes. In the second stage, social learning originated in the process of conservation of goats was analyzed. Finally, in the third stage the lessons learned were identified. Interviews were conducted with focus groups. Also the documentation and records of the collective activities were reviewed. All the analysis carried out was validated through a presentation of results to participants in a devolution workshop. Moreover, we used statistical analyses to assess the association between animal products and strategic uses of these products, based on a factorial correspondence analysis. In addition, in order to group the different family goat raising systems, we carried out an analysis of conglomerates. In La Concepción, participatory community workshops (Chambers, 1983; Geilfus, 2001) were carried out to analyze the sustainability of the LSES as well as farm families’ livelihoods. Criteria taken into account in analyzing family’s capitals of the LSES are listed in Table 14.1. In the workshops, information was obtained regarding natural, financial, physical, human, and social capital(s) for each form of land tenancy, taking into consideration the criteria listed in Table 14.1 In order to determine family’s life strategies, we assumed that each family pools their resources to obtain the greatest benefit and make the best use possible of their capabilities. Life strategies include agricultural activities and a broad variety of non-agricultural activities.

Table 14.1  Criteria used to evaluate capitals of Local Socio-Environmental Systems of the Cauto Valley of Granma, Cuba Capitals Natural capital Physical capital Human capital Social capital Financial capital

Contents Land, vegetation, bodies of water, precipitation, agriculture Health, education, and other services in the community; manual tools, machinery, and other work equipment; agricultural facilities Formal educational level, knowledge of agriculture, experience, and abilities of farm family members Political and farm organizations as actors in communities’ economic and political processes Income from agriculture and off-farm work

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LSES have several critical points that families need to take into consideration while raising goat (Torres et al., 2008). These critical points are listed in Table 14.2, together with indicators used to evaluate the sustainability of these systems. Critical points include aspects that serve to know whether the productive system is efficient or not efficient. Thus, indicators are the elements that characterize the critical points. Two workshops were carried out with farm families; one to analyze their livelihoods and evaluate the sustainability of the LSES, and another to discuss the results. Each workshop began with a presentation by some of the researchers involved in order to present the topic and provoke discussion by participants, who were divided Table 14.2  Critical points and indicators for Local Socio-environmental Systems (LSES) of the community La Concepción in the Cauto Valley, Granma, Cuba System Attributes Productivity

Critical points of LSES Low herd productivity

Stability, reliability, Live weight of livestock and and resilience LSES’ dependence on climatic conditions

Farmers’ level of optimism regarding goat production

Adaptability

Participation in community goat raising projects

Gender equality

Participation of women in organizational activities

Autonomy of management

Membership in farm organizations Creativity and independence, which promotes agricultural innovation

Indicators 1.  Net margin, Cuban pesos 2.  Goats weaned per year, numbers 3.  Sale weight, kg 4.  Birth weight, kg 5.  Fodder area, ha 6.  Type of grass, species 7.  Grazing system, type 8.  Animal load, AU/ha 9.  Climatic conditions, type 10.  Soil erosion, type 11.  Condition of grassland, type 12. Membership in farm organizations, type of organization 13. Farmers that plan to continue raising goats, numbers 14. Generational continuity of goat raising 15. Farmer receives financial or other support for agricultural projects, yes or no 16. Farmer receives technical assistance, yes or no 17.  Total beneficiaries, no. 18. Participation of women at organizational meetings, yes or no 19. Who makes decisions: men, women, or both 20.  Women working on farm, numbers 21. Participation in organizational meetings, yes or no 22.  Carrying out innovation, yes or no

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into four focal groups in order to analyze sustainable livelihoods and indicators for each critical point of sustainability.

14.4  Results and Discussion 14.4.1  Conservation of Cuban Creole Goats The first challenge with respect to recovery and conservation of Cuban Creole goats was to address the problem of its extinction, as identified by the governmental agricultural department and academia. This problem emerged from the biocultural context of peasant systems although the farm families did not perceive this as a problem. The biocultural unit—which results from the interaction between Creole goats and peasant livelihoods—could not be understood from the limited visions of individual disciplines and agrarian policies. The productivist approach of classic animal science failed to address the true uses and value of Creole goats as part of the survival strategies of their peasant caretakers. In the case at hand, there was a need to not only address production, but also life strategies, and therefore we used the concept of strategic uses of animal genetic resources, concluding that Cuban Creole goats form part of different types of livestock raising systems, which have two principal objectives: • Providing meat for self-subsistence and consumption in social events • Marketing live animals to obtain income and be able to manage risks We observed that farmers’ fundamental socioeconomic rationale was to maximize use of family labor and their few available resources. Figure  14.2 depicts results on the association between animal products and strategic uses of these products, based on a factorial correspondence analysis. We identified a diversity of typologies of farm systems, as well as of ways in which farm families appropriated strategic uses of Creole goats. Typologies were differentiated according to three aspects: • Level of tenancy of the system (surface area, number of animals, and other resources) • Family needs • Labor required to produce non-goat products We thereby classified two types of goat raising systems (Fig. 14.3): (a) Family goat raising in backyards and small plots, and (b) family goat raising in farms. Systems in backyards and small plots had herds of up to 13 reproducing females on an average of 1.23 ha. Farm systems had an average of 34 reproducing females on an average of 8.24 ha, of which 1.97 ha was used for grazing. Following a sociocultural approach to understanding peasant rationales of goat raising and peasants’ biocultural relationship with Creole goats as a zoogenetic

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Fig. 14.2  Bidimensional diagram of correspondences between animal products and their uses in family Creole goat raising systems. (Source: Adapted from La O (2013). *Figures shown in parenthesis represent the mass values corresponding to each category of product or use)

Fig. 14.3  Two main grouping of family goat raising systems according to analysis of conglomerates. (Source: Elaborated by the authors)

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resource led government agencies to redefine the initial problem as well as the intervention strategy. The process of conserving Creole goats was designed consisting of three phases (Fig. 14.4): • Government agency coordination of the goat conservation process • Community coordination of the goat conservation process, with technical, political, and logistical advisory by government agencies • Peasant management of the goat conservation process The Creole goat conservation process began with a period involving interviews, polls, discussion workshops, and other activities to allow all actors involved to get to know each other. This phase was termed: “phase of developing common visions and alliances for collective action.” This was followed by the “phase of collective action,” in which all actors involved designed a set of activities for managing goat populations, improving goat raising systems, and developing the peasants’ capabilities for collectively managing animal genetic resources. All activities focused on social learning. As for indicators used regarding peasants developing their capacities to manage animal genetic resources, together with the researchers peasants evaluated collectively constructed knowledge, new collective attitudes with respect to Creole goat conservation, and changes in social abilities such as conflict resolution, communication, and interpersonal relations. Upon analyzing collectively constructed knowledge, two categories were distinguished: (a) basic knowledge involved in developing attitudes and (b) technical and operational knowledge involved in managing goat systems. According to the analytical framework of Kolb (2001), the Creole goat conservation process can be regarded as continuous cycles of experiential learning (Fig.  14.5). The above-­ mentioned phases, which focused on theoretical aspects of the process, constituted an experiential basis to initiate a learning cycle. Through reflexive observation and abstract conceptualization, the interviews, polls, and workshops—carried out during the phase of developing common visions—allowed for systematizing the problem of Creole goat extinction, as well as defining specific objectives of the goat conservation process and steps that should be taken in order to meet these objectives. Knowledge resulting from systematizing the problem of Creole goat extinction proved to be key in developing collective attitudes in favor of resolving this problem. This knowledge was used to define objectives and actions for different spatial levels (goat farms, community, goat population) and dimensions (zootechnical, environmental, social). Pozo (2008) states that the context of social interaction in which learning takes place largely determines the nature and meaning of that which is learned. Comprehension and definition of a complex problem requires multiple experiences, observations, and conceptualizations in order to be able to guide action according to a systemic perspective (Gómez, 2012). In the present study, the use of tools such as maps, diagrams, and matrixes for collective knowledge construction significantly contributed to farmers’ building a common vision of the complex problem, which, according to Díaz Muñante (2004), allows for comprehending sys-

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Fig. 14.4  Chronology (a) and theoretical understanding (b) of the process of in situ conservation of Cuban Creole goats in the rural community “26 de Julio.” (Source: Elaborated by the authors. SGP Small Grants Program of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF))

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Fig. 14.5  Diagram depicting the learning cycle regarding the problem of extinction of Creole goats, designed during the phase of developing common visions. (Source: Elaborated by authors with theoretical input from Kolb (2001))

tem properties and relationships involved in social processes such as of identifying a complex problem. Gómez García (2003) describes the function of information sources and other types of communication in developing knowledge on different levels (personal, informal group, organizational, and societal). Active experimentation was manifested through new practices, motivated by experiential learning, which propitiated the phase of collective action. Participatory experimentation in goat raising systems, experience managing goat herds, and participation in new social spaces—both physical and symbolic—were sources of experience for another cycle of learning. This provided technical and operational knowledge for managing goat raising systems, besides reinforcing basic knowledge involved in developing new attitudes. Social spaces of collective knowledge construction, developed during the goat conservation process, led participating actors (workshop facilitators, other external actors, community leaders, and goat raisers) to develop the following types of new social abilities: (a) Intellectual abilities, including information retention, logical and abstract reasoning, and analysis

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(b) Organizational abilities, including organizing occurrences as systems, listing, classifying, ordering, and establishing hierarchy, which are necessary for planning (c) Interpersonal abilities, consisting of knowing how to listen to and understand others, as well as understanding that which transcends spoken language, and knowing how to negotiate and manage conflict (d) Linguistic abilities, which allow for clearly and easily expressing oneself in public, and include writing abilities (e) Personal abilities, which include the capacity to detect, understand, and express one’s feelings, recognize one’s own personal traits, and reflect on oneself and one’s personal plans These abilities are necessary for all actors participating in a variety of situations in daily life; however, in spaces in which collective knowledge construction takes place, they must be developed, systematized, and integrated. In the present study, in order to systematize the problem of extinction of Creole goats, intellectual and organizational abilities proved to be important; nevertheless, linguistic, interpersonal, and personal abilities were also essential to achieving communicative states of reason, as defined by Habermas (cited by Salazar & Rosabal, 2007). The phase of developing a common vision proved essential for developing and integrating these abilities. Pozo (2008) states that processes of reinforcement (trial and error) do not assure acquisition of such abilities. According to this author, reinforcement is efficient in regulating already learned behavior, but relatively ineffective in creating behavior. Bandura (1986) considers that learning by observation or modeling is a more effective manner of acquiring new social behavior. Development of new positive attitudes is the principle objective of social learning. In the process of conserving Creole goats, the researchers considered it to be important to develop a system of attitudes consistent with the objectives of ­conserving the goats, and also to develop social capital required for achieving the following types of new attitudes. (a) Attitudes specific to the objective of conserving Creole goats. These include identification with Creole goats (recognizing goats as part of their identify and personal and social patrimony), valuing the goats (recognizing their contribution to their subsistence strategies), social responsibility (commitment to resolving local and global problems which transcend their life systems), and innovative attitudes (persistent search to improve their goat herds and raising systems). (b) Attitudes required for developing social capital. These include humanistic attitudes (empathy and appreciation of people and their capabilities), reflexive attitudes (introspective questioning of paradigms and consideration of new paradigms), attitudes of trust (voluntary transferring of control to others), attitudes of reciprocity (the will to contribute as a response to that which has been received), attitudes of cooperation (acting collectively to achieve common objectives), and attitudes of participation (which could be considered to be the integrative result of the other attitudes mentioned).

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Development of attitudes is a result of processes that are more complex than those involved in developing abilities given that developing attitudes requires integration of cognitive processes, behavior, and emotions (Pozo, 2008). While social abilities involve ways of behaving in a given situation or responding to other people, attitudes furthermore involve value judgments and social knowledge. Pozo (2008) explains that aside from a behavioral component (e.g., ways of behaving in workshops or other collective activities, or the way in which herds are managed) attitudes involve an affective component (acceptance or rejection of—for example—Creole animals, community leaders, representatives of government agencies or organizations, or other specialists), as well as a cognitive component (the way in which knowledge and beliefs are constructed regarding—for example—Creole goats, their uses and value, or the objectives of farmers’ organizations). In the present study, the will to participate was an attitude that integrated the majority of the other attitudes generated during the goat conservation process. Participation gradually increased, quantitatively and qualitatively. Figure  14.6 depicts the increase in level of participation during the phase of developing common visions. At first, participation was passive and participants limited themselves to contributing information. However, in the workshop on integrating information— the final activity of the phase of developing a common vision—participants became more fully involved in the process. Development of attitudes and abilities necessary for increasing social capital and conserving Creole goats allowed for achieving greater participation during the collective action phase. During the phase of collective action, peasants participated in such a way that they significantly contributed to critical analysis of the learning process. The highest level of voluntary participation was achieved during official registration of Creole goats by the Manuel Fajardo Genetic Breeding Company together with goat raisers, as well as during the organization of the Second Creole Goat Fair (Fig. 14.6). Aside from these two moments, the goat conservation process required facilitation.

Fig. 14.6  Levels of participation (Y axis) by peasants in different activities (X axis) in the Creole goat conservation process. (Source: Elaborated by the authors. *Street Art: community activity using plastic arts to raise awareness on socio-environmental topics)

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Martin (2009) and Rios (2011) analyzed the diversity of factors that promoted participation in development processes in Cuba, concluding that the capacity of peasants and local actors to “develop their own solutions” to their problems was very important for them continuing to participate. In the present study, collective activities, which fomented a significant level of participation in the rest of the process, are a concrete form of social learning. This does not mean that social learning itself fomented participation, but rather than peasants’ positive attitude toward participation was socially constructed through learning, based on the other attitudes. Miranda and Monzó (2003) and Suset et al. (2010) describe the positive effect of relationships of trust, reciprocity, and cooperation in generating participation. In the present study, trust was an important factor in generating participation. Initially, three goat raisers were not willing to participate due to fear of losing control of their herds. Goat raisers gradually gained trust in the external actors, and the fact that they began to lend their breeder goats to each other also indicated an attitude of trust among goat raisers. Meanwhile, the breeding program developed by goat raisers in the study communities indicated an attitude of cooperation. Given small herd sizes and material limitations for controlling reproduction, no farmer was capable of improving his breeds alone. Cooperation among goat raisers through sale and purchase, exchange, donation, and loans proved vital to enabling all farms to have access to breeder females. Miranda and Monzó (2003) and Suset et al. (2010) hold that cooperation is particularly important in developing social capital. In the present study, social learning proved to be the foundation of the goat conservation process and was indispensable to participants modifying their perception of the problem of extinction of Cuban Creole goats, as well as to their contextualizing and understanding the Creole goat conservation process. By modifying their attitudes and abilities, participants were able to generate social capital. Systematization of the Creole goat conservation process showed that social learning generated definitive changes in attitudes toward Creole goats, as Salazar and Rosabal (2007) have pointed out with respect to other cases. Aside from allowing for ­modifying goat management practices, the Creole goat conservation process in general proved to be an experience of collectively “learning to learn.”

14.4.2  S  ustainable Livelihoods and Level of Sustainability of LSES The second case study of La Concepción addresses sustainability and livelihoods. This community consisted of 40 families, which vary in composition, including couples with one or two children living at home, as well as those with grown children who have moved to a city. In this community, each family is part of the LSES, and they are immersed in the context resulting from the Agrarian Reform established during the economic crisis of the late twentieth century. This reform revalued Cuban peasants who had been

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seen as obstacles to technological modernization of agriculture since the late 1970s (Leyva, 2015), when many peasants and children of peasants moved to cities in search of other sources of employment. In this community, all farmers own their farmland, although some members work as permanent or temporary wage labor within or outside the community (La O, 2013). All Cuban peasants belong to the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP according to its Spanish acronym), founded in 1961 to represent individual peasants as well as those organized in cooperatives. Credit and Service Cooperatives (CCS according to their Spanish initials), which belong to ANAP, hold monthly meetings for all members to express their needs and concerns. Peasants belong to a CCS in order to receive access to credit, markets, and costly technology (Nova, 2006). The socioeconomic and political context in which the LSES develops affected farmers and their organizations in many ways. First, as a result of the Green Revolution, the region was dominated by cattle raising, which was thought to be incompatible with forests, and therefore trees were clear-cut, which has resulted in prolonged droughts, loss of soil fertility, and soil salinization. The fall of Eastern European socialism in 1990 negatively impacted the Cuban system of rural land tenancy and use, and it began to be evident that Green Revolution agriculture was not adapted to Cuba’s conditions (Fernández, 2006). Given their culture and livelihoods, the peasants of La Concepción were able to overcome the poor conditions of their ecosystems. With the help of the Global Environmental Facility, they developed a natural resource management program incorporating soil restoration, crop improvement, and seed saving practices they had learned in workshops held by the University of Granma and the Jorge Dimitrov Institute for Agricultural Research. The resulting practices and local marketing of products have become part of families’ life strategies that allow them to adapt and resist government regulations despite their lack of material and financial resources. The environmental of LSES conditions are characterized by frequent dry periods that have negatively impacted the family economy due to low crop yields and low animal production efficiency. Based on analysis of livelihoods, farmers of La Concepción have developed responses to their problems based on local knowledge and participation in workshops. Therefore, the sustainable livelihoods workshops, aside from allowing for evaluating sustainability, provided a space for social learning that reinforced the families’ innovative, enterprising culture. The workshops revealed that the families of the LSES are naturally oriented toward innovation and experimentation. Despite damage to their natural capital as a result of Green Revolution practices, farmers continually combine their local knowledge with that of researchers of a variety of disciplines in order to develop an efficient, environmentally friendly approach to agriculture. The social interaction among researchers, workshop facilitators, and farm families provided incentives for farmers to innovate and search for technical and agroecological solutions to management problems, which improve their natural capital. Several studies have proposed improving family farm systems in Latin American countries based on theoretical analysis and research, without taking into account technology, users’ capabilities, values, and opportunities, and without involving

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them in these studies (Mosse, 2003). Research based on specialization and vertical knowledge transfer has paid little attention to the importance of local innovation and farmers’ participation in technology generation (Calderón, Tobasura, & Miranda, 2011), and therefore there is a need for alternative approaches to solving farm families’ management problems which are appropriate to their context (Rodríguez et al., 2009). In this sense, René Arzuaga (peasant), a Workshop participant says: “We learned to use green fertilizers and jack bean is a very good green fertilizer to improve the soils, and we have all observed how the soil improves its fertility, because it retains water and humidity is maintained for longer.”

Mario, a Workshop participant says: “we have carried out experiments with the jack bean and we observe that the jack bean does not let there be weeds and also the corn increases its yields.” Analysis of social capital revealed the importance of relationships among all actors involved—in particular the University of Granma and the Jorge Dimitrov Institute for Agricultural Research—for collectively developing knowledge and useful practices. These institutions facilitated peasants’ producing collective knowledge, as well as participatory practices by which they learned about their land’s soil types and how to effectively prepare the soil for planting. Participants expressed that they achieved positive relationships with their province’s educational and research institutions. LSES farmers were also able to combine their social, human, and natural capitals to improve their soils, and in turn their yields and income. During analysis of human capital, participants discussed the need to recover local knowledge and improve training processes so that they are adapted to their needs and involve a variety of actors in a transdisciplinary manner in order to achieve sustainable, equitable development. Through analysis of their LSES, participants visualized development from a perspective that integrated traditional as well as scientific knowledge of several disciplines to generate new knowledge which is relevant to peasant family life, and which may become part of their human capital. Workshop participants mentioned their farm tools and community infrastructure as important parts of their scarce physical capital. They also considered water and electricity to be particularly critical. One farmer explained: “We make maximum use of the rainy season for our crops, because we depend on the rain, and when it’s very scarce we really have to work, but the little rain that falls we harvest, and we also make sumideros1 so that the water penetrates the soil.”

Innovation in the community is a result of emergence of arenas that allow for fomenting creativity for solving problems related to families’ life strategies. Farm families’ experience with problems and other complex situations in their community context have led them to develop an innovative community culture. During analysis of financial capital, participants explained their difficulties in accessing markets and their need for a local market given lack of transportation. Sheep and goats are sold live when some family need arises or to pay for some

 A deep hole filled with rock to allow for water filtration.

1

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investment in their farm. At least one member of each family works off the farm or is retired from an off-farm job. Off-farm work allows for surviving despite lack of access to municipal and provincial markets. As part of the sustainable livelihoods approach, the peasants discussed those climatic factors that affect them, including those over which they have no control. They mentioned that climate change has led to extended droughts in their community, while excess rain falls in nearby regions, including intense, brief local storms. They explained that these changes greatly affect the LSES due to the fact that their crops and livestock depend on the rain and suggested that to help them adapt, research institutions and universities should carry out studies in their community and share their knowledge so that the peasants may learn—for example—about mitigation and adaptation to climate change. It was clear to members of educational and research institutions that knowledge should be produced through a transdisciplinary approach, so that the communities may adapt to changing conditions through a range of technical, economic, and social options of management that take into account not only the family and small ruminants, but the agroecosystem as a whole. Workshop participants analyzed the availability of capitals and how they influence the LSES’ life strategies. They concluded that they provided them with the ability to diversify their economic activities according to their economic, social, and political opportunities and liberties (Rello, 2001). Combining several economic activities has allowed them to confront natural disasters and mitigate climate change (Ríos, Vargas, & Funes-Monzote, 2011). Upon analyzing the LSES’ levels of sustainability (Table 14.3), participants discussed innovations that might help them raise their low values for certain sustainability attributes of the systems. In general, the sustainability of their LSES did not surpass 50%; the highest values were for indicators of adaptability—such as training for personnel to develop projects and farmers’ participation in agricultural projects—given changes in farm families’ attitudes and their openness to new ways of confronting agricultural problems by putting into practice technical knowledge acquired in workshops, as well as that provided by technical advisors (Fonseca & Guevara-Hernández, 2011). Thus, the LSES approach an optimal level of sustainability with respect to technical assistance and the number of families benefitted by agricultural projects carried out in the community. Table 14.3  Values of sustainable system attributes for Local Socio-­ Environmental Systems (LSES) in the Cauto Valley of Granma, Cuba Attributes Productivity Stability, reliability, and resilience Adaptability Equality Autonomous management Sustainability index

Values for LSES 45.7 53.04 60.66 20.03 52.24 46.39

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Stability, reliability, and resilience of the LSES are determined by the level of conservation of resources in the system, as well as the fragility and agrobiodiversity of the LSES. These qualities allow them to confront shocks and tendencies, such as seed or fuel price changes and pests and diseases. Stability, reliability, and resilience favor increased birth weights of livestock as a result of increased use of improved grasses. Due to the fact that animals in the LSES have a birth weight above 3  kg, the mortality rate of newborns is low and a large number of animals are weaned per breeding goat per year (Fonseca, 2003). Furthermore, weight at sacrifice or upon sale above 35 kg results in high yields, and in turn high profits (Castillo, 2006). The naturalized and improved grass species used for livestock feed and availability of fodder areas allow for a high level of stability in livestock yield (Herrera, Jordán, & Senra, 2010). Autonomous management, which has a value of 52% (Table 14.3) is determined by peasants’ participation in farm organizations and their capacity for innovation, which allows their farms to continue to function over time.

14.5  Conclusion Our study demonstrates that Creole goat conservation process, which included evaluation of livelihoods and the level of sustainability of LSES in the two study communities, (i) strengthened the collective consciousness, thereby allowing for establishing agriculture, including small ruminant systems—based on technological innovation and environmentally friendly practices; (ii) fomented production of healthy products; (iii) contributed to peasants developing their ability to participate in community action to conserve biodiversity; and (iv) increased community members’ willingness to share their knowledge with other communities. Acknowledgements  We thank CONACYT for granting a Doctoral Scholarship to I.P.P. from 2011 to 2014. This manuscript benefited from the constructive criticism of two anonymous reviewers.

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Rello, F. (2001). Pobreza e instituciones rurales: un enfoque para analizar sus vínculos. Seminar presentation in Tercer Congreso los actores sociales frente al desarrollo rural. AMER, Zacatecas. Rios, H. (2011). El Fitomejoramiento participativo en Cuba como antecedente del Programa de Innovación Agrícola Local. In L.  Rodríguez & H.  Guevara (Eds.), Innovación y Desarrollo Rural: Reflexiones y experiencias desde el contexto cubano (pp. 38–57). Bayamo: Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias “Jorge Dimitrov”. Ríos, H., Vargas, D., & Funes-Monzote, F. (2011). Innovación Agroecológica, adaptación y mitigación del cambio climático. Mayabeque: Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Agrícolas. Rodríguez, L., La O, M., Fonseca, M., Guevara, F., Hernández, A., & Jiménez, M. (2009). Extensionismo o innovación como proceso de aprendizaje social y colectivo ¿Dónde está el dilema? Revista Cubana de Ciencia Agrícola, 4, 287–394. Rotter, J. B. (1954). Social learning and clinical psychology. Englewood Cliffs: J. Prentice-Hall. Ruíz-Ahmed, Y. M. (2010). Aprendizaje vicario: Implicaciones educativas en el aula. Revista digital para profesionales de la enseñanza, 10, 1–6. Said, A., Chuenpagdee, R., Aguilar-Perera, A., Arce-Ibarra, M., Bahadur Gurung, T., Bishop, B., et  al. (2019). The principles of transdisciplinary research in small-scale fisheries. In R. Chuenpagdee & S. Jentoft (Eds.), Transdisciplinarity for small-scale fisheries governance. Analysis and practice (pp. 411–431). Cham: Springer. Salazar, L., & Rosabal, N. (2007). Procesos de innovación rural: Una mirada al desarrollo rural desde la reflexión y experiencia de América Latina. Barquisimeto: Digesa Lara. Suset, A., Machado, H., Miranda, T., Campos, M., Duquesne, P., Sánchez, T., et  al. (2010). Empoderamiento y cambio social a partir de la participación y el fomento de capacidades. Estudio de caso en tres cooperativas agropecuarias. Pastos y Forrajes, 33(4), 1–15. Torres, V., Ramos, N., Lizazo, D., Monteagudo, F., & Noda, A. (2008). Modelo estadístico para la medición del impacto de la innovación o transferencia tecnológica en la rama agropecuaria. Revista Cubana de Ciencia Agrícola, 42(2), 133–139.

Chapter 15

Socio-Environmental Regimes in Natural Protected Areas: A Case Study in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve Amayrani Meza Jiménez, Manuel Roberto Parra Vázquez, Luis García Barrios, Gerard Verschoor, and Erin I. J. Estrada Lugo Abstract  In this chapter, we analyze the reasons why local socio-environmental systems have met in a limited way the purpose of balancing conservation with development in the Upper Basin of the Tablón River (UBTR), located in La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve (SEBIRE). The study used a transdisciplinary exercise which conceives the Local Socio-Environmental Systems (LSES) as complex and adaptive systems, in which four subsystems interact: (i) the local regime, (ii) the landscape, (iii) the agrarian system, and (iv) the territorial action group. Two common property holdings (“ejidos”) were studied with the case study method. The four subsystems were analyzed through participatory and qualitative research. The results indicated: (a) the local regime imposes norms that limit the decision-making capacity of local actors and its compensatory payments generate dependency and a reactive attitude; (b) the setback of forest frontiers has remained relatively stable due to SEBIRE environmental standards, but natural capital is increasingly vulnerable to socio-environmental disturbances; (c) domestic units (DUs) have little capacity to respond to environmental and market changes; their development is restricted by the geographical, social, and economic conditions of the basin; some producers are unable to cover their production costs and their limited resources barely reach the minimum welfare line; and (d) in the UBTR there are important socio-environmental innovation processes that have generated adaptive management alternatives, but these still face significant challenges at the basin level. In conclusion, the LSES of the UBTR has restrictions on its four components and has not reached the capacity to be socially reproduced. In these LSES, the local regime has promoted an economic model and territorial management mechanisms that have made it environmentally and economically vulnerable. A. Meza Jiménez (*) · M. R. Parra Vázquez · L. García Barrios · E. I. J. Estrada Lugo Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] G. Verschoor Sociology of Development and Change, Department of Social Sciences, University of Wageningen, Wageningen, Gelderland, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_15

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Keywords  Socio-environmental system · Local regime · Territorial action group · Agrarian system · Landscape

15.1  Introduction For the last 50 years, the territory of the Upper Basin of the El Tablón River (UBTR), in La Sepultura, Chiapas, has been the scenario of interaction of multiple policies that have attempted to simultaneously achieve the ideals of development and conservation promoted by the Dominant Model of Sustainable Development (DMSD). These policies have been implemented in Chiapas by state and municipal governments, and by national and international non-governmental organizations (Castro Hernández et  al., 2003; CI-GEF Project Agency, 2017; Gobierno del estado de Chiapas, 2018, 2019; Martínez, 2015). However, despite these policies, the DUs located at the UBTR still face poverty, and lack of infrastructure, equipment, and public services that make it difficult for them to meet their objectives (i.e., the maintenance and reproduction of its members). The DUs’ agrarian and forest landscapes include well-conserved areas and areas with serious cases of erosion, overgrazing, and various productive difficulties (Braasch, García-Barrios, Ramírez-Marcial, Huber-Sannwald, & Cortina-Villar, 2017; García-Barrios et  al., 2012; García-Barrios & González-Espinosa, 2017; Martínez, 2016; Valdivieso, 2008; Valencia et al., 2018). In this study, we regard the domestic unit (DU) as our observation unit and understand it as a social organization whose main purpose is the maintenance and reproduction of its members (Lanza-Valdivia & Rojas-Meza, 2010). The DMSD emerged with the first regulations on International Environmental Law in 1960 (Londoño Valero, 2016) and defined sustainable development and the necessary action mechanisms to achieve it from the Brundtland Report and Agenda 21 (Bustos Flores & Chacón Parra, 2009). Since the 1970s, the DMSD is proposed internationally as the optimal way to solve socio-environmental problems (Slootwet, Vanclay, & Van Shooten, 2001; Tetreault, 2004, 2008). Sustainable development has been linked to the logic of intervention, promoting the application of specific action plans. According to Long (1989, 2007), intervention processes can enter the worlds of life of individuals or groups and become part of the social strategies they develop. The theoretical approach of intervention allows us to understand how and where the social change should be oriented (Rojas, 2012). According to the DMSD advocates: The best way to achieve economic growth is to adhere to the principles of neo-classical economic theory; that is, specialization in products that have a comparative advantage, integration into the world market and elimination of barriers to international trade (Tetreault, 2004, p.50).

From this view: all the development actors (the government, multilateral and bilateral entities, civil society, and the private sector) have a certain role in having

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equitable and sustainable development and reducing poverty (World Bank, 2003, p. 3). For decades, the intervention processes have been distinguished by following a sectoral policy that justifies different forms of international cooperation for development (Ayllón, 2007; Ibarra Delgadillo, Delgadillo Ibarra, & Sánchez Gutiérrez, 2017). In 1995, the participation of the State was paramount in the intervention processes, but over the years it has been losing prominence in the decisions on the environment and development against non-state intervening actors such as the scientific community, non-governmental organizations, companies, indigenous communities, and the media (Ibarra Delgadillo et al., 2017; Londoño Valero, 2016). In addition to the restrictions and guidelines of a Biosphere Reserve, the UBTR has implemented a portfolio of public policies that in the last 20 years have generated very significant changes in the culture and daily life of the peasants including assistance policies (managed by the Social Development Secretariat); policies based on specific productive sectors, such as PROGAN or PROCAMPO; conservationists policies (such as payment for environmental services, PES); and agro-ecological policies like the organic production of coffee (Martínez, 2015, 2016). These transformations occur jointly with the processes of globalization: greater temporary migration, greater access to manufactured products, as well as mass media and urban culture (Pérez, 2008; Teubal, 2001). In the UBTR, as well as in other rural territories of Mexico, the practice of public policy has been distinguished as a short-term sectorial issue (Aguilar Astorga & Lima Facio, 2009), with a high compensatory and assistance sense (Echeverri Perico & Echeverri Pinilla, 2009). Most of these policies are based on management models that break with the local visions of rural development (Echeverri Perico & Echeverri Pinilla, 2009) and therefore, the promises of development (prosperity and well-being) do not correspond to reality, given that they tend to ignore human and cultural contexts (Morin, 2011). According to Herrera, Parra, Livscovsky, Ramos, and Gallardo (2017) the lifeways, that is, the set of traits and procedures that characterize a community and define its patterns of production and consumption, depend largely on public policy. These policies: (i) influence local decisions on the management of community assets, forms of organization and land use; (ii) have a direct impact on economic activities and social practices that define family life strategies; and (iii) generate subjectivation processes through which the values, attitudes, knowledge, and norms that they promote in their speeches and practices are internalized by local actors (Vázquez González, 2017). Decision-making of intervention policies takes places in what Long (1989) calls interface places or “interface spaces,” such as the SEBIRE Advisory Board, in which it has been difficult to promote local initiatives of the common property holdings (henceforth “ejidos”) (García-Barrios & González-Espinosa, 2017). These places operate as the meeting point of actors that belong to different systems, fields, or levels of social order. They serve as places for dialogue about the budgeting, planning, monitoring, or evaluation of projects, and during the meetings they show

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the different and asymmetric power relations of the actors (Long, 1989, 2007; Zamora Chap. 11, this volume). Several national and multinational corporations have intervened in the UBTR, such as AlEn del Norte, SA., Agroindustrias Unidas de México (AMSA), Exportadora de café California, Oro Verde, and the Empresa comunal forestal de San Juan Nuevo Parangarícutiro. According to Boisier (2005), these corporations have the capacity to determine the processes that guide the economic, political, or social activities that favor them. For several decades, the configuration of lifeways and the behavior of the UBTR DUs has been guided by a territorial regime. According to several authors (Geels, 2002; Ingram, 2015; Van der Ploeg, 2010), the regime can be understood as a power structure that articulates local actions with global processes, and establishes the cognitive, social, economic, institutional, and technological processes that generate previously established trajectories to accomplish targets. Despite some literature argues that the logic of the development intervention is a way to achieve sustainable development (see Slootwet et al., 2001), what has been reported that is occurring in several Protected Natural Areas (PNA) (Castro Hernández et al., 2003; Zamora Chap. 11, this volume) allows us to doubt the benefits of such “intervention” when the regime’s actors maneuver to control the production processes, under the norms established by the government in the PNA. Contrary to what was expected by the intervention policies, the UBTR’s DUs continue to be the weakest link in the productive chain and have a natural capital that is increasingly vulnerable to environmental, economic, and social changes (García-Barrios et  al., 2012; Martínez, 2015; Sotelo Polanco & Cruz-Morales, 2017; Valencia et al., 2018). In the present investigation, we proposed to analyze the effect of development interventions of the territorial regime on the rural life of the UBTR using the conceptual framework called Local Socio-Environmental Systems (LSES) (see Parra-­ Vázquez et al. Chap. 1, this volume). In particular, our study aims to understand and analyze, in dialogue with the DUs, the reasons for local socio-environmental systems of accomplishing the purpose of balancing conservation with development in the UBTR in a limited way. Especially, in this study we are interested in identifying the DUs vulnerability factors, that is, the set of social, economic, and spatial conditions that threaten their welfare state. We conceive the LSES as complex and adaptive systems, in which four subsystems interact (Parra-Vázquez et al., Chap. 1, this volume): (i) the local regime, (ii) the landscape, (iii) the agrarian system (DUs, communities, and “ejidos”), and (iv) the territorial action group. We analyzed each of these subsystems and their interaction to answer the following research questions. Is it possible to achieve the ecological, economic, and social reproduction of the rural DUs that live in the UBTR? Is the regime’s intervention proposal ecologically sustainable, economically profitable, and socially acceptable? Is it time to abandon the logic of this type of intervention to give way to other ways of thinking, participating, and acting within the PNA?

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15.2  Methodology We conducted the study in the “ejidos” California and Tres Picos, located in the middle and upper part of the UBTR, respectively (Fig. 15.1). Two rural production systems are located in our study sites, the agrarian system and the agroforestry system. This basin has an altitudinal gradient of 800–2550 m above sea level (masl) and has a high diversity of vegetation types. It is located within the SEBIRE in the southwest region of the Mexican state of Chiapas (Carabias, Provencio, de la Maza, & Jiménez-González, 1999). Our research was grouped into three stages, each addressing specific research guiding questions and methodological tools (Table 15.1).

15.3  Results and Discussion 15.3.1  The Configuration of the Local Regime within the PNA For at least 50 years, various institutional arrangements or social technologies have been established in the UBTR (Nelson & Sampat, 2001), which have influenced and limited the individual and collective actions of the DUs. The processes of technological transformation, that is, changes in techniques, regulations, industrial networks,

Fig. 15.1  La Sepultura Biosphere Reserve location, and the two “ejidos” in which the research was carried out. (Source: Elaborated by LAIGE, ECOSUR, 2019)

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Table 15.1  Research questions and methodological tools used in each research stage Stage 1. Baseline: the management of the UBTR

Research guiding questions Methodological tools – Participatory interviews with key actors in Who have been the most the management of the UBTR’s natural significant actors in the capital (activities carried out: (i) the management of the landscape; (ii) the timeline; (iii) the UBTR’s natural capital and interventions from the last 50 years; (iv) from what vision have they the actors with whom we relate; (v) the made their interventions? organizational scheme; and (vi) and goals and plans to short and medium term). 2. Decisions and Is the regime’s intervention – Participatory workshops with peasant DUs (activities carried out: (i) our lives in the practices that proposal ecologically year; (ii) the life strategy; (iii) household’s sustainable, economically define local income and expenses; (iv) evaluating our life strategies profitable, and socially strategy). acceptable? Is it possible to achieve the –  Interviews with key actors. ecological, economic, and –  Fieldwork to characterize landscape units. social reproduction of the DUs that live in the UBTR? – Interviews with founders of each “ejido” 3. Effect on the How has the intervention (activities carried out: (i) history of the affected local decisions? intervention ejido’s foundation; (ii) participatory map Is it time to abandon the on local for each “ejido”; (iii) listing the most logic of the intervention to decisions significant events; (iv) changes in land give way to other ways of use). thinking, participating, and – Interviews with authorities of each “ejido” acting within the PNA? to investigate about entitlements. – Analysis of data collected in all three stages.

infrastructure, and symbolic meanings (Geels, 2002) have been driven from two perspectives, (i) intervention supported by civil society actors, corporations, and governmental instances; and (ii) the participatory action research carried out by the scientific and academic community. During this time, local social functions have been articulated with international approaches through the creation of a socio-­environmental regime that has guided the productive and social activities of the territory. Initially, the establishment of the SEBIRE promoted conservation projects and environmentally friendly practices. Among them, and as an example, we recognize the promotion of shade grown coffee in the “ejidos” of the UBTR, which operated with organic management practices and with little or no use of external inputs. However, over time and in situations such as the appearance of rust fungus in 2011, the State’s participation in confronting the economic and productive problems of the region has been diminished and has opened the way to the participation of national and international companies that promote other types of land use and productive strategies (Valencia et al., 2018).

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According to Conservation International (CI), this is due to the impulse of commodities at international levels, and a good example of this can be seen in productive strategies such as “We all sow coffee” in Mexico and “One Tree for Every Bag” in the United States, supported by Starbucks. Among others, these productive ­strategies are led by a restaurant operator in Latin America and Spain called Alsea, which coordinates Starbucks Mexico, but which in turn is part of Ecom Agroindustrial Corporation, a global commercialization and basic product processing company specializing in coffee, cotton, cocoa, and sugar, focused on supporting productivity and promoting certification processes. With the promotion of these strategies, a “donation” process of more than 180,000 coffee plants of the Costa Rica 95, Guacamaya, and Marseille coffee varieties has begun in Chiapas. Those who promote them argue that these hybrid varieties of coffee, unlike the varieties of Arabica that were commonly planted in Chiapas, have greater genetic, productive potential, resistance to rust fungus and can grow under other shade conditions. However, it is important to consider that these new coffee varieties are within technological packages that require of high chemical inputs, which legally belong to international corporations, therefore, in the medium and long term we need to consider what would be the impacts the incorporation of these new coffee varieties will have on the coffee producers’ dynamics and health? Our study identified that the socio-environmental regime appears as a power structure, which articulates the decisions of actors from the international to the local scale; from this articulation, the necessary processes are sustained to reproduce patterns of behavior, routines, and previously established trajectories (Geels, 2002; Ingram, 2015; Van der Ploeg, 2010). In the UBTR’s socio-environmental regime, the role of the State has gone through different stages: it started with a central role in decision-making; afterwards, allowed the access of other intervening actors, and gradually lost participation in the face of the stipulations of large international corporations (Ibarra Delgadillo et al., 2017; Londoño Valero, 2016; Martínez, 2016). Moreover, since 1995 the UBTR’s local actors have complied with the rules of distribution, use, and management of the territory, and the different intervening actors have adjusted their interventions to the guidelines set forth in the SEBIRE’s management plan (Carabias et al., 1999). From interviews with key actors involved in the management of the UBTR’s natural capital, we found that in the last 20 years the following events have been occurring: • The UBTR’s conservation projects have been promoted mostly by the scientific community, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), organized local groups, individuals, and some governmental institutions such as the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP), Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT), and the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR); while the development processes have been promoted by other government institutions such as the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA), and the Secretariat of Social Development (SEDESOL), political parties and companies such as AlEn del Norte, SA.,

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Agroindustrias Unidas de México (AMSA), California coffee exporter, Oro Verde, and the San Juan Nuevo Parangarícutiro community forestry company.1 • The relationship between external and local actors has been characterized by the promotion of specific development actions and technical and social assistance, and by scientific and technological cooperation processes. • In recent years, the incidence of companies and organizations, such as the NGO PRONATURA, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Conservation International (CI), Sierra Madre Alliance, Agricultural Research for Development (CIRAD), Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Triumph Conservation Fund (FONCET), and the participation of the State, has been reduced to social and productive assistance. • It has been difficult to the territorial action group give continuity to the socio-­ environmental innovation processes in the basin. The latter fact is because, among others, assistance policies and subsidies could have generated a reactive attitude among local actors. For instance, according to a key informant: Some people do not inherit land to their children because they want to continue receiving subsidies. Subsidy programs are sometimes a problem […] the money that arrives, comes and goes, it is lost, although they should be detonators of community development processes in La Sepultura […] when a program arrives, a lot of sellers also arrive from the outside, then the money [earned through subsides] does not stay, and what people buy are not things that are really worthwhile to trigger people’s development processes (CONANP, com. pers., 2018).

To understand the current configuration of the socio-environmental regime of the UBTR, it is necessary to go back to the origin of the PNA in the country. Its establishment corresponds to one of the environmental policy strategies established by the federal government’s National Development Plan (NDP) 1995–2000, with the objective of “promoting vigorous, sustained and sustainable economic growth for the benefit of all Mexicans, defining strategies that refer to environmental policy for sustainable growth” (Carabias et al., 1999, p. 3). According to the NDP, with the conformation of the PNA, Mexico responded to the commitments assumed in a set of international agreements, joined the global efforts to conserve the world’s natural ecosystems (Zedillo Ponce de León, Carabias Lillo, de la Torre, & de la Maza Elvira, 1996) and adjusted to the DMSD. Studies like those of Castro Hernández et  al. (2003) and García-Barrios and González-Espinosa (2017) report successful stories that simultaneously have addressed the problems of conservation and development within the state’s PNA but recognize that there are still important challenges to address, and that it is still difficult to coordinate the conservation of natural resources with development. International policies have permeated the rural territories of the UBTR through the interventions of the regime in the different productive activities, focusing on the

 All abbreviations in the text are made by its initials in Spanish.

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possibilities of reproduction of both the agrarian system and the agroforestry system. This is what will be discussed below.

15.3.2  The Landscape The landscapes represent the perceptible portion of the territory in which their characteristics and the decisions that have caused them to change are combined. The agrarian and human landscapes in general are a historical construction that results from “the interaction between the biotic and abiotic factors of the natural environment, the uses of these capacities to sustain the economic metabolism of human societies, and the lasting impacts of that anthropic intervention on the environment” (Tello, 1999, p. 196). For Deffontaines and Prigent (1987) the spatial configuration of agrarian and forest landscapes can be characterized from at least six visual indicators: land occupations; present and past agricultural practices; the characteristics of the physical environment; the agrarian structures; the interactions between elements of the landscape; and the legal mode of territorial appropriation. The UBTR’s landscapes are characterized by having forested areas, areas of grasslands and paddocks, bare soils, and areas of herbaceous and bushes, which intermingle with dirt roads that unite rural communities. In these landscapes, networks are drawn between the roads, paths, and the tributaries of the “El Tablón” River. The marks of the agricultural activities have been generated by the production of corn, beans, resin, coffee, cattle, parlor palm (Chamaedorea spp.), vegetables, and fruit trees. The basin has an altitudinal gradient that goes from 800 to 2500 masl, and this allows a diversity of forest conditions, in which granitic and sandy soils are present, generally shallow and susceptible to erosion. The territory is zoned according to the guidelines for the PNA, and it recognizes the common property or “ejidal” tenure. The local actors of the UBTR identify the process of transformation that their productive activities have generated on the basin. While interviewing one of them, he expresses it when referring to the landscape in the following way: The landscape is all that grove that is seen in the mountain. It is very important because that’s where a tasty freshness comes from. Because in an “ejido,” for example, from down below, there is nothing of that sort, it is very hot and then here comes a breeze that makes the leaves move. It is a very good thing […] I think that what we have serves to refresh … but regarding agriculture, it does not occur there under those hills, it does not work, it simply does not … only when it is clear, crops can be grown. When we arrived, there was a chance to pull a “hacheada” (to enter with the ax) to open up the hill and to plant, but now there is nothing of that, but we have our small pieces of land to cultivate the cornfield (Founder of Tres Picos, pers. Com, 2018).

As part of the activities with the local actors, the founders of each site prepared participatory maps and in them they characterized the landscape of their “ejidos” with different territorial units: paddocks, agricultural zones, the community, and forest landscapes destined for conservation (Figs. 15.2 and 15.3).

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Fig. 15.2  Territorial units of “ejido” California showing: pasture areas (pines and black cows); corn and beans agricultural areas (yellow lines); the community (purple circle); and the conservation forest zone (PES forest). (Source: Elaborated by a group of “ejido’s” founders, December 2018)

According to local authorities, the agroforestry landscape has been transformed and maintained also by local institutions, that is, by agreements and “ejido” land use regulations. In both cases: the boundaries between individuals and communities are clearly defined; in the elaboration of the regulations that govern the “ejido,” both external and local agents participated; there is a regulation of gradual sanctions; there are conflict resolution mechanisms in which dates are set and extraordinary meetings are allowed; and there is recognition of organizational rights in which forms of local organization and regulations are supported by external governmental authorities. According to Ostrom (1995), these institutions represent a set of entitlements that must be considered within local history to maintain the complex systems of natural resources over long periods of time. However, as expressed by Echeverri Perico and Echeverri Pinilla (2009), the formulation of intervention policies tends to exclude these institutions, and support management models that break with local visions of rural development. Since the arrival of the first settlers—in 1972 to Tres Picos, and in 1985 to California, the policies implemented in the basin, natural events and DU decisions have directly influenced the temporal distribution of the territorial units (Figs. 15.4 and 15.5) and in the configuration of forest frontiers of the UBTR.

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Fig. 15.3  Territorial units of “ejido” Tres Picos showing: areas of paddocks (green lines); areas of agriculture of corn and beans (red crosses); the community (purple circle); and the conservation forest zone (marked as a coffee area). (Source: Elaborated by a group of “ejido’s” founders, December 2018)

According to the “ejido’s” founders and the local authorities, the main changes in the forest frontier occurred due to: the implementation of the restrictive rules on the use of fire imposed by the government in the 1990s with the “no burn” program; the fall in corn prices and the increase in the costs of production inputs since 1994; the delimitation of the reserve area in 1995; the extraction of resin in both “ejidos” since 2005; the development of coffee under shade; the increase in livestock activity; the problem of coffee rust since 2011; and for some natural events such as Hurricane Stan in 2005 and the earthquake of 2017. As expressed by Moran, Ostrom, and Randolph (1998), the set of measures for evaluating the physical, biological, and economic values of a forest, and their changes, depend in addition to the physical and biological processes, of a set of nested human decisions interconnected from the global to the local scale. The configuration in the landscapes of the UBTR expressed in Figs. 15.2 and 15.3 is the result of local decisions on how to use the territory, and at the same time corresponds to the regulations imposed in the management plan of the SEBIRE (Carabias et  al., 1999). As of 1995, the inhabitants of the UBTR have been adapting their productive strategies, distributing the territory in the different territorial units that we see today in each of the communities.

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Fig. 15.4  Distribution of the territorial units in “ejido” Tres Picos from its foundation to the year 2018. In 1972, about 20% of the forest area had been used by illegal human settlements of this area for the extraction of wood; since then, part of these areas have been allocated to agricultural and livestock activities. In 2005, the extraction of resin in the paddock areas began. After the coffee rust problems in 2011, some local producers extended their coffee crops to fallow areas and incorporated new coffee varieties. (Source: Elaborated by the authors) California 2018

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Fig. 15.5  Distribution of the territorial units in “ejido” California from its foundation to the year 2018. In 1985, the inhabitants had requested a cattle credit. Until 1998, the forest area decreased considerably due to an increase in agricultural and livestock activities. Since 2002, the use of pine resin was initiated and a forestry management was promoted which allowed the recovery of at least 20% of the forest area. (Source: Elaborated by the authors)

The landscapes of the UBTR have been transformed through a forest transition that seeks to increase the production and profitability of agriculture to liberate conservation areas. Although there is a strong discussion about the advantages and dis-

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advantages of following this model (Grau, Kuemmerle, & Macchi, 2013; Perfecto & Vandermeer, 2012; Tenza Peral, García-Barrios, & Gimenez Casalduero, 2011), this vision has privileged the dominant conservation strategy, based on a divergent model of territorial organization (Tenza Peral et al., 2011). From this perspective the most important thing has been to ensure the permanence of biological diversity through protection and conservation mechanisms, such as zoning and the implementation of the reserve management plan. According to Figs. 15.4 and 15.5, the setback of the forest frontier has remained relatively stable in recent years. In the UBTR, the availability of forest resources and the cutting of forests are limited by the guidelines of the PNA and by conservation policies such as the PES; the topographic conditions, with very steep slopes, and the economic income of the domestic units have privileged the manual agricultural work; and the scale of use has been given in terms of the size of the plots because they cannot expand their area of use, the plots have been fragmented and reduced in size according to the hectares that are inherited to their children and grandchildren. Works like those of Braasch et al. (2017) and Valencia et al. (2018) carried out in the same study area, show how the different actors related to the production of resin and coffee can follow goals with totally different trajectories and propose opposing alternatives to solve the problem of pine recruitment and the rust conflict in coffee. According to these authors, there is an interest of companies to increase production even at the cost of abandoning some organic management practices. Behind the decisions that have caused this situation there is a set of agents with different purposes and the solutions require, in addition to a basic understanding of their relationships, a deep dialogue between the different actors involved. The results in the UBTR suggest that policies should incorporate alternative and innovative visions. The Nature Matrix approach based on the “quality matrix model” (Perfecto & Vandermeer, 2010, p.  5786; Perfecto & Vandermeer, 2012) offers a good opportunity to articulate in the proposals of each one of the elements that make up the life strategies, the productive system of the basin and the small-scale local institutions. Although this approach has been taken up by various processes of socio-environmental innovations in the basin, it remains difficult to articulate it within the policies.

15.3.3  The Agrarian System From the workshops with the DUs, we were able to identify the economic and social reproduction of the agrarian system in the following way. The economic income depends on the combination of between 4 and 6 productive activities (sun and shade coffee, resin extraction, native and conventional corn, beans, forestry, vegetables, and livestock), government transfers, non-agricultural activities, and remittances. The net annual income in both communities, that is, the total income of their strategy minus the annual cost for productive reinvestment and the producer’s labor (if

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160

Thousands of mexican pesos

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OPORTUNITIES

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PROGAN

20

PROCAMPO

0 -20

Net productive act.

Du1TP

Du2TP

Du3TP

Du4TP

Du1C

Du2C

Du3C

Du4C

CONEVAL

-40

Fig. 15.6  Net income per DUs of “ejidos” California (C) and Tres Picos (TP). Not one case goes beyond the welfare line established by CONEVAL for 2018. (Source: Source: Elaborated by the authors)

paid a wage for the days worked annually), ranges between $20,800 and $127,000 Mexican pesos (Fig. 15.6). According to what was expressed during the workshops with the DUs: the products with the highest exchange value are obtained from livestock, coffee, and resin. Self-sufficiency depends on coffee, corn, and beans that are not intended for sale, as well as orchard and vegetables, complemented by a basic pantry that is purchased in local stores or in the market of the municipal seat. California producers concentrate their resin in a collection center and sell it to a company in the state of Michoacán. In “ejido” Tres Picos, the producers work the coffee individually and sell it in the offices of one of the companies located in “Villa Corzo”; the sale of corn and beans takes place with intermediaries that reach each community. In general terms, the DUs aspire at optimizing their life strategy to increase their access to means of consumption, guarantee their productive investment, and ensure family reproduction; and in their main objectives they mentioned: securing the sustenance of the home, providing education of the children and grandchildren, having good harvests and savings. The DUs allocate 100% of their income to obtain resources, raw materials, and means of consumption and work. Annual income covers basic food expenses (50–70%), home care (10–18%), production costs (15–30%), education expenses (1–5%), health (2–10%), clothing and footwear (3–8%). DUs do not usually consider the money they “save” (i.e., the in-kind income) for not having to buy the corn and beans they produce. When they considered it, in 7 out of 8 cases, the difference in income minus expenses was negative. The net income from productive activities in only two of the eight cases exceeded production costs, and in three cases they were negative because they do not produce a surplus for the DUs (Figs.  15.7 and 15.8). According to Deere and de Janvry (1979), the process of economic and social reproduction of peasant DUs depends on the key variables that make up their productive system, that is, the resources they have and those they have access to, the

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180 160 Thousands of mexican pesos (2018)

140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 -20

3

2

4

1

Domestic units Monetary costs

Imputed cost

Net income

Fig. 15.7  Ejido Tres Picos: Relation between DUs’ income and their production costs. It indicates the total income for productive activities, the monetary costs of the annual reinvestment, and the imputed costs for the work of the producer. (Source: Elaborated by the authors)

80 70

Thousands of mexican pesos (2018)

60 50 40 30 20 10 0 -10

1

3

2

4

-20 -30

Domestic units Monetary costs

Imputed cost

Net income

Fig. 15.8  Ejido California: Relation between DUs’ income and their production costs. It indicates the total income for productive activities, the monetary costs of the annual reinvestment, and the imputed costs for the work of the producer. (Source: Elaborated by the authors)

activities that define their life strategy—conceived as the set of economic activities and social practices that allow them to have access to means of consumption, means of work, and raw materials—and the mechanisms of circulation of capital that allow them to reproduce.

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In the studied “ejidos,” the DUs deploy a diversified strategy focused on productive activities of the primary sector, and the mechanisms of capital circulation work through the supply and demand of their products in the local and external markets. This coincides with the heterogeneity that characterizes rural systems and with the weight that agriculture acquires in these systems (World Bank, 2008); however, until now the strategy is insufficient for the DUs to achieve their objectives. According to Sevilla Guzmán (2006), the peasants’ dependence on market regulations represents one of the ways in which they are deprived of the surplus generated by their work. The net income showed in Fig. 15.6 places the DUs of both “ejidos” below the line of welfare that the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL, 2018, by its initials in Spanish) established at $144,626.99 for a DU of 6 members for the year 2018. In national and international evaluations, the problem of poverty remains constant and is a problem used to justify the implementation of specific policies (Adams, 2006; CEPAL, 2018; Gobierno del estado de Chiapas, 2018, 2019; Montes & Sala, 2007). According to the state indicators, in Chiapas 79.8% of the population still has an income below the welfare line and at least 13.8% of the population is vulnerable to social shortcomings (Gobierno del estado de Chiapas, 2018). The productive options in the UBTR are untapped due to the population growth, the decrease of the agricultural establishments, the problems of soil fertility, and the lack of income diversification and migration. According to the DMSD, the solution lies in increasing the incomes of agriculture and the non-agricultural rural economy and to achieve this it is necessary to improve the productivity, profitability, and sustainability of small-scale farming. According to the dominant logic, to achieve these objectives it is necessary to increase price incentives and public investment, improve the market products, expand access to financial services, and improve technological innovation (World Bank, 2008). However, the DUs recognize that they still challenge various factors of vulnerability such as productive problems, lack of good markets and prices for their products, productive limitations and access to land, lack of good infrastructure for social services, lack of roads in good condition to move their crops, and difficulty for saving and coping with adverse events such as hurricanes, pests, diseases, and earthquakes. The development of the peasant DUs of the UBTR is restricted; they have limited resources that barely reach the minimum welfare line. According to Figs. 15.7 and 15.8, some producers cannot cover the production costs demanded by their agricultural activities, and they face a context of vulnerability (market dynamics, power relations, and environmental processes) that make it difficult for them to achieve their objectives. In short, the key variables of the LSES in the UBTR hardly allow DUs to reproduce economically and socially. The development model that is not reached in the UBTR, nor in other state PNAs (Castro Hernández et  al., 2003; García-Barrios & González-Espinosa, 2017) detaches from an economic model that has become unsustainable (Carabias 2017; CEPAL 2016, 2018). The dominant economic policy at the international level has aggravated the environmental crisis and increased global inequality (CEPAL, 2016; Montes & Sala, 2007), making evident the need for urgent systematic changes

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(Adams, 2006). These changes should provide real alternatives to the DMSD.  According to Barceló (1994), adopting an “economic reproductive approach” would admit emphasizing the social, productive, and historical aspects and from a systemic view, it would incorporate the subjective values and the analytical schemes of the various actors involved.

15.3.4  The Territorial Action Group In the UBTR, a formal territorial action group (TAG) has not been formed, but since 2007, a group of the scientific and academic community has established a process of participatory ecological research (PER) to address the socio-environmental problems of the basin (García-Barrios & González-Espinosa, 2017). The work of this group has functioned as a niche (sensu Ingram, 2015), from which valuable proposals for socio-environmental innovation have been promoted; they include the integrated management of silvopastoral (forest and livestock) systems; the modeling and simulation of problematic situations in productive systems; the facilitation of meetings between key actors for the management of the basin; the environmental education processes for children, youth, and adults; the design of playful tools; the promotion of good livestock practices and the development of participatory workshops on family farming (Braasch et  al., 2017; Cruz Morales, Vázquez, Barrios, Rodríguez, & Trujillo, 2011; García-Barrios et  al., 2012; García-Barrios & González-Espinosa, 2017; Gutiérrez Navarro, García Barrios, Parra Vázquez, & Rosset, 2017; Meza-Jiménez, 2015; Valencia et al., 2018). The PER has fostered work and reflective dialogue about power relations, the search for local solutions and the exchange of experiences. Its work has allowed progress in some steps of territorial action: initial knowledge, diagnosis, and experimentation. However, the momentum of innovations is still spatially and temporally limited, and local actors are not yet able to face, with their capabilities, the factors of environmental, social, and productive vulnerability (García-Barrios & González-Espinosa, 2017). The PER emphasizes the need to develop the capabilities of the community for self-­ management, to value and use local knowledge, to reduce the dependency of the actors interested in models of paternalistic support, and to overcome local and external impediments that would allow them to arrive to a better general well-being. Initially, participatory agroforestry research was prioritized, but research was increasingly oriented to understand the current livelihood strategies and future expectations of rural families, given their interactions with other territorial actors (for reviews, see García Barrios and González Espinosa, 2017; García Barrios et al 2020). There is a vast space to cover in terms of social ­dynamics and relationships, and in the promotion of comprehensive local development proposals (Martínez, 2016). According to Folke, Hahn, Olsson, and Norberg (2005) in addition to developing knowledge and understanding of the dynamics of resources and ecosystems; and to generate adaptive management practices; it is necessary to support the devel-

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opment of flexible institutions and systems of multilevel governance; and have the ability to cope with external changes or disturbances. According to Ortega Uribe et al. (2014, p.161), “the socio-ecological crisis also requires new frameworks of analysis and alternative paradigms based on an integrating vision of the entire system.” Therefore, the creation of a TAG could provide continuity and follow-up to the PER work in the basin, but it would have as a challenge to promote the creation of sufficiently flexible institutions that promote long-­ term innovation and ensure that local actors are prepared to face the different factors of vulnerability. For this, it is important to pay close attention to the construction of the capabilities that would allow them to improve life strategies (Cejudo Córdoba, 2007; Sen, 2000). In the TAG, the scientific and academic community plays a central role in the construction of knowledge and articulation with other actors in society. Continuing with Ortega Uribe et  al. (2014), to achieve this, it is essential to do a transdisciplinary exercise and promote a set of catalysts that encourage the participation of other actors. According to the arguments of these authors, to advance in the solution of the socio-environmental problems the academy must take into account the ontological, epistemological, and methodological approaches from where the different interventions have been generated because only in this way, will it be possible to overcome some of the serious environmental consequences that the current socio-­ economic model has caused in NPA.

15.4  Conclusions Based on our study carried out with DUs and several local actors, we found that until now, it has not been possible to achieve the ecological, economic, and social reproduction of the DUs in the basin, and therefore the aforementioned complex socio-environmental problems persist in the studied “ejidos.” In the LSES of the UBTR: The local regime imposes rules that limit the decision-­ making capacity of local actors and compensatory payments generate dependency and a reactive attitude on rural producers; the setback of forest frontiers has remained relatively stable due to the SEBIRE standards, but the natural capital is increasingly vulnerable to socio-environmental disturbances. Moreover, the DUs have little capacity to respond to environmental and market changes; their development is restricted by the geographical, social, and economic conditions of the basin, and some producers are unable to cover their production costs and their limited resources barely reach the line of minimum welfare. Furthermore, socio-environmental innovation processes still face significant challenges at the basin level. In conclusion, the LSES of the UBTR has restrictions on its four components and has not reached the capacity to reproduce it socially. The socio-environmental regime established in the UBTR has promoted an economic model and territorial management mechanisms that have made it environmentally and economically vulnerable. Our results indicate that it is time to abandon the logic of the intervention

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policies to give way to other ways of thinking, participating, and acting within the PNA. In this sense, innovations in the LSES could be promoted from a TAG, assuming a clear posture against the local socio-environmental regime, considering the reproductive economic model, and promoting a management model in order to build a matrix of nature (sensu Perfecto & Vandermeer, 2010, 2012). Acknowledgments  We thank all the families that had made this work possible. Also, to those who financially supported our study: the project “Nature’s benefits in agro-forest frontiers: linking actor strategies, functional biodiversity and ecosystem services” (FOREFRONT), financed by the University of Wageningen through its Interdisciplinary Research and Education Fund (INREF); and the National Council of Science and Technology that granted a PhD scholarship to Amayrani Meza Jiménez.

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Rojas, D. M. (2012). La intervención internacional: los desafíos de la conceptualización. Colombia Internacional, 76, 81–109. Sen, A. (2000). Desarrollo y libertad. Barcelona: Ediciones Planeta. Sevilla Guzmán, E. (2006). De la Sociología Rural a la Agroecología. Bases Ecológicas de la Reproducción. Barcelona: Icaria Editorial. Slootwet, R., Vanclay, F., & Van Shooten, M. (2001). Function evaluation as a framework for the integration of social and environmental impact assessment. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 19(1), 19–28. Sotelo Polanco, I. T., & Cruz-Morales, J. (2017). ¿Quién se beneficia de las certificaciones de café orgánico? El caso de los campesinos de la Sepultura, Chiapas. Revista Pueblos y fronteras digital, 12(23), 126–148. Tello, E. (1999). La formación histórica de los paisajes agrarios mediterráneos: una aproximación coevolutiva. Historia Agraria, 19, 195–212. Tenza Peral, A., García-Barrios, L. E., & Gimenez Casalduero, A. (2011). Agricultura y conservación en Latinoamérica en el siglo XXI: ¿Festejamos la transición forestal o construimos activamente “la matriz de la anturaleza”? Interciencia, 36(7), 501–507. Tetreault, D. (2004). Una taxonomía de modelos de desarrollo sustentable. Espiral, 29, 45–80. Tetreault, D. (2008). Escuelas de pensamiento ecológico en las Ciencias Sociales. Estudios Sociales, 16(32), 1–38. Teubal, M. (2001). Globalización y nueva ruralidad en América Latina. In N. Giarrancca (Ed.), ¿Una nueva ruralidad en América Latina? (Colección Grupos de Trabajo CLACSO) (p. 383). Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales: Buenos Aires. Valdivieso, P. I. (2008). Cambio de uso del suelo en la zona de amortiguamiento de la REBISE (1975–2005): crisis del maíz, ganaderización y recuperación arbórea marginal. BSc. Thesis, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Puebla. Valencia, V., García-Barrios, L., Sterling, E. J., West, P., Meza-Jiménez, A., & Naeem, S. (2018). Smallholder response to environmental change: Impacts of coffee leaf rust in a forest frontier in Mexico. Land Use Policy, 79, 463–474. Van der Ploeg, J. D. (2010). Nuevos campesinos. Campesinos e imperios alimentarios. Barcelona: Icaria Editorial. Vázquez González, L.  B. (2017). Subjetividades y sus procesos de cambio en el campesinado maya de la Península de Yucatán. Doctoral Diss, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de las Casas. World Bank. (2003). Desarrollo dirigido por los propios países: Evaluación conjunta del Marco Integral de Desarrollo. Précis, 233, 1–5. Retrieved from http://www.worldbank.org/evaluation/ cdf/. World Bank. (2008). Informe sobre el desarrollo mundial: Agricultura para el desarrollo-­Panorama general. Washington, DC: World Bank. Retrieved May 13, 2019, from http://documentos.bancomundial.org/curated/es/691811468175765077/ Informe-sobre-el-desarrollo-mundial-2008-agricultura-para-el-desarrollo-panorama-general. Zedillo Ponce de León, E., Carabias Lillo, J., de la Torre, G. Q., & de la Maza Elvira, J. (1996). Programa de Áreas naturales protegidas de México 1995–2000 (p.  117). Mexico City: Secretaría de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca, Instituto Nacional de Ecología. http://legismex.mty.itesm.mx/progs/panpm.pdf.

Chapter 16

The Future of Food in Our Hands. Key Factors for Governance Learned from Committees of Food and Nutrition Security in Honduras Jorge Urdapilleta Carrasco and María Raquel Zolle Fernández Abstract  We present a case of study based on two Committees of Food and Nutrition Security (FNS) within Honduras. Differently from the rest of the committees promoted due to National Laws and that did not prevail, these committees have promoted governance within inter-institutional spaces. The chapter aims to demonstrate that the achievement of the FNS must exceed the mere gifting of food and infrastructure or simple technical training to undernourished people. On the contrary, the involvement of different sectors of society is required, giving rise to transformations from the individual and family to the collective sphere. Our study centers on governance from a transdisciplinary perspective, which included an analysis of the implemented strategies by the FNS Committees, such as agroecological production alternatives, training in basic business abilities, formation of cooperative credit institutions and financial training groups, installation of systems of storage, and processing for products of agriculture and livestock production. We conclude that the cue factors for these committees to be successful, beyond of what the national laws established were collaborative and highly credible leadership, articulation of initiatives based on inclusive planning-execution, co-responsibility and collective work, financial support and operational stability. Keywords  Public participation · Social learning · Rural production cooperatives · Agroecological techniques

J. Urdapilleta Carrasco (*) Independent Scholar, San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] M. R. Zolle Fernández Ingeniería sin Fronteras Galicia, San Lorenzo, Valle, Honduras © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_16

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16.1  Introduction The problem of food supply has affected societies to different degrees throughout history. Since the World Food Summit the food deficit has been conceptualized with the term Food and Nutrition Security (FNS), with the implication that “people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO, 1996). All of this is integrated in the following four dimensions (FAO, 2011, p. 4): (i) Availability: sufficient quantities at local and national level, considering production, imports, national storage, and international aid supplies; (ii) Stability: access to adequate food at all times, considering periods of shock, economic crisis, or climatic catastrophes; (iii) Access: to the means of production (water, soil, inputs, knowledge, technology) and to foods available in the market; and (iv) Consumption and biological use: the existence of food in the home must respond to nutritional needs, according to the food preferences of each culture. In addition, innocuousness, conditions of hygiene and equal distribution within the home are considered. This FNS study demonstrates the functioning of local socio-environmental systems (LSES) (see Parra-Vázquez et al. Chap. 1, this volume). In addition, it facilitates identification of how through the agri-food regime—in this case, the rules and regulations agreed upon at international level (by the World Food Summit, FAO, World Economic Forum)—the design and implementation of public policies are established by developing countries’ governments. This regime’s guidelines, recovered from Stamoulis and Zezza (2003, pp. 6–9) and established by the FAO (2011) are: (a) Strategies should address the broader picture of what affects food security at different levels (national, sub-national, household, and individual); (b) Improvements in agricultural productivity are a cornerstone for the development of rural economic activities; (c) Inclusion of non-farming income opportunities and human development, including peace and security; (d) Addressing of root causes, such as access to resources, insecurity of tenure, low returns to labor, and lack of nutrition information; (e) Public sector reforms and decentralization; (f) Governments should provide policy guidance on the most appropriate quality assurance systems and verify their implementation; (g) Trade and macroeconomic policy reforms; and (h) Encouragement of the participation of all stakeholders in the dialog and elaboration of the national strategies. After more than 20 years of this approach, the results show that, in Latin America, the number of undernourished people has increased (to 39.3 million, 6.1% of the population) and the percentage of the population in poverty has risen from 28.5% in 2014 to 30.7% in 2017 (FAO et al., 2018). For its part, ECLA (2018) report that there were 62 million people in a state of extreme poverty in 2018. This despite the fact that there has been a drive towards macroeconomic stabilization, including the aspects of fiscal policy, foreign exchange rate, monetary policy, structural policies, especially trade policy1 and market reforms (Diaz-Bonilla 1  Paarlberg (1999) acknowledges that some poor countries have come to rely on food imports to a greater extent from 1970 to 2000.

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& Reca, 2000; Paarlberg, 1999), among other public policy actions (Cofre, Yagüe, & Moncayo, 2015). Analyses of the strategies promoted by international bodies have concluded that the main weakness has been that these schemes promote more of the same kind of strategies, normally organized around private-led production. As a consequence, governance has been weak and there has been a lack of important opportunities to embrace a genuinely transformative policy framework (Appendini, García Barrios, & de la Tejera, 2003). Different studies suggest that there are three overlapping themes that have not been fully acknowledged by food and agriculture initiatives: the role of power and interests in shaping governance approaches to climate and food systems; promotion of the free market and technology, mainly reinforced by governance initiatives; and the inequality behind the promise of triple wins and strategic cooperation (Garcia Barrios, De la Tejera, & Appendini, 2008). Poverty and undernourishment in the households of families that inhabit marginal territories and rural zones not only form the base of a vicious cycle that particularly affects children (Sparks, 2011), but also force families to invest time and resources in non-profitable2-even detrimental or illicit-activities. Examples of these include scholarly desertion and child labor;3 acceptance of precarious conditions of employment, commercialization of production under disadvantaged conditions, high-risk migration, overexploitation of natural resources as well as involvement in organized crime, among others. These processes can be clearly observed in Honduras, one of the countries in the region with the highest percentages of population in a situation of poverty and malnourishment. In 2009, it was reported that 7 of every 10 people in Honduras lacked FNS (PNUD, 2011). In 2017, 64.3% of the population lived in conditions of poverty, with 51.8% of the rural population and 29.8% of the urban population found in extreme poverty (ECLA, 2018). According to the commitments acquired as part of the Millennium Development Goals, the Law of Food and Nutritional Security (FNS Law) was passed in Honduras in 2011 (DORO, 2011), and was considered a priority within the “Country Vision 2038, and the Nation Plan 2010–2022.”4 With this law, it is recognized that overcoming food crises requires the increasingly active involvement of different sectors of society in decision-making processes, for which reason it seeks to contribute to the generation of more favorable conditions for the well-being of the most disadvantaged sectors of the population.

2  In 2017, 71.5% of the population migrated due to lack of employment or economic crises (ECLA, 2018). 3  Only 37.7% of the population above 24 years of age has completed secondary education. 4  Within the Plan of Nation (2010–2022) and Country Vision (2010–2038), Objectives 1 and 3 establish: “A Honduras without extreme poverty, educated and healthy, with consolidated systems of social foresight”; and “A productive Honduras, generator of opportunities and employment, that sustainably uses its resources and reduces environmental vulnerability.” (Honduras’ Presidency Office, 2010, p. 23).

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Given that the FNS Law establishes that decision-making processes must be characterized by solidarity and transparency, Territorial Ordering Plans (TOP), and the so-called Committees of Food and Nutrition Security or FNS Committees (art. 19, FNS Law), these committees were created at municipal and regional level. These are inter-institutional spaces5 the aim of which is that the different participating stakeholders, such as municipality administrations, producer organizations, cooperative agencies, state institutions, and civil society organizations (CSOs), can design, manage, and implement integrated strategies to address food-related problems. While this proposal of the inter-institutional project adheres to the aim of increasing citizen participation, the TOP and FNS Committees have not produced the expected results, and they either exist nominally or their incidence is very limited.6 This is the result of the continuing control exercised by central government, ineffectiveness of many agencies at local level, opacity and corruption in the use of public resources and of those provided by international cooperation, differentiated and asymmetric availability of resources, complacency on the part of some supranational institutions regarding corruption and passivity among the population, which has to a large extent been stripped of its capacity of agency. In the midst of this panorama replete with challenges, it is important to recognize the spaces that have been able to function, and thus identify how, in the face of all the described adversities, it is possible to contribute to the achievement of a governance model in terms of FNS. This chapter addresses the case of the FNS Committee in the municipalities of Nacaome and San Lorenzo, in Region 13 of Honduras. The importance of the study lies in the high vulnerability that characterizes the socio-environmental systems of the zone, and the fact that one of the Committees of this zone (Nacaome) is recognized as virtuous entity, from which different initiatives have been driven, translating into substantial improvements in the living conditions of a large number of farmer families. The study aims to demonstrate that the achievement of the FNS must exceed the mere gifting of food and infrastructure to people, or simple technical training. On the contrary, the involvement of different sectors of society is required, giving rise to transformations from the individual and family to the collective sphere. Our study’s premises on the one hand are that integrated strategies of collaboration based on deliberative process that strength local values are required. On the other, that the actors and agents who drive the actions must have experience in the management of technical processes as well as a great sensitivity and knowledge of local realities (Bello-Baltazar et  al. Chap. 21, this volume). It is necessary to advance 5  Other types of Committees in existence in Honduras are the Committees of Public Security, Interagency Committee of Transparency and Anticorruption and the Community Committees of Public Participation, among others. 6  The causes of limited incidence identified in the study of Valladares et  al. (2016) are: limited resource management, incipient institutional development, scant mechanisms of political incidence, limited synergies among members of the Committees, and limited financial resources, equipment, and materials.

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together with the groups, understanding and accepting their pace and modes of work and, in turn, motivating the subjects to create their own innovations and alternatives. According to these premises, in this study we identify the model of governance that allows public policies to be assumed and adapted by civil society, thus avoiding replication of the logic of centralization and political control on the part of the political party in power. Our focus encompasses both the practices and logic within the committees, as well as the initiatives driven by CSOs and assumed by collectives of men and women in the rural zones. Furthermore, the study shows that although the greatest source of income of the country remains that of foreign remittances (19% of GDP up to 2018), some alternatives were socially constructed in the face of a dominant neoliberal7 regime, in which an agro-exportation model (of banana and coffee) has been favored in Honduras, along with the generation of employment based on the establishment of textile factories (“maquilas”). Therefore, the following central questions were addressed: (1) How do the FNS Committees function? (2) What types of actions have been driven and what impacts have they had at local level? (3) In which way have local values, practices, and knowledge been incorporated into the work strategies driven by these Committees? (4) Which key factors have favored governance? and (5) What have been the successful factors of the Committees?

16.2  Theoretical Framework Our study centers on governance from a transdisciplinary perspective. In this regard, we recover Boyer’s (1990) proposal who suggests that we must focus on the interaction between governments with non-governmental partners, especially in terms of economy and public policy. According to Klijn and Skelcher (2007), it is necessary to highlight governance networks as opposed to simple government bureaucracies. This neither supports the neoliberal idea of a declining role of the state, nor is the result of a supranational surveillance, imposed to the so-called underdeveloped countries in order to fulfill requirements designed in the “higher” levels of the international hierarchy. For us, governance is a new way of exercising power, based not only on the provision of information, but on a more frequent and well-organized public participation that should take the form of a deliberative process. Therefore, public participation can produce what Fox (2014) defines as changes in behavior among traditionally excluded sectors of society.

7  In this chapter, we regard the term neoliberal as a characteristic of neoliberalism that according to Harvey (2005, p. 145): “Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices which proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, free markets and free trade.”

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In order to stimulate that kind of needed public participation, governance must be based on the recognition of a series of value-oriented norms that integrates individual objectives with collective goals (McIntyre, 2016). Public participation also requires a process of open communication, discussion, and reflection between actors with different interests, values, and alternative political viewpoints (Leeuwis, 2000). Also, we must take into consideration not to force consensus. On the contrary, we should explore divergences in interest and perceptions, so we can have more chances of creating agreements and trusted environments (McIntyre, 2016). According to Leberl et al. (2006), trust is normally built through: repeated interactions of stakeholders which enable social learning. These interactions form the foundation for mobilizing around new issues such as looming thresholds and selforganizing around innovative solutions or after crises. Otherwise, governance initiatives could end up as patronage politics and co-optation by local officials. Since a deliberative process must have some kind of guidance, and it is related to values and normative claims, a transdisciplinary approach that considers the historical background and sociocultural context can provide us a solid base of study. Transdisciplinarity as it is defined by Max-Neef (2005), in agreement with the ideas exposed in this book’s first chapter (Parra-Vázquez et al. Chap. 1, this volume), can help us identify the interaction between beliefs, norms, practices, and resources within local peoples’ strategies. It’s a way of explaining reality through the collaboration between academy and social actors within a certain territory. It helps to address the present situation based on the understanding of both, the past and future visions, among individuals and collective actors. As a result, we could be in position to recognize how social aspirations and collective leaderships are the base of powerful stakeholders or social actors that could exercise public authority.

16.3  Methodology 16.3.1  Region of Study The study was carried out in Departamento de Valle, located in the south of Honduras, on the coast of the Gulf of Fonseca (Fig. 16.1). This administrative region is formed by nine municipalities, prominent among which are the head municipality of Nacaome and the municipality of San Lorenzo. The main economic activities have historically been related to fishing (in the case of San Lorenzo) as well as agricultural livestock production although salt production and tourism activities also have a certain importance. Elevations range from 300 to 430 m above sea level (m.a.s.l.), with temperatures that range from 34–39 °C to 19–20 °C. The rainy season takes place between May and October, with the most abundant rains between June and August. There are also

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Fig. 16.1  Region of study with communities’ location. (Source: Compiled by the authors)

increasingly prolonged periods of drought. High rates of malnutrition8 (32.2%) have been recorded in this region. While lower than the national rate (34%) (Fig. 16.2), these rates remain of concern. Increasingly, larger sectors of the population depend on remittances, and those who do not benefit from these find it difficult to access credit in order to acquire means of production to guarantee their subsistence. As it has been reported in many low-income countries, in Honduras, governmental programs have generated greater dependence and passivity on the part of local populations9 (Meza-Jiménez et al., Chap. 15, this volume). This is due to the fact that these are gifted subsidies that, while they ensure the supply of food for some days of the month, are not only insufficient, but also foster the lack of participation, collaboration, and involvement of the population in the solution of community problems. Another key problem is the lack of public participation and an absence of social organizations within decision-making arenas, such as the Committees here studied. This is due to the view the State has had of the CSOs that participate in the Committees as: “Networks of opportunities to establish extensive extra-official structures of paternalistic and parasitic focus that promote the direct dependence of families on the State, in exchange for state recognition, benefits and privileges from the party in government” (Valladares, Cubas, & Alvarenga, 2016, p. 16–17).

 Report on Human Development in Honduras (PNUD, 2011).  17.51% of the population receives conditional subsidies (ECLA, 2018).

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BELIZE GUATEMALA

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Fig. 16.2  Human Development Index in Honduras (2011). (Source: Author Jorge Urdapilleta)

Other studies held in Honduras show similar situations and conclude that this country is an example of low-quality democracy. Altschuler and Corrales (2013, p. 6) remark that “citizens still confront pervasive authoritarian and illiberal legacies that undermine civil society organizations.” These conditions have favored Honduras reaching a dangerous political precipice (Perez, Booth, & Seligson, 2010, p. 12) in which “pervasive impunity and rampant crime thrive due to the weakness of the rule of law.” Actually, access to justice remains a privilege of the few. For Altschuler and Corrales (2013, p. 7), Honduran rural areas present a great challenge in terms of inclusive democracy. For these authors, the critical problem is: “How to develop a rural civil society capable of expressing citizens needs and demands and engaging effectively with political institutions.”

16.3.2  Fieldwork This is a qualitative study, in particular it is based on the analysis of the narratives of different actors, obtained during a total 14  days of field research held during October and December 2016 in Honduras. We had two focus groups (one of them with 7 women and another one with men and women, members of a cooperative). Also, we visited 15 working field areas: 2 grain silos, 2 honey processing plants, 2 family orchards, 1 agricultural experimental field, 2 cooperative credit institutions,

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2 artificial ponds, and 4 cassava plots. We carried out 13 semi-structured interviews (with agricultural producers and their families, governmental agents of central and local level, CSO team members) and we reviewed documents and reports elaborated by two CSO.

16.4  Results and Discussion 16.4.1  Functioning of the FNS Committees In order to form the FNS Committees in Nacaome and San Lorenzo, representatives of the central government, local governments, CSOs, academia and, above all, agricultural producers of the region were convened. The intention was to create an inter-­ institutional coordination that would permit identification of problems with basic needs (primarily food) and thus generate solutions according to the needs, interests, and capacities of the local actors. It was intended that the programs, funds, or support would be evaluated by the members of the Committee and inter-institutional dialog be held to determine the forms in which greater incidence and positive impact could be achieved. The Committee meets on the last Friday of every month and convenes actors involved with governance and FNS, prominent among which are the municipality administration (who coordinates the committee); Luis Landa Agricultural School (LLAS); Secretary of Agriculture and Livestock production (SAG, by its Spanish acronym); Secretary of Health; Secretary of Education; Provincial Government; CSOs such as the Committee for the Defense and Development of the Flora and Fauna of the Gulf of Fonseca (CODDEFFAGOLF, by its Spanish acronym), Friends of the Earth, Engineers without Frontiers (ISF, by its Spanish acronym), Red Cross and Save The Children-Honduras; as well as actors at the community level, prominent among which are Caja Rural Fuerzas Unidas de las Tablas, the Asociacion de Productores Emprendedores de Moropocay and the Asociación de Ganaderos of the municipality of Nacaome. The formation of the Committee was not easy. It required the will of the actors to provide their resources—not necessarily financial—and thus carry out the sessions of dialog, discussion, agreement, and planning as well as the processes of agreed work and assigned tasks within the Committee itself: “It was a little difficult at first, we invited them, some [people] arrived and others not. However, as it progressed and actions were undertaken, they saw that united the actors can contribute to the FNS. More actors are therefore becoming involved, and that is the beauty of this experience” (Interview with J. Gutiérrez, CODDEFFAGOLF).

One of the first goals to meet in order that the FNS Committee can function was the establishment of mechanisms of governance, such as dialog and interlocution between institutions of government and the public. This fostered a gradual overcoming of the lack of trust on the part of the farmers towards the governmental

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institutions. Likewise, a critical and propositive attitude was created with respect to the programs of government and focuses on projects of international cooperation. It was always sought to give a direction that was not based on welfare, but rather one that fortified local capacities: “We provide initiatives directed towards the generation of capacity and resilience in the populations. However, I believe that the government has its strategies and policies and it is really complicated to effect changes in these policies. Nevertheless, we do not lose heart and we try to propose models that are more sustainable, such as those we have developed in the communities. Rather than giving ‘bolsas solidarias10’, we establish mechanisms such as grain banks, in which the people can capitalize the rural cooperative credit institutions” (interview with R. Reyes, CODDEFFAGOLF).

Equally, efforts were focused on breaking the institutional inertia that predominated in certain areas of supposed participation. For example, there was the impression that some producer associations—such as the Cattle Association—was a place for having parties, or that areas of interaction with the government were associated with co-optation and electoral control. In general, it was not thought possible to have substantive cooperation areas in which there might be direct interlocution that produces results.

16.4.2  Socio-Environmental Strategy The study allowed identification of integral processes that cover different spheres, both of community life and of natural resource use. Phases of production, processing, distribution, commercialization, and investment are contemplated (Fig. 16.3), within which special care is given to the generation of trust and re-establishment of the social fabric.

16.4.3  S  ocial Construction and Dissemination of Agroecological Production Alternatives Given that most working people in the region pursue small-scale farming, the need to improve food production systems was proposed through incorporation of the following agroecological techniques11: (a) Soil conservation based on the use of live and dead barriers; (b) Construction of contour curves on land with pronounced slopes; (c) Rotation and crop association within plots; (d) Use of fertilizers produced by composting and fermentation of organic material (bocashi); (e) Selection  Name given to the basic food packages supports provided by the Central Government of Honduras. 11   Urdapilleta, J. (5 may 2017) Produccion de Yuca [Video] https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=-PGZSD7rpZk&t=119s 10

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Social construction and dissemination of agroecological production alternatives

Commercialization and training in basic business abilities.

Formation of cooperative credit institutions and financial training groups

Systems of storage and processing for products of agriculture and livestock production.

Fig. 16.3  Work processes including production, distribution, commercialization, and investment. (Source: Elaborated by the authors)

and improvement of seed varieties by the producers; and (f) Creation of agroforestry systems with fruit trees that have hitherto not been considered of value. Alliances were constructed with key actors (small producers, institutions, and organizations), featuring agricultural and livestock production as the central axis. For this, campesinos (small farmers) interested in learning new and improved production techniques were identified, i.e., this was not simply filling up a list in order to meet a quota, but rather a careful identification of the people with the best profile (necessity, commitment, and willingness to work). The technicians of CODDEFFAGOLF and of the LLAS opted to learn alongside the campesinos themselves, and thus discover new ways to work the land. This could be seen within the spontaneous training sessions in which the technicians spoke to the campesinos in their own language, with openness in order to identify knowledge arising from the experience of others. They shared from their own experience and were not present simply to theorize or speak from assumptions. “These are areas that are not far removed from that managed by a campesino on the slope, the soil types are equal to those on the mountain or hillside. (…) We represent crop diversity, we sow from fruit trees, crops such as peanut and manioc to sesame and other types of domestic garden crops. (…) We are showing the small farmer that he can make any type of soil work” (Interview with LLAS, technician).

This attitude has favored a situation where campesinos do not feel “ignorant” because of the simple fact that they have no formal education. Their empirical knowledge has acquired great relevance since they provide important lessons to the technical personnel of different institutions12.  Urdapilleta, J. (5 may 2017) La Milpa de Adan: seleccion de semillas criollas. [Video] https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xw1WG4Fctw&t=4s

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“Some are precepts and knowledge from the elders - and we believe they work due to the rotations of the moon! We have a time in which the plant has a strong function, then this strong function, which works with the sun, means that you cannot transplant a plant at that point, since it can lose much liquid. Another thing is planting, if I want a plant that does not grow too much, I am going to sow it during the New Moon. This tells us that the plant is going to grow little, and will produce its harvest more quickly” (Interview with Antonio, El Rincon town, Nacaome).

Another key element has been the “campesino to campesino technique,” with which the farmers themselves, from their voice and experience, test, discover, experiment, share, and help their peers. Thus, this knowledge generated and transmitted with colloquial words has favored a greater appropriation on the part of other producers: “One never stops learning. (…) The difference between his farm and mine is that his does not have water, and mine here has a little water. That way we see differences. He works through conservation of moisture. It is like soil conservation but he uses the moisture covering all the plants in summer. There is almost no excuse not to have a domestic garden or a farm! If you want it you can have it! This is his experience. He came to see how to mash the passion fruit. He said: ‘It is good! I never knew that’.” (Interview with Adán, El Rincón town, Nacaome).

At the time of systematization, many producers that had previously only sown maize with very low yields, were seen as leaders that, together with their families, were driving processes of productive transformation: “The money I make! I just made 1500 lempiras ($60 USD) from just two trees (of soursop). (…) the more plants you sow, the more you learn, eat, experience and make money” (Antonio, El Rincon twon). With regard to other agroecological techniques, working collectives have been created to construct cultivation systems based on the use of terraces, and the design and creation of contour curves. What had previously been very pronounced slopes (of up to 50°), in many cases are now production spaces for species such as manioc and other forage plants, on which the soil can be retained and erosion avoided. To achieve this, it was necessary that campesinos be trained, often on experimental plots located on the lands of the campesinos themselves. At a personal level, the benefits are evident. One example is the case of a campesino that used to feed his children with water in which he could only dissolve a spoonful of sugar. Now, the same producer has a great diversity of crops on his land13 (including Annona muricata, Manihot esculenta, Colocasia esculenta, Vigna angularis, Carica papaya, Phaseolus coccineus, Phaseolus lunatus, Phaseolus augisti,14 Cucurbita pepo, Musa paradisiaca v. sapientum, Musa balbiciana, Zea mays,15 Lpomoea batata, Cnidoscolus aconitifolius, Annona cherimola, Annona  Urdapilleta, J. (5 may 2017) La diversidad enriquece. Huertos agroecologicos en Honduras. [Video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRvLpqNQuLw&t=171s 14  Local varieties of Phaseolus spp. are: cuarentano colorado, cuarentano tinto, cuarentano negro, cumiche, cuarentano blanco, cuarentano amarillo. 15  Local varieties of corn are: solutan blanco, maicena, maicillo norteño, maicillo enano, maicillo mano de piedra, maicillo sorgo. 13

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squamosal, Passiflora edulis, Citrullus lanatus, among others). He can even be seen tending his plantations with joy. His son also participates in this activity; he is a youth that, unlike others in the region who consider that migration is their only alternative, has opted to become a farmer as a viable life option. In summary, it is considered that the entire process of training in agroecological techniques has meant that the campesinos can, firstly, rely more on auto-­consumption and secondly, create new ways to commercialize their production. It was shown that the food supply for this family and others is covering the components of “availability” and “biological use.” The homes presented dishes with beans and tortillas, cheese produced from their peers with livestock and wild vegetables now reincorporated into the campesinos’ family diet, as well as drinks made from local fruits such as the passion fruit. The highlight from all of this is that the food was not just there for the benefit of visitors, but it could be seen that all five members of the family had enough food on their plate.

16.4.4  F  ormation of Cooperative Credit Institutions and Financial Training Groups One of the main obstacles faced by the campesino sectors in Latin America has been the lack of access to mechanisms of credit. Even campesinos with such access, it could imply a debt that, while it helped to resolve a short-term problem, in the medium term it became a ball and chain from which it was difficult to be free. In response, some CSO members of the Committee drove the creation of cooperative credit institutions (Urdapilleta, 2017). In doing this, the objective has been that men and women alike become partners in small savings and credit businesses that operate at local level. Despite not being inscribed in any banking mechanism, over time, the cooperative credit institutions have generated yields that, in the medium term, can be channeled towards productive options. It is sought that this be a space for learning and training, in which the people can raise their self-esteem thanks to achieving increased knowledge and abilities in relation to their management of money: “The intention is that they learn little by little, and gradually assume increasingly complex processes. Such would be the case of community shops selling products of basic necessity, buying-selling of seeds, production and sale of bread, production and processing of honey and its derivatives” (Author Raquel Zolle, ISF). “Now it is bakery, sale of plastic goods, of tamales, of soups. It has almost become a business of multiple services. We do everything that is food, but most of all bread. We know that we can grow little by little reinvesting our money. (…) Now our goal is to work in order to buy premises and have our own business” (Interview with Carolina, member of the cooperative credit institution).

In order for the institution to operate, a group of people pays an entry fee, and it is subsequently maintained through a monthly subscription. They generate yields through loans given in the area, on which are charged very accessible interest rates.

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These loans are given with terms of 1 year and facilities such that the debtors define the manner in which they wish to pay. This can be by making a constant monthly payment or by paying the interest and finally repaying the amount originally loaned. This scheme does not seek to exploit the unfortunate other, but rather to generate a mechanism of mutually binding support in which all parties benefit. The users consider that one of the strengths of the scheme is that it involves family and close friends in the loan: “because I can recommend one of my family [members], because I know that my family must pay because they know that I am here. And if they do not pay, they are affecting me directly” (Yudy, member of the cooperative credit institution). This type of practice has generated various benefits, beyond the merely economic. Possibly the most significant may be the fact that the women that participate have become empowered, since they have learned to generate their own income and, in this way, have contributed to paying part of the household costs. “(…) we were not heard in that time. It has helped us a lot, because we have been growing with the rotating fund. As a business, with the projects that we carry out together in our group, it has been a wonderful experience and one that cannot be explained” (Interview with Yudy, member of the cooperative credit institution). “Before, we were waiting for whatever our husbands bring us. Now we don’t. Now we increase the support for our household. Now we are not waiting for our husbands to earn 60 or 100 lempiras per day, and then to make do with what we can afford to eat. Now we can have a greater increase for our households. This has helped us a lot” (Interview with Carolina, member of the cooperative credit institution).

Some government agencies that participate in the Committee, such as the SAG, have considered that the working mechanisms of these cooperative credit institutions can serve as a base from which to drive projects of agriculture and livestock production: “What we would like is to form a cooperative credit institution for each harvest, and afterwards we can have a central cooperative credit institution for the entire Department, and to unionize all of the rural cooperative credit institutions to this central credit institution, so that it can supply the rural institutions with funds and seeds at a minimum rate of interest, so that they are strengthened and their needs addressed. In fact, we see that we have been working an average of 6 years with the credit institutions and the funds are not being lost as they were before, in which funds would arrive and groups be formed only to break up again the next day. Now, the people who form the groups sign commitments, and these same people take care of the funds” (Interview with M. García, SAG).

On the other hand, it was recognized that the groups have a mysticism and adherence to a series of values defined within each group. This has given an ethical orientation to their actions, which favors the reduction of conflicts and, in the case of such conflicts—since they shared the fact that they had occurred—the group can resolve them through dialog. In the case of one of the groups interviewed, several women shared the principles a credit business must comply with in order to maintain itself and function. In order of mentioning, these are: love, honor, punctuality, personal improvement, knowledge, and communication.

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From the observations made, it was established that these principles can be found in all of the working collectives; they are part of a moral deeply rooted in the communal ethics of the region, the mobilization of which is sought from the FNS Committee. It can be seen how members of the FNS Committee put the search for the common good before their own personal benefit. This explains why the personnel of many of the institutions that comprise the FNS Committee represent people you can trust, who will support you, people from whom and with whom to learn.

16.4.5  I nstallation of Storage and Processing Systems for the Products of Agricultural and Livestock Production In the region, many people sell their harvest before it is ready. The existence of intermediaries or middlemen was identified who buy the harvests at a lower price when the producers are in difficulties. To address this, some of the institutions have driven the construction of food stores or silos, where grains can be conserved. The intention is that the grains can be processed subsequently, or when it is expected that the market prices improve and greater utility is obtained from the sale of the agricultural products, particularly maize and beans: “Grain is bought, and there is a store, and it is the same group. (…) Its sale is improved, since we sell it at another, better price. It is bought at L400 or L500, once we sold it at L1000 (41USD)” (Interview with M. Nuñez, Las Tablas town). This initiative has implied mobilization of the organizational capacities promoted in other processes described above, such as those of training in agroecological techniques. The lessons learned from having supported each other and those that were fomented in the construction of terraces, or strengthening of the trust and reciprocity that supports the cooperative credit institutions, are translated to other areas, where people trust a collective figure, deliver their harvest, and mobilize to sell their grain at a better price. This same interrelation among projects can also be seen in another area, the Multiple Services Company of Honey Derivatives and Other Products (MIDEPRO, by its Spanish acronym). This company has not only learned the benefits of apiculture in order to achieve greater harvests, but has also found a good way to complement its economic income: “We are people of very few resources, we do not have anything. Economically poor. The people here live from working in the shrimp packing plant. The youth and we, the older people, are working in agriculture. But we don’t work continuously, only in winter. And this is to sustain the family. For this reason, there is no income. There are no sources of employment. And the packing plant is only here for six months, when there are shrimp; it is seasonal” (Interview with a partner of Midepro).

Faced with this problem, the central strategy is to continue training, increase the aggregate value of the product, and thus improve incomes. To achieve this, an

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increasing number of components and technical considerations have been integrated, including notions of quality control, hygiene, and loss reduction: “The containers must be 100% clean. Hands in gloves. The worktable must be very clean, well washed. The honey is not tested here, not at any moment. Someone who wants to lick something cannot. This must be totally clean. There is no chance of contamination” (Interview with an apiculturist).

This type of initiative has been replicated by other groups in the region, as is the case with some small livestock producers. We consider that this is the result of the fact that they also cultivate the land, for which reason the solutions driven in one productive sphere, such as agriculture, have inspired innovative processes in other spheres, such as livestock and dairy production: “We want to improve our livestock herd, (to have) a milking parlor where the livestock have their space, their concrete floor, and where they can reach their food. They must be fed so that they relax and give all of their milk. To give them their two pounds of concentrate, so that they relax. (…) Also to make barns to store our food, not to leave it exposed to become damaged” (Interview with R. Pereira, Association of Small Livestock Producers).

These same groups have actively participated—together with several governmental agencies such as the SAG—in the construction of artificial lagoons to retain water. As we confirmed directly, this is a manner of storing the vital liquid that impacts positively on the production of food for more families of the region.

16.4.6  G  eneration of Spaces for Commercialization and Training in Basic Business Abilities The projects have been clear in terms of the fact that personal/collective capacities and systems of production must be strengthened, in order to commercialize their product under increasingly fair conditions. To achieve this, there has been application of the learning and training at personal level received by the participants of the other projects, and promotion of the training of groups of producers, in terms of both administrative abilities and in techniques of product transformation (especially of cashew apple and honey). Furthermore, priority has been given to the idea that this project involves more than receiving equipment, but rather how to organize and work for the common good. These types of initiatives have sought that the collectives of producers and the businesses of agricultural and livestock production transformation first have an internal market, and then explore how to sell their products outside of the region. One way of achieving this is through the “Green Fair,” an initiative of the FNS Committee in which every month a market is created for the sale of local products: “Before, I only produced milk. I had the practice of bottling fresh milk in liters, collected, well washed and I went to sell them in the market. Now I sell them in the region of 20 lempiras per bottle, all with hygiene, because we wash the containers well and put them in hot

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water so they are good.” (Interview with R.  Pereira, Association of Small Livestock Producers)

In parallel, workshops of “Responsible Consumption” have been created. Renovation of social practices is sought through holding such workshops with children in the schools. The objective is to promote habits of hygiene; drive the ­management of solid residues (with a focus on the three “R”s—reduce, reuse, recycle), promote respect for living beings and the elements of the ecosystems and foment collaboration and solidarity. With this, the aspect of “consumption” is addressed, which the FNS Committee has expressed should not be limited to the simple possibility of purchasing. Consumption implies integration into the cycle of generation, use and reuse of products, all with a focus of environmental sustainability and social justice. In general, Food Security must be more than the simple procurement of resources for current generations; it must begin to act with awareness of the effect—both current and future—of our actions on the surroundings.

16.5  C  onclusions: Challenges and Possibilities of Governance Our study aimed at demonstrating that the achievement of the FNS must exceed the mere gifting of food and infrastructure to undernourished people, or provide simple technical training. The premise was that integrated strategies of collaboration are required, in which the agents that drive the actions have capabilities in terms of the management of technical processes as well as a great sensitivity and be knowledgeable of local realities. At a theoretical level, it has been established that good forms of governance are associated with the form in which populations are involved in public decision-making, such as the planning and resource management of the different levels of government. To achieve this, our study has identified that equity, participation, pluralism, transparency, responsibility, and rule of law must be promoted, but in a manner that is context-specific, effective, durable, and efficient. Likewise, attributes such as corruption, violence, and poverty must all be avoided since these attributes act to weaken transparency, security, and social participation. We identified three basic dimensions in this transdisciplinary analysis which are depicted in Fig. 16.4. In the center of this figure, we have placed the most important dimension, which includes individual and collective aspects, related with self-­ esteem and family integration. On the right-hand side of the figure we have placed a dimension related with social abilities and the creation of networks of inter-­ institutional collaboration, and on the left-hand side we have placed a dimension related with rational and physical activities. The present study has shown that by promoting all these dimensions and aspects the FNS Committee of Nacaome—where past relationships between the State and society have been so strongly marked by patronage and political control—reached a good model of governance, something recognized as remarkable in the Honduran

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1

2

3

Productive and business capabilities

Strengthening of selfsteem and the social fabric.

Inter-institutional collaboration

·Agroecological Techniques. ·Processing and transformation of products of agriculture and livestock production. ·Basic abilities of administration and accountancy ·Local commercialization

·Family integration, especially of the new generations ·Interpersonal relationship through conflict resolution ·Promotion of spaces for gathering ·Gender Approach

·Dialog and agreement among actors ·Participative planning and inclusive decision making ·Articulation of initiatives at local level

GOVERNANCE

Fig. 16.4  Transdisciplinary analysis of the FNS projects. (Source: Elaborated by the authors)

context. In that context, the generation of new alternative models of governance is an arduous task with various risks: to some extent, it implies creation of more frustration and distrust when expectations are not met, perpetuation of the benefits of an oligarchy that is kept in control of decision-making or getting mired in the generation of complaints and blackmail on the part of society. While other Committees have broken up or don’t function very well, such as the case of San Lorenzo’s, the fact that the FNS Committee of Nacaome studied here has continued to function gives us new clues of what can help us achieve an effective governance. We consider that it is because of the following conditions: (a) Collaborative and highly credible leadership: this is one of the main elements that was identified as a very favorable and fortuitous issue. The people in positions of power had backgrounds of great social commitment, such that it was much easier for the representatives of civil society to trust them. On the other hand, in the execution of the coordination of the committee, a form of collaborative leadership was chosen, based on the dissolution of power struggles or protagonism that could occur, in order to thus favor motivation and the disarticulation of the committee from other interests. Participation and commitment

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were actively fomented; recognition and value were given to the actions of all of the participants, regardless of political leanings, level of training, and power or influence of any type. The attitude of the committee coordinators was based on acceptance of diversity and dissent, listening and empathy, improvement of communication and dialog, integration, respect, and coherence with the internal rules of the committee and the fomentation of commitment. This leadership is related to the fact that the representatives of the local government have acquired a commitment that goes beyond their public function. The capacity for observation and listening is fundamental and has been the focus of strengthening of the group: “As a mother, as a teacher, and as Deputy Mayor, I feel very proud and happy to have been collaborating in this institution. I have been concerned by the many problems our society faces. Leaving this work, I will always be at the orders of the Mayor, so that we can continue working in the Committee. Our communities need our help, from those who are concerned about the well-being, health and economy of our fellow citizens” (Interview with Magda Quiroz, Deputy Mayor of Nacaome).

Those who did not have so clear an orientation of service were convinced over time that acting from the logic of the common good would in turn bring benefits to them. Particularly for those who belong to governmental institutions, where there can be rotation, having support and social recognition became a benefit that favored adoption of the commitments of the Committee. (b) Articulation of initiatives based on inclusive planning-execution: from the beginning, it was agreed to conduct annual planning in order to schedule the future activities—beginning with the monthly meetings—which has guaranteed that the different actors who participate in the design of the agenda, commit themselves to fulfilling the collectively established goals. By being generated and assumed from the producers, these goals have established the basis of a relationship of greater trust, founded on the credibility that the FNS Committee has earned at regional level. The assumption or distribution of collective tasks, adapted to the capacities of each agent, has sometimes purely followed a line of inclusion and participation. That is, the option has been taken on occasions to give priority to the integration of agents in the execution of actions, beyond any criteria of efficacy or efficiency, prioritizing the effect such inclusion could have on the agent. This has achieved learning, strengthening, and a sense of having contributed and of being valued in the team of the FNS Committee, enhancing the sense of team and unity that has characterized the form of execution of the activities. This occurred, for example, in actions that are clearly led by the FNS Committee itself, such as the organization and management of the “green markets” in Nacaome, in which all of the agents collaborated in one way or another: producers and the Luis Landa Agricultural School with food, the municipality and CSOs with logistics, sound equipment and space, teachers mobilizing folkloric groups, etc. (c) Co-responsibility and collective work: the gradually constructed interlocution did not remain at the level of “complaint,” but has been promoted to addressing the concerns and proposals presented by the different actors. This through con-

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tinuous interaction that, to various degrees, the different actors that comprise the committee have had outside the group. Some people have even influenced the municipal governments to invest in improvements to the social infrastructure. For example, there was a case where a group of campesinos turned to two mayors to request improvements to a road that connected some localities with the main municipal town. The locals made a commitment to contribute in kind (materials and labor) in order to carry out the construction, to which the two mayors responded favorably. “We suffered because the road was bad, there were many holes (…) Today we don’t. We managed it with the Mayor, because the Mayor had to contribute a part. Members of the group also went with me, and he didn’t want to act. He said “later, later”. But we told him that, with the engineers of Emprendesur, we are ready with the money, we just need 600 thousand. Now you should assume your duty as a Mayor. And he agreed, because the mayor of San Francisco de Coray also contributed. Then, when he saw that the other had gone ahead and made his contribution, he said: “I have no money, but I will contribute with machinery. I will contribute with two machines” (…) About my participation, me and a neighbor who is also here up above we both contributed the ballast. And now we have a good road” (interview with M. Nuñez).

The public institutions participating in the Committee, such as the Municipality, the SAG and the LLAS, have integrated actions planned by the committee in their actions as administrations, responding to determined needs manifested in this agreement space. It has been possible to integrate these three entities, overcoming differences and prejudices of the dependence of governmental teams of different political parties, such that common actions are carried out for the benefit of the FNS of the municipality, through the needs detected and proposed in this agreement space. The reliability and focus on results, and the disarticulation of power struggles or protagonism described in point (1) have broken the barriers that impeded such co-responsibility and shared work. (d) Financial support and operational stability: the commitment of the different institutions has favored the flow of material and financial resources, with which it has been possible to guarantee continuation of the activities. On the one hand, the municipal administration and other institutions provide spaces, vehicles, and materials, and on the other, the non-governmental organizations and the institutions of government manage national and international sources of funding, which give viability to the projects proposed by the population itself. This helps to maintain trust and motivation since tangible results can be seen over time. We conclude that the aspects mentioned above can explain how local initiatives could resist and even modify at a certain point the logic and practices imposed from the higher levels of the regime hierarchy. But it is not an easy task. First, we must be aware that nowadays many of the public policies constantly promoted by governments are related with a neoliberal regime. Even though neoliberal policies mention terms such as empowerment, gender approach, social entrepreneurship, participatory planning, and others, in its nucleus they support privatization, actions at an individual base, and the absence of the state. So we consider local initiatives such as the FNS Committees have to be articulated with

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others, whether within the same territory and with other regions in the world. Good practices and strategies have to be socialized in some kind of wider social learning process. That way, governance initiatives could have more elements to resist present and future challenges. In the case of the FNS Committees, one future challenge has to deal with its capacity of response and its resilience in the face of variation that can occur, such as (i) reduction in the contributions of the projects coming from cooperation; (ii) variation in the technical personnel of CSO; and (iii) changes in the municipal government and with them, the coordinating representatives of the committees, among other circumstances. Our hypothesis is that Nacaome’s FNS Committee will endure these challenges. Only time will tell.

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y Desarrollo. Ensayos sobre la complejidad del campo mexicano (pp. 17–32). México City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Harvey (2005). A Brief History of Neolibarlism- New York: Oxford University Press. Honduras Presidency Office (2010). Vision de Pais 2010–2038 y Plan de Nación 2010– 2022. Retrieved June 20, 2019, from https://honduras.un.org/sites/default/files/2019-08/ HondurasPlandeNacion20102022.pdf. INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadística). (2013). XVII Censo de Población y Vivienda. Tegucigalpa: INE. Klijn, E. H., & Skelcher, C. (2007). Democracy and governance networks: Compatible or not? Public Administration., 85(3), 587–608. Leeuwis, C. (2000). Reconceptualizing participation for sustainable rural development: Towards a negotiation approach. Development and Change, 31(5), 931–959. Max-Neef, M. (2005). Foundations of transdisciplinarity. Ecological Economics., 53(1), 5–16. McIntyre, A. (2016). Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity. An Essaoy on Desire, Practical Reasoning and Narrative. Cambridge University Press. Paarlberg, R. (1999). The weak link between world food markets and world food security. Policy reform, market stability and food security. Proceedings of a Conference of the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium, University of Minnesota. Perez, O., Booth, J., & Seligson. M. (2010). The Honduran Catharsis. Americas Barometer Insights. No. 45. PNUD (Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo). (2011). Informe Nacional de desarrollo humano en Honduras 2011. Tegucigalpa: PNUD. Sparks, C. S. (2011). Parental investment and socioeconomic status influences on children’s height in Honduras: An analysis of national data. American Journal of Human Biology, 23, 80–88. Stamoulis, K., & Zezza, A. (2003). A conceptual framework for national agricultural, rural development, and food security strategies and policies. ESA working paper no. 03-17. FAO, November 2003. Urdapilleta, J. (2017). Innovacion social desde la solidaridad económica: estudio de caso sobre las cajas de ahorro en el departamento de Valle, Honduras. Revista Ciencias Espaciales, 10(2), 62–91. Valladares, J.  C., Cubas, C., & Alvarenga, D. (2016). Diagnostico participativo de las capacidades de redes y organizaciones de la sociedad civil vinculadas a la Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutricional en las regiones 12 y 13. Tegucigalpa: Proyecto Ruta-SAN/European Union/ Amigos de la Tierra-España/Movimiento Madre Tierra-Honduras/Red de Desarrollo sostenible-Honduras.

Chapter 17

Governance of African Palm Production and Lifeways of Palm Producers in Two Municipalities of the Chiapas Jungle Enrique de Jesús Trejo Sánchez, Guillermo Valdiviezo Ocampo, and Manuel Roberto Parra Vázquez

Abstract  This chapter analyzes the relationship between lifeways of family or domestic units and the governance of African palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq) production in the municipalities of Zamora Pico de Oro Marqués de Comillas and Benemérito de las Américas, Chiapas, Mexico. Our study uses an approach in which the domestic units are viewed from the perspective of socio-environmental studies. The information was obtained via (i) discussion workshops and participative workshops with focus groups, and (ii) interviews with public officials; business managers; key social actors in the communities; and directors of Local Action Groups (LAGs). Our results show that due to the differences in capacities and capital that produce power asymmetries, in the governance of the African palm production system in Zamora and Benemérito, coordination and control are determined principally by the government/business group and the group of LAGs. The domestic unit’s participation is marginal. The way in which governance is exercised enables the oil-­ extraction business to impose its rules upon the process of coordination among the different groups. Thus, the implementation of the palm production system’s norms and rules affects incomes of domestic units directly. Nevertheless, production of African palm is the principal source of income for the domestic units. From their subjectivity, these groups perceive the governance as benefitting business at their expense. Therefore, they perceive that in the future, the exercise of governance must prioritize respect and the values needed for honest behavior among the system’s

E. J. Trejo Sánchez (*) Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico G. Valdiviezo Ocampo Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico M. R. Parra Vázquez Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_17

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actors, at the same time that the income generated by palm production enables producers to cover the costs of non-material needs like health and education. Keywords  African palm production · Governance · Lifeways · Zamora Pico de Oro · Benemérito de las Américas

17.1  Introduction Mexico’s shortage of African palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq) oil drives government agencies to implement a program to dedicate more land to the cultivation of that tree in south-eastern Mexico, especially in the state of Chiapas. Although the government spoke initially of generating biofuels for public transport, the program attempts at the same time to enable family units to involve themselves in a system that is more commercially valuable than the small-scale production of livestock and basic grains. The diverse actors that participate in mechanisms of governance of the system for producing African palm form three nodes: family or domestic group, who form the palm production unit, the government/business group, and local-action groups (LAGs) composed primarily by academics and non-governmental organizations (NGO). Governance of the system requires as a precondition, institutions, authority, and capacity for enforcing rules (coercion), as well as the economic, knowledge, and administrative resources that make the coordination of the production system possible (Aguilar Villanueva, 2016).The management of the system for producing African palm presents a network of relations in which the government plays an important role, but uses links to other actors for carrying out the process of governance. Relations among social actors express linkages of domination and subordination, according to the resources and capabilities possessed by each actor. The network of relations expressed in the specific system of governance of each territory will have particularities corresponding to the actors’ characteristics and types of relations. The actors involved in that system interpret its governance subjectively because they participate in the production in different ways. This chapter aims to analyze the relation between the lifeways of family units and the governance of African palm production in the municipalities of Zamora Pico de Oro Marqués de Comillas and Benemérito de las Américas, Chiapas. Hereinafter, those municipalities will be referred to as Zamora and Benemérito, respectively.

17.2  The World Context of African Palm Production African palm is cultivated in many countries and its oil is consumed worldwide. Eighty percent of the world’s production of palm oil is used in food products: cooking oils, margarines, ice cream, cookies, and chocolates (Trejo, 2018). Its global

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production has increased markedly in the last two decades. In 2019, its global production as of 20 December exceeded 75.69  million metric tons, of which 74.62 ­million were consumed domestically (USDA, 2019). During the last decade, the price of palm oil fell from 723 US dollars per metric ton in 2009 to 543.88 in July of 2019 (Indexmundi, 2019). Rather than discouraging growers of African palm, the current low price is causing them to devote more land to its cultivation. The increase in palm oil production, consumption, and share of the edible-oil markets is due, in large measure, to its competitive cost compared to prices of other vegetable and animal oils. Malaysia and Indonesia produce a combined total of 85% of the world’s palm oil, and account for 95% of its exportation (ANIAME, 2016). Since the 1990s, South and Central America have increased their production of palm oil greatly. During the first congress of Mexico’s palm producers, held in Villahermosa, Tabasco, La Federación Nacional de Cultivadores de Palma de Aceite (FEDEPALMA, 2018) indicated that in 2017, five countries in the Americas produced 86% of the continent’s entire output. Colombia, whose production increased from 711,000 metric tons in 2006 to 1,537,000 in 2017, was the largest producer. In second place was Guatemala, with 768,000 metric tons in 2017 (up from 125,000 in 2006.) Third place went to Ecuador, with an increase from 345,000 metric tons to 642,000. Honduras’s production of 585,000 metric tons in 2017 (versus 195,000 in 2006) put that nation in next-to-last place. Brazil came in last, with 428,000 in 2017, up from 170,000  in 2006. Guatemala is the second most-important producer of palm oil in the Americas. This is especially important to Chiapas because Guatemala’s principal zone of production is Sayaxché, which borders on Benemérito (Fig. 17.1). Sayaxché’s 66 thousand hectares of African palm generate 96.81% of that region’s gross internal product (Central American Business Intelligence, 2019).

17.3  African Palm Production in Mexico and Chiapas In Mexico, the impulse for palm production comes from the government body which, to a great degree, sought social justification by promoting a policy focused on development of renewable energies—including bioenergy. In the year 2017, the administration of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006–2012) created the Nuevo Programa Especial Concurrente (New Special Concurrent Program), whose emphasis on the raising of crops for production of biofuels affects, directly, the impulse given to production of palm oil in southeast Mexico (Trejo Sánchez, Valdiviezo Ocampo, & Fletes Ócon, 2018). According to Trejo (2018) and Trejo Sánchez et al. (2018), there are two types of factors responsible for the consolidation of African palm as an important national crop in Mexico. The first type has both, an international character (such as the World Bank’s promotion of biofuels) as well as a national one (the growing demand from Mexico’s food industry). A prominent feature of the second type of factor is the Federal government’s strong push to redirect agriculture toward crops that are more commercially valuable. While African palm oil was considered at first to be a promising raw material for biodiesel

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Fig. 17.1  Land surface planted in African palm in Zamora, Benemérito and Sayaxché. (Source: Prepared from RapidEye satellite images and photo interpretation of images taken by the Google Earth satellite)

production, literature has shown that Mexico’s deficit in palm oil (88.71%, due mainly to demands from the food industry) makes that use inviable (Trejo, 2018, p. 104). In Mexico, only four states are reported to produce African palm: Campeche, Chiapas, Tabasco, and Veracruz. Together, these four states dedicate 101,753.22 hectares (ha) to that crop. Chiapas has the most land under palm cultivation: 45,426.23 ha, on which 548,446.55 metric tons of fruit are produced (Table 17.1). Chiapas has three important African palm-producing zones: the Isthmus Coast and Soconusco; the Maya region; and the Lacandón Jungle (where the Zamora and Benemérito municipalities are located). Because of the national policy of promoting expansion of African palm cultivation, the amount of financing for palm production on new hectares in Zamora and Benemérito increased sharply during the periods 2006–2008 and 2011–2012 (Fig. 17.2).

Harvested 38,316.83 13,331.00 14,056.00 7138.00 72,841.83

Source: Elaborated from data of SIAP (2019) a Unit of measurement b Rural Middle Price, unit defined by SAGARPA

State Chiapas Campeche Tabasco Veracruz Total

Surface (HA) Planted 45,426.23 28,061.00 21,046.00 7220.00 101,753.23 Production 548,446.55 158,867.00 208,438.00 67,925.00 983,676.55

Yield (udm /HA) 13.00 8.00 15.00 9.00 11.25 a

PMRb ($/udm) 32,696.26 7620.00 11,961.00 25,010.00 77,287.26

Table 17.1  Land surface under African palm cultivation in Mexico and yields of that crop, during the year 2018 Value of production 858,875.96 243,372.00 305,697.00 98,655.00 1,506,599.96

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Fig. 17.2  Financing for African palm cultivation from 2006 to 2015. (Source: Prepared from the database of the Secretaria del campo del gobierno del estado de Chiapas (2015))

17.4  The Municipalities of Zamora and Benemérito These two municipalities are located in Chiapas’s jungle (Fig.  17.3). They were chosen as a research focus because in recent years, cultivation of African palm has extended to more municipalities in the jungle because of the state government’s efforts (since 2015) to establish two businesses in Benemérito for extracting palm oil. Zamora and Benemérito have their origins in a recent colonization that dates back to 1964 (Table 17.2). The inhabitants of the two municipalities have needed to adapt, then readapt, their modalities of territorial appropriation through a process of trial and error. Weber and Reverte (2006), who describe such processes, propose five levels of appropriation: the system of representation; the use or uses of resources; the modalities of access, and controlling land access; the transferability of rights of access; and the distribution of the resources that are obtained. Although Zamora and Benemérito were settled during the1960s, they were designated as municipalities somewhat later, in the context of the Zapatista conflict in the Chiapas Highlands, during the interim governorship of Roberto Albores Guillen (1998–2000). To “pacify” the “zone of conflict,” the Chiapas government began a process of remunicipalization (Cruz Burguete, 2019, p.  379). Zamora and Benemérito, which had been ejidos belonging to the municipality of Ocosingo, thus became new municipalities by official decree on 28 July 1999 (Leyva Solano & Burguete Cal y Mayor, 2007, p. 11). While the remunicipalization of 1999, according to Cruz Burguete (2019) and Leyva Solano and Burguete Cal y Mayor (2007), was intended to address some of the demands that derived from the Zapatista

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Fig. 17.3  Study area showing the location of the municipalities of “Zamora Pico de Oro Marqués de Comillas” and “Benemérito de las Américas”. (Source: Prepared by the authors using RapidEye satellite images and photo interpretation of images taken by the Google Earth satellite)

conflict,1 we wish to clarify that Zamora and Benemérito are localities of the old municipality of Ocosingo. Armed groups and social groups related to the Zapatistas do not have a presence in Zamora and Benemérito. Zamora and Benemérito constantly expressed, even if informally, their dissatisfaction with belonging to the enormous municipality of Ocosingo. “The reasons for their discontent were the 350 km that separated them from the municipal seat and the scant attention that they received” (Leyva Solano & Burguete Cal y Mayor, 2007, p. 322). Because of that separation, the population had to travel 10 to 12 hours. “Basically, Zamora and Benemérito were considered since the mid-1980s to be subregions of the Lacandón Jungle, because they operated de facto with great autonomy based on their particular history of colonization (Leyva Solano & Burguete Cal y Mayor, 2007, p. 322). In Zamora and Benemérito, as in the rest of Chiapas, African palm was promoted at first (in 2006) as a Federal government program aimed more at generating biofuels than at resolving social conflicts like the Zapatista movement. Zamora and Benemérito were well suited for the government’s plans. Both municipalities are considered to have high potential for cultivation of African palm because of their

1  The 1999 remunicipalization of Chiapas created the following municipalities: Aldama, Duraznal, Santiago el Pinar, Monte Cristo de Guerrero, Maravilla Tenejapa, Marqués de Comillas, and Benemérito de las Américas (Leyva Solano & Burguete Cal y Mayor, 2007).

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Table 17.2  Factors that promoted the process of colonization in Marqués de Comillas, Chiapas Period Causes 1964 Eviction resulting from demarcation of the Lacandona Community

Origin San Javier y zona aledaña

1960– Colonization polices directed by the 1970 State

Aguascalientes, Campeche, Chiapas, Chihuahua, D.F. México State, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Puebla, Sinaloa, Tabasco, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Zacatecas

1980– Social pressures, lack of land, 1986 construction of the border highway and the Boca Lacantún bridge; policies for strengthening national sovereignty, Implementation of hydroelectric projects that expelled the population from inundation areas 1982 Intensification of social conflict in Guatemala 1986

Guatemala

Socio-agricultural problems in Nuevo Zoque Indians affected by the Francisco León eruption of the Chichonal volcano in Nuevo Francisco León 1984– Relocation of refugees due to Guatemala 1987 political conflicts

Destination Flor de Cacao and Quetzalcóatl Banks of the Lacantún and Salinas Rivers Central Zone and border region

Ejidos along the banks of Lacantún River La Nueva Unión

Quintana Roo and Campeche

Source: Adapted from Arreola (1996)

climate. The summers are hot and humid with abundant rains (86.5% of which fall during the summer), while winters are hot and subhumid. The average temperature is 24–28  °C, and the annual precipitation is 1500–3500  mm (INEGI, 2019). In Benemérito, two agroindustries have made use of these advantages by establishing facilities for processing the fresh fruit of African palm. One of these agroindustries is part of the Oleopalma corporate group, which has a presence in Benemérito, Palenque, Mapastepec, and Guadalajara. The other company, Agrotrópico, arose from the synergy of national investors, Guatemalan industries, and local businesses (CUARTO PODER, 2018). The agent of the Fideicomisos Instituidos en Relación con la Agricultura (FIRA) who is stationed in Chiapas characterized Agrotrópico in similar terms. According to that agent, Agrotrópico is an initiative of FONDO CHIAPAS, which was formed by Guatemalan, Mexican, and local business persons. Agrotrópico’s injected capital from three sources: an eight-year loan for 300 million pesos from FIRA; a smaller amount from FONDO CHIAPAS; and the remainder from a family business involved with extraction of palm oil in Guatemala.

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17.5  Theoretical Perspective Governance is the form in which the process of governing a society is carried out in the existing social conditions. During the last two decades, the concept of governance has been the object of distinct reinterpretations. As a result, the concept has changed from a traditional governance, in which the government assumes the role of being the only agent (Jessop, 1995), to a modern governance that favors interaction among a plurality of actors in horizontal relationships that seek an equilibrium between the powers of government and those of civil society (Mayntz, 2001; Peters & Pierre, 2008; Rhodes, 2007). Network governance is another perspective that recognizes the interdependence between the private and public actors that collaborate in a project. However, the power relations among those actors may be asymmetric (Zurbriggen, 2011). Yet another perspective is territorial governance, which associates the respective capacities and capital(s) of the individuals who share a territory for the purpose of undertaking projects in common (Farinós Dasi, 2008; Torres & Ramos, 2012). Although each of the reinterpretations of governance focuses to a greater or lesser extent upon the power or influence of some type of actor, governance represents the set of actions that are carried out with the purpose of directing society. That goal, in turn, requires recognition of the government’s action, and of the actions of economic and social actors (Aguilar Villanueva, 2006, 2010). The basic assumption is that under current social conditions, the government is an important but insufficient directing agent that must incorporate the capacities of other social agents (Aguilar Villanueva, 2010). In that sense, Aguilar Villanueva’s (2016) broader version of governance is: [T]he relations between the government and society […] for the purpose of reconstructing that society’s sensibilities and capacity for management […]. Consequently, the concept emphasizes the greater influence and decision-making capacity that non-governmental actors (economic enterprises, civil organizations, independent thinking-tanks, and international agencies) have acquired in the processing of public affairs, in defining the orientation and implementation of policies and public services (Aguilar Villanueva, 2016, p. 85).

In this chapter, governance implies that diverse groups of social actors participate in the process of directing the system for producing African palm. Government has a relevant role in that system, but makes use of other types of actors that possess resources, and are important for making its projects go. In the network of relationships that the actors establish, one finds relationships of domination and subordination, according to the resources and capacities that each type of actor possesses. Thus, the system of governance in each territory will have particularities that reflect the characteristics of the type of relations among the actors. The concept of governance has been used to explain the distinct socio-territorial processes in which government and social actors interact to foster development or resolve conflicts. In that sense, governance becomes relevant and is used in socio-­ environmental investigations (Brenner, 2010; Garavito González, Gómez Zarate, & Palacio Tamayo, 2018; Moreno, 2013).

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Regarding the production of crops for biofuels, and the implications of that production for lifeways, the work of Hunsberger, Bolwing, Corbera, and Creutzig (2014) stands out. Hunsberger et  al. (2014) analyze the political and governance measures that are intended to improve the social effects of biofuels. These authors concentrate on three aspects: the lifeways that are affected by the type of crop, the mechanisms of governance, and the value chains. They also consider that an analysis of the governance of biofuels can aid in producing more efficient strategies for addressing concerns about lifeways and social equality. In our study, the system of governance will be approached from the viewpoint of the local socio-environmental systems (LSES, Parra-Vázquez et al. Chap. 1, this volume), which identifies three groups of actors: the family or domestic group (DG), the government/business group (GBG), and Local-Action Groups (LAGs), all which will be described in the next paragraphs.

17.5.1  The Social-Territorial System With respect to development studies, development interventions are processes that create meanings—they involve dominant discourses that promote political, cultural, and moral points of view (Vázquez González, Parra Vázquez, & Garcia, 2018). A useful tool for entering into the analysis of interventions is the conceptual approach of lifeways, which are understood as patterns of behavior of families during the course of everyday life, including the families’ practices and discourses. Lifeways of peasant families include searching for the means to ensure access to necessary resources, which are considered to be capital(s) for carrying out the set of activities through which the families attempt to satisfy their own objective and subjective needs (Vázquez González et al., 2018). To analyze the system for producing African palm, its governance and the lifeways of the peasants or palm producers, this chapter uses the socio-environmental systems approach illustrated in Fig.  17.4. This approach will be described below. 17.5.1.1  The Domestic Group (DG) as a Production Unit In our study, a DG is conceived as a family whose principal economic activity is derived from the cultivation of African palm (in the rest of this chapter, we will use the term “African palm-producing families”). In our research, we found that some actions and activities related to the production and harvesting of African palm are carried out by the majority of the family members, whom we define (following Bourdieu, 1994) as a set of persons who are related to each other, and who live under the same roof. Family members interact, grow, and develop. Throughout their lives, they will make decisions that modify their lifeways. They will also be influenced by internal and external factors that affect the family structure for better or for worse. The ways in which the families relate to the social world and organize their

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Fig. 17.4  Schematic of the socio-environmental system approach used in this chapter. (Source: Adapted from Parra-Vázquez et al. (in press))

activities are governed by local behavioral norms, as well as by government-­ established ones (Parra-Vázquez, García Barrios, Bello Baltazar, & Estrada-Lugo in press). Parra-Vázquez et al. (in press) strengthen the conceptual framework of lifeways with proposals generated by Bourdieu, from whom they take the ideas that (a) capital—including social and cultural capital—is “accumulated work” in the sense that it is the result of effort over time; (b) a family’s strategy is formulated according to the available capital(s) and the predominant habitus2; and (c) that strategy is implemented through a series of social practices that articulate family decisions with the “rules of the game” that are defined locally or territorially. 17.5.1.2  The Government and Businesses Group (GBG) In many territories, corporations or businesses are some of the relevant actors in the processes by which governance is constructed. A business is “a collective legal entity, possibly having private rights” (Rodríguez Valencia, 2002, p. 4), and is an

 “Habitus” can be understood as the conditioning associated with a particular class of conditions of existence, involving durable and transferable arrangements, i.e., structures that are organizing and generating principles for practices and representations that can be adapted objectively to their purpose (Bourdieu, 2007, p. 85–106). 2

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“entity that obtains certain advantages in marketing, production, research, and development by establishing itself in strategic places, and that satisfies the needs of clients” (Kotler, 1998, p. 529). Another relevant actor in this group is the government, which can be conceptualized in either a broad sense or a narrow one. In the broad sense, it represents the set of bodies that are depositories of public power. In the narrow sense, it is limited to the bodies that are depositories of Executive Power (Fernández Ruiz, 2015). For the purposes of this chapter, government is the set of bodies linked to the design and execution of policies and plans oriented toward the rural sector. 17.5.1.3  Local-Action Groups (LAGs) In this investigation, the term LAGs will denote non-profit working groups composed of members of public entities (academics and governmental representatives, among others), private as well from civil society (NGO) that affect the territory even though they are not physically present. These structures were created as an experimental, decentralized form of fostering a territorial approach to rural development (De los Ríos Carmenado, Cadena Iñiguez, & Díaz Puente, 2011, p.  816). In this sense, participation means not only consultation with the public, but also a logic of collective action (Cernea, 1991). This logic, in turn, implies generation of processes of participation in the formulation, implementation, and fostering of socio-­territorial projects of whatever type. In Mexico, that activity is supported by the Ley de Desarrollo Rural Sustentable (LDRS) (Law of Sustainable Rural Development), which emphasizes the importance of democratic participation for fostering a bottom-­up endogenous development. It also opens new possibilities for working in the opposite direction to experiment with new schemes for planning rural development (Cámara de Diputados Honorable Congreso de La Unión, 2019). 17.5.1.4  Landscape and Territory Landscape refers to piece of productive land located in a territory. In particular, a landscape—is a key concept in contemporary geography—refers to the portion of space that an observer sees (Fernández Christlieb, 2014). It is also “a portion of space, perceptible to an observer, where there is a combination of facts and interactions visible and invisible, that we do not perceive, in a given moment” (Deffontaines & Prigent, 1987, p.  1). Although the information that comes from observing the territory is valuable, the “image of the landscape” expresses only one part of reality, in which not all the components and forces that are present manifest themselves (García Romero & Muñoz, 2002, p. 19). Landscape becomes resource to the degree that it is perceived as such by the populace, via the conception of landscape as a good, or as an element destined to satisfy a need (Zubelzu Mínguez & Allende Álvarez, 2014, p. 32). Therefore, landscape is a good that society can perceive and use, but is also a resource to the extent that it can be utilized and modified.

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Geography, in its beginnings, defined territory as a portion of the Earth’s surface appropriated by a group of humans, with the possibility of exploiting the natural resources therein. In an interpretation that involves multiple dimensions of social processes, it is understood that territory, in addition to being a form of appropriating space, is a product that enables modification of social relations and the natural surroundings. It is also the medium in which a culture develops that deploys part of the subjectivity of the human being (Hernández, 2008). According to Parra-Vázquez et al. (Chap. 1, this volume), territory is a social construction because social groups try to appropriate it for themselves, objectively through the work that they do in order to transform it according to their needs. A community appropriates territory subjectively as well, by endowing it with cultural meaning. In this chapter, territory is conceived as the appropriation of space through the work relations deployed by diverse social groups that modify the biophysical environment and transform their own social relations.

17.6  Methodology Field work was carried out from September to November of 2019. Data was collected through participative workshops that used the “peasant family and life” methodological approach utilized by various researchers at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur and the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo. We also held seven discussion workshops with focal groups in each of the common holding or “ejidos” involved in this study: América Libre, La Victoria and Quiringuicharo from the municipality of Zamora; and Arroyo Delicias, Loma Linda, Nuevo Orizaba, and Roberto Barrios from the municipality of Benemérito. We facilitated the attendance of palm producers, of both genders, who represent different scales of land ownership, and encouraged all attendees (in both types of workshops) to participate actively. Despite this, one limitation of the methodology is that in our workshops most attendees were men because due to the physical strength needed for production of African palm, they were who worked in the palm growing systems. To complement the information gathered from workshops, we conducted 23 semi-structured interviews with key actors involved in the system for producing African palm. Using the same format, we also interviewed public officials, mangers of businesses, and heads of LAGs. To identify the relationship between the size of producers and the amount of land that they cultivate, we classified the producers as small (with 0.5–5 ha), medium (5.5–50 ha), large (50.5–100 ha), and very large (100.5–1000 ha). The majority of the palm-producing land is held by medium-sized and very large producers (Table  17.3). Small producers represent 39.44 percent of all producers, but hold only 8.5% of the cultivated land. Medium-sized producers represent 56.14% and hold 43.44% of the cultivated land. Only 1.96% of producers are “large,” but they have 9.45% of the cultivated land. Very large producers represent 2.45% of producers and have 38.58% of the cultivated land. These figures are consistent with those of Castellanos Navarrete (2018), who indicates that Mexico stands out as one of the

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Latin American countries with the greatest proportion of palm-producing land in the hands of producers who hold less than 50 ha.

17.7  Results and Discussion 17.7.1  G  overnance of African Palm Production Systems in Zamora and Benemérito Three large nodes of actors participate in the dynamics of growing African palm and extracting its oil: domestic units, government/business, and LAGs (Aguilar Villanueva, 2006). Governance is exercised primarily by the government/business node and the LAGs node. The domestic-unit node has very little margin for influence based upon capacities and capital(s) (Torres & Ramos, 2012) because power asymmetries put the domestic units in a subordinate position (Zurbriggen, 2011). Although the government/business node is presented methodologically as a single unit, the bodies that compose that node exercise governance in different ways. The government does so mainly by establishing norms and rules for extending credit through various financing schemes, thereby making use of its economic and administrative resources, as well as of its position of authority (which is another sort of resource) (Aguilar Villanueva, 2016). The businesses that participate in that node exercise governance principally by disbursing governmental credits, establishing relations between quality and price, specifying forms of billing, forming distribution networks, and providing both certification and technical assistance. The resources used by businesses as they carry out those actions are economic, administrative, and coercive (Aguilar Villanueva, 2016). The LAGs node, for its part, exercises governance through technical assistance to palm growers and through devising rules and norms for certification of sustainability (i.e., the sustainable palm production system), making use of the LAGs’ informational, administrative, and coercive resources (Aguilar Villanueva, 2016). One of our study’s results is a graphic representing the governance of the African palm production system in Zamora and Benemérito (Fig. 17.5).

17.7.2  Government/Business Processes of financing are quite relevant to the scheme of governance. The government, via the Fideicomiso Instituido con Relación a la Agricultura (FIRA) (Trust Fund Instituted Regarding Agriculture) is the body responsible for supplying financing to organized producers, via the commercial bank. To access those loans, producers must conclude contracts with the company Agrotrópico for sale of their produced fruit. They must also agree to let their crop be used as collateral for these loans and

100

486

6821.69 100

2489.21 36.49

1.85

9

% Hectare 9.51 44.47 9.54

Hectare 648.45 3033.53 650.50

125

6

Number of producers 43 72 4

100

4.80

% Producers 34.40 57.60 3.20

Zamora Pico de Oro % Hectare 5.96 40.73 9.23

2588.45 100

1140.96 44.08

Hectare 154.35 1054.34 238.80

Source: Prepared from the database of the Secretaria del Campo del gobierno del estado de Chiapas (2015)

Classification of producers range (ha) Small 0.5–5 Medium 5.5–50 Large 50.5– 100 Very large 100.5– 1000 Total

Benemerito de Las Americas Number of % producers Producers 198 40.74 271 55.76 8 1.65

Table 17.3  Sizes of palm oil producers in Zamora and Benemérito during 2006–2015

611

15

Producers 241 343 12

Total

100

2.45

% 39.44 56.14 1.96

% 8.53 43.44 9.45

9410.14 100

3630.17 38.58

Hectare 802.80 4087.87 889.30

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maintain the palms according to Agrotrópico’s recommendations. The commercial bank depends upon Agrotrópico to recover loans. For that reason, each producer is obligated to sell the fruit to Agrotrópico, which withholds the amount of the loans, plus interest, when the producer sells his or her crop. In addition to being the party responsible for recovering loans that the commercial bank makes to producers, Agrotrópico exercises governance through various mechanisms. One of those mechanisms, the quality-price relation, consists of stipulating that the price paid to producers depends upon the producer delivering fruit of optimum ripeness, within 24 h of cutting, and with the bunches (of fruits) intact. The producers within a given ejido must bill Agrotrópico as a group for the sale. In addition, producers must receive technical assistance on how to comply with the norms of the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) (Fig. 17.5). That assistance may be obtained from Agrotrópico’s technicians, or from Solidarity—an international body whose principal goal is to help make the African palm production system sustainable by giving technical assistance to the parties involved. RSPO is dedicated primarily to the certification of systems for producing African palm. These conditions, imposed upon domestic units by Agrotrópico, are derived from power asymmetries among this type of actors (Zurbriggen, 2011). The credit that FIRA offers according to its agreement with Agrotrópico must be used to cover certification by RSPO—a requirement that must be met during 2020. The LAGs manifest the process of governance via the RSPO’s norms. RSPO bases its certification of producers mainly upon six criteria: no deforestation, no pollution, demonstration of traceability, avoidance of using fire, preservation of places with high conservation value (HCV), and preservation of workers’ human rights.

Fig. 17.5  How governance of the system for producing African palm is exercised in Zamora and Benemérito. (Source: Prepared by authors, based upon field work and upon information provided by the FIRA agent in Chiapas)

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Solidarity is another actor with which the LAGs join forces in the logic of exercising governance in co-participation with agroindustries. According to Michaelyn Baur, Managing Director of Solidarity’s Regional Expertise Centre for Central America and the Caribbean, “Our vision is to unite the actors […] for the use of innovative solutions for improving production while ensuring a sustainable, inclusive economy that maximizes benefits for all” (Interview with authors, 2019). The influence of the LAGs in the African palm production system, like that of the RSPO, comes from the large capacities and capital that they possess for supervising production at the international level (Torres & Ramos, 2012).

17.7.3  G  overnance of the African Palm Production System from the Subjectivity of the Producers Regardless of the amount of land that they cultivate, and of how much they earn from African palm, the families that produce it interpret the system of governance in the same way. The set of norms and rules is determined to a great extent by both the government/business group and the LAGs. Families have little influence in governance. The palm-producing families interpret the government-driven African palm project as an opportunity that they could not pass up because it was the best option for improving their living conditions and was also the best alternative to production of livestock and basic grains. The project guaranteed the possibility of obtaining financing for production and of becoming owners of the extraction plant. In the words of Don Abraham of the ejido Arroyo Delicias in Benemérito, “[T] he palm project was launched by the government, and some of us grabbed the opportunity because we had no other alternative” (Interview with authors, 2019). For other domestic units, which dedicated themselves to livestock-raising, the project was an opportunity to increase their incomes significantly. As Don Olber of the ejido La Victoria recalled, “We plant palm because we had few head of livestock—two or three per producer. The pasture is not very good; when they brought the proposal to plant palm it seemed attractive at the time. They said that it was a very profitable activity and that we were going to make much money” (Interview with DO, a palm producer, 2019).

At present, families perceive that although financing is fundamental to production of African palm, Agrotrópico’s mechanisms of sales contracts and of withholding capital and interests from proceeds of sales turn the families into producers who are captive to rules established by the company. Therefore, the families propose that the government be the party that extends credit, at preferential rates, and that it also collect on the loans. The pricing scheme for palm fruit is one of the principal mechanisms for exercise of governance. To determine the price, they will pay to producers in Zamora and Benemérito, businesses use as a reference a certain percentage of the international

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price per metric ton of crude African palm oil. The international price is determined, in turn, by the Rotterdam market. At the national (Mexican) level, the percentage is established by the Asociación Nacional de Industriales de Aceites y Mantecas (ANIAME) (National Association of Oil and Butter Industries). On 12 November 2019, the international price of crude palm oil was 10,154.80 pesos per metric ton (530 US dollars per metric ton, at an exchange rate of 19.16  pesos per dollar). Businesses in Mexico used a reference percentage of 12.5%. Therefore, they paid 1269.35  pesos per metric ton of fresh palm fruit. Reference percentages in other countries include Guatemala’s 13–14%, Honduras’s 15%, Costa Rica’s 15.5–16%, and Colombia’s 17–18%. Knowing that businesses in other countries use a higher reference percentage, domestic units in Chiapas constantly ask for a percentage like Guatemala’s (as a minimum), or Costa Rica’s (as the best case). An additional source of producers’ dissatisfaction is their belief that they are subjected to a set of norms, established by the businesses, that reduce the real price paid to producers. On this point, Don Abraham mentions that “The price that they pay for fruit is low, and still they penalize us for delivering fruit that the company considers not ripe enough, that has a stalk, and that is not delivered within 24 hours after cutting. In addition, we still have to discount the cost of transport to the collection center. And to top it off, we have to wait 15 days to be paid. They punish us so much with the low price that they make us want to let the fruit just rot.” (Interview with DA, a palm producer, 2019).

The palm-producing families, faced with norms and rules that result in lower prices for their fruit, have attempted at times to create some sort of organization through which they could negotiate collectively for higher prices and better operating conditions at the collection centers. Don Sebastian of the ejido Loma Linda tells of negotiations of this sort that took place on 19 July 2019: “We asked for a better price; that [Agrotrópico] pay for the transport; that there be better scales and personnel to weigh and unload the fruit because we lose much time during weighing. We also asked that they not discriminate against us for being peasants, because all of Agrotrópico’s employees are foreigners, and the company is Guatemalan.” (Interview with DS, a palm producer, 2019)

In response to the effort to organize in order to improve the price, collection-­ center conditions, and treatment of family units, Agrotrópico proposed that the families increase the prices themselves by improving the efficiency of their (the families’) production processes. The chief recommendation for doing so was to intensify the workdays of the field workers. As Don Santos of the ejido Quiringuicharo relates, “The company told me that I have to demand that the workers produce more; that they cut more than two metric tons per day, and that I reduce their time for eating from one hour to at most 30 minutes, and that they work more every day, starting earlier and ending later. I can’t do that, it is very inhuman; I have done the same work; it is hard. I give the workers food, and take water to them; we are equals. On weekends I invite them to eat at my house. I treat them like family” (Interview with DS, 2019)

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Of all the norms and rules driven by the RSPO, the most difficult for the producing families to meet are “no deforestation” and the preservation of high conservation value (HCV) locations. Both requirements affect the families’ incomes directly. The RSPO established that producers had to demonstrate that their post-2005 plantings of African palm had not been established on deforested land, or where conservation values had not been preserved. Starting in 2020, compliance will be verified through analysis of satellite images by specialized personnel. In the workshop that we held in the ejido La Victoria on 12 November 2019, Don José Angel, of the ejido Río Salinas stated: “They tell us that we have to revert the damages that we cause by planting palm. We all know that to plant palm, we have to cut some of the trees in our fields. This [the no-­ deforestation] requirement is the most difficult because we have to do work in conservation projects in other places, or pay other people to do it. If we are already being paid little for our fruit, this will decrease our incomes further.” (Interview with DJA, a palm producer, 2019).

From the subjectivity of the families that dedicate themselves to growing African palm, the system of governance is perceived as a set of norms and rules oriented toward benefitting the business and which does not take the producers’ needs into consideration. Given the producers’ weak organizational capacities and scant social capital for undoing power asymmetries, the producers feel marginalized in the process of defining the norms and rules that are constructed to coordinate the productive system (Zurbriggen, 2011).

17.7.4  Lifeways of the African Palm-Producing Families 17.7.4.1  Incomes Although the subjectivity of the palm-producing families is that the system of governance is designed to benefit oil-extracting companies at the cost of lower incomes for producers, the families also recognize that palm production provides the region’s households with a much higher proportion of income than do other available options (Fig. 17.6). The importance of income obtained from palm cultivation varies among the seven ejidos in the area of study, reaching 80 to 90 percent in Roberto Barrios, Quiringuicharo, Loma Linda, La Victoria, and Arroyo Delicias (Fig. 17.6). Even in ejidos where the proportion of income from palm is lower, it can exceed 50%, as in América Libre and Benemérito. These figures demonstrate that importance of the palm production system for construction of families’ lifeways.

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Fig. 17.6  Incomes provided by various economic activities in ejidos of Zamora and Benemérito. (Source: Prepared by authors based upon workshops about lifeways (2019))

17.7.4.2  The Distribution of Spending The ways in which palm-producing families distribute their spending reflect the families’ concerns about meeting their most-important needs. An examination of the families’ spending distributions reveals the differences among the families’ strategies. Except in Quiringuicharo, the amount spent on food is noteworthy (Fig. 17.7). For their part, palm-producing families in América Libre, Arroyo Delicias, and Loma Linda spend up to 80 percent of their incomes on food. Families in Quiringuicharo spend only 25% on food, and put 40% into savings— their largest single outlay (Fig. 17.7). 17.7.4.3  Subjectivities of African Palm-Producing Family Transformations in the palm-producing families’ lifeways and appropriation of territory can be comprehended through analysis of the families’ subjectivities, which are understood as comprising a set of four components (Fig. 17.8): values, expected fruits, economic activities, and capacities (Vázquez González et al., 2018). From their subjectivity, the palm-producing households identify that the system of governance for African palm production allows them little margin for participation, and therefore benefits mainly the oil-extraction companies to the detriment of household incomes. However, the lifeway workshops in the seven ejidos of the study area allow identification of how the households will look in the future.

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Fig. 17.7  Distribution of spending by family units in ejidos of Zamora and Benemérito. (Source: Prepared by authors based upon workshops about lifeways (2019))

Fig. 17.8  Life strategies of palm-producing families (Source: Prepared by authors based upon workshops about lifeways (2019))

Values From the subjectivity of the palm-producing families, the most-important value— and therefore the most-important one to develop—is respect, followed by honesty, solidarity, tolerance, and love (Fig. 17.8). The families consider that without these

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values, they and other ejido residents would have difficulty living together and achieving a joint development. The families also feel that the palm project does not meet all of the expectations that were mentioned at the project’s beginning, such as producers having their own extraction plant, and generating high incomes. For that reason, development of respect and honesty will be fundamental for conviviality of families in the territory, principally with relation to the mechanism for extending and collecting on loans via the government, as well as in respectful treatment of palm-producing families by the companies. Fruits In terms of fruits of their labors, family units visualize that in the future, the system for producing African palm must generate sufficient income to cover non-material needs like health and education, over and above satisfying material needs like vehicles, houses, and land (Fig.  17.8). In this connection, Don Santos of the ejido Quiringuicharo mentions that “it serves no purpose to accumulate money, houses, and land if you have to spend it all on an illness” (Interview with authors, 2019). The order of importance that families give to the various fruits indicates that the families’ central concern is for well-being in terms of health and education, more so than for material wealth. Economic Activities Although the families recognize that cultivation of African palm is their principal source of income, they foresee a potential need to return to livestock-raising (with agriculture as a second choice) because of difficulties posed by the present governance of the palm production system, plus the possibility that palm could cease to be profitable. Two families in the ejido América Libre have already found that they do not earn enough income from palm to cover their needs and have therefore begun to cut down their palms to convert the land to livestock-raising (Fig. 17.9). A total of 15 families in that ejido have mentioned the possibility of doing the same. This finding indicates that the families are in the process of readjusting and reconstructing their strategies for satisfying their material and non-material needs. That process would have important implications for the permanent landscape transformation that began with the migrations that populated the two municipalities. Cutting of the palms has already caused identifiable—albeit incipient—transformations in América Libre’s landscape. However, that transformation is not yet perceptible to many actors involved in the palm production system (García Romero & Muñoz, 2002). Therefore the landscape, such as it is perceived by the populace, represents a good, or an element destined to satisfy a necessity (Zubelzu Mínguez & Allende Álvarez, 2014), and amenable to being transformed as many times as the domestic units might require.

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Fig. 17.9  A site belonging to Sr. Fernando, in the ejido América Libre. (Source: JET’s archives (2019))

Capital(s) From their subjectivity, domestic households see themselves as units that have a great deal of human capital, based upon the experiences that they accumulated during the productive processes for palm, livestock-raising, and agriculture. In addition, the families consider that they possess an important physical capital in the machinery that they have accumulated and used during agricultural activities since arriving in the zone. They consider, too, that they will continue to have little capacity for negotiating better prices from oil-extracting companies. Nor do they see themselves as being able to commit to obtaining the large loans needed to install their own processing plant, due to the families’ scant capacity to organize themselves to work together. The domestic units do believe that they have strong financial capital because they interpret the aforementioned 15-day delay between delivery of fresh fruit and reception of payment as a way in which they are financing the extraction company. However, in this chapter that delay is interpreted not as a strength, in terms of financial capital, but more realistically as a sign that the producers’ social capital is too weak for them to negotiate a prompt payment.

17.8  Final Considerations The results and its implications presented up to this point allow one to conclude that, due to the differences in capacities and capital that produce power asymmetries in the governance of the African palm production system in Zamora and

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Benemérito, coordination and control are determined principally by the government/business group and the group of LAGs. The domestic group’s participation is subordinate. Governance in that system is exercised by different means. The government uses financing, while businesses use provision of raw material, control of credit, and technical assistance. The LAGs exercise governance through compliance with socio-environmental norms. The domestic groups, given their limited social capital, have little leverage in the governance system. Consequently, the full weight of the system of norms and rules falls directly upon them, to the detriment of their incomes. However, that weight does not fall upon all families equally—the families’ respective scales of production matter. Producers consider 10 ha as the minimum area for profitable cultivation of palm. However, palm production on any scale represents a high percentage of the families’ incomes. From their subjectivity, domestic groups interpret the governance system as being designed so that the business group controls the process. According to that interpretation, the businesses’ control of the process enables them to comply with the RSPO’s international norms and rules, to direct the system of credit, and to increase the businesses’ income at the expense of the producers. Acting upon their interpretation, some domestic units have begun the process of returning to activities that they carried out before raising palm. That process will continue to transform the territory’s landscape. The producing families’ perception that they are excluded from defining and exercising governance causes them to say that respect and honesty should prevail in the interactions among actors in the palm-producing system. According to these families, their incomes from palm should be spent primarily to satisfy non-material needs such as health and education rather than upon material goods. The experiences and abilities that many of the current producers have accumulated since migrating to the two municipalities enable them to have sufficient human, physical, and financial capital should the palm-producing system no longer meet their needs and should the families have to return to agriculture and livestock-raising. Acknowledgements  This work was carried out as part of Enrique de Jesús Trejo Sánchez’s postdoctoral scholarship at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal Unit. It was financed by the National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT) with grant number 2019-000006-­01NACV-00259 for the period August 2019 to July 2020. This manuscript benefited from the constructive criticism of two anonymous reviewers.

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Chapter 18

Community Responses to Historical Land Degradation: Lessons from São Luiz do Paraitinga, Brazil Alice Ramos de Moraes and Camila Alvez Islas

Abstract  São Luiz do Paraitinga is socially and environmentally similar to many other municipalities in the Upper Paraíba River Valley, southeast Brazil. With numerous hills and valleys, it is embedded in the Atlantic Forest biome and maintains a significant cultural ensemble. Colonization and territorial occupation in São Luiz do Paraitinga and the Valley led to deforestation and shaped the landscape, and two centuries of poor land management eroded both the social and natural capitals in the territory. The consequences were rural out-migration, biodiversity loss, strong hopelessness regarding rural livelihoods, and the greatest flooding in the downtown area of the municipality, in 2010. We used a Social-Ecological Systems (SES) perspective as a multidisciplinary-transdisciplinary approach to identify and analyze community initiatives that self-organized as a response to social and environmental degradation, and also to identify the main public policies that currently support these initiatives. Data collection (between 2013 and 2019) included interviews with key stakeholders and direct and participant observations of technical and community meetings, as well as community activities, and data were analyzed with a qualitative approach. Three self-organized community initiatives emerged locally in the last decade: (i) Village community; (ii) Akarui, a non-profit local organization; and (iii) REDESUAPA network. Such initiatives comprise the restoration of native forests, stimuli for the adoption of sustainable farming practices, strengthening local production chains, and social valuation of rural livelihoods. A set of recent public policies—some of them specifically targeting rural areas and the SES under study— have supported these initiatives, by creating conditions for them to develop their activities and apply for public funding, for instance. Overall, the initiatives impact the territory in different levels (local–regional) and have strong potential to change the trajectory of social and environmental degradation of the SES. However, social policies in favor of local smallholder production and rural ­livelihoods are still fragile, and the initiatives still face difficulties to maintain themselves and/or scale-up. A. R. de Moraes (*) · C. A. Islas Programa de Pós Graduação em Ecologia, Institute of Biology and Ecosystem Ecology and Management Lab, NEPAM, University of Campinas - UNICAMP, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_18

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Keywords  Social-ecological systems · Local-level community initiatives · Community self-organization · Rural areas · Public policies · Community responses

18.1  Introduction Rural areas, here understood as spaces with abundant land and natural resources and small patches of urban infrastructure (Wiggins & Proctor, 2001), are live portraits of human action. In these areas, voluntary and directional modification of the landscape and local ecosystems is engraved over time and may be therefore interpreted. Human choices of land use and the respective management practices embraced—or neglected—are not out of context or random. They result from the combination of individual motivations, perceptions, and beliefs (Meyfroidt, 2013) with different settings of social, cultural, economic, ecological, and climatic variables that influence people in various ways. The Paraíba Valley is a region with historical prominence in southeast Brazil. It connects the two largest metropolitan areas in the country, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and is part of the Paraíba do Sul watershed, which comprises 180 municipalities in three states (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais). Although streamflow of the Paraíba do Sul has been decreasing since the 1920s (Marengo & Alves, 2005), approximately 14 million people depend on its water for drinking, agriculture, hydropower, and depuration of effluents nowadays (AGEVAP, 2006; BRASIL, 2019). Currently, 71% of the area of the Paraíba Valley of São Paulo state is comprised by rural properties (Silva, Rodrigues, Vieira, Batistella, & Farinaci, 2017); 51% is covered by pasturelands and 32% is covered by remnants or recovering native forests (Silva, Batistella, & Moran, 2016). The Valley is embedded in the Atlantic forest biome, a biodiversity hotspot (Myers, Mittermeier, Mittermeier, da Fonseca, & Kent, 2000). Deforestation at unprecedented rates in the last century (Cardim, 2018) reduced this biome to less than a third of its original cover in Brazil (Rezende et al., 2018). The Paraíba Valley has a long history of intensive land use guided by socioeconomic drivers which, in turn, were supported by public policies of development (Dean, 1996; Monteiro, 2012). Since the colonization by Europeans, such policies endorsed the unrestricted removal of the original vegetation and the replacement of native ecosystems by crops and other human activities, therefore shaping the landscape and having profound influence on current social and ecological aspects (Monteiro, 2012; Teixeira, Soares-Filho, Freitas, & Metzger, 2009). Since the nineteenth century, the region witnessed different economic cycles based on agricultural production. Coffee plantations accounted for a relevant part of the region’s revenue (1800s–1930) (Santos, 2008) and turned the Paraíba Valley into a nation-

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ally prominent area. However, soils are naturally prone to erosion mainly because of the hilly landscape (Akarui, 2017)—referred to as “sea of hills” by a eminent Brazilian geographer (Ab’Sáber, 2003). Therefore, the intensive use of soil for over one century, with minimal or nonexistent management practices to avoid erosion and soil impoverishment, led to soil degradation (Akarui, 2017; Monteiro, 2012). Extensive cattle ranching, which took over the territory after the crash of coffee and still persists, reinforced this trend (Monteiro, 2012). From 1940 to 1980, the Brazilian Federal government adopted different policies to foster industrialization (Brito, 2006) and the modernization of large-scale and export-oriented agriculture (Freitas, 2008), leading to significant rural out-­migration (Silva et al., 2016). Concomitantly, after its peak during the 1970s, cattle ranching has become an arduous and unprofitable activity (Monteiro, 2012). The declining economy, plus the difficulty in maintaining workers on the farms and the major industrialization process in the neighboring urban areas, converged to increase rural out-migration. In 1950, for instance, 55% of the total population of the Paraíba Valley lived on rural areas; 60 years later, this number decreased to less than 6% (Silva et al., 2016). Nevertheless, such a gloomy scenario made way for transformations on the landscape: land abandonment on rural areas enabled a process of forest transition and native forests began to regrow and expand on the Valley as a whole (Farinaci, 2012; Silva et al., 2016; Silva et al., 2017). As a result from the national industrialization policies, some municipalities currently host industries that play a strategic role in the national scenery—however, most of the smaller municipalities have kept their rural character and are characterized by scarce opportunities for development (São Paulo, 2011). São Luiz do Paraitinga, in São Paulo state, is an example of the latter category. Environmental degradation involving high soil compaction, erosion, and lack of native forest cover contributed to a long and silent process of siltation of water courses (Akarui, 2017; Monteiro, 2012). All these factors contributed to the greatest natural disaster of the history of this municipality, in the beginning of 2010. After a period of abnormally high precipitation upstream, the Paraitinga river rose 11 m above its regular level and flooded the entire downtown area of the municipality. Many historical buildings were damaged by the water and some of them collapsed completely. Still, in a remarkable self-organization effort (Moraes, 2019), there were no victims and the community managed to rescue everybody. This event got national attention, and several sorts of donations and efforts from the state government towards the reconstruction of the municipality were undertaken. Additionally, the flood of 2010 triggered several multi-level environmental initiatives (which can also be framed as community responses to social and environmental conditions) targeting the recovery of rural areas, and different stakeholders have been dedicated to foster sustainable land use practices locally since then. Our objective was to analyze if and how the communities of São Luiz do Paraitinga, São Paulo state, Brazil, have been responding to the environmental and socioeconomic degradation of its rural areas. Specifically, we aimed at (i) analyzing self-organized community initiatives taking place at the local level in the last decade that seek to improve environmental aspects (e.g., forest cover, water availability,

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food production, soil protection) and rural livelihoods, and (ii) assessing if and how recent public policies contribute to/support these initiatives. We highlight that the community self-organized initiatives are here understood as the ones which emerged in response to the historical context of degradation of land and livelihoods. The policies and programs addressed here refer to those which are part of the “institutional structure” supporting these initiatives.

18.2  Theoretical Approach The theoretical approach used in this chapter is the Social-Ecological Systems (SES) (Berkes & Folke, 1998) perspective, which postulates that human societies are part of nature and, consequently, ecological and social variables are deeply interconnected. Some variables change fast, e.g., community income, crop production, access to resources, while others change more slowly, e.g., infrastructure, soil fertility, values, culture. In general terms, these variables are directly or indirectly influenced by one another and by external drivers as well (Chapin, Folke, & Kofinas, 2009; Walker, Carpenter, Rockstrom, Crépin, & Peterson, 2012). Rainfall patterns, climate dynamics, global markets, programs, and policies, for instance, are examples of external drivers (according to the level of analysis—local, regional, national, etc.). Although these variables originate at higher levels, they propagate downward and affect local social-ecological dynamics. In this sense, programs and public policies are examples of social “inputs” that trigger responses from the community and community members, which, in turn, affect the environment. One way of responding to these social inputs is through self-organization, which is an emergent property of SES.  Self-organization relates to the capacity of the system to structure itself, reorganize and diversify without a central command; along with adaptive capacity, it confers resilience to the SES (Folke, 2006, 2016; Folke et  al., 2002; Moore et al., 2014; Olsson, Galaz, & Boonstra, 2014). SES may self-organize (or not) in response to drivers and changes in its conditions and variables. Still, it is hard to predict their behavior, as SES are complex adaptive systems—meaning that they display features such as emergence, nonlinearity, thresholds, and uncertainties (Biggs, Schlüter, & Schoon, 2015). More than just adding a social component to the analysis of environmental issues (or the other way around), the social-ecological perspective enables deeper integration between approaches and disciplines, which are in turn necessary to face current complex socio-environmental challenges. In this regard, the SES research offers opportunities for transcending the boundaries of traditional disciplines and therefore it moves along a multidisciplinary-­ transdisciplinary continuum lens (see Choi & Pak, 2006).

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18.3  Methods 18.3.1  Study Area São Luiz do Paraitinga is a small (10,000 inhabitants) (IBGE, 2010) rural municipality in the Paraíba Valley, state of São Paulo, southeast Brazil (Fig.  18.1). “Paraitinga” is the indigenous name of the river that forms the larger Paraíba do Sul river. Even though the landscape is mostly unsuitable for mechanized agriculture and livestock (Akarui, 2017), the local economy is agriculture-based. Farming, especially small-scale cattle ranching, is the main activity in the municipality—72.3% of the rural properties have less than 50  ha (São Paulo, 2008). Approximately 38% of the territory of São Luiz do Paraitinga is currently covered by remnants or recovered native forest (Farinaci, 2012) and the Serra do Mar

Fig. 18.1  The municipality of São Luiz do Paraitinga is located in the Paraíba Valley (dark grey area) in São Paulo state, Brazil. (Source: Elaborated by the authors)

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State Park—a strictly protected area established in 1989—encompasses 10% of this share (Villani, 2007). The current Human Development Index (HDI) value is intermediate (IBGE, 2010). This small municipality has remarkable cultural heritage keeping both material (e.g., historical buildings and monuments) and immaterial (e.g., folk festivities, dances, foods) culture alive (Farinaci, 2012; Santos, 2008, 2015). The caipira way of life, a traditional rural livelihood that entails typical tales, music, foods, dancing, living close to nature and a simple life, is part of this cultural ensemble. However, rural livelihoods are endangered by urbanization and rural out-migration (Monteiro, 2012). Moreover, the misconception that the caipira way of life is a synonym for poverty and underdevelopment has gained space for decades. In spite of its history of land degradation and marginalization of rural communities, São Luiz do Paraitinga is a vibrant place both culturally and environmentally: local traditional culture is kept alive by its inhabitants (Santos, 2008, 2015) and multi-level initiatives targeting the recovery and social valuation of environmental, cultural, and economic dimensions of rural areas have been fostered in the last decade (Akarui, 2017).

18.3.2  Data Collection and Analysis We carried out participatory research in the municipality of São Luiz do Paraitinga and surroundings for 6 years (Islas, 2019; Moraes, 2019) and collected data through different quantitative and qualitative methods. Our first interaction with inhabitants of this municipality was in 2013  in an outreach project at the rural district of Catuçaba. In parallel with this project, we began to conduct direct observations and to build our informants’ network. From 2015 to 2019, we have dedicated to understanding how historical social-environmental drivers have locally and regionally shaped the landscapes, affected ecosystem services and wildlife diversity, and how rural communities have been responding. Data on ongoing community initiatives and public policies were gathered through semi-structured interviews (n  =  10) with key stakeholders, as well as direct and participant observation of (i) technical and community meetings with different stakeholders (e.g., community members, farmers, technicians, government staff) (n = 31) and (ii) daily activities and events in the community. We selected the local community responses that were self-organized. Data regarding the responses were qualitative and were analyzed through four steps: transcription, codification, organization, and categorization (Bernard, 2006). All data were validated by triangulation, when three or more evidences are needed to validate each piece of information (e.g., interviews, literature). To describe and analyze the selected responses, we encompassed three items: (i) overview: main characteristics, members involved, how and when it came up (in response to what), how its actions take place in the territory; (ii) scope: the objectives, approach, and dimensions encompassed

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(­ environmental, economic, social, cultural); (iii) actions and outcomes: examples of actions taken by the initiatives and results achieved.

18.4  Results and Discussion 18.4.1  Self-Organized Community Responses We identified three self-organized community responses taking place in the territory; all of them connecting nature conservation with social valuation of rural livelihoods. The trajectory of landscape change and the different policies and programs recently implemented (over the last decade) led to the emergence of local multi-­ level community responses that address the recovery of the rural territory as a whole, taking into account environmental, cultural, social, and economic dimensions. We analyzed the following responses: (1) the Village community of Catuçaba district; (2) the local organization Akarui; and (3) The Upper Paraíba River Sustainable Development Network (REDESUAPA for its acronym in Portuguese). All three responses are consequences of a series of events and common drivers and complement one another in relation to the level where they take place (Fig. 18.2, Table 18.1). These initiatives have been impacting the territory in different levels (from local to regional) and have the potential to actually change the trajectory that

Fig. 18.2  Events and drivers connected to environmental degradation, erosion of traditional rural livelihoods, and the emergence of community responses (i.e., Akarui, REDESUAPA, Village community) in São Luiz do Paraitinga municipality, São Paulo State, Brazil. Such drivers and events take place at different levels (local–regional) through time. (Source: Elaborated by the authors)

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Table 18.1  Overview of the main characteristics of the three self-organized community responses taking place in São Luiz do Paraitinga, southeast Brazil, in face of land and sociocultural degradation (source: the authors)

Level of action Objective(s)

Stakeholders directly involved

Village Community Akarui Local Municipal (rural community) (São Luiz do Paraitinga) To restore and socially value local rural culture and traditions Community members

Primary focus Sociocultural dimension

REDESUAPA Regional (São Luiz do Paraitinga and neighboring municipalities) To reconcile soil conservation To improve local and native forest restoration environmental quality with income generation for and socially value local smallholders rural culture Government staff from state and Technicians local administration (from (environmental, agriculture and education environmental and agriculture agencies, protected area expertise), researchers, lay community members managers), researchers, Akarui members Integration of environmental Integration of and rural production environmental and cultural dimensions

this social-ecological system has undergone so far. Overview of the initiatives is presented in Table  18.1; scope, actions and outcomes are presented in the section below. 18.4.1.1  Scope, Actions, and Outcomes The Village Community of Catuçaba District: Rural Livelihoods on the Spotlight The Village community started in 2014, as a result from an outreach project focusing on integrating environmental conservation and local development. The project, called “Learning communities on integrated conservation and development initiatives” was developed by a research group from the University of Campinas (Unicamp) at Catuçaba, a rural district from São Luiz do Paraitinga municipality between 2012 and 2015 (Islas, Moraes, Farinaci, & Seixas, 2017; Seixas et  al., 2013, 2014). The Village community emerged from a lack of local socioeconomic instruments (incentives) and propositions to foster and strengthen rural livelihoods and local culture. The perception that rural livelihoods were being eroded for decades already motivated the participants of the outreach project. Seeking to change this undesirable trajectory, community members self-organized and established a routine of informal but organized meetings. First, they focused on reviving local cultural festivities: they resumed the organization of religious celebrations that used to be locally traditional in the past, such as St. Peter’s and St. Benedict’s celebrations.

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They also embraced specific initiatives towards the environment, such as a waterfall cleanup with children from the community and tree planting along the local river. With time, they started addressing a wider range of daily issues and community challenges. For example, the problems they faced when trucks loaded with eucalyptus from nearby plantations of a multinational paper and cellulose company repeatedly crossed the village, damaging homes and roads and disturbing villagers at night. With the support from a network of friends and external collaborators, the Village community created the opportunities to be heard by the company’s representatives by contacting the agency responsible for the company’s certification process. Village community members prioritize local culture, as they understand culture is the main driver for transformative change in the everyday rural life. Still, they understand that cultural, social, and environmental challenges are not disconnected. In many opportunities, they encouraged local artisans and cooks to exhibit and sell their art and typical dishes during the festivities they would organize and plan other initiatives with the clear intention to socially value rural livelihoods. One of the most significant efforts in this sense is the village street market, that was established on April 2017 and is still ongoing. The street market takes place once a week and was created to support local smallholder production, focusing on crafts and also on produce and other food items (e.g., marmalades and jams, cheese, bread, and cachaça, a typical Brazilian alcoholic beverage). By creating space and visibility for local production, they create opportunities for local economy to diversify, generate income for smallholders and other community members and socially value the traditional knowledge involved. Besides, the village street market is a space for community members to be together and to strengthen social relations among them. However, lack of leadership and fluctuations on individual motivation to participate due to internal conflicts are challenges that currently threaten the continuity of the initiative. While economic instruments for ecosystem service conservation and restoration have been allocated for environmental projects in the last few years, specific incentives towards strengthening rural livelihoods still lack. Nevertheless, Akarui and REDESUAPA include this dimension in their projects and acknowledge the importance of addressing social, cultural, and environmental issues concomitantly. The Organization “Akarui,” a Local Non-Profit Organization Longstanding land and sociocultural degradation in the regional context of rural areas motivated a group of local inhabitants of São Luiz do Paraitinga to organize and establish a non-profit association of public interest (in Portuguese, organização da sociedade civil de interesse público—OSCIP) named “Akarui.” Since its foundation in 2003, Akarui has been promoting change in the territory mainly through the implementation of projects structured on at least one of the following themes: education, community organization, and local production. The focus is environmental conservation and local development through community participation and sustainable use of natural resources. The effects of their actions range mainly from local

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(property, neighborhood, and watershed) to municipal level. They partner with a variety of stakeholders, from government agencies, research groups from universities, NGOs, and local community associations to residents of the rural areas. Its members believe that in a rural municipality such as São Luiz do Paraitinga (and its surroundings), agroecology is a powerful means to transform the territory. From the perspective of rural sustainable development, the adoption of more sustainable farming practices can foster soil self-renewal in terms of fertility, prevent or mitigate soil loss due to erosion, and allow for biodiversity to co-exist with cultivated species. In addition, it can improve individual and collective well-being by exploring the intrinsic potential of the territory, fostering the consumption of high-­ quality locally grown food and stimulating local production chains, raising awareness of the importance of local small-scale agriculture and food production systems and valuing the local knowledge held by smallholders and local culture. Building on the expertise of their own members, Akarui elaborates and implements projects in the rural areas addressing issues such as: the restoration of local populations of key endangered tree species (such as the heart-of-palm Euterpe edulis); the recovery of native forest in rural properties through different techniques to avoid erosion and siltation of streams and rivers, and to improve water quality and availability; the analysis of ecological and socioeconomic aspects of the territory to provide basic information for future research or interventions. Funding is provided by state or federal agencies—such as the State Fund for Water Resources (Fehidro) and the National Bank for Social Development (BNDES)—via public calls. They also play an important role regarding community organization and empowerment. For example, they supported a group of smallholders to establish a street market of locally grown and agroecological produce in 2015 and negotiated the use of public space for the market with the municipal government. Between 2017 and 2018, they facilitated the organization of a local association of organic small-scale farmers. Although some local residents have personal divergences with one or another member of Akarui, the local community as a whole acknowledges their expertise, relevance, and leadership. The organization is frequently sought for technical assistance in rural properties and was declared of public utility by the municipal government in 2015. Akarui holds a systems view of the territory, which connects the sustainable use of natural resources, income generation for local smallholders, participation of local stakeholders in planning and decision-making processes—including the design of public policies—and the importance of rural livelihoods and the caipira way of life. They publicly acknowledge local rural inhabitants—especially smallholders—as their partners, as they are essential for the projects to be implemented and for change to take place. They organize workshops and public events to celebrate their actions and the results achieved in the territory. Currently, they have been implementing since 2016 an ambitious environmental education project encompassing the Paraitinga river and its importance for the local community. The project was co-­ designed with staff from the municipal secretary of education and approximately 30 teachers from the municipal schools. Additionally, they are relevant members of REDESUAPA (please see below).

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The Upper Paraíba River Network “REDESUAPA,” a Multi-Level Bridging Organization REDESUAPA was initially organized as a working group in response to the major flood that took place in São Luiz do Paraitinga in the beginning of 2010—which, in turn, has been recognized as a consequence of land degradation due to historical use and management. During the post-disaster phase, several working groups were created to support the complex reconstruction of material and immaterial assets of the municipality. These groups were harbored in the CERESTA (Center for the Sustainable Reconstruction of São Luiz do Paraitinga), a space created and kept by the municipal government until 2013, when the administration changed. One of those working groups had the challenging task of designing strategies to avoid future natural disasters alike, and gathered experts from the state and municipal government, local leaders (including Akarui members), staff from a regional environmental NGO, and researchers from the University of Taubaté (UNITAU). This group has been dedicated to designing and implementing projects targeting the rural areas of the municipality and surroundings, in order to reconcile soil conservation and native forest restoration with income generation for smallholders. Similar to Akarui, REDESUAPA’s projects fostered the restoration of riparian forests (10 ha restored since 2012), the conversion of degraded areas (usually abandoned or heavily grazed pastures) and extensive cattle ranching into agroforests and silvopastoral systems (08 “experimental plots” each in 14 rural properties), and provides learning and knowledge exchange opportunities for smallholders. They occasionally organize a “day in the field,” where smallholders and experts have the opportunity to visit a chosen rural property in order to learn together and improve management techniques. REDESUAPA also has a systems view of the territory—influenced by Akarui, whose members play a key role in this network. Although the primary objectives of REDESUAPA refer to the recovery and conservation of natural resources, they understand that perennial effects on this matter can only be achieved if they embrace and address local culture and particular challenges of that community. They work to create synergies among different ongoing efforts in the territory and to influence public policies so that rural sustainable development is actually incorporated into municipal planning and decision-making processes. An example is the letter they wrote to the candidates running for mayor during the elections of 2016, where they stated the necessities and challenges to be addressed in the rural areas of the municipality. The members of REDESUAPA used to meet voluntarily approximately twice or three times a year. The name of the network was decided in 2015, after going through a facilitation process to re-discuss and re-align their objectives, shared values, and strategies for action. The current members differ from and are fewer than the original configuration although the key members (members of Akarui and of the now extinct Coordination of Biodiversity and Natural Resources, from the former State Secretary of the Environment) remain the same. Because of its own nature, REDESUAPA allows the flow of information between local and regional levels. The

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impacts of their actions transcend the municipality of São Luiz do Paraitinga and reach the regional level (i.e., the Paraíba Valley)—for instance, other environmental projects have been implemented in the Paraíba Valley because of the projects previously supported by the network. The last initiative by REDESUAPA involved the implementation and development of the project called “Recovery and protection of climate and biodiversity services in the Paraíba do Sul basin of the Atlantic Forest of Brazil,” funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) through the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The focus is on adapting rural properties close to protected areas to the environmental legislation, as well as implementing payment for environmental services schemes. The project started in 2016 and was expected to end in 2021. Considering its results so far and existing opportunities, it has been extended until 2023.

18.4.2  P  olicies and Incentives Supporting the Self-Organized Community Initiatives Here we focus on the main polices and incentives which we identified as having indirectly and directly influenced the three community initiatives analyzed. 18.4.2.1  P  olicies and Programs Indirectly Supporting the Community Initiatives Under this category, we identified an institutional framework underpinning the actions and outcomes of the community initiatives analyzed. This institutional framework is mainly composed by legal instruments from the federal government, namely (i) The Brazilian Forest Act, (ii) The Atlantic Forest Act, (iii) The National Politics for the Recovery of Native Vegetation (PROVEG), as well as international agreements such as (iv) Paris Agreement, (v) the Bonn Challenge, and (vi) Initiative 20×20. While the federal instruments (i, ii, iii) were responsible for setting a background in favor of conservation strategies, the Brazilian government committed to restore and recover 12 million hectares of native forests by 2030, besides implementing 5 million hectares of agroforests and/or silvopastoral (forest and livestock) systems by 2030 and restoring 5 million hectares of degraded areas by 2020 in the context of these international agreements (iv, v, vi) (WRI, 2019). All these policies and programs guide restoration efforts in the SES not only by the community initiatives analyzed, but also by other stakeholders. The first Brazilian Forest Act dated from 1965 (Law n. 4.771/1965) and established guidelines for the protection of native vegetation in all biomes. After longstanding pressures from the agribusiness sectors and clashes with environmentalists, a New Forest Act was promulgated in 2012. Although somewhat controversial, one innovative aspect was the Rural Environmental Register (cadastro ambiental rural).

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This instrument defines that the register of the main land uses and cover of the rural properties is mandatory, in the attempt to build a historical record to monitor changes. It is also worth mentioning the Atlantic Forest Act (law n.11.428/2006), from 2006, that established guidelines for the use and conservation of forests in this respective biome, and the National Politics for the Recovery of Native Vegetation (Federal decree n. 8.972, from 2017). 18.4.2.2  P  olicies and Programs Directly Supporting the Community Initiatives Under this category, we identified legal instruments from different institutional levels, namely: (i) the National Plan for the Recovery of Native Vegetation (PLANAVEG) (BRASIL, 2017), (ii) the National Program for School Feeding (PNAE), (iii) two resolutions from the state government establishing priority areas for restoration efforts, and (iv) the project called “Recovery and protection of climate and biodiversity services in the Paraíba do Sul basin of the Atlantic Forest of Brazil.” The 2010 flood triggered initiatives from the state government, which has been working to create an institutional environment that is favorable for forest restoration in the rural areas ever since. Staff from the former State Secretary of the Environment1 drew institutional attention to the situation of regional environmental degradation and favored the local implementation of projects to protect and restore water resources and payment for environmental services schemes, for instance. These did not succeed much, though. Additionally, legal instruments were designed to establish priority areas for forest conservation and restoration efforts. The legal resolution SMA/SSRH 001 from 2014, for instance, included the Chapéu river watershed in São Luiz do Paraitinga as a priority area for the restoration of riparian forests. The resolution SMA 07 from 2017, in turn, established the municipality of São Luiz do Paraitinga as high priority for native forest restoration efforts (Akarui, 2017). Both resolutions directly influenced the actions and projects implemented by Akarui and REDESUAPA targeting the recovery of rural areas through forest restoration and protection of water springs on the pastures. They also paved the way for the implementation of the project “Recovery and protection of climate and biodiversity services in the Paraíba do Sul basin of the Atlantic Forest of Brazil” in the SES, which was articulated by REDESUAPA members. Finally, as the National Plan for the Recovery of Native Vegetation strengthens the production chain of forest restoration, it therefore reinforces local restoration actions and projects led by Akarui and REDESUAPA.  Likewise, the National Plan for School Feeding, together with the law n. 11.947/2009, define that 30% of the total amount received by state and municipal administrations need to be invested in purchasing agricultural goods directly from smallholders, and priority must be given to organic and 1  On January 1st, 2019 (Decree number 64.059), the government of São Paulo state merged the Secretary of the Environment with two others (Sanitation and Water Resources; Energy and Mining), creating the Secretary of Infrastructure and the Environment.

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agroecological produce. This resolution directly supports Akarui’s projects and actions that aim at fostering the adoption of agroecological and organic production by local smallholders.

18.4.3  Current and Future Challenges The community responses presented are complementary to one another and may actually lead to the implementation of alternative social-ecological development trajectories. However, as expected, there are important gaps that must be highlighted and addressed. The Village community and Akarui have yet a very local reach—and the Village community seems to be isolated from policies and programs that favor conservation strategies and strengthening of rural livelihoods. The areas of forest restoration and other environmental projects are few and sparse on the territory. Both initiatives constantly struggle financially, and there are no incentives from the municipality to foster community initiatives in favor of local culture. There are also few opportunities in this context to support Akarui’s projects, and they have to seek funding elsewhere. REDESUAPA, on the other hand, operates with proper funding. However, recent political-institutional changes in the state government have relocated employees who are key for the network, and this causes uncertainties in relation to future possibilities of action. All initiatives can be considered to be in the initial stages of development and are struggling to maintain themselves and/or scale-up.

18.5  Concluding Remarks In this chapter, we focused on a municipality from the Paraíba Valley, a region in southeast Brazil with historical and current prominence nationally. This region has a legacy of intensive land use with poor management in the rural areas, which reflects on current issues for instance regarding water provisioning, and also on the erosion of local rural livelihoods. Specifically, we presented the case of São Luiz do Paraitinga municipality. We used an SES perspective as a multidisciplinary-­ transdisciplinary approach to identify and analyze three community initiatives that self-organized as a response to social and environmental degradation, and also to identify the main public policies that currently support these initiatives. All three community responses presented here depict the different strategies that the local community has been using to cope with and adapt to (and maybe transform) the current reality of social-ecological degradation in  local rural areas. Even though some governmental policies provide them institutional support, all of them emerged in response to scarcity to solve local problems. This is a general picture observed at the regional level; however, such responses were brought up and are being nurtured in the small São Luiz do Paraitinga. Each one has its own characteristics, scope, and

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struggles, and all have been disturbing the current state of the social-ecological system, within their capacity. The flood of 2010 was important to increase the attention from the state government to local environmental degradation and its consequences, and more projects have been implemented since. However, social policies to favor local smallholder production and therefore strengthen rural livelihoods are still fragile. This scenario highlights the necessity for more support—for instance, other initiatives or even the municipal administration may partner and strengthen one another. As it was demonstrated in the case of the reconstruction after the flood (Moradei, 2016; Santos, 2015), we understand that local culture is a powerful driving force to redesign rural landscapes and change the undesirable trajectory towards a reality where nature conservation and social valuation of rural livelihoods go hand in hand.

References Ab’Sáber, A. N. (2003). Os domínios de natureza no Brasil: potencialidades paisagísticas (Vol. 1). São Paulo: Ateliê Editorial. AGEVAP (Associação Pró-Gestão das Águas da Bacia Hidrográfica do Rio Paraíba do Sul). (2006). Plano de Recursos Hídricos da Bacia do Rio Paraíba do Sul—Resumo. Diagnóstico dos Recursos Hídricos—Relatório Final. Fundação COPPETEC, Laboratório de Hidrologia e Estudos de Meio Ambiente. Akarui. (2017). Subsídios para um plano de restauração florestal da bacia do Chapéu, São Luiz do Paraitinga. São Luiz do Paraitinga: Akaraui. 58 pp. Berkes, F., & Folke, C. (1998). Linking social and ecological systems for resilience and sustainability. In F. Berkes & F. Folke (Eds.), Linking social and ecological systems: Management practices and social mechanisms for building resilience (pp.  1–25). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bernard, H. R. (2006). Research methods in anthropology: Qualitative and quantitative approaches (4th ed.). New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Biggs, R., Schlüter, M., & Schoon, M. (2015). An introduction to the resilience approach and principles to sustain ecosystem services in social-ecological systems. In R. Biggs, M. Schlüter, & M. Schoon (Eds.), Principles for building resilience: sustaining ecosystem services in social-­ ecological systems (pp. 1–31). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BRASIL (Agência Nacional de Águas) (ANA). (2019). Paraíba do Sul (Saiba Mais). Retrieved April 11, 2019, from http://www3.ana.gov.br/portal/ANA/sala-de-situacao/paraiba-do-sul/ paraiba-do-sul-saiba-mais. BRASIL (Ministério do Meio Ambiente) (MMA). (2017). Planaveg: Plano Nacional de Recuperação da Vegetação Nativa / Ministério do Meio Ambiente, Ministério da gricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento, Ministério da Educação, 73. Brasília: MMA. Brito, F. (2006). O deslocamento da população brasileira para as metrópoles. Estudos Avançados, 20, 221–236. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0103-40142006000200017 Cardim, R. (2018). Remanescentes da Mata Atlântica: as grandes árvores da floresta original e seus vestígios. São Paulo: Olhares. Chapin, F.  S., Folke, C., & Kofinas, G.  P. (2009). A framework for understanding change. In C.  Folke, G.  Kofinas, & F.  Chapin (Eds.), Principles of ecosystem stewardship (pp.  3–28). New York: Springer.

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Choi, B. C. K., & Pak, A. W. P. (2006). Multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in health research, services, education and policy: 1. Definitions, objectives, and evidence of effectiveness. Clinical and Investigative Medicine, 29(6), 351–364. Dean, W. (1996). A Ferro e Fogo: a história e a devastação da Mata Atlântica Brasileira (484 pp). São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Farinaci, J. S. (2012). As novas matas do estado de São Paulo: um estudo multiescalar sob a perspectiva da teoria da transição florestal. Doctoral Diss. Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas. Folke, C. (2006). Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for social–ecological systems analyses. Global Environmental Change, 16(3), 253–267. Folke, C. (2016). Resilience (republished). Ecology and Society, 21(4). Art. 44 Folke, C., Carpenter, S., Elmqvist, T., Gunderson, L., Holling, C.  S., & Walker, B. (2002). Resilience and sustainable development: Building adaptive capacity in a world of transformations. Ambio, 31(5), 437–440. Freitas, J.C. (2008). A Política Agrícola do Regime Militar de 1964: aspectos jurídicos,financeiros e socioeconômicos. Master Diss. UNIFOR/CCJ, Fortaleza. Retrieved June 5, 2017, from http:// www2.unifor.br/tede//tdebusca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=786431. IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística). (2010). IBGE Cidades. São Luís do Paraitinga. Retrieved February 10, 2017, from http://cidades.ibge.gov.br/v3/cidades/ municipio/3550001/pesquisa/37/2010. Islas, C., Moraes, A., Farinaci, J., & Seixas, C. (2017). São Luis do Paraitinga and Catuçaba, Brazil: From land degradation and disaster to community conservation and development. Halifax: Community Conservation Research Network. Retrieved December 17, 2017, from http://www.communityconservation.net/sao-luis-do-paraitinga-and-catucaba-brazil/. Islas, C. A. (2019). Factors influencing mammals assemblages in rural landscapes: contributions to management. Doctoral Diss. University of Campinas, Campinas. Retrieved November 1, 2019, from http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/335116. Marengo, J. A., & Alves, L. M. (2005). Hydrological tendencies in the Paraiba do Sul River Basin. Revista Brasileira de Meteorologia, 20(2), 215–226. Meyfroidt, P. (2013). Environmental cognitions, land change, and social–ecological feedbacks: An overview. Journal of Land Use Science, 8(3), 341–367. Monteiro, A.  R. A. (2012). Povoamento e Formação da Paisagem em São Luiz do Paraitinga. Doctoral Diss. Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas. Moore, M. L., Tjornbo, O., Enfors, E., Knapp, C., Hodbod, J., Baggio, J. A., et al. (2014). Studying the complexity of change: Toward an analytical framework for understanding deliberate social-­ ecological transformations. Ecology and Society, 19(4), 54. Moradei, N.  S. (2016). A Grande Enchente de São Luiz do Paraitinga—2010. Master Diss. Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo. Moraes, A. R. (2019). Ecosystem services in a hilly rural landscape: contributions for resiliencebased management. Doctoral Diss. University of Campinas, Campinas. Retrieved June 22, 2020. http://repositorio.unicamp.br/handle/REPOSIP/338484 Myers, N., Mittermeier, R.  A., Mittermeier, C.  G., da Fonseca, G.  A. B., & Kent, J. (2000). Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. Nature, 403, 854–858. Olsson, P., Galaz, V., & Boonstra, W. J. (2014). Sustainability transformations: A resilience perspective. Ecology and Society, 19(4), 1. Rezende, C.  L., Scarano, F.  R., Assad, E.  D., Joly, C.  A., Metzger, J.  P., Strassburg, B.  B. N., et  al. (2018). From hotspot to hopespot: An opportunity for the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation, 16(4), 208–214. Santos, J. R. C. C. (2008). A Festa do Divino de São Luiz do Paraitinga: desafio da cultura popular na contemporaneidade. Master Diss. Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo. Santos. J. R. C. C. (2015). A Cultura como Protagonista do Processo de Reconstrução de São Luiz do Paraitinga, SP. Tese de Doutorado, Universidade de São Paulo.

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São Paulo (Estado). (2008). Secretaria de Agricultura e Abastecimento. Coordenadoria de Assistência Técnica Integral. Instituto de Economia Agrícola. Levantamento censitário de unidades de produção agrícola do Estado de São Paulo—LUPA 2007/2008. São Paulo: SAA/ CATI/IEA. Retrieved January 10, 2017, from http://www.cati.sp.gov.br/projetolupa. São Paulo (Estado). (2011). Subsídios ao planejamento ambiental da unidade hidrográfica de gerenciamento de recursos hídricos Paraíba do Sul: UGRHI 02. SMA, São Paulo. Digital version. Seixas, C.S., Farinaci, J. S., Bahia, N.C.F., de Araujo, L.G., Prado, D.S., Dias, A.C.E., et al. (2013). Annual Report of the outreach project Núcleos de aprendizagem comunitária em conservação e desenvolvimento integrados (Learning communities on integrating conservation and development)—Year I. Unpublished Report. UNICAMP, Campinas. Seixas, C.S., Farinaci, J. S., Bahia, N.C.F., de Araujo, L.G., Prado, D.S., Dias, A.C.E., et al. (2014). Annual Report of the outreach project Núcleos de aprendizagem comunitária em conservação e desenvolvimento integrados—(Learning communities on integrating conservation and development)—Year II. Unpublished Report. UNICAMP, Campinas. Silva, R. F. B., Batistella, M., & Moran, E. (2016). Drivers of land change: Human-environment interactions and the Atlantic forest transition in the Paraíba Valley, Brazil. Land Use Policy, 58, 133–144. Silva, R. F. B., Rodrigues, M. D. A., Vieira, S. A., Batistella, M., & Farinaci, J. (2017). Perspectives for environmental conservation and ecosystem services on coupled rural–urban systems. Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation, 15(2), 74–81. Teixeira, A. M. G., Soares-Filho, B. S., Freitas, S. R., & Metzger, J. P. (2009). Modeling landscape dynamics in an Atlantic Rainforest region: Implications for conservation. Forest Ecology and Management, 257, 1219–1230. Villani, J. P. (2007). Zona de Amortecimento do Parque Estadual da Serra do Mar—Núcleo Santa Virgínia: subsídio ao manejo sustentável dos fragmentos de mata atlântica. Master Diss. Universidade de Taubaté, Taubaté. Walker, B., Carpenter, S., Rockstrom, J., Crépin, A. S., & Peterson, G. (2012). Drivers, slow variables, fast variables, shocks, and resilience. Ecology and Society, 17(3), 30. Wiggins, S., & Proctor, S. (2001). How special are rural areas? The economic implications of location for rural development. Development Policy Review, 19(4), 427–436. WRI BRASIL (World Resources Institute). (2019). Você sabe o que é Planaveg? Conheça o plano do Brasil para restaurar 12 milhões de hectares. Retrieved November 1, 2019, from https://wribrasil.org.br/pt/blog/2019/05/voce-sabe-o-que-e-planaveg-conheca-o-plano-do-brasil-pararestaurar-12-milhoes-de-hectares.

Chapter 19

Effects of Public Agricultural and Forestry Policies on the Livelihoods of Campesino Families in the Bolivian Amazon Pamela Cartagena and Carmelo Peralta

Abstract  In Bolivia, agricultural and forestry policies are more of redistributive nature, and it is difficult trying to understand the complexity of this type of production. In this respect, this chapter addresses agricultural and forestry public policies that operate in the Bolivian Amazon. In particular, we assessed how these policies affect campesinos’ livelihoods inhabiting the community of Trinchera. Our research used the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach as a multidisciplinary perspective as well as a qualitative scale to measure campesino families’ capitals. The results reveal that families possess a very high and high potential in natural and social capitals, whereas the human, physical and financial capitals are on a low and very low levels. Of five agricultural and forestry programs implemented in Trinchera, only two of them have a moderate contribution to the family capitals, and three of them have a low contribution. The human, financial and physical capitals have low values, which restricts the improvement of the families’ life strategies in the community. In order to achieve better livelihoods and quality of life, the community’s visions for the future are focused on achieving a very high and high level in their capitals supported by their natural capital. The community acknowledged that natural and social capitals are fundamental for the development of strategies and livelihoods of its families, and our study recorded that the programs currently implemented in the community do not contribute significantly in the improvement of their capitals. Consequently, we present a discussion indicating that achieving the community’s visions will depend not only on internal but also on external factors to the community.

P. Cartagena (*) Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado, La Paz, Bolivia e-mail: [email protected] C. Peralta National Unit for Development, Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado, La Paz, Bolivia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_19

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Keywords  Agricultural and forestry policies · Family agriculture · Public policies · Sustainable livelihoods · Bolivian Amazon

19.1  P  ublic Policies for the Agricultural and Forestry Sectors in Bolivia Currently, there are 861,668 agriculture and livestock productive units (unidades productivas agropecuarias, UPA) in Bolivia, of which 91.41% are small units with land surfaces smaller than 50 hectares (INE, 2015). In general terms, these units develop family agriculture, understood in its wider sense as “a way of organizing agriculture, livestock, forestry, fishing, aquaculture and grazing, which is managed and operated by a family, and it depends predominantly of family labor.” (Salcedo & Guzmán, 2014, p. 26). Several laws were promulgated in the last decade in favor of this type of production as follows: Law 338 declares that it is of national interest moving towards a sustainable family agriculture and establishes regulations for its promotion; Law 144 prioritizes national production of food and the transference of resources to producers through the sub-national governments; Law 3525 regulates and promotes agricultural and non-timber and forest production; and Law 300 establishes the vision and fundaments of comprehensive development in harmony and balance with Mother Earth to Live Well (con la Madre Tierra para Vivir Bien) (Gaceta Oficial de Bolivia, 2019). Therefore, derived from this set of laws, various programs and projects were implemented for the promotion of family agriculture; however, the sector continues to lag behind and experiences the lowest revenues in the country. A recent national study carried out in six regions of the country reveals that in Bolivia, the rural area continues excluded of the improvement of living standards and economic growth of the country. According to official figures, the per capita national income is of 3448 US Dollars/year, while per capita income in the Chaco regions and South Amazonia is only of 690 US Dollars/year and 1309 US Dollars/year, respectively (Salazar & Jimenez, 2018). Bolivia has a development model targeted at extracting natural resources which coexists with the model of traditional production. The first model is based on mining, natural gas extraction, selective logging, and deforestation to promote cattle and monoculture of oleaginous plants; whereas the second one is based on subsistence agriculture, livestock rearing, hunting, fishing, and gathering (Cartagena, 2018). The extractive model generates important visible economic resources in the national accounts and is considered having a high economic importance to the country. In contrast, the traditional family agriculture model generates economic, social, and environmental benefits yet to be quantified or made visible in the national accounts, with benefits to the country and the region. However, there is a kind of collision between these two predominant models which result in socio-­environmental and political conflicts that affect campesinos and indigenous people. While most

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socio-environmental conflicts are solved by the market, the political conflicts go through several processes of negotiation and agreements between social organizations and the government. On the other hand, there are public policies oriented to the promotion of both productive models, but these are not equal. For the agroindustry, these public ­policies are specific and favorable, while for the family agriculture these are of redistributive character and assistance oriented. Pérez and Cruz (2018) report that it is common that in Latin American countries, governments guarantee inputs, technology, investment, and market for the agroindustry sector, while for the campesinos who are out of this agribusiness dynamics, public policies are not comprehensive and lack of technical assistance, technological support, and marketing conditions. Notwithstanding Bolivia’s wealth of natural resources—similar to other countries in the region, and its political will, which in the last years considered overcoming the primary production model which it could not achieve, it is a peripheral country. Rojas (2009) indicates that to guarantee production and raw material export of commodities, the so-called peripheral countries still respond to economic and political pressures of the called “central countries.” This certainly is aligned to a globalized hierarchical system (i.e., the socio-environmental regime; see Parra Vázquez et al. Chap. 1, this volume) which determines that involved actors generate enabling conditions to the consolidation of the model. Within this system, peripheral countries’ governments are requested particularly to guarantee propitious legal and tax conditions, facilitate investments, and generate appropriate policies to the productive sectors. The boosting to the agroindustry production in the region increased in the 1990s; it responds to the necessity of eliminating poverty, especially rural poverty, which is a topic considered as one of the challenges of the Sustainable Development Goals. This is not a new topic, McKay (2019) indicates that in 2008, the World Bank in an annual report claimed that there are three ways out of rural poverty; (i) agriculture, (ii) the sale of labor, and (iii) migration. For that purpose, agriculture must be integrated to the agroindustry value chain. Therefore, it becomes apparent that it is not a question of overcoming poverty through simply any agriculture model, but through the agribusiness model, whose justification is that farmer incomes under entrepreneurial contract are significantly higher than the income of other types of farmers. The boosting to family agriculture, whose main goal is to achieve food security to the family, is recognized in a wide national legal framework. It has been almost 10 years of the demand of the social organizations to progress towards a law of food sovereignty and security resulting in specific public policies, carried out in times of neoliberal1 governments; and it is not until 2006 that the National Development Plan (Plan Nacional de Desarrollo) 2006–2010 includes the food security and sov1  We understand the term “neoliberal” a characteristic of neoliberalism, which according to Harvey (2006, p.  145): “Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices which proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, free markets and free trade.”

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ereignty topics as a priority to be addressed by the government (Dávalos, 2013). The issue has been included as a governmental priority in the Pillar 8 of the National Development Plan 2016–2020 to achieve food security with sovereignty, having as a goal the elimination of hunger, undernutrition, and malnutrition, as well as guaranteeing school supplementary feeding. Despite this positive picture for the family agriculture, the government lately opts for an agroindustry production, adopting a series of measures for consolidating it as follows: (i) setting a time extension for verification of the Economic Social Function (Función Económica Social) of the private land from 3 to 5  years; (ii) providing credits for agroindustry with resources of workers’ pension fund; (iii) political will to expand agricultural frontier from 3.8 to 8 millions of hectares legalizing deforestation; and (iv) an exceptional authorization to National Biosecurity Committee (Comité Nacional de Bioseguridad) to establish fast-track procedures for the assessment of HB4 soybean and intact soybean for the production of plant origin additives for biodiesel, all these being among the main examples. In this regard, Ormachea (2018) claims that in the 12 years of the current government administration, public policies were oriented to promote a major commodification of the countryside giving priority to the production of large, medium, and small-scale capitalist producers; expanding new crops highly mechanized (soybean, sorghum, sesame, hard yellow corn, among others), whereas some stages of other traditional crops such as sugar cane and rice, have been modernized with negative effects on the magnitudes and characteristics of traditional agricultural wage employment. This research focuses on the case of small-scale producers of the community Trinchera in the North Amazon of Bolivia and analyzes how the public policies through agricultural and forestry programs have an impact on the livelihoods of campesino families. The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) of multidisciplinary nature was used because it allows a flexible and holistic analysis of life strategies and livelihoods of small-scale producers, facilitating the understanding of their realities and needs (Henkemans, 2003; Vos, Llanque, & Zonta, 2010). Our research question was, what are the effects of productive public policies on the sustainable livelihoods of inhabitants from the community Trinchera? In this sense, the overall objective of our chapter was to evaluate how these productive public policies (agricultural and forestry) affect the strategies and livelihoods of small-scale agricultural and forestry producers (campesinos) in the community Trinchera. There have been numerous efforts to give viability to family farming applying a variety of legal adjustments aimed at small producers. However, agricultural and forestry policies in Bolivia have continued to favor agribusiness elites by promoting the production of monocultures and extensive cattle ranches, thus allowing the country to respond to the pressures by commodities of the central economies and to articulate to the market taking advantage of the high prices of raw materials. This shows that the global economic political regime continues to condition the policies of peripheral countries such as Bolivia. The agribusiness sector is an important economic actor and, therefore, subject to investment and specific public policies.

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In a democratic regime and with a progressive government that seeks social change, it would be expected that the construction of policies will be participatory and inclusive of diverse actors from the public and private spheres. In addition, it should be considered that Bolivia is a very diverse country in ecoregions and cultures and also in productive terms. Therefore, public policies should not be ­homogenizing in order to achieve changes and expected improvements in the agricultural and forestry sector.

19.2  T  he Sustainable Livelihoods Approach as a Theoretical and Methodological Framework Chambers and Conway (1992) point out that livelihoods are the skills set, entitlements, and assets (material and social resources) and necessary activities to make a living. A livelihood is sustainable when it can withstand tensions and sudden shocks and it can recover from them; at the same time, whenever it can keep and improve its well-being possibilities and assets in the present and in the future, without damaging the basis of the natural resources. On this basis, the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach formally emerged. The DFID (1999) indicates that livelihoods are oriented to achieve the precise and realistic understanding of the people’s strengths, and people require a set of assets or capitals to achieve results in their livelihoods. These livelihoods are subject to a vulnerability context encompassing critical tendencies as well as perturbations or shocks that will affect the capitals on which people have a limited or non-existent control. Public policies are part of these critical tendencies that affect people’s assets. Assets or capitals from this approach are framed in five categories, namely human, social, natural, physical, and financial capitals. Given that this set encompasses several dimensions of development it can be regarded as a multidisciplinary perspective to sustainable livelihoods. In this sense, Ramos (2016) reports that life strategies are the result of what a family or community is capable of doing through the combination of their capitals taking into consideration external factors (i.e., the vulnerability context). In this regard, Pasteur (2001) indicates that it is imperative to understand the relationship between public policies and livelihoods because these will affect substantially to poor people and their community capitals and therefore, they will influence their life strategies. For this reason, we must analyze to which extent public policies support better practices of development initiatives focused on sustainable livelihoods, that is to say, we refer to policy that is a people-centered, participative, holistic, and dynamic. In this respect, Mesa (2014) points out that public policies have to do with the role of the State in organizing efficiently its actions to achieve societal benefits and distinguishes three fundamental aspects: public policies should be deliberative; they take place in public space, and are of collective nature.

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19.3  Geographic Context of the Community Trinchera The community of Trinchera is located in the Municipality of Porvenir, department of Pando, Bolivian Amazon (11°9′12.44″S and 68°30′21.41″W). It is at 265  m above sea level and has 9419.03 hectares with forests of which, 95% are in primary state (Fig. 19.1). According to the Land Use Plan of Pando (Plan de Uso de Suelos de Pando) (DHV, 1996), the community possess the land-use category of agroforestry and livestock rearing (agrosilvopastoril) (63%), and a subcategory for Brazilian nut collection (Bertholletia excelsa) and rubber or latex extraction of seringueira (Hevea brasiliensis). Towards the southern sector, land-use category corresponds to flood plains with rubber extraction, for which, the community has established rules of use and specifications of management. While the community was founded in April 29, 1999; the beginning of the land sanitation process started in 2000, and the reception of land title deeds was just in 2016 (PGIBT, 2017). The sanitized and titled land surface is of collective or common property; in other words, the total of the families in the community have a legal right of using and exploitation of its natural resources. The community of Trinchera has 108 people organized in 25 families. According to oral history registered on February 2019, half a century ago, two Bolivian— 68º30`0``W

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Fig. 19.1  Study area location of the campesino community of Trinchera. (Source: Elaborated by the authors, based on PGIBT (2017))

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Brazilian families settled and founded this community. These and other families inhabited in the surrounding area for almost 20  years, when the rubber boom (Bertholletia excelsa) was experienced in the region, and these families were commercially related to a rubber company, owned by the Portuguese Antonio Resende Leite. The Amazon belonged to landowners, who had rights on the land, its natural resources, and on people living in those lands. Thus, working conditions were of servitude; people would exchange their production (rubber cylinders) for food, tools, and clothes provided by the rubber company. By 1980, after the construction of the road that would connect the capital of the department with the rest of the country, the monopoly of rubber and Brazilian nut companies in the collection and trading of these products was dissolved. This economic boom lasted more than a century. In 1988, there was a drop of the rubber price, which affected the exploitation of other products of economic interest such as wood, Brazilian nuts, skin of wild animals, and some fruits of the Amazon. By 1990, the landowners had lost the regional economic dominance; the boom of timber production granted by the State to companies had started with forest concessions of 40 years. The opening of secondary and tertiary roads benefited the community because it improved the transport of their products to the main road which allow producers to get better prices; at this time, the exchange was in a monetary form. The logging boom concluded in the decade of 2010, aspect which coincides with the acceleration of sanitation and land-­ titling in favor of campesinos and indigenous people. Current economic income of the campesino families depend on collection and extraction of non-timber forest products (Brazilian nut, asai, copoazú, and other Amazonian fruits); agricultural production (rice, corn, yucca, banana, plantain, and agroforestry multilayer systems); livestock production as well as hunting and fishing are complementary to the extractive economy; and timber is for their own use in construction. The average income per family of five members in a year is of 46,825 Bolivianos (USD 6727.72), all this showing that the productive activities are based on the access and management of the forest as the main means of living (PGIBT, 2017).

19.4  G  overnmental Programs Present in the Community of Trinchera Governments at the national, departmental, and municipal levels have implemented several productive-oriented programs in the Amazon communities. National programs are implemented from decentralized programs of institutions dealing with productive issues such as the Ministry of Rural Development and Land (Ministerio de Desarrollo Rural y Tierras, MDRyT) and the Ministry of Productive Development and Plural Economy (Ministerio de Desarrollo Productivo y Economía Plural, MDPyEP). In general, these programs respond to the World Bank’s policy on the elimination of rural poverty launched in 2007 and still in force and applicable in

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Bolivia, suggesting that agriculture should be integrated into the agro-industrial value chain (McKay, 2019) to eliminate rural poverty. Ormachea (2018) identifies two guiding documents for the existing agricultural policies at the national level, the Patriotic Agenda (Agenda Patriótica) and the Economic and Social Development Plan (Plan de Desarrollo Económico Social) 2016–2020. In the near future, these documents visualize the country as a producing and exporting country of unique and traditional food products of mass consumption, with high added value, ceasing to be a country of agricultural producers with obsolete technology. From these main guidelines, the MDRyT and the MDPyEP introduce different objectives from which derive programs and projects. The MDRyT, besides solving land issues, establishes as a goal to ensure food security for urban and rural population whereas the MDPyEP considers the development of industries or state plants of raw material transformation for 13 productive complexes. In that framework, the community of our study there are currently implemented projects which derive from the policies of the MDRyT; these being generally oriented to the food security like those described in Table 19.1. The intervention of the State has been increasing in the last 10 years. There are many programs and projects implemented in the Amazon communities like Trinchera, but in general they do not respond to a plan of development, neither on a municipal level nor on a community level. The case of Trinchera is different because it possesses a Comprehensive Management Plan of Forest and Land (Plan Integración de Gestión de Bosque y Tierra, PGIBT), which has a decennial strategical plan. In general terms, the governmental programs and projects are generally sparsely articulated among them although they can derive of the same institution; their priority is simply to guarantee the provision of materials, input, machinery, and other types of Table 19.1  Programs and projects implemented in Trinchera Level of government and Project/program institution Production of National dairy cows MDRyT Municipal Mechanized government of production Porvenir (corn)

Project/program implementer Accesos Bolivia Indigenous Fund of Municipal government of Porvenir Accesos Bolivia

Irrigation systems for agriculture

National MDRyT

Processing of Amazon fruits (asai) Reactivation of rubber production

National MDRyT

Accesos Bolivia

Departmental Government of Pando

Productive unit of the departmental government

Characteristics of the project/ program Equipment with a herd of 31 cows on a community level Mechanized sowing and harvest of corn in one productive common parcel of land of 10 hectares Equipment with engineered irrigation systems for a group of six interested producer families using a land of three hectares Provision of lacking machinery and equipment in the artisanal plant of asai production Provision of materials for the rubber extraction on a level of interested families

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physical assets; however, in general they do not intervene in the formation of capabilities or the development of the social capital. The historical absence of the State in the Amazon region has accounted for a high presence of non-governmental organizations (NGO) that intervene with programs and projects which are first and foremost oriented to the conservation of natural resources and to the production systems whose progress are diverse. Today, many of the governmental programs and projects overlap with or adhere to already advanced processes, especially within the framework of the comprehensive forest management system, which is the case of Trinchera.

19.5  Methodology Fieldwork was carried out between December 2018 and March 2019 although the institutional work of the Centre for Research and Promotion of the Campesinado (Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado, CIPCA)—where the two authors of this study are affiliated to—in the community dates from the year 2010. Since then a progress was made in the creation of diverse instruments for the forest management in the PGIBT, as well as on the implementation of diverse productive initiatives. The present investigation counts with the consent of the community as a whole to carry out the research project. Data collection included the context of vulnerability, the trends, and changes which influence the livelihoods’ capitals of the families of Trinchera, which were recorded through workshops, semi-structured interviews, and the application of participative tools (i.e., a diagram of Venn, timelines, history of the community). Moreover, the potential of life capitals of the present 21 families in the community was analyzed. The study was divided into three parts as follows. In the first part, 30 indicators for the five life capitals which refer to what the families have and access to at present (Appendix 1); that is to say, participants in the study answered the question “What is your resource base?” (Fig. 19.3). Also, as quantitative and qualitative data were obtained for the calculation of indicators to human, social, natural, physical, and financial capitals, numerical limits were established in order to assess the indicators independently and pooled them, resulting in a qualitative rating scale for life capitals as proposed by Marín, Bedoya Patiño, and Cárdenas Grajales (2015) (Table 19.2). In the second part, the impact of the five governmental agricultural and forestry programs of the last 5 years on family’s livelihoods was analyzed (Fig. 19.2). In particular, it was assessed how these productive programs contributed to the different livelihoods capitals of the participant families. Likewise, this part addressed a question about the potential of the families in the community, namely “What are they able to do?” (i.e., what strategies they use for the achievement of their livelihoods), and also “What was achieved?” (here we refer to an achievement through the management of government programs at the national, departmental, and municipal levels).

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Table 19.2  Scale of values for indicators of life capitals in the Trinchera community Qualitative scale Low Medium High Very high

Quantitative value 0.00–0.50 0.51–0.80 0.81–0.90 0.91–1.00

Source: Adapted from Marín et al. (2015)

LIFESTYLE

Goal that people / families chase Moment 3

Moment 1

Capital “Families” Natural

Physical

TRANSFORMATION OF ESTRUCTURES AND PROCESSES

CONTEXT OF VULNERABILITY

Social

Influence and Access

Human Financial

Human

Moment 2

Human Financial

“Capital Families”

Natural

Social

Physical

Impact of programs governmental

Financial

Natural

“Capital Families”

Social

Physical

What is that inhabitants of Trichera want?

What was achieved? What people have what they access What is your resource base?

ACHIEVEMENTS IN LIVELIHOODS What are they able to do? a) Dairy cows (Accesos Bolivia), National Government b) Production of corn under mechanized agriculture (GAMP-Indigenous Fund), Municipal Government c) Irrigation systems for agriculture (Accesos Bolivia), National Government d) Asaí processing - Amazonian Fruits (Accesos Bolivia), National Government e) Reactivation of rubber production (GAD), Departmental Government

Fig. 19.2  Methodological procedure for the analysis of sustainable livelihoods of Trinchera community. (Source: Own elaboration)

The impact of the five governmental programs of the agricultural and forestry sectors was analyzed according to information provided by the Trinchera’s families. To do this, we used an qualitative scale from 1 to 5, where 1 represents a very low value concerning the program contribution; 2 refers to low, 3 to medium, 4 to high, and 5 to a very high contribution to families sustainable livelihoods. For this purpose, a matrix was elaborated for every implemented program with the five livelihoods capitals and its ranging impact. To provide an example of this analysis, Table 19.3 describes the case of the impact assessment of the corn production program with mechanized agriculture which had a low impact. For example, in Table 19.3 (see its seventh column) the impact on human capital only arrived in the form of informative conversations about implementation of programs because the responsible technicians of the project executed it anyway. On the other hand, referring to the physical capital (see third column of Table 19.3), in addition to having seeds, families were equipped with tools and machinery for seeding and harvesting, but not with means of transportation and/or silos for them

19  Effects of Public Agricultural and Forestry Policies on the Livelihoods… Human Capital 1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0

Financial Capital

Social Capital

Physical Capital

Natural Capital

Low

0

0.1 0.2

0.3

391

Medium

0.4 0.5

0.6

0.7

High

0.8

Very High

0.9

1

Fig. 19.3  Level of the capitals within the sustainable livelihoods in the community of Trinchera. (Source: Own elaboration based on fieldwork)

to store their produce, which is fundamental to assure that corn will not get lost due to humidity or other factors. Lastly, in the third part of the research, the addressed question was “What is that the inhabitants of Trinchera want?”. In particular, it was targeted at families taking best advantage of their traditional livelihoods; and how they take advantage of both, the local context and the contribution of external actors (public policies and support from non-governmental entities) to generate better life strategies. Also, the question has to do with what are the objectives that community families pursue to achieve a way of life coincident with their expectations for the future (Fig. 19.2). It was therefore also carried out an evaluation using the scale 1–5, being 1 a very low objective and 5 a very high objective.

1–2

2–3

3–4

Low

Medium

Good

Average (2.2)

Financial No subsidy was provided

Machinery for seeding and harvesting was provided Means of transportation for corn were provided Silos were provided for storage (infrastructure) 3 2

Capital/investment for harvesting and processing Capital/investment for commercialization

Access to productive credits

There were provisions Seed grant to start-up of tools capital

Capitals Physical Seeds availability

Family’s responses are in bold

Global impact (low)

Very good 4–5

Evaluation level 0–1

Impact scale Very low

Families were consulted for the implementation of the program The program was designed with the participation of the community Consent was obtained from all the families of the community All families of the community benefited from the program 2

Social Families were informed about the program

Table 19.3  Evaluation of the programs’ impact for mechanized corn production in Trinchera

It was implemented in Promoters were trained in the community areas of intensive cultivation 3 1

It was implemented in Technical innovations were pasture grounds developed

Human There was an informative talk about the program for its implementation There was training in situ about the implementation of the program It was implemented in There was training on corn fallow land and/or at crop handling the secondary forest

Natural Program was implemented in pristine forest It was implemented in the primary forest

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19.6  Results and Discussion Given that objective of our chapter was to evaluate how the established productive public policies (programs on agricultural and forestry) operate in the Bolivian Amazon, and what are its effects on the life strategies and livelihoods of agricultural and forestry campesinos in the community Trinchera, the following paragraphs introduce the results found as well as its implications for the studied community as well as to similar communities in Bolivia.

19.6.1  Capitals from Sustainable Livelihoods in Trinchera According to our assessment, the families’ capitals in Trinchera community (Fig. 19.3) reveal the great natural capital potential (very high) and the social capital (high) people possess. However, human and physical capitals show a medium level, whereas the financial capital shows a very low level according to what people own and have access to the undertaking of their life strategies (Fig. 19.3). This result is related to the statements made by Pokorny et al. (2011) and Vos et al. (2010) who point out that the access to forestry resources is fundamental for the undertaking of life strategies of the families in the Amazonian region; even though most often they cope with difficulties in the commercialization of their products and the access to credits for pursuing their agricultural and forestry activities. (a) The natural capital is the most precious capital the community possesses. The forest provides them with timber and non-timber resources, flora and fauna, water for both, their consumption and their productive activities. Having legal certainty over land and the communal territory, as well as the potential use of land according to land-use planning which refers that 95% of the communal territory is of forest use, permit families the pursuit of productive activities (such as annual and multiannual crops), collection of non-timber products (Brazilian nut, asai, and other fruits), livestock rearing and subsistence hunting which altogether provide material and economic means for their livelihoods. However, although 426.54 hectares of the community are fallows or secondary vegetation due to changes in coverage of land use, Peralta-Rivero, Torrico-­ Albino, Vos, Galindo-Mendoza, and Contreras-Servín (2015) and Pokorny et al. (2011) indicate that the conversion of primary forest is part of the family producers’ strategies for the diversification of their productive activities; in this framework only 4.5% of the communal surface is deforested which is rather low in comparison to other communities in the region. (b) The social capital is highly valued by people from Trinchera. In this regard, the community has generated important social resources around four aspects: communal resources (forest and natural resources); communal organization which functions from the trade-union and its internal rules; family relationships and cultural identity; and established collaborative relationships with external

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actors. This set facilitates people carrying out collective activities within the community and a positive interaction outside the community. In this respect, Trinchera interacts with both public and private institutions, some of them contributing substantially to the strengthening of their livelihoods (Appendix 2). Even though the general secretary in his appointment of representing the community in relation to external public and private actors is very active, the community has a history of high relationship with external actors. The latter in addition to two factors, namely the short distance and connectivity of the community to the municipal and departmental capital, and the union life experience of various members who also have been served as departmental and national leaders in the principal campesinos organizations of the country. Since the last 5 years, the community’s social structure and the leadership of key personalities have allowed a good articulation level of the community with the government in its different levels by increasing access to productive programs and projects. Nevertheless, the relationship of the community with various NGOs which have implemented projects of conservation, production, and organizational and leadership capacities, which have facilitated territorial governance processes, dates from 15 years back. However, despite the progress, occasionally some producers establish nexus with programs and projects coming from public policies for strategic reasons, even accepting little viable proposals and, inclusively investing enormous efforts in these alliances with the expectation of receiving high direct and indirect benefits (Medina, Pokorny, & Campbell, 2009). Community’s rules and regulations govern conflict resolution disputes, both for natural resources and personal issues. Under this framework, the trade-­ union directive plays a very important role because it exercises functions of mediation, negotiation, and establishment of sanctions, amongst others, always in consultation with the social base. Another aspect is the community’s capability of negotiation with various programs and projects implemented in the community, even though these initiatives follow an official protocol which consists of the introduction, agreement, and execution from its operators; it is usual in Trinchera that, once the offers are introduced, discussion and negotiation are generated which allow adjustments of them to more real local conditions. Moreover, it was found that the articulation and negotiation capability of the community outreaches even beyond national frontiers. For instance, in the case of asai pulp sale, there are commercial agreements with Brazilian supermarkets; and in the case of Brazilian nuts, there are commercial agreements with Italian companies. In this regard, Bebbington and Torres (2001) point out that this social capital facilitates access and negotiation with external actors which can contribute to higher benefits and achievements in local development. (c) The human capital shows a medium level (Fig. 19.3). Despite this, we found that there is not only local capability to manage productive support with public and private financing, but also on other subjects such as that of education. With respect to the latter, years ago, and based on the implementation of a scholarly class with a female multi-grade teacher in the community, has solved

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an educational problem so that currently children and teenagers are able to complete their primary studies in the same community. Also, arrangements were made, so that currently, local teenagers can attend to Santa Lourdes School, a neighboring community, in order to obtain their secondary school diploma. Additionally, in 2017 the community managed the arrival of a secondary school programs for adults at the Center of Alternative Education (Centro de Educación Alternativa) dependent of the Ministry of Education. As a result of this, eight adults graduated from school at the end of 2018, which elevated the level of communal schooling and the human capital. (d) The physical capital shows also a medium level (Fig. 19.3). It is based particularly on productive equipment according to the Amazon productive vocation. This is the result of the efforts made by the community and the capability of negotiation of its leaders with various programs and projects of development. On the other hand, Trinchera has a Comprehensive Management Plan for Forest and Land (Plan de Gestión Integral de Bosque y Tierra), which is a technical and legal tool allowing the knowledge of the local natural resources’ potential, and with this baseline, it is possible to plan the productive economic activities within a time frame of 10 years. (e) Finally, the financial capital’s level is low compared to the rest of the capitals (Fig. 19.3). In this regard, there seems to be a little margin for savings and availability of economic resources in cash for the undertaking of local activities. The access to bank loans on production and consumption matters is narrow (Appendix 3). Pokorny et al. (2011) indicate that the latter aspect is characteristic of the Bolivian Amazon region. Nevertheless, the annual family income obtained is higher than the national minimal wage, especially due to the collection of forest products like the Brazilian nut, asai, and other Amazon fruits; and in order to carry out their life strategies, it represents their main financial means. When analyzing its annual family income, the latter situation is reflected for all the northern Amazon region of Bolivia (Salazar & Jimenez, 2018). From this set of capitals, life strategies carry out by Trinchera inhabitants allow gradually the design and achievement of a livelihood dependent on the forest; therefore, the community has a long-term life plan designed around their most important capital (the forest), but it also has a great strength in the accumulated social capital which can be a vehicle for creating and increasing other forms of capitals, mainly human and financial capitals (Coleman, 1988, cited by Bebbington & Torres, 2001).

19.6.2  I mpact of the Agricultural and Forestry Programs on Sustainable Livelihoods in Trinchera Given that the main weaknesses of family livelihood in Trinchera are positioned especially on the financial, physical, and human capitals, it is fundamental that governmental policies have a direct impact on these barriers in order to contribute to the improvement of the family life strategies.

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Agricultural and forestry programs

a) Dairy cows (Accesos Bolivia) National government Corn production under mechazined agriculture b) (GAMP - Indegenous fund) Municipal government

c)

Irrigation systems for agriculture (Accesos Bolivia) National government

d)

Processing of asai - Amazonian fruits (Accesos Bolivia) National government

e) Reactivation of the rubber (GADP) Departmental government

0

1 Very Low

2 Low

3 Medium

4 High

5 Very High

Impact assessment

Fig. 19.4  Contribution of the productive development programs in Trinchera. (Source: Elaborated by the authors, based on a participatory workshop)

Of the five productive agricultural programs implemented in Trinchera since 2014, two of them contribute moderately to the strengthening of the community capitals: the processing of asai and the mechanized production of corn (Fig. 19.4). The reactivation of rubber, dairy cows, and irrigation systems for agriculture are of low contribution (e, a, and c from Fig.  19.4). Therefore, only two of five implemented governmental programs would articulate to productive processes which are a priority for the community. If we analyze the coincidences between the prioritization and strengthening of the community capitals for Trinchera from the governmental programs, four of five programs (a, b, c, and d from Fig. 19.5) contribute to the natural capital at medium degree, and two of them (c and e) contribute to the social capital at medium degree. We argue that the former result becomes relevant because it responds to the expectations and priorities of the community families. In this regard, Ramos (2016) points out that, for the campesinos the productive base is their main means of production and an essential condition to maintain and pursue their life strategies. If we analyze the programs complementarity upon the weakest capitals of the community, two programs (b and d from Fig. 19.5) strengthen the physical capital in a medium degree, but they have a low and a very low contributions for the remaining community capitals. According to Ramos (2016) and Gottret (2001), the programs’ structures are within hierarchical bureaucratic structures composed by global and national institutions, in this case within the socio-environmental regime (sensu Parra-Vázquez et al. Chap. 1, this volume), which impose the rules of the public policy and its related programs. In this regard, the social organizations or “players” interested in accessing the productive programs must comply with those rules. In many cases, those rules will be the drivers of the programs’ impacts on the agricultural and forestry sectors.

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Human Capital 5 4 3 2

Financial Capital

Social Capital

1 0

Natural Capital

Very Low

0

Physical Capital

Low

1

High

Medium

2

3

Very High

4

5

a) Dairy cows (Accesos Bolivia) National government b) Corn production under mechazined agriculture (GAMP - Indegenous fund) Municipal government c) Irrigation systems for agriculture (Accesos Bolivia),National government d) Processing of asai - Amazonian fruits (Accesos Bolivia) National government e) Reactivation of the rubber (GADP), Departmental Government

Fig. 19.5  Impact of agricultural development programs on families’ livelihoods in Trinchera (Source: Own elaboration)

In this case study, the governmental program that impacted less upon the family capitals’ enhancement was the production of the dairy cows (see (a) in Fig. 19.5). This project was initially implemented into the pasture ground of the communities, subtracting the pressure over the forest (natural capital); however, the lack of both, productive infrastructure (physical and financial capitals), and technical assistance for cattle management (human capital), as well as the little culture and ­organizational skills of the families (social capital) involved with this kind of undertaking led to the program’s dissolution early. At the end of this project, a total of 31 remaining cows were allocated among the participant families. The reactivation program for rubber exploitation (see (e) in Fig. 19.5) also had a low impact in the majority of capitals. Although the intention of the latter was to use both, the forest potential of the community (natural capital) and the knowledge of the producers about this resource (human capital), the program’s actions were limited to the provision of tools, which were not used by families because of the lack of market and the low prices of the rubber. Although rubber was a traditional product and its exploitation was consonant with the regional productive vocation, the fall of the price lowered the commercial interest; therefore, it seems sensible that even producers having the knowledge and tools to exploit it, they could not make any profit of the resource because there was no market for it. In rural contexts, the

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economic rationality of the campesinos is definitive to success or downfall of the productive projects (Landini, 2011). In general terms, our study found that this rationality works around pursuing small-scale family production as well as surviving and self-consumption and not around accumulation as the capitalist rationality does. The latter does not consider that campesinos’ productive units never seek surplus because that is not its main objective. From interviews with participant families, it was evident that the main income source in Trinchera is the Brazilian nut extraction, followed by other activities like asai exploitation, and some annual and multiannual crops. In this sense, local people do not invest time and efforts in activities without any—in-kind or cash—remuneration for their invested labor. The program on implementation of irrigation systems for the agriculture (see (c) in Fig. 19.5) was executed only with six beneficiary families using a total of six hectares within the community. Although irrigation is fundamental for the agricultural production during dry season (July to September), the main difficulties for its success were the lack of technical assistance (human capital) since the beginning of its implementation (Fig.  19.5). The corn production program under mechanized system (see (b) in Fig. 19.5) had a medium impact upon the physical and natural capitals. Seven beneficiary families with ten crop hectares are receiving a subsidy of machinery and inputs for production in pasture and secondary vegetation, which reduces the pressure against the primary forest. The program contribution for the producers’ skills development is very low (human capital), as well as to the social organization (social capital), simply because it is limited to few families, it has a vertical design, and the program is implemented with low participation of beneficiary people. In general terms, the mechanized production programs in the region have had very low impact. One of the experiences for this type of program with respect to mechanized of rice production took place during 2017 in the Municipality of Puerto Gonzalo Moreno, in the Bolivian Amazon. However, the results obtained were also the same and included a limitation in all knowledge, capabilities, and empowerment of the involved families (Peralta-Rivero, Cartagena-Ticona, & Flores-Huallpa, 2017). Likewise, in Trinchera the mechanized corn production was harvested in March 2019 but there were difficulties for its commercialization. In particular, although the program’s design considered moving the corn production to silos located nearby the capital municipal, it was not possible to transport the corn production to that place because the community lacked capacity to do that. With respect to the asai processing program (d in Fig. 19.5) provided better contributions to the families’ livelihoods. In this case, there were ten families that profit from asai fruits in almost 3000 forest hectares under a management plan. Although this program had a medium impact, it is projected to include more families in Trinchera and other communities continuing the resource management under the communities PGIBT, which would generate additional income to the families (financial capital). With this kind of program, the local development of capabilities and knowledge is improving (human capital), and the access to credit now could be more feasible (financial capital) because the importance of asai. Should there exist

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viability for this type of initiative, credits could be used to improve the conditions of the asai processing plant to improve the physical capital. In general terms, our study found that there are two programs with less compatibility to the regional productivity potential: dairy cows’ production and mechanized corn production. These results were corroborated by the interviewees. While both programs are oriented by the MDRyT to the achievement of food security, they also address the implementation of a new productive model for the Amazon. The latter has been announced by the government in the Agenda 2025 and promoted through diverse food security programs in low lands. Until now, it is initiated with the production of rice, corn, bean, among others. This model would promote using those mechanized areas for cultivating oleaginous plants and grains, as part of the industrial agribusiness model. In this regard, Rojas (2009), from the Paraguayan experience, points out that to make easy the expansion of the area sown by a mechanized way, it is necessary to obtain the standardization of the different ways of agricultural production, through monocultures, which allows the management of thousands of hectares with high degree of mechanization and low number of workers. The main interest of the agribusiness is increasing its profitability through monocultures, decreasing its costs and increasing its production, without any consideration about the social and environmental impacts produced. Moreover, the two programs with greater compatibility to the productive potential of the region were asai processing and rubber reactivation. These programs generate great expectation in the community and therefore, people are motivated to carry on with their practices. In the former case, the productive process has been set because an identification of the productive potential of assai in the natural resource maps has been carried out; the rules for its sustainable management, infrastructure for collection, and processing, as well as national and international commercial agreements for the sale of both asai milk and pulp. However, the rubber was replaced by other products and its current demand is low; therefore, despite local producers do have interest in rubber production, currently there is no market for it, and there is no evidence that it would rebound again.

19.7  Future Perspectives: Visions of the Community Because of their access to land and natural resources, the families of Trinchera had increased in an exponential way some of their livelihoods’ capitals during the past 20  years. Moreover, the increment of their community organization level has allowed them the development of their current life strategies. Their future community’s perspectives (to 20 years ahead) are focused in improving considerably the human capital (Fig. 19.6) taking into account that local young people can become professionals and once graduated could return to the community as a social retribution. In this sense, local life conditions would improve in different aspects including the management of more productive programs for the community using capitals and capabilities as well as the traditional knowledge of the producers.

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The community visions emphasize the increment of the communal infrastructure in productive terms, as well as the industrialization of products. At the local level, people in the community consider as important the acquisition of equipment and machinery (physical capital) for the processing and transformation of produce, such as asai, Brazilian nut, copoazú, and many tropical fruits, as well as handicrafts and other products, which will also facilitate their productive activities. In this regard, interviewees commented that it would be good to create an integral association, which could be able to organize their production, in such a way as to allow them to generate economic income and at the same time ensuring the undertaking of friendly productive initiatives in the forest and with local natural resources. The interviewed families stated that in the long term, their will is to look after the forest, which represents its main community natural capital, because it provides them with major livelihoods. Pokorny et al. (2011) report that forest could generate income in the Amazon, but it cannot serve as an exclusive base for family income to all the families and communities of the region because they have different realities; assuming that there are factors that limit their success, such us high cost of supplies, low prices for the products, and significant logistic challenges. Although the commercialization of the Amazonian products continues being complex, some conditions changed in the last 5 years in the region because to date the connectivity was improved as currently there is a main paved road and better roads to the communities. Moreover, a great percentage of communities, especially those which are in the backbone road, have now access to mobile telephony and internet; the demand for forest products is increasing (alternative to wood) both at national and international levels. Also, the productive infrastructure has improved gradually since the conclusion of land-titling. The decision of the families to preserve the forest in the long term also has an economic rationale because the contribution of the forest to their economy is essential. According to a study about the family income in the North Amazonia, the annual income reaches to 34,404 Bolivianos (USD 4655.75) of which, more than 90% of it comes from productive activities, and half of it corresponds to the gathering activities (mainly Brazil nut and asai) (Salazar & Jimenez, 2018). In this sense, families of Trinchera expressed that their livelihood is mainly linked to the forest and that they regard agriculture and livestock as complementary activities (Fig. 19.6). Within this framework and given that current programs operating in the community only contribute with a medium and lower levels to physical and financial capitals, respectively, it is necessary to seek ways to strengthen those two capitals. In this regard, Vos et al. (2010) and Pokorny et al. (2011) point out that credits adapt little to the characteristics of the producers in the Amazonia, which usually are less mechanized and whose activities include forest extractivism. Faced with the above scenario, the social and human capitals which recorded values were, respectively, high and medium in the community, are the ones which are strengthening the projects management that in turn help to improve the technology in the community. Pokorny et al. (2011) mention that the many producers of the Amazonia consider that the modernization of the family production is a prerequisite to make use of the market options and generate income. These authors propose that some changes are

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Human Capital 5 4 3 2 1

Financial Capital

Social Capital

0

Natural Capital

Physical Capital Actual state of the livelihoods (2019) Future perspective of livelihoods (2039)

Very Low

0

Low

1

2

Very High

High

Medium

3

4

5

Fig. 19.6 The future community’s perspectives on livelihoods’ capitals. (Source: Own elaboration)

needed; for instance, in the management techniques and changes in the organization of work as well as in commercialization mechanisms. They also mention to include the value added for the processing of the produce; improving linkages with financially more attractive markets especially with non-local markets. These recommendations have been gradually happening in Trinchera nowadays, with the creation of two associations: the Society for Exports of Extractivist Families in the North of Bolivia (Sociedad de Exportación de Familias Extractivistas del Norte de Bolivia, SEFENBO) and Association of Gatherers and Forestry Transformers Producers (Asociación de Recolectores y Productores Transformadores Forestales, ARPTFAT), which are linked, respectively, to international market for the sale of Brazilian nut, and the by-product of asai and Amazonia fruits to the national market. In this regard, Zenteno, Zuidema, de Jong, and Boot (2012) indicate that total income and income from forest resources, amongst rural inhabitants of the Amazonia are influenced not only by the access to the market, prices, but also by organizational, institutional, and social factors. These factors influence on the diversity of resources to which producers have access to and bring as a result, the producers’ specializations in livelihood strategies. In this sense, the visions of the future in the community’s livelihoods will be a process depending not only on internal factors

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and decision-making within the community, but also on external factors influencing the way how communities develop. Therefore, if all the above factors were taken into consideration for the Trinchera community, the 20-year community perspective presented in the Fig. 19.6, could be configured in a different way.

19.8  Concluding Remarks Our research used the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach to evaluate the productive public policies of the agricultural and forestry sectors in place at the campesino community Trinchera which affect the community life strategies and livelihoods. Our main findings are that since 2014, there have been five agricultural and forestry programs implemented in Trinchera. These programs respond to global agreements which enter the Bolivia’s national and regional arenas through National Development Plans and are specifically implemented by the Ministries of MDRyT and MDPyED. From the five analyzed programs, only two of them contribute moderately to the strengthening of the community capitals (the processing of asai and the mechanized production of corn) whereas the remaining three programs (the reactivation of rubber, dairy cows, and irrigation systems for agriculture) have a low contribution. Therefore, the current implemented programs in the community do not have a relevant impact in the rising up of their more deficient human and financial capitals. For this reason, the families of Trinchera, who participate in them, adapt themselves to reap the small direct and indirect benefits which these programs generate. In general terms, the implemented programs are not responding to the essential needs at the productive level of the community and tend only to reinforce lightly the families’ food security. Our results also reveal that Trinchera’s families possess a very high and high potential in natural and social capitals, whereas the human, physical, and financial capitals are on a low and very low levels. Therefore, currently families have as a prioritized objective to reach very high levels of all, the financial, physical, and human capitals, while they want only to get a high level for their natural and social capitals, which are currently the most valued ones in the community. Interviewed families perceive that in order to reach their objective, they should focus in their most important barriers they have today which preclude them to have any progress. With respect to the natural and social capitals, they consider that in the future, their natural capital (the forest) will suffer diverse pressures by the changes of the productive model, which is primarily oriented to the agroindustry business present in the Amazonia. However, they also consider that if backed up by their community organization, their forest conservation will be sustained. As the small-scale rural production in Bolivia is a complex process, the materialization of the community vision of the future will depend on both, internal and external factors to the community, while the forest resources will continue to be a fundamental resource for this accomplishment.

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The results of our research show weakness and potentialities of the campesino producers and on the agricultural and forest programs implemented in Trinchera, a situation that, most likely replicates in other rural communities of the Bolivian Amazonia. Likewise, it provides possibilities for improvement which, if both, livelihoods and campesinos’ rationality of the Bolivian Amazonia are taken into account, could be reached within the framework of governmental policies and programs, in its several levels. Within this framework, it is necessary for the government to guarantee the design of adequate and differentiated policies that not only foster and magnify the contribution to food security but also enhance the other roles of family farming in social, cultural, and environmental aspects. Likewise, the diversity and complexity of the sector means that subnational governments, within the framework of their powers and competences, take charge of many of these specific policies. For this, the central government should be predisposed to decentralize public functions and resources. Also, at the local level there is greater sensitivity to solve the structural problems that the sector is experiencing and at this level there is a set of important stakeholders such as research entities, promotors of family farming, associations, and others, which would guarantee greater success of public policies. Acknowledgements Authors are grateful to the Fondo Francés para el Medio Ambiente (FFEM)—French Fund for Environment, and the Agencia Francesa para el Desarrollo (AFD)— French Agency for Development for funding our research. Also, they are grateful to the families of the community of Trinchera who freely agreed to be part of and participated in this investigation, making a valuable contribution. This chapter benefited from the constructive criticism of two anonymous reviewers.

Appendix A Table 19.4  Capitals, indicators, and formulae for the analysis of the sustainable livelihoods of families from the community Trinchera Capitals Human capital

Campesino community Trinchera Indicators Level of knowledge in agricultural, forestry, and product transformation practices Level of education of people in the community Capacity of the population to manage programs or projects for the benefit of the community Population of working age, economically active Population with access to health services due to insurance affiliation

Formulae Active population in agricultural, forestry, and transformation practices/total population of the community Years of training and/or empirical knowledge Number of programs or projects managed for the community last 5 years/optimal number for the total population of the community Economically active population/total community population Level of access to health services for the population

(continued)

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Table 19.4 (continued) Capitals Social capital

Physical capital

Natural capital

Campesino community Trinchera Indicators Level of conflict between members of the community Level of collective actions developed in the community Level of association for the development of economic initiatives Level of actions for collective decisionmaking in the community Level of articulation to other groups in the region Level of connection to policies, programs, and projects Rate of access to basic services

Formulae Perception of the level of conflict/value of the optimal level Perception of the level of collective actions/value of the optimum level Perception of the level of association/ value of the optimal level Perception of the level of decisionmaking/value of the optimal level Perception of the level of regional articulation/value of the optimal level Perception of the level of linkage/value of the optimal level % access to health, education, drinking water, electricity, sewerage, transportation, and solid waste management Presence of roads and highways Number of roads and highways that connect to the community Rate of access to housing Number of families with housing/number of families in the community Heavy equipment availability rate for Number of heavy equipment/number of agricultural and forestry production families in the community Rate of availability of heavy machinery Number of heavy machinery/number of for agricultural and forestry production families in the community Infrastructure for production Number of productive infrastructure/ number of families in the community Rate of access to land Hectares under a Plan de Gestión Integral de Bosques y Tierra (PGIBT)/100% of the territory Rate of water availability for consumption Days with water for and productive activities consumption/365 days Rate of availability of forest cover for the % of forest cover/100% of the territory collection and use of timber and non-timber forest products Rate of availability of wild fauna used in % of species with consumptive and the community economic value used/100% of species inventoried in the community Rate of availability of wild flora used in % of species with consumptive and the community economic value used/100% of species inventoried in the community Rate of availability of fish harvested in % of species with consumptive and the community economic value used/100% of species inventoried in the community Potential of land use % land use ordered territorially according to its potential use Rate of use and rights to harvest natural No. of families with the right to use and resources harvest of natural resources/total of families in the community Right owner of natural resources and land % of land titled in favor of the community (continued)

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Table 19.4 (continued) Campesino community Trinchera Capitals Indicators Financial Level of availability of cash economic capital resources for community activities

Formulae Perception of the level of economic resources in cash/value of the optimum level Level of savings for community activities Perception of the level of savings/value of the optimal level Annual family income level Perception of the annual family income level/value of the optimal level Rate of access to productive and Number of families with access to credits/ consumer bank credits number of families in the community

Source: Own elaboration

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Level of knowledge in agricultural, forestry, and product transformation practices Level of education of people in the community Capacity of the population to manage programs or projects for the benefit of the community Population of working age, economically active Population with access to health services due to insurance affiliation Level of conflict between members of the community Level of collective actions developed in the community Level of association for the development of economic initiatives Level of actions for collective decision-making in the community Level of articulation to other groups in the region Level of connection to policies, programs, and projects Rate of access to basic services Presence of roads and highways Rate of access to housing Heavy equipment availability rate for agricultural and forestry production Rate of availabity of heavy machinery for agricultural and forestry production Infrastructure for production Rate of access to land Rate of water availability for consumption and productive adctivities Rate of availability of forest cover for the collection and use of timber and non-timber forest products Rate of availability of wild fauna used in the community Rate of availability of wild flora used in the community Rate of availability of fish harvested in the community Potential of land use Rate of use and rights to harvest natural resources Right owner of natural resources and land Level of availability of cash economic resources for community activities Level of savings for community activities Annual family income level Rate of access to productive and consumer bank credits

Fig. 19.8 (a) Indicators of Capitals from Sustainable livelihoods in the Trinchera community. (b) Legend. (Source: Own elaboration based on a participatory workshop)

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References Bebbington, A., & Torres, V. (2001). Capital social de los Andes (p. 171). Editorial Abya Yala: Quito. Cartagena, P. (2018). Economía y producción campesino indígena, en Memoria IV Foro Internacional Andino Amazónico de Desarrollo Rural 2017 (p. 147). Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado, La Paz. Chambers, R., & Conway, R. (1992). Sustainable rural livelihoods: Practical concepts for the 21st century. IDS Discussion Paper, 296, 127–130. Coleman, J.  S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, S95–S120. Dávalos, A. (2013). Políticas de seguridad alimentaria con soberanía en Bolivia (p. 42). Fundación Tierra: La Paz. DFID. (1999). Hojas orientadas sobre medios de vida sostenibles (p.  210). Department for International Development, United Kingdom Government. DHV. (1996). Plan de uso de suelo del departamento Pando (PLUS Pando). Proyecto de Zonificación Agro-ecológica y Establecimiento de una base de Datos y Red de Sistema de Información Geográfica en Bolivia (p. 72). La Paz: DHV Consultores. Gaceta Oficial de Bolivia. (2019). Gaceta Oficial de Bolivia. Retrieved January 30, 2019, from http://www.gacetaoficialdebolivia.gob.bo/. Gottret, V. (2001). Medios de vida sostenibles: Un marco para el análisis de línea base, planeación, seguimiento y evaluación de impacto en Memorias del II Curso Internacional. La Promoción de la Agroempresa Rural para el Desarrollo Microregional Sostenible. Harvey, D. (2006). Neo-liberalism as creative destruction. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 88(2), 145–158. Henkemans, A. (2003). Tranquilidad y sufrimiento en el bosque, los medios de vida y percepciones de los cambas en el bosque de la Amazonía Boliviana. Serie Científica N° 7 (p. 97). Bolivia: Riberalta. INE. (2015). Censo agropecuario 2013 Bolivia (p. 143). La Paz: Instituto Nacional de Estadística. Landini, F. (2011). Racionalidad económica campesina. Mundo Agrario, volumen 12, segundo semestre 2011 (p. 27). Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación. La Plata, Argentina. Marín, Y., Bedoya Patiño, C. G., & Cárdenas Grajales, G. I. (2015). Estrategias de adaptación y medios de vida de las familias integrantes de la fundación consejo veredal–fcv–, municipio de Calarcá, Quindío. Revista Luna Azul, 41, 201–239. McKay, B. (2019). Extractivismo agrario: dinámicas de poder, acumulación y exclusión en Bolivia, en Madre Tierra, la agenda abandonada (p. 230). La Paz: Fundación Tierra. Medina, G., Pokorny, B., & Campbell, B. (2009). Community forest management for timber extraction in the Amazon frontier. International Forestry Review, 11(3), 408–420. Mesa, C. (2014). Breve historia de las políticas públicas en Bolivia (p. 193). La Paz: Editorial Gisbert. Ormachea, E. (2018). Políticas agrarias, campesinos y obreros agrícolas: balance y perspectivas. La Paz, Bolivia: Unión Nacional de Instituciones para el Trabajo de Acción Social UNITAS. Pasteur K. (2001). Policy analysis: Tools for sustainable livelyhoods. Institute of development studies. Retrieved February 10, 2019, from http://www.livelyhoods.org/Info/linksevents_PRP. html#5. Peralta-Rivero, C., Cartagena-Ticona, P., & Flores-Huallpa, R. (2017). Efectos socio-económicos y ambientales por la producción de arroz (Oryza sativa) bajo agricultura mecanizada en el municipio Puerto Gonzalo Moreno, Norte Amazónico de Bolivia. CienciAgro, 1, 37–56. Peralta-Rivero, C., Torrico-Albino, J.  C., Vos, V.  A., Galindo-Mendoza, M.  G., & Contreras-­ Servín, C. (2015). Tasas de cambios de coberturas de suelo y deforestación (1986-2011) en el municipio de Riberalta, Amazonía boliviana. Ecología en Bolivia, 50(2), 91–114.

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Pérez, M., & Cruz, J. (2018). La concentración y centralización del capital en la agricultura latinoamericana. Implicaciones para el campesinado. Cuba: Facultad de economía. Universidad de la Habana. PGIBT, (2017). Plan de Gestión Integral de Bosques y Tierra de la comunidad Trinchera. Plan de Gestión Integral de Bosques y Tierra. Autoridad de Fiscalización y Control Social de Bosques y Tierra. Cobija, 28 p. Pokorny, B., Godar, J., Hoch, L., Johnson, J., Koning, J. D., Medina, G., et al. (2011). La producción familiar como alternativa de un desarrollo sostenible para la Amazonía; Lecciones aprendidas de iniciativas de uso forestal por productores familiares en la Amazonía boliviana, brasilera, ecuatoriana y peruana (p. 174). Bogor, Indonesia: CIFOR. Ramos, P.  P. (2016). Alternativas para el desarrollo rural sostenible en tres zonas cafetaleras indígenas de México (p. 235). Doctoral Diss. Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí. Rojas, L. (2009). Actores del agro negocio en Paraguay. BASE IS/DIAKONIA (p. 164). Asunción, Paraguay: Red de Bibliotecas Virtuales de CLACSO. Retrieved January 18, 2019, from http:// biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar. Salazar, C., & Jimenez, E. (2018). Ingresos Familiares Anuales de campesinos e indígenas rurales en Bolivia (IFA) (p.  212). La Paz: Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado. Cuaderno de Investigación N°86. Salcedo, S., & Guzmán, L. (2014). Agricultura familiar en América Latina y El Caribe: recomendaciones de política. Santiago de Chile: FAO. Vos, V., Llanque, O., & Zonta, A. (2010). Medios de Vida y Manejo Forestal por Pequeños/as Productores en la Amazonía (p. 280). Riberalta, Bolivia: UAB/ForLive. Zenteno, M., Zuidema, P. A., de Jong, W., & Boot, R. G. (2012). Livelihood strategies and forest dependence: New insights from Bolivian forest communities. Forest Policy and Economics, 26, 12–21.

Chapter 20

Organic Agriculture, Agroecology, and Agroforestry: Small Farmers in Brazil Célia Futemma Abstract  On the one hand, the turn of the century into the new millennium brought new hopes; on the other hand, it brought many challenges to rural communities, particularly small farmers with regard to food security, environmental degradation, and changes. In Brazil, the growth of the agribusiness sector has affected rural communities, natural ecosystems, and human health. Rural communities of small farmers have been pressured by land grabbing and declining living standards. Additionally, agrochemicals pollute the water and soil and affect human health (producers and consumers) with intoxication. As a response, more sustainable farming system models have emerged such as organic agriculture, agroecology, and agroforestry across different groups of small farmers in Brazil. Such systems serve not only as a form of production but also as a social movement and environmental conservation in many parts of the country with a truly transdisciplinary approach. Thus, this study addresses the social, political–institutional, and environmental dimensions of these farming systems practiced by small farmers. Keywords  Small farmers · Sustainable farming system · Food security · Food sovereignty

20.1  Introduction On the one hand, the turn of the century into the new millennium brought new hopes; on the other hand, it brought many challenges to rural communities, particularly small farmers with regard to food security, environmental degradation, and changes (FAO, 2018). In Brazil, small farmers have been pressured by land grabbing (Alston, Libecap, & Mueller, 1999; Futemma, Adams, & Munari, 2015; Schmink & This chapter was supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation—FAPESP (grant numbers 07/53308-1, 12/05145-1, 16/07756-1). This manuscript was peer-reviewed by two anonymous reviewers. C. Futemma (*) Center for Environmental Study and Research (NEPAM), State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_20

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Wood, 1991, 1993), market struggles, besides environmental problems such as agrochemical pollution of water and soil, which in turn affects human health (producers and consumers) by intoxication, causing overall declining of living standards. On the other hand, the new century brought new hopes to small farmers and local communities. More sustainable farming system models have emerged in contrast to conventional agriculture that fits small-scale farming system (Altieri, 2009; van Noordwijk, 2019; Willer & Lernoud, 2019). To better understand these “new” agricultural trends or alternative agriculture, this chapter focuses on three different farming models—organic agriculture, agroecology, and agroforestry—in Brazil, where small farmers from different regions have adopted one or a combination of two or more of these agricultural systems. During the 1970s, alternative agriculture emerged as a response to the negative effects caused by the agricultural models of the Green Revolution which were based on heavy chemical compounds after the Second World War (WWII) (Carson, 1962; Fonseca, 2009). Alternative agriculture is a general term to refer to different models of agriculture and encompasses several types of farming systems that take into account ecological processes of natural ecosystems: nutrient cycling, energy flux, intra- and interspecies interactions, and water cycles. These alternative agriculture models were mostly popular in developed countries such as Europe, the USA, and Japan. In the 1980s, alternative agriculture models started to become more popular in developing countries, including Latin America and Brazil (Fonseca, 2009). In the 1990s, the general term “alternative agriculture” was replaced by “sustainable agriculture” in a publication in the Brundtland report “Our Common Future” in 1987, focusing on sustainable development (Brundtland, 1987) and the UN Conference on Environment and Development, Rio92  in 1992, that launched the Agenda 21 (Camargo, Capobianco, & Oliveira, 2004; De Castro & Futemma, 2015a). Thus, “sustainable agriculture” movement was more socially inclusive than “alternative agriculture,” since the former sheds some light on local communities and small farmers and the latter is more related to environmental and economic concerns. Finally, during the 2000s, there was a turning point in farming systems practiced in Latin America as far as the social dimension was concerned: the inclusion of small farmers into the sustainable development agenda. Thus, sustainable agriculture is an umbrella term encompassing several types of farming systems, and it is multi-dimensional in that it encompasses social, economic, ecological, and political dimensions in a truly transdisciplinary approach1 (Choi & Pak, 2006; Parra-Vázquez et al. Chap. 1, this volume). Sustainable agriculture involves local knowledge, that is, these integrative and multi-dimensional production systems have been built upon scientific and non-scientific knowledge (Choi & Pak, 2006, p. 354) that goes beyond conventional agriculture based mostly on scientific portfolio. 1  Transdisciplinarity: it is a specific form of interdisciplinarity in which boundaries between and beyond disciplines are transcended and knowledge and perspectives from varying scientific disciplines as well as non-scientific sources are integrated (Choi & Pak, 2006, p. 354; Flinterman et al., 2001).

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For purposes of this study, the three sustainable farming systems practiced by small farmers—organic agriculture, agroecology, and agroforestry—will have their social, political–institutional, and environmental dimensions analyzed. The social dimension deals mainly with the social class, social inclusion, and behavioral changes in both producers and consumers. The political–institutional dimension touches on issues of producers’ organization (e.g., cooperatives, and associations), certification process, socio-political movement, and co-production of knowledge. Last but not least, the environmental dimension brings aspects of ecological processes from these productive models in an integrative frame ecosystem-agriculture. This is a literature review of primary and secondary data. Fieldwork was carried out in different periods in the state of São Paulo (2007–2012 and 2017–2018) and state of Pará (2011–2019), located in the southeast region and Amazonian region, respectively. The search for articles was conducted through Google Scholar searching for keywords such as “organic agriculture,” “agroecology,” and “agroforestry” in combination with the term “small farmers.” In addition, research on organizations was done by accessing the Brazilian Institute of Applied Research (IAR) dataset2 and additional information was gathered in each organization’s website available online. Finally, three case studies observed during the fieldwork in São Paulo and Pará will be presented (Boxes 20.1, 20.2, and 20.3) in order to illustrate each farming system (organic, agroecology, and agroforestry) practiced by small farmers.

20.2  S  ustainable Agriculture Models and Small Farmers in Brazil In the past 15–20  years, small farmers in Brazil have had the opportunity to be included in the sustainable agricultural models, mainly due to public policies that support small-scale production through credit lines3 and access to the market (Fonseca, 2009). Small Brazilian farmers is a very heterogeneous category socially, culturally, and politically speaking, but they all face several struggles and constraints to produce and sell their products, thus they all face economic bottlenecks. In this study, small farmer is a general term that embraces family farmers,4 smallholder

 https://mapaosc.ipea.gov.br  Family Farmer Forest Credit (PRONAF Floresta, see https://www.bb.com.br/pbb/pagina-inicial/ agronegocios/agronegocio%2D%2D-produtos-e-servicos/credito/investir-em-sua-atividade/pronaf-florestal#/) and Family Farmer Agroecology Credit (PRONAF Agroecologia, see http://www. agroecologia.gov.br/acesso-a-politica/pronaf-agroecologia). 4  According to Brazilian Law 11,326/2006, family farmers (agricultura familiar) are small-scale producers who work at minimum 70% with farming activities and depend on labor of family members and who hold a land size up to 440 ha (it varies according to Brazilian regions). 2 3

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farmers,5 local communities (traditional6 and Indigenous farmers), and rural settlements (settlers and landless farmers). Regarding the production system, in Brazil, according to federal regulation (Decree 6323/07), organic agriculture encompasses different farming production systems: (1) Ecological; (2) Bio-dynamic; (3) Natural; (4) Regenerative; (5) Biological; (6) Agroecological; (7) Permaculture; and (8) other types that might meet Brazilian organic production regulation. Despite this “umbrella” definition, in the present study, organic agriculture is considered different from agroecology and agroforestry. In this section, an overview of small farmers’ participation on these three different sustainable agriculture models will be shown and particular attention to social, political–institutional, and environmental dimensions will be paid.

20.2.1  Organic Agriculture Production of organic products has been steadily increasing around the globe, according to Willer and Kilcher (2010). Between 1999 and 2008, organic agriculture increased by 200%, from 11  million  hectare (ha) to 35  million  ha. In 2017, organic agriculture was found in 181 countries from all continents with 69.8 million  ha (in 1999, 11  million  ha) occupied by organic production and 2.9  million producers (in 1999, 4.1 million producers) (Willer & Lernoud, 2019, p.22). In 2019, Oceania was the largest producer of organic products (35.9 million ha) and Latin America lied in third place (8 million ha) (Willer & Lernoud, 2019). Latin America has an estimate of 8 million ha covered by organic production and Argentina ranks as the second top country worldwide (3.4  million  ha), only behind Australia (35.6 million ha) (Willer & Lernoud, 2019). Brazil, in 2008, was the tenth largest producer in the world with 1.7 million ha and 7250 organic farmers. Its main organic products for exportation were sugar, coffee, tobacco, chicken, orange, milk, vegetables, and soybean (Madail, Belarmino, & Bini, 2011). Some private companies or large-scale producers in Brazil are Native (sugar), JBS-WWF (meat) (Fonseca, 2009), and Korin (Mokiti Okada’s natural agriculture that produces fruits, meat, chicken, and eggs). According to Brazilian law (Law 10,831), organic agriculture refers to all farming systems that promote sustainable production of food (plant, animals, and mushrooms), as well as fibers and other non-food products (e.g., cosmetics, vegetable oils) by considering environmental aspects and by being socially and economically  See Netting (1993) for definition and discussion on smallholders.  “Traditional population” has become an umbrella category in Brazil, and it encompasses several social groups whose cultural distinctiveness is expressed in terms of specific territorialities, such as Amerindians and Quilombolas, but they all have historical connections with natural resources either as source of food, shelter, rituals, medicine, or all of them. For more information, see http:// www.mma.gov.br/desenvolvimento-rural/terras-ind%C3%ADgenas,-povos-e-comunidadestradicionais 5 6

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responsible. Organic agriculture, according to the Brazilian regulation, includes both productive and extractivist systems (Fonseca, 2009, p.19). In order to deal with issues of fair trade and social responsibility and to follow international protocols (Willer & Lernoud, 2019), the Brazilian regulations address rules and mechanisms that include organic production from small farmers as well (Alves, Santos, & Azevedo, 2012; Fonseca, 2009). These regulations contribute to guarantee quality of small farmers’ products and to give them access to the market (see discussion further in this chapter). To understand the multi-faceted aspect of organic agriculture, the social, political–institutional, and environmental dimensions will be discussed. 20.2.1.1  Social Dimension Historically, organic agriculture has been related to the middle class worldwide (Coelho, 2001), both for producers but mainly consumers. In all countries (the USA, Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Latin America), including Brazil, consumers have higher education, between 20 and 50 years, higher income and are professionally liberal or independent, academics, executives, and students (Coelho, 2001). The reasons behind the consumption of organic products are mainly human health and environmental protection. Organic producers can be small, medium, and large scale. Worldwide, there are several cases of private companies or large-scale farmers who invest in organic production and exportation (Coelho, 2001; Madail et  al., 2011). In the period 2006–2010, in Brazil, from 50% to 70% of organic production was for exportation to Europe (mainly Netherlands and Sweden), the USA, and Canada: sugar, coffee, butter, cocoa, and dried and fresh fruits (Madail et al., 2011). However, some Brazilian public policies, in particular a federal program for school meal, have provided a great opportunity to include small farmers in organic production. In 2009, the federal government launched the National Program for School Meal (NPSM),7 which requires that at least 30% of the products used in public schools’ meals be supplied by local family farmers. It was a significant shift in social paradigm, especially if one considers that organic products have historically been connected to middle class or the so-called elites. Through this program, family farmers have a guaranteed market and good price to sell their products on a weekly basis. Farmers can produce and sell non-organic food, but the government gives priority to organic producers, which is an incentive to farmers to adopt this more sustainable model. The number of small farmers and local communities practicing organic agriculture has increased (see Table  20.1, proxy number of organic farmers). The main motivations of small farmers to adopt an organic production are farmers’ health, higher price (in comparison to conventional products), guaranteed market, and environmental protection. According to Coelho (2001), in general and worldwide, prices

 For more information, see http://www.fnde.gov.br/programas/alimentacao-escolar

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Brazil 7,146 5,290 4,711 17,147

Source: Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (BMAL). Jun/2018

of organic products are 10%, 20%, or 50% higher than conventional counterparts. In Brazil, such prices can be 100% or even 200% higher (Coelho, 2001). In addition, small farmers became not only organic producers but also organic consumers, which is a significant change in their behavior towards more environment and health concerns. 20.2.1.2  Political–Institutional Dimension In order to sell their products, all organic producers must follow some federal regulations related to certification and market. In order to guarantee standard8 quality of organic products, to promote consumer trust, and to follow the International Federation of Organic Agriculture or Organics International (IFOAM) system, the Brazilian government created several rules and mechanisms9 in 2009 to regularize and certify organic products through the Brazilian Organic Conformity Assessment System (BOCAS). The Brazilian System is formed by the Participatory Guarantee System or Assurance System (PGS) and Certification by Audit (Fonseca, 2009). The PGS is a group certification that facilitates access of small farmers to organic certification and organic market and it is associated with the concept of Internal Control System10 (ICS). Besides, the PGS reduces the costs of certification. Certification by Audit is an individual third-party certification by an independent certification body. Some of those bodies are public agencies, but their majority is private organizations  Organic standards address various aspects of organic production, namely: (1) General farm production requirements and conversion periods; (2) Crop production requirements and requirements for the collection of wild products; (3) Animal production requirements (including bee-keeping); (4) Processing and handling requirements; (5) Social justice requirements, and (6) Labeling requirements. (Source: https://www.ifoam.bio/en/general-information-organic-standards-andcertification). 9  Federal Law 10831/2003; Decree 6323/2007 and 6913/2009; Normative Instruction 54 and 64/2008 and Normative Instruction 17 and 18/2009 (Fonseca, 2009). 10  According to IFOAM: “An Internal Control System (ICS) is the part of a documented quality assurance system that allows an external certification body to delegate the periodic inspection of individual group members to an identified body or unit within the certified operator. This means that the third party certification bodies only have to inspect the well-functioning of the system, as well as to perform a few spot-check re-inspections of individual smallholders.” (Source: https:// www.ifoam.bio/en/organic-policy-guarantee/participatory-guarantee-systems-pgs). 8

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which must obtain accreditation by the International Organic Accreditation Service (IOAS) under the IFOAM Organic Guarantee System.11 There are three different ways of selling organic products: (1) Direct sales by family farmer to end-consumer, with no certification, but the seller must be affiliated to an Organization of Social Control (OSC), which is an internal control system; (2) Direct sales by non-family farmers with organic certification; and (3) Indirect sales by non-family farmers with organic certification (Fonseca, 2009). Small organic farmers affiliated to an OSC who have no certification may sell their products through direct sales to some specific markets, such as street markets, home-delivery services (organic basket), and NPSM (school meal program). Small organic farmers who participate in the Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) have access to a wider range of markets, such as supermarkets, restaurants, coffee shops, and specialized organic stores/shops, besides street markets, NPSM, and homedelivery services (Fonseca, 2009). In 2018, there were more than 4700 OSC and more than 5000 PGS signed up at the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (Table  20.1). These figures mean that, in 2018, there were more than 10,000 organic small farmers from all regions in Brazil. According to the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (BMAL), the number of organic producers increased seven times between 2010 and 2018. Another important aspect of small farmers who are involved with organic production is social organization. Usually, they are affiliated to a cooperative and/or an association. Cooperatives help them access markets and reduce production costs by exchanging information, products, seeds/seedlings, or by purchasing collectively agricultural inputs and offering opportunities of capacity building. Associations provide them with support for farmers’ legal rights, access to lawyer’s services, access to public policies and NGOs’ projects, and some associations offer members medical and dental assistance. In 2018, there were 555 organizations spread in all regions of Brazil directly related to organic (329), agroecology (199), or agroforestry systems (27) (Table 20.2). Almost 200 organizations refer to organic agriculture (36%) because it is the oldest organization since the 1970s, and the number exploded during the1990s and 2000s (Table 20.3 and Fig. 20.1). An example to illustrate a case of a group of family farmers who have been involved in organic agriculture (and lately in agroforestry as well) in the countryside of the state of São Paulo (Campinas region) is presented in Box 20.1. They are organized as a cooperative, are certified, and sell their products to diversified markets: school meal, street markets, restaurant, among others.

 https://www.ifoam.bio/en/general-information-organic-standards-and-certification

11

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Box 20.1 Small Farmers from the State of São Paulo: An Organic Agriculture Case Family farmers from the Campinas region in the state of São Paulo grow organic vegetables and fruits and have been successful in selling their whole production to PNAE (school meal program) and local market (specialized stores and free market). This region has a high demand for organic food due to costumers’ profile from middle/upper class, professionals from universities and private companies likewise worldwide (Coelho, 2001). These small organic farmers are organized in a cooperative and, recently, at the end of 2018, they have found another market to sell their products: delivery at middle class/upper class condominium doors on a weekly basis and consumers may buy their products online and pay with credit card. In order to sell their organic products, family farmers have created groups of certification based on PGS in order to obtain an organic certification with reduced costs and to be able to access different markets and consumers. In general, each group is composed of 6–10 members, each farmer has his or her own organic labeling to stamp in their products, and they follow all organic standard procedures from production, marketing to property conditions. Regularly, they collect samples of soil, water (e.g., rivers, streams, wells), and crops (e.g., leaves) and send to lab analysis in order to monitor their organic production. They follow all legal procedures diligently and are proud of being an organic producer. Some of these organic farmers have participated in the agroforestry program (PDRS, 2010–2018) promoted by the government of the state of São Paulo (Araújo, Santos, & Lobo, 2016; Canuto, 2018). There is another group of small farmers (non-family farmers) from the Campinas region whose choice to produce organic food was driven by their belief and lifestyles, and they are connected to an international movement known as the Community Supported Agriculture12 (CSA). In Brazil, the CSA13 is a very recent farming model, it arrived in 2011 and it has been found in Campinas since 2012–2016. There are approximately 43 groups of farmers related to the CSA in Brazil, but mainly in the South and southern regions, and 19 are in the state of São Paulo (SP). In 2018, the Campinas region had six groups of CSA (Campinas, Jundiai, Atibaia, and Itatiba municipalities, all in the state of SP). Their members seek a sense of community in that it tries to promote a close interaction between producers and consumers (as co-producers) from an early stage of production to direct selling to each consumer through weekly basket of fresh farming products (Adam, 2006; Brown & Miller, 2008; Ernst, 2017). In general, small CSA farmers are people from the middle class and urban areas who decided to invest in organic  https://communitysupportedagriculture.org.uk/what-is-csa/ and https://www.localharvest.org/ csa/ 13  http://csabrasil.org/csa/ 12

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Table 20.2  Distribution of the number of organizations related to agroecology, organic agriculture, and agroforestry across different states in Brazil (2018) Agroecology Relative Absolute (%) 0 0 8 2.4 3 0.9 2 0.6 33 10.0 21 6.4 5 1.5 13 4.0 6 1.8 15 4.6 18 5.5 5 1.5

State Acre (AC) Alagoas (AL) Amazonas (AM) Amapá (AP) Bahia (BA) Ceará (CE) Distrito Federal (DF) Espírito Santo (ES) Goiás (GO) Maranhão (MA) Minas Gerais (MG) Mato Grosso do Sul (MS) Mato Grosso (MT) 13 Pará (PA) 14 Paraíba (PB) 13 Pernambuco (PE) 13 Piaui (PI) 10 Paraná (PR) 24 Rio de Janeiro (RJ) 12 4 Rio Grande do Norte (RN) Rondônia (RO) 8 Rio Grande do Sul (RS) 25 Roraima (RR) 1 Santa Catarina (SC) 22 Sergipe (SE) 5 São Paulo (SP) 27 Tocantins (TO) 3 Savannaa (Cerrado) 1 South regionb 2 Northeast regionc 1 Country leveld 2 TOTAL 329

Organic agriculture Relative Absolute (%) 1 0.5 0 0.0 1 0.5 1 0.5 11 5.5 8 4.0 3 1.5 3 1.5 1 0.5 0 0.0 11 5,5 4 2.0

Agroforestry Relative Absolute (%) 17 63.0 0 0.0 2 7.4 1 3.7 1 3.7 1 3.7 1 3.7 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0,0 0 0.0

4.0 4.3 4.0 4.0 3.0 7.3 3.6 1.2

5 10 4 10 4 42 17 2

2.5 5.0 2.0 5.0 2.0 21.1 8.5 1.0

0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0

0.0 3.7 0.0 3.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

2.4 7.6 0.3 6.7 1.5 8.2 0.9 0.3 0.6 0.3 0.6 100.0

2 7 0 13 10 29 0 0 0 0 0 199

1.0 3.5 0.0 6.5 5.0 14.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 100.0

1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 27

3.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 3.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 100.0

Source: IAR (Brazilian Institute of Applied Research) Associations that represents social actors from Savanna region of Brazil b Associations that represents social actors from South region of Brazil c Associations that represents social actors from Northeast region of Brazil d Associations at the national level (Brazil): Articulação Nacional de Agroecologia and Associação Brasileira de Agroecologia a

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Table 20.3  Percentage (%) distribution of organizations related to agroecology, organic and agroforestry by period of foundation Period of foundation 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000–2009 2010–2018

Agroecology Percentage (%) 0 3 11 48 38

Organic agriculture

Agroforestry

1 3 6 61 30

0 0 0 43 57

Source: IAR (Brazilian Institute of Applied Research, 2018)

production but with an added strong feeling of collaborative work, in collectivity. However, several family farmers sell their organic products to CSA groups in order to fulfill the CSA’s weekly baskets, and thus family farmers and non-family farmers help each other in a collective effort. 20.2.1.3  Environmental Dimension The environmental dimension has much to do with the concept of organic per se, which is based on ecological principles. The organic model is guided by four main principles14 that characterize its sustainable production: the principle of ecology; the principle of health; the principle of fairness; and the principle of care (Willer & Lernoud, 2019). Definition and practice of organic agriculture has undergone some changes from its initial concept back in 1920s–1930s—when Sir Albert Howard (England) pointed out the important role of organic material and biological life of soil (Madail et al., 2011)—throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It has always focused more on environmental aspects and on producing healthy foods rather than social and political issues such as what the agroecology movement has done (see discussion further in this chapter). However, in the1990s, and mainly in the 2000s, fair trade and social responsibility started to be included in the organic agenda worldwide (Willer & Lernoud, 2019) and in Brazil (Campanhola & Valarini, 2001; Fonseca, 2009). Besides changes in its scope, the definition of organic agriculture varies and it is controversial; while some authors do not consider it as a science but rather as a practice (Fonseca, 2009), others such as the IFOAM (International Federation of Organic Agriculture or Organics International) defines it as a science-based system: “organic agriculture is a production system that sustains the health of soils, ecosystems and  The principle of ecology refers to a nested relationship between agriculture system and living ecological systems and natural cycles. The principle of health deals with overall health of humans, animals, plants, soil, and planet. The principle of fairness deals with a relationship that ensures fairness with regard to common environment and life opportunities. Finally, the principle of care touches on issues of precautionary and responsible manner to protect the health and well-being of current and future generations and the environment (Willer & Lernoud, 2019, pp. 2–3).

14

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Fig. 20.1  Distribution of organizations in % (Y axis) related to agroecology, organic agriculture, and agroforestry by year of foundation (X axis). (Source: IAR (Brazilian Institute of Applied Research))

people. It relies on ecological processes, biodiversity and cycles adapted to local conditions, rather than the use of inputs with adverse effects. Organic Agriculture combines tradition, innovation and science to benefit the shared environment and promote fair relationships and a good quality of life for all involved.” (www. ifoam.bio). Thus, organic agriculture is characterized as not using chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and any other products of synthetic origin.

20.2.2  Agroecology The agroecological farming system shares some similarities with organic agriculture (see Sect. 20.2.1, below); however, they differ in terms of social and political aspects. One of the main and active proponents of the agroecological model is Professor Miguel Altieri from Berkeley University (USA). He argues that agroecosystems are based on three pillars: ecological, technological, and socio-economic/ cultural. He states that agroecology is a political movement that claims food sovereignty and food security, ensure social equity and economic agricultural viability especially for small farmers in Latin American countries with a peasant population of approximately 75  million people, which represents almost two-thirds of Latin America’s total population (Altieri, 2009).

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Agroecology is considered scientific-based (Altieri, Rosset, & Thrupp, 1998; Assis & Romeiro, 2002; Fonseca, 2009), and it also relies on indigenous farming knowledge and technological innovation to manage diversity (Altieri et al., 1998). An agroecological movement has emerged throughout Latin America in the 2000s, including Brazil (Caporal & Costabeber, 2005). This movement constituted by smallholder and landless farmers claim land tenure rights (individual or collective territories) and recognition by society of their important role as farmers, mainly as food producers and their identity as peasant farmers (see Via Campesina,15 an international peasant’s movement). Despite the organic agriculture system focusing on social responsibility (and social inclusion) and fair trade, it does not emphasize political aspects of the whole production system as does agroecology. In addition, while organic models work with both small and large-scale production (Coelho, 2001; Fonseca, 2009; Willer & Lernoud, 2019), agroecology only works with small scale (Altieri, 2009). 20.2.2.1  Social Dimension As previously described, agroecology holds a strong social and political role in its practice (Abreu, Lamine, & Bellon, 2009). In Brazil, in the past 5–10  years, the agroecological model has grown rapidly, and it has strong connections with social movements (e.g., the landless movement) and touches on several sociocultural issues such as local people empowerment, gender, collective identity (e.g., family farmers or peasant/camponês), and food security/sovereignty. Agroecology has been adopted as a farming model by hundreds of rural settlements (agrarian reform) all over the Brazilian territory from North to South (Borges, 2012), as well as by traditional communities such as Afro-Brazilian people with strong support from NGOs and academics (Azevedo & Netto, 2015). Thus, agroecology has been related strongly to family farmers and local communities, unlike the organic model that has historically been connected with middle class at both producer and consumer spheres worldwide and in Brazil. As discussed thus far, agroecological producers are composed most of family farmers, and it has a mission to combat hunger (Altieri et al., 1998). Thus, the first target is to provide food for farmers’ family members and for all local communities who historically face poverty and multiple vulnerabilities, but not any kind of food, only food produced with quality on an ecological basis (Altieri et al., 1998). Thus, producers and consumers are the same actors for the main goal of agroecology food production. However, agroecological farmers also sell their products in the market for overall citizens. To be able to sell their products as organic food and obtain a better price, they must follow all Brazilian regulations for organic certification and market (as discussed previously in the Organic Agriculture section). Data in Table 20.1 refer not only to small organic farmers affiliated to the OSC (Organization of Social

15

 https://viacampesina.org/en/

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Control) or PGS (Participatory Guarantee Systems) but also to small agroecological farmers who indicate strong participation of these farmers into the market. Many agroecological farmers sell their products in free markets. However, differently from Brazilian consumers from the South and Southern (richer) regions, agroecological farmers from the North and Northeast (poorer) regions face more challenges in selling their products in the local market due to their products higher prices compared to conventional ones, as observed by Santos, Rosário, Matos, Freitas, and Carvalho (2015) in the state of Pará. An important motivation for family farmers in adopting the agroecological model was the opportunity to participate in the NPSM (public school meal program), as previously discussed. 20.2.2.2  Political–Institutional Dimension Agroecology has become an agroecological movement due to its social and political importance, in addition to functioning as a power instrument to change family farmers’ attitudes and even self-esteem and motivation to self-organize in small or large collectivities such as associations or networks. Table 20.2 shows the existence of 329 organizations related to agroecology in 2018, wherein the highest number was (59%) compared to organic and agroforestry organizations. Agroecological organization started to be created in the 1980s with a peak between 2000 and 2009 with 48 new organizations (Fig. 20.1), and it is still growing in numbers. Differing types of organization vary considerably, several represent family farmers and rural settlements, some represent Afro-Brazilian communities, and only a few represent women’s rights, professionals from extension services and university professors, despite all of them dealing with agroecology. Organizations that represent professionals from the extension service and rural assistance as well as from universities might indicate that these professionals are organized in order to give support to local farmers and communities in a process called Agroecological Transition. Such “transition” refers to change from conventional or slash-and-burn agriculture to the agroecological model (Caporal & Costabeber, 2005; Fonseca, 2009). Working together for a common goal—producing healthy food and achieving farmers’ empowerment and autonomy—is the main strategy adopted by agroecological farmers. They have been organized in different forms of social mobilization, such as networks (e.g., Rede Ecovida de Agroecologia, Market and Social Innovation network, see Rover (2011) for more detailed discussion), federations (e.g., Articulação Nacional de Agroecologia—ANA; Associação Brasileira de Agroecologia, see Table 20.2), and associations. Box 20.2 illustrates a case of family farmers (former landless families) of a rural settlement located in the countryside of the state of São Paulo (Sorocaba region), who have been investing in the agroecological system and, more recently, have combined it with agroforestry in order to cultivate perennial cash crops (e.g., fruits) and to forest restoration purposes. Because the settlement is located near a protected area (National Forest), local farmers reported that they wanted to grow more sustainable crops in order to reconcile both nature protection and production system.

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20.2.2.3  Environmental Dimension Agroecology shares similarities with organic agriculture with regard to the environmental dimension. Both hold similar goals and ecological principles in that a farming system is part of a natural ecosystem—such as an agroecosystem—by using biological control of pests and diseases, preserving habitats and biodiversity, nutrient cycling, promoting water quality regulation and paying particular attention to conservation and management of the soil, which is considered a living being and is the basis for healthy plants. Thus, its goal is to produce healthy and chemical-free crops and animals (for more information on ecological processes of agroecology, see Altieri et al., 1998; Gliessman, 2007). Box 20.2 Family Farmers from Rural Settlements in São Paulo: An Agroecology Case Two rural settlements from the Sorocaba region in the state of São Paulo are located near the Ipanema National Forest (a protected area). It was a Ranch (Fazenda Ipanema) with a large pasture area and when landless people moved in, in 1992, it was a degraded land. Small farmers grew a diversity of annual and perennial crops for both subsistence and commercial purposes. They cultivated a variety of vegetables (lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, eggplants, among others), beans, sweet manioc (Manihot utilissima), and fruits (orange, tangerine, acerola, lemons, limes, guava, avocado, mangoes, to list a few). In 2007–2008, some families decided to change from conventional agriculture to chemical-free production (agroecology), both annual (e.g., corn, beans, vegetables) and perennial (e.g., passion fruit, guava, acerola) crops. They were concerned with their own health as well as the consumers’ health, and they also reported that organic production was more compatible with environmental conservation since they lived close to a protected area. They sold to the local free market and also to NPSM (a school meal program). Family farmers were also concerned with the deforestation of the gallery forest and they were planning to restore settlements’ riparian areas with agroforestry. In 2013–2015, they started to participate in the Program of Sustainable Rural Development (PSRD), a program in the state of São Paulo (Gonçalves, Ruas, & Benedetti, 2018). Thus, these family farmers seek to produce a variety of crops, both annual and perennial, in a sustainable manner by following the agroecological and agroforestry models.

20.2.3  Agroforestry The emergence of the agroforestry productive model is very similar to organic production and partially agroecology back in the1970s and in response to negative impacts of Green Revolution and conventional agriculture (van Noordwijk, 2019).

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He states the concept of agroforestry was proposed in the mid-1970s, but it has likely been practiced by farmers since the advent of agriculture. Since agroforestry’s first definition in 1978, it has undergone some changes during1990s and 2000s. One of the main changes in its concept was the inclusion of the social dimension in order to deal with issues on social benefits, human and rural livelihoods, co-production of knowledge (farmers’ knowledge and techniques), and participatory approaches (van Noordwijk, 2019). Besides social and economic components, the Agroforestry System (AFS) includes ecological functions (high diversity of crop species and forest-like structure) (Yamada, 1999). The AFS has been considered a key farming system by national and international environmental agencies because it can contribute to forest restoration and rural development (van Noordwijk, 2019). Agroforestry is a diversified multi-crop system with several models that depend on different variables or conditions: biophysical, sociocultural, and economic attributes and/or goals. It is very much a “site-specific model”: Which species will be cultivated (native or exotic); How many of each species (annual and perennial); For what purposes (environmental restoration, production); Availability of labor (family or contracted); Access to information/knowledge; and several other specific circumstances of each site or place (van Noordwijk, 2019). These multi-functional and diversified agroforestry models have shown to be adequate production systems for small farmers around the world (Willer & Kilcher, 2011; Willer & Lernoud, 2019), and it has been practiced in many tropical countries (van Noordwijk, 2019). In Brazil, agroforestry models have been found in all regions (from north to south) or biomes (Amazonia, Atlantic Forest, Brazilian savanna, Caatinga) and for different purposes (forest restoration, farmers’ income, environmental conservation, food production) (Bianchini, 2006; CPI-AC, 2002; Gavazzi, 2012; Miccolis, Penereiro, & Marques, 2019; Porro & Miccolis, 2011; Subler & Uhl, 1990; Yamada & Gholz, 2002). It has also been an important tool to combat hunger and poverty in Brazil (Porro & Miccolis, 2011). 20.2.3.1  Social Dimension As mentioned, the agroforestry model when first proposed in 1978 did not include any social dimension to it: “Agroforestry is a collective name for land-use systems and technologies where woody perennials (trees, shrubs, palms, bamboos) are deliberately used on the same land-management unit as agricultural crops and/or animals, in some form of spatial arrangement or temporal sequence. In agroforestry systems, there are both ecological and economic interactions between the different components.” (van Noordwijk, 2019,p. 5)

In the 1990s, agroforestry’s definition changed and included some social aspects related to these production systems: “Agroforestry is a dynamic, ecologically based, natural resource management system that, through the integration of trees on farms and in agricultural landscapes, diversifies and

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sustains production for increased social, economic and environmental benefits for land users at all levels.” (Leakey, 1996, van Noordwijk, 2019, p. 6).

However, only in 2000s, social aspects and its multi-dimensional spheres have been applied in several agroforestry methods and practices (participatory methods, co-design and co-production of knowledge, poverty alleviation, food security) around the world, Latin America and Brazil, through a process quite similar to the organic model as discussed earlier in this chapter. In this context of the new millennium, agroforestry projects towards small farmers have been steadily increasing in tropical countries of Asia (Celeridad, 2018; Riyandoko & Martini, 2018), Africa (Meijer, Catacutan, Ajayi, Sileshi, & Nieuwenhuis, 2014), and Latin America (Castillo, Valverde-Quiroz, & Cornelius, 2018; Gambon, Jacobi, & MathezStiefel, 2016). In Brazil, agroforestry production can be considered a “recent” agricultural model according to World Agroforestry (ICRAF)’s concept (see van Noordwijk, 2019). However, in practice, rural homegardens (quintais) with a mix of trees, shrubs, herbs, and roots/vegetables can be found among the Brazilian rural population (Albuquerque, Andrade, & Caballero, 2005; Florentino, Araújo, & Alburquerque, 2007; Gazel Filho, 2008; Trotta et al., 2012), and researchers called them agroforestry homegardens. In the eastern region of the Brazilian Amazon region, in the municipality of Tomé-Açu, there is a very well-known agroforestry system and it is market-oriented, whose main agroforesters are Japanese immigrants and their descendants, or Nikkei16 (Barros, Homma, Takamatsu, Takamatsu, & Konagano, 2009; Batistella, Bolfe, & Moran, 2012; De Castro & Futemma, 2015b; Subler & Uhl, 1990; Yamada, 1999; Yamada & Gholz, 2002). They have invested in agroforestry production since the 1970s after a devastating pest outbreak that collapsed the monoculture of black pepper (Homma, 1998). It is a unique agroforestry system in Brazil and Nikkei farmers have named it as the Agroforestry System of Tomé-Açu (ASTA),17 comprising a set of highly economically valuable cash crops that provides continuous harvest throughout the year. They process fruit pulps through an agroindustry plant for exportation (the USA and Japan). Due to property size, Nikkei farmers can be considered small farmers (up to 200 ha/lot). In the last 10–15 years, Nikkei farmers have invested in projects to transfer ASTA technologies to local communities of family farmers, as well as Afro-Brazilian (maroon) and Indigenous groups in the Amazon region and abroad (Bolivia in South America and Ghana in Africa), thus being in the process of expanding this ASTA model in partnership with a federal research institute, a cosmetics private company, ICRAF (The World Agroforestry), and WRS (Japanese NGO). The AFS in this region has been built in a true co-production process by combining farmers’, practitioners’, and scientists’ knowledge and techniques.

16 17

 Nikkei: Japanese immigrant in Brazil or Japanese descendants.  In portuguese SAFTA: Sistema Agroflorestal de Tomé-Açu.

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The AFS is spread all over the Amazon region across different groups of small farmers: family farmers and landless people from rural settlements, as well as AfroBrazilian and Indigenous communities. In Acre, there have been projects geared towards indigenous territories that involve several communities in agroforestry systems (CPI-AC, 2002) since mid-1990s through PPG7 (Pilot Program for Tropical Forest Protection, promoted by the United Nations—UN) and technical support from the Pro-Indigenous Commission of Acre. In order to promote and maintain agroforestry, Indigenous farmers were trained and, in 2002, they received the title of Indigenous Agroforestry Agents. These Agents were responsible for transferring agroforestry techniques to their counterparts and for implementing and monitoring the productive system. As such, this whole situation led to the emergence of a new social and active local actor in Acre (Bianchini, 2006; CPI-AC, 2002). Miccolis et al. (2019) have developed different models of agroforestry systems for poor family farmers from the Cerrado (Brazilian savannas, mid-west region of Brazil) and Caatinga (dry areas in the northeast region of Brazil) biomes. These researchers considered specific biophysical conditions, the sociocultural background of local farmers, and access to knowledge and credit. They argued that it is possible to implement agroforestry systems in any biome, be it humid or dry, it would be a matter of adapting this production system to particularities of each site or location, where a small farmer lives in (Miccolis et al., 2019). In São Paulo, Southeast region of Brazil, the state government through its Environment and Agriculture Departments launched, in 2010, a Program for promoting and giving support to family farmers (especially from rural settlements) to adopt agroforestry system for three main purposes: (1) to recover degraded areas; (2) to generate and increase farmers’ income; and (3) to promote food security (Peruchi et al., 2015; Peruchi, Ramos Filho, & García-Barrios, 2015). The PSRD (Program for Sustainable Rural Development) was composed of 20 projects of agroforestry that involved more than 600 families of small farmers, mostly from the agrarian reform settlements spread all over the state of São Paulo, and its aim was to achieve 600 hectares covered with agroforestry (Araújo et al., 2016). The program lasted from 2010 to 2018. Some results have been published in Canuto (2018) and some others are still in analysis to verify whether the program reached its goals or not or what gaps must be tackled in the future. Ramos Filho and Aly Jr. (2005) also reinforce the potential of the agroforestry model for agrarian rural settlements as an alternative production system to raise farmers’ income, guarantee food production and food security, and minimize farming risks by cultivating multiple crops. Because agroforestry is not necessarily an organic production (as previously discussed), it has been practiced in both ways by local farmers, as organic or nonorganic practices. In the case of organic agroforestry, a farmer needs to certify his or her organic product in order to obtain a fair price per product in the market and reach a middle-class consumer (which is more prone to pay a higher price for organic or eco- and socially friendly products). In the case of non-organic agroforestry, their prices can be the same as conventional products in the market and as such would be more accessible to both the lower and middle/upper classes.

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20.2.3.2  Political–Institutional Dimension Many agroforestry farmers have organized themselves in cooperatives as a form of facilitating the process of farming products (agroindustry) and to access market to sell their products. Table 20.3 and Fig. 20.1 show the creation of agroforestry organization in the 2000s, that is, they are very “young organization” compared to organic and agroecology organizations that go back to the 1970s and 1980s, respectively. These organizations represent Indigenous communities, agroforestry small farmers, and rural settlements. Many of such organizations likely have no word “agroforestry” in their name, thus, the present search could not fully track all cooperatives and association that exist and work directly with agroforestry, which is the case of the Cooperative of Farming from Tomé-Açu or simply the Nikkei Cooperative (state of Pará). Table 20.2 shows that most agroforestry organizations were created in the state of Acre in the last 5–10 years and mostly represent Indigenous communities, which is the case of the AIAAA (Acre Indigenous Agroforestry Agents Association) (Bianchini, 2006; Di Giano et al., 2018), it was created around 2002. The Nikkei Coop, in Tomé-Açu, is a key cooperative that was created in 1931 as the Cooperative of Vegetables (CAMTA, 1967), it has been transformed into a successful organization comprising of more than 160 members (including a few nonNikkei farmers), 180 collaborators/employees, and more than 1000 registered farmer suppliers.18 The cooperative is an example of resilient collective action as it recovered from a few crises over its history (Brondízio, 2012; Piekielek, 2010). The Nikkei Coop also runs an agroindustry that processes the pulp of tropical fruits in order to sell to national and international markets. Since 2008, the Nikkei Coop has also engaged in a joint project with a cosmetics private company to assess the economic and environmental viability of oil palm (dendê oil palm, Elaeis guineensis) in an agroforestry system, the AFS-Dendê model. According to Castellani (Aug/2018, per. communication, Castellani et  al., 2009), the AFS-Dendê model revealed promising results, with oil palm productivity in agroforestry similar or above oil palm cultivated in monoculture. Since 2016, they (private company and coop) have another project to expand this AFS-Dendê model to the small farmer community.19 Hence, Nikkei farmers have been particularly successful in diversifying their farming system and testing new production models in their properties via these collaborative arrangements. In São Paulo, small farmers who participate in the PDRS project must also be affiliated to a cooperative. The cooperative functions as a bridge-institution between small farmers and public officers in regard to monetary funds management, equipment, training capacity, and access to information and knowledge. Similar to organic agriculture and agroecology, agroforestry family farmers also participate in the PNAE program (school meal), which is one of the main markets

 Registered farmers are allowed to be a Nikkei Cooperative suppliers once they comply with required quality standards. 19  http://www.worldagroforestry.org/country/Brazil 18

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for family farmers to sell their agroforestry products (Porro & Miccolis, 2011). In order to participate of NPSM, farmers must be affiliated to a cooperative. Overall, small farmers are better off if they are organized in groups—namely, self-organization (Ostrom, 1990)—through an association, cooperative, or any other type of institutional structure rather than individually as a farmer. Not only because of official requirements (such as NPSM or PRSD), but also because they might have easier access to knowledge and information, capacity building, better prices to sell and to buy products, and exchange information and resources (seeds, equipment). As the Tomé-Açu agroforester leader states: “farmers must work together in order to buy farming inputs by a cheaper price and to exchange knowledge.” Box 20.3 presents a case of a rural settlement in Tomé-Açu (state of Pará), where family farmers have adopted the ASTA model following the Nikkei Agroforestry. This group of family farmers has self-organized in order to create a cooperative and an agroindustry in a similar way to Nikkei farmers to sell their products to NPSM (school meal) and local markets. Box 20.3 Small Farmers from Rural Settlement in the Brazilian Amazon Region—An Agroforestry Case In Tomé-Açu (state of Pará, eastern part of the Amazon region), due to the Agroforestry Nikkei cooperative’s influence and capacity building, a group of family farmers from a rural settlement started to grow agroforestry between 2000 and 2004, created a cooperative (around 2016–17) and, more recently, in 2018, they opened a small agroindustry to process the pulp of tropical fruits (e.g., coconut, cupuaçu, Barbados cherry) in order to sell to municipal schools on a weekly basis (NPSM program). These small farmers have undertaken a protagonist role by designing and creating their own rules to produce and sell agroforestry products at a group-based or community level. Thus, they have been able to self-organize (Ostrom, 1990) into a cooperative to process and sell their own agroforestry products, similar to the Nikkei cooperative. In 2019, they invested in seedling nursery to expand their agroforestry fields.

20.2.3.3  Environmental Dimension Agroforestry is a combination or an integrative system between agriculture and forestry, in other words, interaction between agriculture and trees (or trees on farms), including agricultural use of trees.20 For environmentalists, practitioners, and researchers, AFS fulfills these multiple goals: social inclusion (e.g., small farmers) and promotion of rural livelihoods, food security, farmers’ income along the year and throughout the years (annual and perennial crops), ecological functions or environmental services (e.g., protection

20

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and enhancing biodiversity, water regulation and quality, conservation of soil, combat erosion, among several other ecological processes) (van Noordwijk, 2019). Agroforestry follows truly ecological principles of forest succession, nutrient and water cycles, and soil management. Thus, AFS has been considered an alternative to deforestation (Anderson, 1990) and a socio-ecological system at landscape scale (van Noordwijk, 2019), and it has been largely used for forest restoration purposes (Cameron, 2018; Chazdon & Guariguata, 2016; IUCN & WRI, 2014; World Bank, 2014).

20.3  Final Considerations The new millennium brought for small farmers in Brazil, on the one hand, several challenges related to the environmental agenda and market competition at national and international levels. On the other hand, this turning of the century allowed for new opportunities in order for small farmers to change their conventional agricultural practices to new paths towards sustainable agricultural models, namely organic agriculture, agroecology, and agroforestry. All three models have contributed to small farmers economically, socially, and ecologically. Economically because these alternative or sustainable-oriented farming systems can help increase their income by adding value to sustainable end products and have more access to the market at local, national, and international levels. Socially, they gained more visibility as a key social actor within society, they hold more self-esteem and political empowerment, and have more access to healthy food and, thus, better family farmers’ health. Lastly, in regard to the ecological dimension, they have contributed to forest restoration (e.g., Forest Reserve21 and riparian forest or PPA22), the recovery of degraded areas, lowering costs of production by managing natural resources (e.g., soil management, and biological control of pests and diseases) to enhance and conserve biodiversity, to produce and regulate water bodies (e.g., rivers, streams, springs), and to have access to potable water. In regard to all three sustainable-oriented production systems, they all emerged in the1970s and1980s in response to negative effects of the Green Revolution. While the organic agriculture and agroforestry conceptual models proposed in the1970s focused more on ecological and economic targets, agroecology was born with a strong political and social agenda in the 1980s and 1990s, especially in Latin America, towards the inclusion and empowerment of family farmers or peasants (campesinos) population. However, there was a turning point in the 2000s in regard  Forest Reserve refers to an amount of native or advanced secondary forest that must be conserved within a rural property and this amount varies according to each region in Brazil (Law 12.651 of May 25 of 2012). 22  Permanent Preservation Area—PPA—a protected area, covered or not by native vegetation, with environmental function of preserving water resources, the landscape and biodiversity, and soil (Law 12.651 of May 25 of 2012). 21

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to all three productive models—considering the growing international agenda that claimed for social environmental justice, climate change mitigation actions, and fair trade—wherein organic agriculture and agroforestry ended up more clearly including the social dimension in their agenda and goals, similarly to agroecology. Despite organic and agroforestry systems being adopted and practiced by mid- and largescale producers, both systems started to pay special attention to the small farmers population as a way of combating historically persistent poverty, hunger, and social vulnerabilities among the Brazilian rural population. The results of the more encompassing agenda of the three sustainable farming systems, that is, the inclusion of social, economic, and environmental goals, can be observed in small farmers’ practices on the ground. In addition, on an everyday practice, they have mixed those systems by adopting methods and principles of two or three productive models. In the Sorocaba region of the state of São Paulo, small farmers from rural settlements have combined agroecology production with the agroforestry model (Box 20.2), as did rural settlers and Indigenous communities in the state of Acre in the Amazon region. Small farmers from the Campinas region in São Paulo have adopted both organic and agroforestry systems in their properties (Box 20.1). Lastly, the acknowledgment of small farmers’ importance and wisdom has been reflected in the methods and techniques proposed by researchers, practitioners, and officials. Approaches such as building knowledge or co-production of knowledge (by combining scientific and farmers’ knowledge), participatory methods, and loop learning tools have been adopted by policy makers, academics, donors, and NGOs across programs and projects that involve the three productive models. All these methods and the integration of scientific and non-scientific knowledge reinforce the role of transdisciplinarity in the practice of sustainable farming systems (Choi & Pak, 2006; Flinterman, Teclemariam-Mesbah, Broerse, & Bunders, 2001) in the new millennium. To conclude, there is still a long way to fulfill historical gaps and tackle struggles faced by small farmers in Brazil, but trends of more sustainable productive models and more open dialogue between farmers and external actors (researchers, practitioners, officials, donors) indicate some initial seeds of transformation.

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Part VI

Synthesis and Moving Forward

Chapter 21

Lessons on Local Socio-Environmental Systems and Rural Producers’ Local Visions to Inform on Public Policy for Latin America Eduardo Bello Baltazar, Minerva Arce Ibarra, Manuel Roberto Parra Vázquez, and Luciana Gomes de Araujo Abstract  This chapter aims to present a synthesis of learned lessons on Local Socio-Environmental Systems (LSES) and rural producers’ local visions regarding the regimes complex’s effects on indigenous and rural productive systems present in Latin American (LA) territories. The majority of the studied territories have important biophysical reserves of water, minerals, and forests, like the Mayan area and the Amazon, which are inhabited by indigenous and traditional peoples. We used a transdisciplinary approach as well as Bonfil-Batalla’s cultural control theory to categorize territories according to the sources of rural producers’ key local resources and their capacity for decision-making regarding these resources in seven LA countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, and Mexico). The LSES’ main components are the Political-Economic Group (PEG), the Socio-­ Academic Group (SAG), and the Group of Producers (GP). All of them interact, mediated by asymmetric power relations, at territorial landscapes. Although different territorial dynamics were observed in different countries, our results show that current public policies promoted by social, environmental, educational, and law regimes are based on approaches that break with local visions of rural development. Moreover, a predominant model of interaction among the PEG, GP, and SAG was found in the studied LSES. In this model, the interaction among actors is driven by PEGs—as they determine the laws and market conditions imposed to control rural E. Bello Baltazar (*) · M. R. Parra Vázquez Department of Agriculture, Society and Environment, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] M. Arce Ibarra Department of Systematic and Aquatic Ecology, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] L. Gomes de Araujo Institute of Energy and Environment, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Arce Ibarra et al. (eds.), Socio-Environmental Regimes and Local Visions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49767-5_21

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production processes located in the territory’s landscapes. This model results in a reduced action by the GPs who experience conditions of exclusion, marginalization, poverty as well as a deterioration of their landscapes. In some case studies, the GPs increased their actions’ margin by developing collaborative partnerships with the SAG, which eventually generate collective action initiatives and/or innovation niches related to territorial autonomy and well-conserved landscapes. Moreover, among the cultural control processes findings, few examples of “appropriated territory” and “autonomous territory” are identified whereas the most common findings were “imposed territories” and “alienated territories,” which reinforce the dominant role of PEGs. Lastly, we provide public policy recommendations that are informed by both, decades of research in LA rural territories and lessons learned from the case studies analyzed. These recommendations are rooted in post-development thinking; they promote territorial public policy with social inclusion and a human rights approach; hence, they foresee new dynamics for interactions among the GP, SAG, and PEG. Keywords  Local socio-environmental systems · Cultural control theory · Regimes complex · Post-development theory · Territorial public policy

21.1  Introduction This volume is composed of a diversity of perspectives which stem from a common premise to highlight the voices of the people living in Latin American (LA) rural territories who face and cope with the regimes complex’s effects imposed by global markets and governments. It presents a set of case studies developed through multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research aimed at including peoples’ local visions through local-to-global analysis in different rural contexts. In this chapter, local visions consist of people’s subjectivities as well as a range of community and regionally based personal and family processes that—when faced with economic, social, and/or political impositions by national and international regimes—may or may not be capable of collaborating with socio-academic actors to develop innovation niches of collective action1 in an attempt to attain life with dignity. Local visions and regimes are highlighted in two of the most common forms of interaction reported in this book: the environmental and the food and agriculture forms. The encounter of local visions and regimes produces a variety of processes that give shape to LSES (Fig. 21.1) and the interactions among different social actors. In this chapter, we aim to present a synthesis of learned lessons on Local SocioEnvironmental Systems (LSES) and rural producers’ local visions and to provide 1  We coincide with Ingram (2015) regarding the definition of a niche, however, throughout this chapter we show that niches are found in processes of emergence and consolidation of the analyzed case studies.

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Fig. 21.1  The Local Socio-Environmental Systems framework. (Source: Adapted from Parra-­ Vázquez et al. Chap. 1, this volume)

recommendations about public policy proposals. These proposals are rooted in a human rights approach towards a better quality of life for campesino producers groups, indigenous producers, and other small-scale producers within the LA context. This chapter is organized in four sections. The following section presents the methodology used; the subsequent section presents the findings and lessons learned from 19 case studies; finally, it concludes with a series of recommendations for devising of new public policies for LA. We hope that the theoretical focus, analysis, and lessons learned in this chapter (and the entire volume) fuel a productive debate with other groups of academics both within LA and in other regions of the world. Also, we hope this informed advice on public policies contributes to the governmental decision-making processes of the countries analyzed in addition to international organizations like the World Bank (WB), the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Crucially, this discussion seeks to build a set of informed recommendations for the previously mentioned institutions based on an interrelated and transdisciplinary series of perspectives shared by LA academics that have spent decades of work in rural territories.

21.2  Multidisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Action This work is the result of the collaboration of LA researchers who responded to an invitation to analyze local visions and prevailing regimes within their study areas. The theoretical framework which underpins the entire volume derives from a series of seminars in which the collaborators teased apart the conceptual premises central to this work, such as global regimes, innovation niches, local visions, and transdisciplinary perspectives. The editors of this volume held at least ten work-meetings to exchange ideas on the general focus of the book and the transversal analysis of the case studies presented in this chapter. The dialog among editors and authors of this volume not only opened up a space for direct and meaningful interaction, but also

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made explicit some of the LA roots that nurture the conceptual underpinnings at the crossroads of the themes and issues outlined in the chapters. For example, in the 1970s (at the peak of the Green Revolution), within the context of the cultural human– plant relationship and ethnobotany in Mexico, Professor Efraím Hernández Xolocotzi proposed an agricultural technology theory that addressed the need to shift our focus towards traditional knowledge as a valid form of production that comes into dialog with a conceptualization of the natural world based on deep cultural roots. In this sense, an approach structured by the axes of time, space, and culture (Hernández, 1970) took shape in this book, in chapters that show dialogs carried out between researchers and local actors but also insights about campesino, indigenous, and other traditional peoples’ places within rural areas where the presence of high biodiversity contrasts starkly with the marginalization and poverty of its inhabitants. The aforementioned dialog transformed into a shared learning experience for the book’s editors, first tasked with the revision of all the chapters, and later with the discussion of similarities and differences found in the case studies analyzed. This chapter presents results that illustrate our dialogs and the lessons we learned. With respect to the success of the collaboration among academic teams, we emphasize that in our case, an attitude key to achieving meaningful collaboration was the willingness of the authors and editors to participate in multiple working activities that made this volume possible. This collaborative attitude manifested itself in the creation of a shared workspace carved out within the busy schedules of this book’s authors. It is important to note that this kind of gray work (i.e., the organization, coordination, and integration of lessons learned of a book) often goes unnoticed by those who realize it and others alike and is often interpreted as obvious and unworthy of mentioning. In our case, willingness and empathy were the determining factors in the affirmative dialog necessary to carry out the transdisciplinary nature of our work. As such, we recognize that personality traits of the researchers who participate in this book were key factors for the completion of this collaborative work (see Aguilar-Perera et al., 2017; Parra-Vázquez & Díaz-Hernández, 1985). Working with socio-environmental issues from various angles has benefitted our transdisciplinary approach through what Heemskerk, Wilson, & Pavao-Zuckerman (2003) describe as a set of collaborative and communicative tools among social scientists and ecologists. However, an even wider array of academics participated in this book: agronomists, sociologists, biologists, economists, ecologists, educators, anthropologists, lawyers, and zootechnicians. With respect to the methods used, we carried out a transversal analysis of the 19 case studies comprising this volume. Therefore, depending on the aim set in each chapter, we identified the present regime or regimes, as well as the group of producers (GP), socio-academic groups (SAG), political-economic groups (PEG), and innovation niches that were present within each territory. From there, the chapters are grouped together based on thematic affinity and classified into four sections: II, III, IV, and V, each coordinated by one of the editors. In each section, the editors identified the presence or absence of interaction between the three groups mentioned previously in Fig. 21.1; afterwards, and taking into consideration the objectives of the book, we elaborated a synthesis of the chapters contained in each section.

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These syntheses were informed by brainstorming, the use of matrixes from the cultural control theory (Bonfil-Batalla, 1991), and a diverse array of graphic visualizations. Lastly, we completed the analysis and integration of all of the book’s sections. The next two subsections lay out the main findings (and their implications) obtained during our transversal analysis.

21.3  T  he Regimes Complex within the Case Studies Analyzed The prevailing situation in rural territories of the seven LA countries analyzed (Fig. 21.2) should be interpreted through historical lens and the formation of structural characteristics of underdeveloped economies; how these economies relate to global markets and the role they play within internal social groups. Over half a century ago, Cardoso and Faletto (1969) argued that: “… historically the sub-development situation produced by the expansion of commercial capitalism and later by industrial capitalism was linked to a single market economy that, in addition to presenting distinct degrees of differentiation in the productive system, came to occupy distinct positions in the capitalist global economic structure. From this point on, there was not only a difference among the developed economies and the underdeveloped economies in terms of different stages or productive system states, but also in terms of their functions or positions within single international economic structure of production and distribution. This implies, on the other hand, a structure defined by relations of domination. However, the concept of underdevelopment, as it is commonly used, refers more precisely to the structure of the economic system with predominance over the primary sector, high concentration of income, little differentiation within the productive system and, above all, the supremacy of the external market over the internal market.” (Cardoso & Faletto, 1969, p. 12).

For our research purposes, and following Cardoso and Faletto (1969), we reclaim the connection and interdependence between the living conditions and the performance of the economic and political systems, which apply both to the domestic and international domains. As such, the signaling of the possibilities of development and the character of dependence in each country vary depending if the PEGs present in the territories have control over their primary economic activities or if that control is in the hands of foreign companies. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, the economic interests in LA (first as exporters of prime materials, followed by the industrialization for substitution of importations, neoliberal2 and post-neoliberal policies) have had the following in common:

2  The term “neoliberal” is used as a characteristic of neoliberalism and for the purposes of this chapter we refer to Harvey’s following definition: “Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices which proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, free markets and free trade” (Harvey, 2006, p. 145).

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Fig. 21.2  Case studies from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, and Mexico. (Source: Elaborated by Ivonne San Martin-Gajardo)

“(… ) the four models share, despite their important differences, common features (…): (a) they conceive modernization as an evolutionary and linear process based on growth, (b) they subordinate and negate the intrinsic value of nature in the relationships that human beings have with their surroundings and (c) they exclude ways of knowing that diverge from the dominant western notion of rationality” (Cálix Rodríguez, 2016, p. 15–16).

The permanence of these features can be explained by the prevailing global regimes created by international entities through imposed mechanisms that have been legitimized through international agreements. In the 1990s, the World Bank (WB) institutionalized a mechanism of “conditionality lending” (Vordtriede, 2019, p. 1), by which each signatory country must modify its laws to align them with a development agenda directed by international financial institutions. For example, if a country participates in these agreements, the WB offers to fund its development initiatives or other federal programs. A country’s access to funding is conditioned by its government complying with rules set through this mechanism (de Moerloose, 2014). Therefore, a participating country provides prior informed consent to complying with rules established through multilateral agreements (Domínguez Martín, 2018). In the 1990s, Mr. James Wolfensohn, at a time he was the president of the

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WB, in order to assist loaning countries with the formulation of corresponding policies, proposed an outline—grouped by specific productive sectors—for how to coordinate international cooperation through the proposal of responsible international bodies (Wolfensohn, 2000); this outline continues to inform the current coordination of these matters. Currently, the most notable international agreement following this logic is the Sustainable Development Agenda for 2030, approved in September 2015 by the General Assembly in the United Nations (ONU-CEPAL, 2016). This agenda establishes 17 obligatory sustainable development goals (SDG) for all of the countries participating and to do so they must adhere to a smoothened outline of conditionality and consent mechanism (Mangas Martín, 2018). That said, what has been the effect of this global regime in LA? The most notable impact is the unequal growth of capitalism in LA countries that has given rise to a profound inequality and deep polarization. This has reached a point where the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC and CEPAL by its initials in English and Spanish, respectively) has stated that “inequality is not just a result, but, rather a key determiner in the operation of the economy because it conditions access to economic agents, abilities and opportunities, and models the rules of the game and incentives” (CEPAL, 2018, p. 6). As we trace the history of these economic focuses, we arrive at the age of neo-­ extractivism in the beginning of the twenty-first century, when a new stage of the international economy is emerging. In this stage, the nation states have amplified the frontier of extraction in pursuit of wealth. Governments, corporations, and productive organizations have repressed populations that oppose to extractive projects, while simultaneously, the social costs and harmful effects of this economic model continue to rise. Likewise, the extractive activities have diversified into a range of other economic fields, such as agribusiness, tourism, and mining, creating new functions for the nation states (Echart Muñoz & Villarreal Villamar, 2018, pp. 148-149). The commodification of territories can result in a tendency to expand the limits of extraction in different contexts: “the extension of the petroleum frontier, especially the exploration and explo[i]tation of petroleum in the open sea, glaciers, protected areas and indigenous territories; the industrialization of heavy oil and shale; open–pit mining; agribusiness that includes pesticides, transgenics, monocultures and plantation systems; environmental services (the privatization of water, carbon markets, the t[o]urism industry, paying for environmental services); biotechnology; geotechnology, biofuels, among others.” (Albuja & Dávalos, 2013, p. 83).

Even within the post-neoliberal field, which seeks alternatives to neoliberalism, the prevailing pattern of accumulation is manifested in the prime-export-extractive model financed by transnational capitals. As Stolowicz (2010, p. 10) argues, this pattern is based on: “vast monocultures of genetically modified organisms; in mining (particularly open–pit mining); in the exploitation of energies such as oil, gas, hydroelectric; in the expropriation of biodiversity; and in the construction of a multimodal transportation and communication system to lower the costs of extraction. All of these activities demand control over t­ erritories and the dispossession of the people, campesinos, small landowners and indigenous communities.”

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The global regime permanently seeks to elevate profit margins and to do so it uses mechanisms of financial, environmental, and labor markets deregulation. Simultaneously, it ignores the very cultural, judicial, and institutional divides that put pressure on rural production systems. From our analysis, we identified four types of regimes in the case studies analyzed; (a) the agri-food regime, (b) the environmental regime, (c) the educational regime, and (d) the law regime. The first two regimes had the highest frequency while the last two were each identified in one case study. According to the findings reported by the chapters’ authors, these regimes are connected to the historical context of international regimes that, in agreement with the principles of neoliberalism, have influenced the design and implementation of social and economic policies in LA countries. In the 1950s, it was predicted that LA countries would become a source of raw materials (Pastor, 1992). Decades have passed and this is still the role that these countries have, which is borne out in our findings. Several countries are source of raw materials in the production of agri-food and livestock products, or in environmental services—including payment for environmental services programs—that respond to the national and international market demands, or in the mechanisms for biodiversity conservation in protected natural areas. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the tremendous influence or the exercise of power needed to maintain this system is applied by international financial agencies. The influence of the guidelines of the WB, the IADB, and the IMF (which are among the most important international organizations) is vast and deeply consequential for LA governments who had accepted the norms of the conditionality lending agreements. The economic panorama in LA has been disheartening in recent decades. Filmus (2019) argues that several governments who call themselves “left leaning” were able to mitigate the increasing poverty in their populations given that they prioritized the fight against poverty and inequality. However, Filmus & Rosso (2019) indicate that in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the situation will worsen given that the governments who call themselves “right-wing” are now in power in various LA countries, and these countries have returned to “the implementation the shrinking of the State, the indiscriminate expansion of the economy, the ‘primarization’ of production and the destruction of industry, the encouragement of financial speculation, the stagnation or fall of the GDP and the consequent growth in unemployment, poverty and inequality” (Filmus & Rosso, 2019, p. 15). Our findings in the case studies, which were supported by a literature review, show that the condition of poverty is present albeit with differences across different countries.3 We compiled poverty data for municipalities or departments that

3  With respect to assessing poverty level, LA countries have used a diverse series of methods: the method of the poverty line (PL) (establishes a minimum monetary amount as the principle criterion); the method of lack of basic necessities (LBN) (designates the collection of a series of goods that satisfy the minimum level of well-being); and in the last decade, a method of multidimensional poverty has been adopted (a combination of variables that capture distinct aspects of the levels with which a person can access goods, services and rights). Thus, each country adopts its own methodologies in accordance with their social, political, and economic contexts.

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100 90 POPULATION IN POVERTY (%)

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

1990

2000

2010

Argentina

15.2

10.1

8.2

Brazil

39.6

22.8

11.2

Bolivia Colombia

43.0

Honduras

72.0

Mexico

2015

2018

40.1

31.6

32.1

46.1

34.1

67.0 79.0

76.7

Fig. 21.3  Relative poverty trends for municipalities and departments of the case studies analyzed from seven LA countries. (Source: Elaborated by Jesús Geovani Alcazar Sánchez)

c­ orrespond to the research sites. However, they were scarce and only the year 20104 had information covering all the case studies (Fig. 21.3). All countries show impoverished populations, but, for example, Mexico shows the highest rate of relative poverty (78% of the population) and Argentina shows the lowest (8.20%). The poverty measure of Mexican population completely tears down the Central American notion of Mexico as “the giant of the north” with respect to its economy. Figure 21.3 shows that this is not the case, rather, in Mexico but also in the remaining cases we find examples of fragile economies or economies with “clay feet.” Also the poverty in the municipalities of Honduras (67%) is similar to the poverty rate in Mexico. The municipality’s poverty in Bolivia is shown in the middle of Fig. 21.3, first at 40% and then is reduced to 32%. In 2010, the lowest poverty rates are found within the municipalities studied in Brazil (11%) and Argentina (8%). However, in 1990 Brazil showed a poverty rate of over 40% and the reduction of almost 20% in 2010 could be related to public policy actions of the governments who call themselves left leaning.

4  The majority of data was obtained from the institutions that collect statistical data on the population about once every 10 years, from home surveys taken every semester or annually: IBGE (2013), INDEC (2010), DANE (2005, 2018), INE (2012), INE (2015), INE (2018), INE (2013), INEGI (2010), 2015), and CONEVAL (2020).

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In LA, one finds enormous forested and marine areas with first-rate biophysical reserves of water, minerals, flora and fauna, which are among the most important resources in internationally acclaimed geographic spaces like the Amazon, the Mayan jungle, the Andes or Patagonia. The territories of the case studies are rural and most of their inhabitants have interactions with protected natural areas and with private and governmental technician agencies as part of a regime complex. Beyond that, part of the studied populations collaborates with SAG formed by academics and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In the majority of the cases, a long history of environmental degradation within the last 50 years was recorded, which is primarily related to the implementation of development policies from the Green Revolution (in the 1970s and 1980s) to date. In conjunction with the findings reported by the chapters’ authors, we found that spaces of interaction, negotiation, and domination configure the roles that play a part in the territorial expression of LSES. As such, we suggest that the model of Fig. 21.1 can now be better expressed through Fig. 21.4 in which landscapes are in a continuous transformation resulting from the interactions produced by the regimes complex. These landscapes are represented by coastal, agricultural, bovine, or scenically beautiful elements. From an integrated analysis, we found that the landscape which supports a productive system transforms itself rapidly, it cracks and splits and is in crisis. It does not only produce ubiquitous farm products and ecosystem services, but in many cases, it is safeguarded for its own protection in the form of natural areas and extractive reserves as local livelihoods depend on it (Prado Chap. 13, this volume); or is designated as an attractive space for leisure and exploration activities such as tourism (Araujo et al. Chap. 9, this volume); or, in contrast, is a finite source of resources for industrial interests like the African Palm (Trejo et al. Chap. 17, this volume). The data from the majority of the case studies show that the PEG impinges on the rural production processes located in the territory’s landscapes through policies and public instruments, and manages income and control foreign and national capital. This results in further impoverishment of the population and environmental

Fig. 21.4  Synthesis of the territorial configuration of LA’s Local Socio-Environmental Systems. (Source: Elaborated by the authors)

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deterioration of the territory. The control exerted by these social actors is represented now by its current conspicuous position in Fig. 21.4. In turn, the GPs are understood not only in their productive phase but also in terms of their ability to organize collective actions. Have the GPs lost a certain margin of ability to remain in their own territories? The exceptions found are the cases of Brazil (Prado Chap. 13, this volume; Futemma Chap. 20, this volume) and Colombia (De La Cruz et al. Chap. 2, this volume). Prado presents a case of conquest of territorial autonomy by a community of small-scale fishers, through a Brazilian category of protected natural areas designated as Extractive Reserve. Futemma shows an array of examples of increasing small farmers’ sustainable production, and De la Cruz et  al. on how social movements of indigenous peoples have helped established territorial autonomy. Also, in the latter case, environmental instruments (like life plans) are used for negotiations with the PEG. In both cases, the actions taken by the SAGs are relevant given that their role has become more important in the face of neoliberalism. More precisely, nation states have moved away from focusing their direct attention on rural territories (e.g., while realizing extensionism); this role has previously been as a mediator of public policies or as an ally in the self-management processes of the local GPs. In general terms, all studied territories have had several economic cycles related either to agricultural, bovine, fisheries, and forestry production through time. According to Meza-Jiménez et al. (Chap. 15, this volume), the socio-environmental regime “is a power structure that articulates local actions with global processes” whereby several actors with economic interests “maneuver to control the production processes” located in the territory’s landscape. Moreover, these actors have interests in the implementation of the “market of nature” logic, a process coined as “commoditizing” nature (Durand, 2014; Dunlap & Sullivan, 2019; Picone et al. Chap. 12, this volume). This includes, for instance, the implementation of a monetary logic on landscapes that results in payments for environmental services, among others. With regard to agricultural and agroforestry systems, most of the cases analyzed report that current public policies promoted by the socio-environmental, educational, and law regimes are based on approaches that break with local visions of rural development (sensu Echeverri Perico & Echeverri Pinilla, 2009) and do not consider the worldviews of peasants and other rural farmers valid. In this sense, these public policies’ targets and objectives—including poverty eradication, food security, and well-being—are never reached because their rationale totally ignores local human and cultural contexts (Morin, 2011, Meza-Jiménez et al. Chap. 15, this volume). In particular, seven of the case studies report that the regimes and its public policies and productive programs impose norms and criteria which constrain the decision-making capacity of local actors (Sanches & Futemma Chap. 4, this volume; García et al. Chap. 6, this volume; Vázquez-González Chap. 7, this volume; Araujo et  al. Chap. 9, this volume; Meza-Jiménez et  al. Chap. 15, this volume; Urdapilleta & Zolle Chap. 16, this volume; Trejo et al. Chap. 17, this volume), and in the cases where subsidies and compensatory payments are in place, they generate dependence and reactive attitudes. Furthermore, three case studies report that the federal government adopted different policies to promote agribusiness which competed directly with rural agricultural production and therefore led to rural emigration.

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The inhabitants of the studied territories are small farmers and campesinos from a diverse range of ethnic origins. Some groups are indigenous like the Tikuna, Uitoto, Bora, Cocama, and Inga peoples (Tarapacá, Colombia), the Kĩsêdjê people (Upper Xingu River, Brazil), and the Yucatec, Tseltal, Tsotsil, and Ch’ol Mayans (Quintana Roo and Chiapas, México), whereas others were of mixed ethnic heritage including the Amazónicos (Pando, Bolivia) whose ancestors were either Yaminawas, Machineri, Ese ejja, Chacobo, or Tacana peoples. Moreover, some studies were carried out with Caipira, Caiçara, and Canastreiros peoples (Southeastern Region, Brazil) and with people of Choltecas heritage (Nacaome, Honduras). This wide swath of ethnic groups and their systems of social organization use customary laws and their countries’ legal frameworks as well as other entitlement programs to pursue livelihoods across a varied set of landscapes. In this sense, the addressed rural processes do not center on a single culture or cultural expression, rather, at the intersection of the studied issues is a cultural rooting that is manifested in distinct ways. This was identified within these groups’ institutions (local norms and customary legal rules, both written and unwritten); knowledge of the different uses of resources within the jungle (the milpa and the chagra systems); knowledge of ancestral management of burning practices; management of marshes, savannahs, and marines areas; community organization and how to forge a social sense of community belonging. These cultural expressions are consistent with and complementary to the findings from other studies on the role of GP kinship relations in the regulation of territory, religion, and the utilization of landscape units (Bello & Estrada Lugo, 2011). Cultural expressions within the case studies come up against an asymmetrical power dynamic when traditional and indigenous peoples face agri-food, environmental, law, and educational regimes, which threaten their existence. In order to privilege financial and economic development, the regimes push aside policies related to the eradication of poverty, inequality, and exclusion present within these territories. These actions do not only distract attention from the impoverished people who live in and manage rural territories, but they also normalize this situation and make campesino and indigenous peoples “invisible” (García et al. Chap. 6, this volume), given that their relationships to their territories are ignored. In this regimes’ context, not only there is no recognition of their cultural rootedness and the cultural complexity that has allowed them to survive within these territories for centuries but neoliberal policies and the law regime make these people feel marginalized and excluded from their national societies (García et al. Chap. 6, this volume). In order to give concrete examples, we report here three sets of public policies identified within the environmental regime: climate change, conservation of biodiversity, and natural protected areas. Within climate change, four case studies reported negative effects on rural production systems due to this driver. In some cases, the urgency to confront climate change and its consequences—droughts, floods, hurricanes, fires—generated international initiatives in addition to national and state laws which immediately generated restrictions that affected the rainfed slash-and-burn agriculture (Pereira Corona, Prezas Hernández, Olivares Mendoza, Fragoso Servón, & Niño Torres, 2013) and its indigenous institutions (Segundo

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et al. Chap. 3, this volume). However, in the long term, these policies together with the law regime threaten to wipe-out—the Mayan campesinos and their way of life (García et al. Chap. 6, this volume). Moreover, the recognition of the vulnerability of rainfed agricultural production systems in times of drought is absent in climate change planning. With respect to the conservation of biodiversity, many public policies prohibit the ancestral use and management of fire by traditional peoples because of its possible threat to biodiversity (Almada et  al. Chap. 10, this volume). Finally, with respect to natural protected areas, Araujo et al. (Chap. 9, this volume) illustrate the importance of community self-organization and empowerment to negotiate with no-take protected areas managers regarding issues of access and use of natural resources. This is discussed within the context of the implementation of National Parks in Brazil, most of them established before 2000, with no consultation to traditional people living in these areas for generations. From the 2000s many no-take protected areas advanced in the implementation of management and enforcement actions pushing local communities to negotiate their autonomy to their territory through strengthening local organizations, partnerships, and social networks. Lastly, with respect to the agri-food regime, findings show that the market demand for high quality products produced in an eco-friendly and socially conscious fashion leads to processes of certification with fixed standards in foreign countries, but also is subject to price fluctuations in the international market, as is the case with Maya beekeeping. The previous process marginalizes the milpa system and the community organization that sustains it, even though it is a highly productive agricultural system for a variety of crops (Vázquez-González Chap. 7, this volume). In summary, the socio-environmental, law, and educational regimes have promoted an economic model in addition to territorial management mechanisms that maintain territories in a vicious cycle of socio-cultural, economic, and environmental vulnerability. All case studies report that a wide range of farmer’s families, domestic groups and community initiatives are resisting, coping with and adapting to the public policies related to this economic model (Durand, Nygren, & de la VegaLeinert, 2019) and climate change drivers, which are affecting their territories.

21.4  Cultural Control Processes The historical roots of the nexus between culture and territory can be explained through the people who inhabit the research sites as carriers and transmitters of living cultures. But what does the notion of “living culture” mean in the age of accelerated economic and political flows that transcend rural territories? Our discussion is premised on the theoretical underpinnings of Bonfil-Batalla (1991). This author argues that culture is a processual system in which the capacity for decision-making regarding cultural elements in a territory is “brought into play in order to carry out any and all social actions; maintain daily life, satisfy necessities, define and solve problems, formulate and attempt to complete aspirations” (Bonfil-Batalla, 1991, p. 171).

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We understand that territories are in a process of dynamic transformation given the effect of the regimes complex which is concretely expressed within the landscapes of the studied territories. However, for our analysis, processes of cultural control refer specifically to rural territorial cultural elements. Ochoa’s (Ochoa, Bello, Estrada, Zamora, & Suárez in press) interpretation is useful for identifying and locating the conditions that we find within case studies of this volume: “Cultural control is dynamic in that it must be seen as a system and as a process. To see it as a system allows for the differentiation of cultural spheres and the definition of the decision structure in a determined moment. As a process, these spheres and this structure acquire movement which is manifested by tensions, contradictions and conflicts (Bonfil-­ Batalla, 1991). Within Bonfil-Batalla’s (1991) framework, an appropriated culture is a culture in which foreign cultural elements are under the control of group decision-making, elements that continue to be foreign given that the group does not have the capacity to produce them by themselves, and their use requires the assimilation of knowledge and abilities, like with the modification or adjustment of some social organization guidelines or symbolic elements. On the other hand, in an alienated culture, the group loses its decision-­ making capability over the elements of their own culture.”

Two additional conditions are contemplated within this theoretical framework, an imposed condition (“imposed territory”) in which one or more external actors have both local ownership and decision-making power over resources, and in contrast, an autonomous condition (“autonomous territory”) in which local people have both ownership and decision-making power over resources. We elaborated an adjusted representation of Bonfil-Batalla’s cultural control matrix to present findings from the rural territories analyzed in this volume, which is shown in Table 21.1. Within the case studies, we identified distinct processes of cultural control expressing the asymmetries of ownership and decision-making power between the regimes and the local cultural groups. In all cases, these processes respond to, on the one hand, the high pressure that the market, governments, and international financing entities impinge on the territory; and, on the other hand, the pressure placed on the internal dynamics like the management and control of their own territories. Effects resulting from these processes fall on people living within the territory and the environment (Table 21.2). We elaborated a synthesis of the case studies and their processes, which is shown in Fig. 21.5. All the cultural control processes shown therein are processes in transition grouped into two categories: (i) own territories and (ii) foreign territories. On Table 21.1  Classification of a territory based on the cultural control theory Resource ownership Local ownership Ownership by external actor/s

Decision-making over resources Local Decision-making by decision-making external actor/s Autonomous Alienated territory territory Appropriated Imposed territory territory

Source: Elaborated by the authors with theory from Bonfil-Batalla (1991)

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Table 21.2  Cultural control processes in 19 case studies from seven LA countries in this volume Processes 1. The alienation process

Case studies (a) Basic school education does not embody elements of local culture (Quintana Roo, Mexico). (b) Extensive crops with agrochemicals have displaced traditional subsistence farming, this implies that the farmers apply foreign knowledge to produce prime material and the local culture’s participation is marginal (Chiapas, Mexico). 2. The imposed (a) An appropriate agroecosystem (shade grown coffee). The local process culture has already adopted and adapted the techniques of this system, and it has a tense relationship with the imposition of foreign agroecosystems (full sun coffee), which are promoted by companies and teams of technicians. Furthermore, it retains autonomous cultural elements like the milpa (Chiapas, Mexico). (b) The creation of a protected natural area that requires the local cultural to appropriate the sale of tourist services through planning models that have displaced the local actors crucial to decisionmaking (Patagonia, Argentina). (c) Groups of colonizers in the process of appropriating the settlement face tensions due to the creation of a protected natura area whose operating system does not include an intercultural perspective (Chiapas, Mexico). (d) Wildfires are equated with controlled agricultural burning. This equivalency comes into conflict with indigenous agriculture (Quintana Roo, Mexico). (e) Traditional controlled burnings are prohibited based on western criteria. This impact on lives and cosmologies of the people in addition to the biodiversity within the territory (Serra da Canastra, Brazil). (f) Local knowledge is not recognized in the government’s measures to attend to natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, and drought (Quintana Roo, Mexico). 3. The imposition (a) The Cuban case of small ruminant farmers responds to a double regime, the national regime, and the global regime imposed by the to appropriation USA’s economic embargo (Granma, Cuba). process 4. The resistance (a) The way in which traditional knowledge as well as the territory is process administered and controlled by organized groups of indigenous peoples (Tarapacá, Colombia). (b) Colonization through extensive agricultural crops, like soy, cattle, and the use of agrochemicals (Xingu Indigenous Park, Brazil). (c) Territorial rights defend in response to historical conflicts with the goal of achieving local territorial autonomy (Trindade, Brazil). (continued)

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Table 21.2 (continued) Processes 5. The appropriation process

6. Autonomous territory sphere

7. Appropriated territory sphere

Case studies (a) The cultural group wins the right over a protected natural area (Extractive Reserve) as a mechanism to maintain its autonomy (Prainha do Canto Verde, Brazil). (b) The cultural group generates community initiatives as a response to the environmental degradation and floods. These initiatives apply for public funds to sustain these initiatives through time and to adapt to climate change (São Luiz do Paraitinga, Brazil). (c) The deterioration of soil and problems with human health due to contamination is combatted by local groups through organic agriculture, agroecology, and agroforestry through social movements (several regions of Brazil). (d) In an agroecosystem oriented to the market and good prices for their products, the local culture maintains the control of the milpas, the opposite causes tensions. The productive activities incorporate foreign knowledge because the product is not made for domestic consumption (culinary or medicinal), but for foreign markets (Quintana Roo, Mexico). (e) The local culture appropriates a commercial agroecosystem aligned with the regulations of a protected natural area. However, it barely reaches the bare minimum in terms of people’s well-being, and it is subject to the sways of the market with scarce decision-making capacity (Chiapas, Mexico). (a) The people have favorable conditions due to public policy and the support of local action groups. However, the agri-food regime programs compete with campesino production systems for funding (Pando, Bolivia). (a) To deal with marginalization and malnutrition problems, public policies based on the agri-food regime are implemented and imply the appropriation of new knowledge and forms of organizations by the local culture in order to improve nutrition among inhabitants (Nacaome, Honduras).

the one hand, we observe processes that take place within a group’s own territory (appropriated and autonomous territories); on the other hand, we observe processes that are oriented around the conditions of foreign territories (alienated and imposed territories). The arrows and their orientation within the graphic (Fig. 21.5) highlight continuous transformation of the processes—given that their intensity and direction can change with the variations of the regimes and the local responses. In fact, we identify only two cases within specific cultural spheres: an example of the autonomous territorial sphere in Bolivia (number 6 in Fig. 21.5) and an example of the appropriated territorial sphere in Honduras (number 7 in Fig. 21.5). The principle characteristics of cultural control processes in transitions are: 1. The Alienation Process As it was presented in Table  21.1, technological and educative changes in Chiapas and Quintana Roo, Mexico, respectively, and imposed by the regime through teams of advisors and governmental projects which, in turn, impose for-

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Fig. 21.5  Transitions and processes of cultural control in rural territories. (Source: Elaborated by the authors)

eign elements that the local groups do not control. Faced with this situation, the local group attempts to maintain its own cultural elements, such as the milpa. In this case, there is no room for negotiation, the economic benefits do not reach the local sphere, the inhabitants become poorer, their cultural elements are cast into doubt and the environment further deteriorates. 2. The Imposed Process Six case studies from Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico fall under this process category. Within this process, an agricultural landscape has been appropriated and incorporated into the local landscape. The market demand, for cheap raw material or the sale of environmental services, imposes technical changes that transform the landscape with chemicals and genetically improved crop varieties. Local inhabitants then depend on foreign technical models and become further impoverished. This condition is similar to the environmental regime in place in Mexico, which, in order to mitigate climate change, imposes laws without considering the rural population, their customary law, and its cultural knowledge systems. As a result, they are left outside of the imposed legal protections. Both processes are oriented towards a foreign territory; this is a condition wherein decisions regarding cultural elements are completely out of the local inhabitants’ hands. The regime has imposed regulations related to the demands of the market. If the GPs are not trapped within these regulations, they increase their repertoire of economic activities, like emigrating to look for employment elsewhere in order to survive. In this case, the actions that the SAGs can take are limited to the external investment necessary to bolster local socio-environmental innovations; thus, they participate in education processes and the development of abilities based on local conditions.

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3. The Imposition to Appropriation Process In the Cuban case study, local cultures respond to the necessities dictated by the nation state with respect to the conservation of creole goats, and appropriate foreign knowledge in conjunction with their own. In this process, both the local farmer groups and the SAG perceive benefits. 4. The Resistance Process In case studies from Colombia and Brazil, tension is generated when the regime imposes the implementation of regional economic groups and teams of technicians, even though the GP, which is supported by the SAG, still has room for negotiation and thus leaves open the possibility of a relationship or a negotiated relationship. On the local level, collective works and organizations of indigenous and traditional peoples are evident; the role of the SAG is to accompany and assist the inhabitants and offer options with respect to different solutions of both short-term and long-term problems. 5. The Appropriation Process In six case studies from Mexico and Brazil, the local culture develops citizenship processes in order to maintain control over its territory; to do so it negotiates with the regime in order to find a way of safeguarding the lifestyles of the inhabitants. The capacity for agency of local and regional collectives allows for the development of strategic alliances, but to some extent, even these alliances’ economic and political relationships are dependent on the regime. 6. The Autonomous Territory Sphere The local culture in Pando, Bolivia, holds decision-making power over their own cultural elements. In one case, the inhabitants decide what they produce, where they sell it and they keep some of the harvest for local consumption. Public policies and the support from the socio-academic community results in favorable conditions for the local inhabitants. 7. The Appropriated Territory Sphere This occurs in Nacaome, Honduras, when foreign knowledge and different forms of organization are adopted and adapted within the context of local knowledge in an appropriation process that is driven by the strength of the local culture, a culture which is capable of incorporating new knowledge into its own knowledge. Processes numbered 3–7 (Table  21.2) transit towards the notion of a home ground or one’s own territory. Local groups are capable of maintaining and strengthening their own cultural elements without succumbing to relations with the regime. This condition favors the actions taken by the SAG which, in turn, favors the p­ ractice of new and innovative research methods. Does this type of relationship work? Yes, it does when new problems arise because it is not continuous and ascending, but punctual and constrained.

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21.5  I nformed Advice: Recommendations for Inclusive Public Policies The adverse effects generated by development capitalism and particularly neoliberalism have exceeded their own limits and now a diverse range of international bodies are positing a series of corrective measures which should consist of public policies at the level of the nation state (CEPAL, 2016). In this section, we outline several of the public policies that support the type of LA’s territorial development suggested in this book. In order to take advantage of favorable world market conditions in the agro-­ mining industry, the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, and Venezuela made an effort to eliminate their debts by proposing the limitation of their creditor’s power (the IMF and the WB). The rationale of the last political move was that for a country’s economy to gain more rootedness, the political sphere needed to distance itself from international economic interests (Dautrey, 2010). The elimination of external debt diminishes the impact of the conditionality lending mechanism; thus, nations could move towards the recuperation of their sovereignty. It is now widely recognized that the global neoliberal regime has generated vast inequality both within and across the nations of the world. In response, the CEPAL (2010) has noted: “these divides are relative to productivity and society, they have their own maps, in other words, they are embodied in territorial segmentation and, at the same time, feed off of it. This segmentation implies that in each one of these countries and the entire region at large, where a person lives determines a large portion of their socioeconomic condition” (2010, p. 131). With respect to the previous quote, it is evident that if LA’s States continue with the implementation of homogenizing policies—economic, environmental, educational, law—only will generate further inequality because some territories will always be in a better position to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the market and public policies. Therefore, the public policies using territorial approaches that propose the prioritization of improved territorial equilibriums have grown more important. Within these proposals “there is an emphasis on diverse combinations of policies and instruments of two kinds: those which are oriented to mobilize endogenous capabilities within territories and those directed towards the transference of resources and making public investments in favor of the trailing territories” (Berdegué & Modrego, 2012, p. 19). Under this perspective, development implies the growth of people’s capacities through the expansion of their liberties so that they obtain agency and decision-making power in their own lives. This task necessitates economically responsible social policies that are oriented targeting equality and appropriate institutional frameworks. In this regard, it is clear to the LA social movements that the current global food crisis will not be solved by the global food industry. Instead, it is necessary to encourage small-scale sustainable agricultural production controlled by local communities, oriented towards local markets, and based on agroecological methods, biodiversity, and soil quality improvement (GRAIN et al., 2014; Futemma Chap. 20, this volume). With respect

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to these suggestions, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP, 2018, p.1) in article 15 (number 4) proposes public policies that aim to achieve Alimentary Sovereignty, which is understood as the people’s right to access healthy and culturally appropriate food which is sustainably produced, and the people’s right to define their own agricultural and food systems. This process puts the aspirations, needs, and lifestyles of the people who produce, distribute, and consume the food at the heart of the policymaking and design of the world’s food systems, instead of the free market demands and corporations that have dominated the global food system (GRAIN, 2005). At the beginning of the 1990s, post-development represented a school of thought dedicated to overcoming the idea of development, reclaiming a greater connection with local ways of knowing, other relationships with nature and a tighter link with social movements (Unceta, 2018, p. 64). Post-development pointed out to the possibility of visualizing a time when development ceases to be the central organizing principle in social life (Escobar, 2012). The school of post-development associated with Arturo Escobar treats development as a discursive western invention, which is best counteracted by an ethnographic approach including the local knowledge of the people who have been most marginalized by colonial modernity. This focus promises to trailblaze paths to more equal and sustainable development (Asher & Wainwright, 2018). Post-development constitutes a renewed questioning of the fundamental principles of Eurocentric modernity—from linear progress and standard economic value to the liberal individual and nature as inert—which strengthens non-anthropogenic and non-economistic approaches. Post-development continues to be useful in the articulation of criticisms of existing tendencies (i.e., neo-­ extractivism) in the reorientation of debates and research towards non-economistic possibilities (Escobar, 2012). This school of thought proposes the study and implementation of LSES focused on transformational processes in LA’s territories and the effects caused by the globalized regime. From the experiences analyzed in our LA’s case studies, as well as based on our research carried out by decades in rural territories, we provide the following advice in public policy targeted to policy planners and decision-makers.

21.5.1  From Homogenizing Policies to Territorial Policies Since 1965, Rodolfo Stavenhagen5 (Stavenhagen, 1981) has pointed out that in addition to the colonizing relationships that “central countries” have with the so-­ called peripheral countries, there is an internalization and reproduction of certain forms of colonial domination within Latin America. The LA’s regions which are

5  Article originally published in the newspaper on June 25 and 26, 1965. Consulted in: https://seminario7hesis.colmex.mx/images/pdf/stavenhagen-siete.pdf

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most behind show internal colonies in the most dynamic urban areas in each country. Stavenhagen argued that the transfer of capital, raw materials, and labor forced from zones that were “behind” to the “growth poles” made the rapid development of latter viable and delayed it in the former. Out of this seminal idea has grown the proposal to establish spatially different policies in order to achieve more egalitarian kinds of development. The policy proposals from the remaining paragraphs take into consideration the human rights of indigenous and tribal peoples, rural farmers, and peasants from the following documents: the Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO, 1989); the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) (2007); and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) (2018). In this regard, the incipient territorial policies should: • Recognize the existence of indigenous peoples, their right to use and enjoy their territories and grant them agrarian security. • Encourage the decentralization of resources and functions in order to achieve the confirmation of productive self-administrating territories. • Promote the strengthening of local and flexible organizations and institutions that operate in a collegiate manner to achieve governability. • Recognize the ability of the local actors to decide the direction of territorial transformations, recuperating their indigenous and local knowledge; allow them to design socio-environmental innovations and administrate the use of local resources. • Replace productive sectorial policies (i.e., policies by silos) by territorial policies.

21.5.2  F  rom Production Development to the Betterment of the GPs’ Life and Labor Conditions After a boom of research on the campesino, at the end of the last century, investigations began to evolve into specialized rural studies (e.g., migration, gender, urbanization) and rural development policies were replaced by assistance policies geared at reaching specific social groups. In this sense, new policies should consider: • The bio-cultural diversity of rural producers within each country and a recognition of their livelihoods, taking into consideration how their cultures, subjectivities, characteristics, practices, and social institutions ensure their social reproduction. • Provide support to the different kinds of rural producer organization like families, communities, productive organizations, or territorial organizations. • Prioritize the cases in which socio-environmental diversity is threatened and has affected families’ self-sufficiency and alimentary sovereignty.

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• Consider the local knowledge systems and design socio-environmental innovations that take into account their needs in a transdisciplinary and intercultural manner. • Strengthen the value chain driven by local social businesses. • Establish productive development programs based on the strengthening of assets in each domestic unit.

21.5.3  F  rom Disciplinary to Transdisciplinary Research in Socio-Academic Groups The administration of knowledge and its dissemination in different territories can be a task for the socio-academic groups that can be incentivized by public policies that: • Understand the innovative work developed by local socio-academic groups. • Incentivize the co-production of knowledge among producer groups and socio-­ academic groups. • Favor the formation of innovation niches in the territories. • Sponsor social learning processes. • Promote cultural control over socio-environmental innovations.

21.5.4  F  rom the Authoritarian Corporate Group to the Self-­Administrating Governmental Corporate Group The actions of the corporate governmental regime have been observed principally in international and national contexts. Here, we highlight the fact that the regime acts through local representatives who are in charge of developing specific governmental actions and corporate actions within a particular territory. Thus, public policies should establish conditions that cause the corporate governmental groups to transform their actions in order to: • Respect the human rights of indigenous peoples, small farmers, and campesino communities. • Be able to adapt the national and international institutionalism to conform to local conditions. • Establish deliberation spaces to analyze problems which include local visions; make decisions and administer the processes of change needed in the territories. • Do not make decisions over rural productive systems using the economic sphere that is only based on cost-benefit analysis; rather, consider more inclusive valuation assessments based on shared value.

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• Respect the knowledge and rights of the local groups in the creation and administration of their own traditions related to their productive systems. • Foster the transformation of territories through the integration of several productive sectors (i.e., in an inter-sectoral way).

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