The Brazil Natural Resource Governance Initiative (BNRGI) is comprised of US and Brazil-based scholars, students, and practitioners engaged in social and environmental research in Brazil. We asked fellow BNRGI members working across Brazil about the country's most daunting ecological challenges. Below we compile their photos, insights, and stories about the most pressing social and environmental dilemmas in Brazil today, and opportunities for positive change.
Part 1. Environmental Challenges
Lack of adequate infrastructure
Many Brazilian cities lack the infrastructure necessary to manage flooding caused by climate-driven extreme weather and sea-level rise. Without adequate infrastructure for storm-water runoff and sanitation, sewage and storm water can pollute public spaces and destroy homes.
Pollution
Many Brazilian cities and towns also struggle with adequate waste collection and treatment, leading to pollution of green spaces, rivers, and commons.
Drought
Especially in the Northeast, climate change is exacerbating periodic drought cycles, creating ecological challenges for residents everywhere from large cities to rural small farms.
Deforestation
In both the Amazon and Cerrado, industrial agriculture drives large-scale deforestation, threatening traditional communities and small-holders that live off the land.
Part 2. What's at stake? Brazilian ways of life and the environment
In Brazil, many communities still live off the land
Brazil has a wide variety of populations whose livelihoods depend on collecting from the ocean and forests, small-scale farming and cultivation, and fishing and hunting. Environmental crises disproportionately impact these communities.
Embodied Risks
People who depend on natural resources for subsistence are more vulnerable to risks associated with losing access to the ocean, forests, and other ecosystems. When those ecosystems become polluted, individuals in these communities must confront the embodied risks associated with pollution.
Economic Vulnerability
Many people who subsist off natural resources also rely on those same resources for extra cash for basic needs. Without steady income from these resources, it becomes impossible for those individuals to support their households.
Part 3. Hope for Positive Social and Ecological Change
Land-based organizing
For decades, social movements like the Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra-MST) have been fighting for land rights, agrarian reform, and environmental justice across Brazil.
Organizing for equitable environmental governance
In cities and villages, grassroots movements fight for protections against environmental challenges such as flooding, pressuring governments to invest in equitable infrastructure projects.
Women's rights to access natural resources
Women's groups are also organizing for rights to safely access land and other natural resources necessary to feed their households and earn extra income.
A note on methods for this project:
The Digital Project Team is Shelly Annette Biesel, Raul Basílio and Pedro Paulo Soares. We asked fellow BNRGI members to share their research photos from projects across Brazil. We then coded the images using MaxQDA, identifying patterns and cross-cutting themes. The next step was conducting preliminary interviews with our colleagues to confirm that we had coded the images with the correct themes. Finally, we used the cross-cutting themes to inform our interview design for longer, more extensive interviews. The secondary interviews were recorded and made into videos that you see above. We thank our BNRGI colleagues for their enthusiastic participation (and patience)!
Thank you to our BNRGI colleagues who contributed photos and interviews:
- Larissa Lourenço, Pesquisadora do Pará
- Evandro Neves, Pesquisador do Maranhão e Pará
- Cydney Seigerman, Anthropologist working in Ceará
- Bruna Borges, Pesquisadora do Pará
- Bruno Ubiali, Anthropologist working in Acre
- Eduardo Monteiro, Pesquisador do Pará
- Dr. Pedro Paulo Soares, Pesquisador do Pará
- Raul Basílio, Anthropologist working in Rio de Janeiro
- Shelly Annette Biesel, Anthropologist working in Pernambuco
- Dr. Greg Thaler, Political Scientist working in Pará, Mato Grosso, & Brasília
- Dr. Don Nelson, Anthropologist working in Ceará