Governance, Conflict Management & Natural Resource Management in the Amazon
2013–2018 · CAPES Pró-Amazônia · UFPA/NAEA · UNIFAP · UNIR · Natural Resource Governance · Mining · Amazonia
Resource Governance · Conflict & Cooperation · Small-Scale Gold Mining · Organizations · Regional Comparison
Project Overview
Governança, Gestão de Conflitos e Manejo dos Recursos Naturais na Amazônia was a research project funded by CAPES through the Pró-Amazônia: Biodiversidade e Sustentabilidade programme (Edital 047/2012).
Coordinated by Oriana Trindade de Almeida, the project brought together researchers from the Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA), the Universidade Federal do Amapá (UNIFAP) and the Universidade Federal de Rondônia (UNIR). The project ran from 2013 to 2018.
The research addressed governance, conflict and cooperation surrounding natural-resource use in Amazonia. Within this broader programme, I participated as a researcher and coordinated the subproject Conflitos e Cooperação no Uso de Ouro, focusing particularly on gold mining in the Tapajós region in Pará and the state of Amapá.
The project continued and extended, within a Brazilian inter-university research network, questions concerning natural-resource governance, conflict and mining that were also being investigated through earlier and partly overlapping international research cooperation.
Research Context
Natural-resource use in Amazonia involves heterogeneous actors, forms of appropriation, organizations and institutional arrangements. Mineral extraction provides a particularly important field for examining these relations because access to resources, environmental regulation, economic interests and competing territorial claims frequently generate both conflict and possibilities for cooperation.
The project investigated these questions within a broader research agenda concerned with governance, conflict management and natural-resource management in Amazonia.
My research within the project concentrated on mineral extraction and its relationship to regional development, continuing earlier work on Amazonian gold mining while extending questions developed through international research cooperation on resource governance and small-scale mining.
This research was conducted particularly through the subproject Conflitos e Cooperação no Uso de Ouro.
Conflict and Cooperation in Gold Mining
The gold-mining subproject examined resource use and mining-related transformations in two different Amazonian settings:
- the Tapajós region in Pará;
- the state of Amapá.
These regions provided different settings for investigating relations between mineral extraction, actors and organizations, public regulation, environmental questions and regional transformation.
The research continued an established line of investigation into artisanal and small-scale gold mining while providing opportunities to compare mining within different regional and institutional contexts.
In Amapá, documented research activities included field visits to mining areas and engagement with both small-scale gold mining and industrial mineral extraction, including activities in Vila Nova, Mazagão, and Pedra Branca do Amapari.
These activities added further comparative empirical material concerning heterogeneous forms of mineral extraction and their regional and institutional contexts.
Research Cooperation
The project strengthened research cooperation among Amazonian universities and researchers working on natural-resource governance.
The participating institutions included:
- Universidade Federal do Pará — UFPA/NAEA;
- Universidade Federal do Amapá — UNIFAP;
- Universidade Federal de Rondônia — UNIR.
Within the mining subproject, research in Amapá involved cooperation with Marcelo Oliveira at UNIFAP, extending an existing academic relationship into interinstitutional research collaboration.
This network dimension was an important characteristic of the project. Rather than concentrating research within a single institution or location, Pró-Amazônia supported cooperation across different Amazonian research environments and empirical contexts.
Relationship with Parallel and Earlier Research
The project formed part of a broader research environment concerned with natural-resource governance, conflict and mineral extraction in Amazonia.
During this period, related questions were also being investigated through the CAPES–NUFFIC research cooperation and GOMIAM — Gold Mining in the Amazon. These projects differed in institutional architecture and comparative scope but overlapped intellectually and, in part, temporally.
Pró-Amazônia contributed a distinctive Brazilian inter-university dimension, connecting researchers and empirical research settings across Amazonian states.
The relationship among these projects should therefore not be understood as a linear succession. Together they constituted overlapping research environments through which questions concerning resource use, mining, conflict, formalization and governance were investigated from different perspectives.
My Role
I participated in Governança, Gestão de Conflitos e Manejo dos Recursos Naturais na Amazônia as a researcher and coordinator of the subproject Conflitos e Cooperação no Uso de Ouro.
My research focused particularly on the Tapajós and Amapá, connecting questions concerning gold mining with broader research on regional development and natural-resource governance.
The subproject continued earlier research on artisanal and small-scale gold mining while extending comparative empirical observation across different Amazonian mining contexts.
Documented activities included field-based research, inter-university academic cooperation and teaching activities concerning mining history, geology, mining technologies and environmental impacts.
The overall Pró-Amazônia project was coordinated by Oriana Trindade de Almeida.
Mining, Governance and Regional Comparison
Pró-Amazônia continued a research trajectory concerned with mining, resource governance and regional development while adding a stronger inter-regional and inter-university comparative dimension.
Research in the Tapajós and Amapá provided opportunities to examine mineral extraction within different regional and institutional settings. In Amapá, field activities also brought small-scale and industrial mining contexts into the same broader research environment.
The project's particular contribution to my research trajectory therefore lies less in opening a new thematic field than in extending comparative empirical observation across different Amazonian mining regions and strengthening cooperation among researchers based in Amazonian universities.
Contribution to My Research Trajectory
In retrospect, three aspects of the project are particularly relevant to my subsequent research.
Regional comparison. Research in the Tapajós and Amapá reinforced the importance of examining mining within different regional configurations rather than treating Amazonian mineral extraction as a homogeneous phenomenon.
Governance and organizations. The project continued research on the institutional and organizational arrangements through which resource use, regulation, conflict and cooperation are structured.
Amazonian research cooperation. The project strengthened collaboration among researchers and universities located in different parts of Amazonia, creating opportunities for comparative research grounded in different regional contexts.
Rather than constituting a major theoretical turning point, Pró-Amazônia consolidated and extended an existing research trajectory concerned with mining, natural-resource governance and regional development.
From Pró-Amazônia to Regional Development in World Society
The project was not conceived within the later theoretical framework of Regional Development in World Society. Its relevance to the current programme is therefore retrospective.
Research in the Tapajós and Amapá nevertheless provided comparative empirical material concerning the different regional contexts in which mineral extraction, regulation, organizations and conflicts become interconnected.
From the perspective of my current research, this comparison is particularly relevant to the problem of regional differentiation. Processes associated with mineral extraction do not generate identical consequences across Amazonia. Their effects depend on historically established economic relations, organizations, institutional arrangements and material conditions.
Pró-Amazônia therefore contributes to the empirical background from which the current RWS interest in the regionally differentiated consequences of wider societal processes can be reconsidered.
Retrospective analytical relevance:
Mining · Resource Governance · Organizations · Conflict & Cooperation · Regional Comparison · Regional Differentiation
Related Research
GOMIAM — Gold Mining in the Amazon →
International comparative research on artisanal and small-scale gold mining, formalization, conflict, legal arrangements and resource governance.
Formal and Informal Practices of Natural Resource Use and Management in the Amazon →
Brazil–Netherlands research cooperation comparing resource access, formal and informal institutions and different systems of natural-resource use and governance.
Mining & Extractive Transformations →
Research on artisanal and industrial mining, resource governance, responsible mineral extraction and regional transformation.
Regional Development in World Society →
The current theoretical programme examining how heterogeneous world-societal processes become selectively connected and consequential within historically evolving regional configurations.