The “Negotiation Platform” Method’s Limits for Decentralised Natural Resource Management: Participatory Municipal Planning in the Brazilian Amazon

Christian Castellanet*, Iliana Salgado** and Carla Rocha**

*Research and Technological Exchange Group (GRET), Paris, France,

** LAET (Laboratório Agro-ecológico da Transamazônica), Altamira, Pará, Brasil.

Abstract

Natural resource management (NRM) is intimately linked to the dynamics of land occupation and resource appropriation by diverse stakeholders with divergent interests. This is especially true in the “agriculture frontier” zones that are characteristic of much of humid tropical forests. This article analyses two action-research experiments on participatory municipal planning of natural resource management in the Brazilian Amazon. The “multi-stakeholder platform” method was used with limited success in the first. In the second, priority was given to the empowerment of the weaker and more numerous stakeholders (the small farmers and traditional populations) with more encouraging results. Analysis of the two cases leads to the conclusion that the platform approach is not adapted to situations where the State is absent or weak.

Introduction

A local action-research [1] team, the Transamazonian Agro-Ecological Laboratory (LAET)[2] in partnership with local and regional farmers’ organisations grouped together in the “Mouvement Pour la Survie de la Transamazonienne” (MPST, movement for the survival of the Transamazonian) supported two participatory municipal planning experiments.At the start, the LAET team chose an intervention method based on seeking consensus among the various parties involved. Roling described this approach as a “multi-user negotiation platform” (1994). It is similar in various ways to the “patrimonial approach” proposed by Ollagnon (1989) and Bertrand and Weber (1995). The underlying hypothesis was that participatory planning for municipal development would necessarily include the issues of land occupation and natural resource management, thereby allowing reflection on technical or politico-legal solutions for more sustainable management of these resources (Castellanet and Jordan, 2002). The “participatory” approach seemed all the more opportune because municipal planning was promoted by local stakeholders (farmers’ organisations in particular). Participatory municipal planning experiments, focused on natural resource management, were established successively in two different Transamazonian “municipalities”: Uruara (1993-1996) and Porto de Moz (1996- on-going) [3].

Participatory Research on Municipal Planning of Forest Resource Use in Uruara

The first experiment took place in the Uruara municipio, situated on the Transamazonian road 180 km west of Altamira. This region is typical of the colonisation zones planned by the Brazilian government in the 1970s with the opening of roads through the Amazon forest in territories until then frequented only by Indians. This municipality has been particularly dynamic since its 1978 spontaneous creation as a future city.

At the end of 1993, LAET was asked to participate in a “municipal conference for alternative economic projects”. The LAET team conducted an initial participatory survey (municipal zoning) of forty farmers from diverse communities. This study rapidly provided the team with an overview of existing natural resources and how they were used in the area. It also identified the main existing socio-economical problems. The results were presented and discussed during the conference. The municipio’s main problems were evoked, in particular the massive arrival of sawmills exploiting public and private forests in an anarchical and uncontrolled manner, something that greatly worried the farmers in the region. There was real debate on the municipality’s future. LAET’s “participatory” approach earned the team the trust of farmers, above all because they appreciated the efforts made to present them with the results in understandable terms during the first dissemination meeting.

After the conference, LAET continued its forest sector research, with the Uruara farmers’ union. The goal was to assess forest activity, the strategy and interests of the different stakeholders, and the diverse sales possibilities, costs and incomes of sector stakeholders. The underlying hypothesis for this research was that better knowledge and clarification of the various resource users’ (often contradictory) interests and prospects would facilitate subsequent negotiations between all users. This was supposed to make it possible to find solutions that would be acceptable to all (“win-win” solutions) or that would at least satisfy the majority of users, taking into account the interests of the largest number and future generations, thus following the basic premises of stakeholder analysis and the “multi-user negotiation platform” method (Roling, 1994). The research results were presented at the March 1995 municipal Conference on “the forest and wood”. This seminar was attended by foresters (“madeireiros”), representatives of farmers’ associations and communities, and local and national authorities such as EMBRAPA (agro-forestry research) and SUDAM (the Amazon region development office). LAET’s presentation revealing the considerable margins earned by forestry enterprises was strongly criticised by the madeireiros. They disagreed with the estimates of profits from forest exploitation and volume of wood extracted from the municipio. Indeed, LAET’s figures were twice the official figures. A certain number of innovative proposals were formulated during this seminar. Some seem truly able to benefit all (e.g. that sawmills produce high value timber trees such as mogno and other valuable species distributed freely to farmers who wish to plant them). Others are acceptable to all under certain conditions. For example, the creation of a municipal forest in the north of the District (for which government would build and maintain an access road) was unanimously agreed upon. Creating a public forest was against the interests of some of the big sawmills owners but they expected to benefit from the road giving them direct access to the Amazon river, thus lowering the cost of transporting sawn timber. This proved that it is possible to get past the apparently strong opposition between the different social groups to find acceptable common ground, albeit on limited initiatives that do not solve all the problems.

The Uruara conferences were occasions to invite representatives from various public offices of the government of the state of Para. This made it possible to draw public attention to the municipio, and justified its subsequently being given priority by government authorities as the first in the region to benefit from a new line of credit for farming (called PRONAF). A sub-section of INCRA (the National Land Reform Institute) was also established, and a new settlement project by landless farmers launched. In reality, the decision to give Uruara priority had been made earlier, probably before the first conference. It was part of an agreement between the governor of the state, the curate, and other local political figures, to win a new city hall in the Transamazonian region through a regional alliance between two political parties. Uruara was to be the centre of this alliance. In the end, the governor’s candidates were not elected, despite the considerable economic support of sawmill owners. The LAET team was, for its part, progressively pushed out of the Uruara process, especially after the forestry seminar. It was invited to fewer and fewer meetings. LAET seemed to have become bothersome. Local government and the State quickly forgot the most interesting resolutions of the Uruara Conference (e.g. the municipal forest, or small cooperative groups of farmers sawing their own wood with chainsaw). It appears that, for its initiators, the conference’s purpose was not really to apply these innovative proposals, but more to draw public funding of any sort. The local technicians working for Government agencies (particularly the extension services and regional development agencies) and the outside researchers invited for their expertise—far from bringing neutral knowledge that could be made available to local stakeholders—also participated in function of their own interests and strategies, including in politics. (In Brazil, civil servants can take part in political parties and elections). This is why the local elite pushed aside LAET at the crucial point when proposals were to be transformed into projects or training for farmers.

One can not simply analyse the strategies of the various stakeholders vis-à-vis resources (interests tied to the forest, in this specific case), one must also take into account their larger strategies, in this instance in the field of national politics. The “strategic stakeholders” may give greater importance to hoped-for political benefits than they do to possible economic benefits (from, for example, a new wood optimisation technology). The research team suffered from a lack of experienced members able to analyse the local political context and from the lack of permanent presence of a researcher or technician in the community (“municipio”). Without this continual presence and without direct and regular contact with the farmers, it was impossible to develop a relationship of trust with well-informed local stakeholders who could have enlightened LAET on the different groups’ strategies. In addition, one can conclude that it was not very realistic, in the local context, to believe that discussions could be undertaken with the various participants on equal footing and that these discussions could produce proposals in the general interest. The reach and the interest of this type of “multi-stakeholder” platform/discussion arena are considerably reduced by uneven distribution of power and knowledge, weakness in democratic traditions, and the fact that the Government does not play its role as referee and guarantor of the agreements reached.

Zoning and Participatory Municipal Planning in Porto De Moz

The area around Porto de Moz is more characteristic of the occupation of the Amazon since the 16th century. The majority of the Porto de Moz population—“caboclos”[4]—have been installed on the riverbanks for several generations. Until the 1960s, the principal economic activity was traditional extractivism (hunting and gathering), but wood extraction has since taken on growing importance for the local economy.

In December 1995, LAET and MPST were approached by two leading farmers in the Porto de Moz municipio who requested help organising a conference on “the future of wood and fishing”. The popular organisations there had already held three seminars on these subjects with the representatives of local communities. During the third seminar, they decided they needed technical and financial support for a more ambitious event in June 1996. Based on their experience in Uruara, the researchers (working in close collaboration with MPST representatives) decided to use a different participatory planning strategy. Instead of planing to include all local users and technicians in the action-research process from the start, they would in the first stage give priority to direct dialogue with local organisations to strengthen them. They would enter into negotiations with the other local stakeholders and the Government only in the second phase, based on their own (already consolidated) objectives and strategies. In March 1996, the LAET coordinator, a MPST representative, and those in charge of local organisations discussed how this could be organised. It was decided that LAET would conduct “a rapid assessment of the natural resource situation” in May 1996 with representatives of the community. This rapid diagnostic mobilised all of the LAET team as well as the organisations’ representatives for 10 days. Less than a month later, an overview of the municipio’s social, economic and ecological dynamics had been established (Rocha et al., 1996) and was presented one week before the conference. An initial discussion of the information was organised around three questions: was it realistic, was it understandable, and was it opportune.

More than 80 representatives of grassroots communities, a few representatives of other municipios, local technicians, and a representative of the Secretary of State and the Environment attended the seminar. The presentation of the diagnostic showed that large quantities of trees were cut down and sold as logs outside of the area for relatively little compared to their value when sawn into planks. It was estimated that relatively easy access forests would be depleted in 10 to 15 years if nothing was done to stem the current trend, and local inhabitants would probably not find an alternative source of income easily. The community representatives explained the ecological mechanisms by which forest exploitation along riverbanks reduced the abundance of fish[5]. In short, the situation was critical. Most of the traditional occupants had not thought to mark the borders of their land until 10 years ago. The land (and its natural resources) were almost freely accessible to all. Recently, however, forestry companies, unscrupulous intermediaries, and speculators had begun to mark off vast tracts of forest for which they pretended to have obtained “occupation permits”, leaving only relatively small areas for the traditional inhabitants. The Union and the Church advised them to record only a 50-hectare plot of land (standard for agricultural colonisation). Consequently, several communities were encircled by forestry companies and pressured to sell their remaining land at derisory prices. During the seminar, the participants were split into small groups to discuss these issues. The discussions were very level-headed and calm, but very serious. The technicians and researchers were conveniently placed in a separate group. Therefore, the communities and representatives of local organisations prepared a list of proposals themselves. Some were relatively ambitious, for example: establishing an Environmental Commission on the municipal council; strengthening fiscal control over wood exploitation; or creating an additional municipal tax on the export of logs in order to encourage local sawing. Other proposals were highly concrete, for example: discussing community fishing rules and their immediate application; establishing and marking community land to avoid invasion by forestry companies; or creating a co-operative of small foresters (truck drivers that extract wood for large sawmills).

A “Committee for natural resource management planning” made up of representatives of local organisations was formed after the conference and reached a three-year partnership agreement with MPST and LAET. This committee set priorities, elaborated a programme of action, and took charge of monitoring local implementation of the programme, calling on LAET and MPST as needed. A few important results were (in 1997): rapid multiplication of community-established rules limiting fishing in their rivers and real control of professional fishing in their areas; the support of the federal environment agency (IBAMA) which undertook at least two verification visits in Xingu river after the conference; the launch of discussions on establishing “community forest reserves” in four communities; the organisation of an “environmental awareness-raising” programme by local organisations, mainly explaining the conference’s conclusions and presenting environmental law and the existing authorities to contact in case of conflicts (the committee produced and distributed a small illustrated pamphlet and posters); the process of creating a protected area in the flood area (varzea) around a seasonal lake named “Lago du Urubu”; and support from the Para land office (ITERPA) in giving the Porto de Moz farmers’ union access to its records.

This experience tested a new method of participatory research for natural resource management. Unlike the “multi-user negotiation approach”, priority was given to the majority of small rural producers (farmers and extractivists) and their organisations. Establishing a “negotiation platform” can be envisaged only after these groups and organisations have been strengthened and have acquired a clearer idea of their own interests and their NRM strategies. In Porto de Moz, this new approach was more successful than the one used in Uruara; it produced more concrete NRM results during the first two years than the one used in Uruara did in four years[6]. In addition, some of the results were obtained by direct contact between the local organisations and national administrations. MPST’s support and experience considerably facilitated these contacts. The participatory research results were published and communicated to these decision-makers.

This tends to confirm Sawyer’s theory (1990) that NRM results can be obtained in the Amazon through cooperation between local organisations and national administrations, bypassing the local elite who is likely to block all initiatives that go against its immediate economic interests. In this case, the local organisations played the roles that were a priori expected of them: facilitated research, helped understand farmers and extractivists’ strategies, and represented them in their negotiations with the Government. Meaningful participatory municipal planning efforts in the Amazon can not be imagined without real participation from popular organisations.