Manejo Florestal Comunitário na Amazônia Brasileira: uma abordagem sobre manejo adaptativo e governança local dos recursos florestais em Reserva Extrativista

Abstract

The forest handling developed by communities in Amazonia has practically 20 years of existence and it is still considered unviable in the way that it is conceived nowadays, and their guidelines need to be discussed. The initiatives that exist are subsidized by the public authorities, or private organizations that decide the intensity of field exploration based on legislations directed to a timber extraction business and opposite to the principles and habits of local communities. The work has as objective to analyze, in an integrated way, the adaptive management and local governance, as the approaches that can support community forest management in the Brazilian Amazon. The research was structured from the studies in the RESEX Green Forever, in Pará, seeking, through the trajectory of five communities, to set up the community forest management according to its conditions and needs, making use of the logging resources through traditional practices. The investigation has happened for seven years (2010-2016), using a method based on the observer-participant technique and diagnostic tools of participatory organizational development methodology for the qualitative and quantitative information collection, complemented by bibliographic and documentary research, as well as depth interviews. To analyze the empirical data, it was used a theoretical and methodological framework that met this search, being able to support future research, and a study about forest economical viability to decide if the management plans will get the desired success. The results showed that the RESEX are cultural forests where the family's way of life, their histories and traditions must be recognized. In this logic, the management plans were adapted to the reality of the communities and it is economically viable, as well as the local government was considered the most appropriate arrangement to make the management and use of forest goods, suggesting a system of governance between communities and State that can build a new institutionalism in protected areas. In this context, there is the appearance of the “new common”, described by protagonism and autonomy in decision making and by a network of collaboration among communities that practice extractivism, seeking in collective actions to ensure their human rights and social environmental justice. The community forest management in the Amazon needs to be urgently resignified, which implies a conceptual change that is able to corroborate with simplified laws and public policies adjusted to forest peoples.