Da fronteira à sustentabilidade?: o caso de Paragominas-PA

Abstract

Paragominas has made a pole of the frontier expansion in the Amazon, experiencing a model of development guided by the search of economic growth along its History. This model has been featured by the expansion of economic fronts, notedly, the livestock activity and timber extraction, which generated an economic growth linked to social problems and environment degradation. Since the last decade of this century there have been changes on this case scenario, with alterations on the productive basis and meaningful improvements on the town's natural resources management. The "Paragominas Green Town Project", which started in 2008, is considered as a historic fact that traces the transition from the frontier economy to a sustainable development model. The current study demonstrate that the changes seen in the town happened before this historic fact and have occurred because of variations on the economic viability of the developed activities and/or for reasons due to the new global economy consumption pattern, as characteristics of a new Amazon frontier stage. On the new Paragominas frontier stage, despite the environmental and ecological dimensions growth, there remain the challenges of a promotion to a more democratic natural resources access, a better generated riches distribution and a better quality of life for its citizens, problems linked to the social dimension of a wider development process, that feature indeed, a model of sustainability.