PREFACE

v.7 Edição Especial Jan. 2021

Despite great advances in the debate on sustainable development and protected areas in the last 35 years in Brazil, there are still many gaps and doubts about the processes for implementing these concepts. In fact, for a long time the great challenge has not been in the construction of conceptions and meanings of these concepts, but in their applicability, in forms of operationalization.

If, on one hand, sustainable development is seen as the only possible form of development (if it is not sustainable, it is not development); on other hand, it is also seen only as an ideal to be pursued, that is, a plumb or direction for the predominant structure of economic development with incorporation (and not necessarily  recognition) of environmental issues, specifically of issues of resources natural. In other words, we need to rethink its use on an accelerated scale, its exhaustion and how to minimize the negative effects of its exacerbated use within the production processes.

We understand that is from these two aspects that propositions of applicability of the concept of sustainable development emerge that are operationalized in different territorial scales and social and organizational structures.

The proposal to create protected areas, such as conservation units (UC), indigenous lands, quilombos, natural parks, among others, which aims to conserve the natural and cultural heritage associated with it (which includes ecological, historical, geographic and traditional knowledge) is one way to pursue the implementation of sustainable development.

While a new model of social and economic structure that radically changes the relationship between man and nature within the prevailing capitalist economic system, alternatives are being sought for the longevity and, perhaps, perpetuity of the current model.

However, for case of Amazon, the region that still holds the greatest biodiversity on the planet, the existence of protected areas and the pursuit of new models for implementing the concept of development can be redeeming for its people. Within the classic model of economic development, the Amazon region has always been (and continues to be) only a supplier of natural resources for the national and international high-scale production process. Perhaps, in these two possibilities, alternatives can be found to place the Amazon - its organizations and society - within a more just, inclusive and balanced development, valuing its human, natural and cultural heritage. In any case, we believe that are still far from any approximation of the applicability of the concept of sustainable development in Amazon.

Thus, in this way, we still have several experiments and diverse applications in contexts, scales, territories and approaches. These are expressed in the articles presented in this special issue of P2P & Inovação Journal.

Among the experiments, there is the experience of sustainable psiculture shown by Paes e Silva. The authors maintain the importance of local knowledge - a very peculiar heritage of Amazon - for social, economic and cultural reproduction of small fishermen and rural producers who saw and were affected by what the authors call the “green revolution” that brought production to Amazon large-scale farming and reconfigured, for the worse, the local way of life. Thus, sustainable psiculture presents itself as a development alternative on a community scale.

In fact, since the 1970s, the classical logic of development has disrupted the territory and local way of life in Amazon, requiring more and more environmental management. Farias and Magno discuss precisely the challenge of environmental management, especially after the implementation of large projects that were built within a different development approach that prevailed in Brazil until the end of the 1980s. The authors use the Tucuruí HPP as an example. and the environmental impacts caused since its construction to the present moment. Evidently, today the impacts are of different nature, however they continue to exist and to challenge the paradigmatic change in development and the achievement of an effective environmental management.

In the same line of reasoning, Ribeiro, Afonso, Souza, Riva and Souza Filho discuss the impacts on natural resources in the construction of dams for the implementation of hydroelectric plants of different sizes, including small hydroelectric plants. The authors, in turn, use examples from the state of Rondônia. However, more optimistically than Farias and Magno, the authors Ribeiro, Afonso, Souza, Riva and Souza Filho believe that in the conflicts between economic growth and environmental protection, governance actions can contribute to reconciliation of opposing interests and mitigate environmental and social impacts.

Governance, in fact, has been presented as an important approach to conflict management and for the implementation of development projects, translating into risk governance. Siqueira et al start from the understanding of risk governance as a democratic and participatory decision-making process related to risk management in which social participation is fundamental for the sharing of the State's decision-making power in relation to issues related to the public interest. According to the authors, precisely because its characteristics of greater social aggregation, it is that risk governance becomes interesting to be used in the construction of hydroelectric plants to balance the social, economic and environmental.

From the perspective of attempts to apply and operationalize the concept of sustainable development in public policies, Rocha, Conduru, Flores and Rocha discuss the importance of environmental information for decision making. This is because environmental information is a sine qua non condition for knowing the reality and formulating public environmental policies. In effect, environmental information is reconciled with principles of sustainable development since, according to the Rio-92 Forum Declaration, all individuals must have adequate access to information related to the environment in the same way as public authorities. Based on the discussion on CAR (Rural Environmental Registry) as a public policy, authors emphasize the importance of 2012 Forest Code for bringing significant advances aimed at protecting the environment.

CAR presents itself as an important tool for environmental information on rural properties and possessions in the context of sustainable rural development.

Managing environmental information is not a trivial activity. Big data and information is increasing and the search for alternatives for its handling has been a challenge. It happened in the Brazilian courts to guide environmental public policies in Amazon.  One alternative found has been use of artificial intelligence as a management tool, according to Santana, Teixeira and Moura Júnior. The authors seek to demonstrate that the use of artificial intelligence for data structuring and  Big Data based on sensible processes can be an important source to public environmental policies be applied in a more effective and sustainable way.

. In search for sustainable development in rural areas and their populations, National School Feeding Program (PNAE) is a guide, according to Chaves, Maneschy and Barbosa. The authors bring the debate on national public policy to the local level and show that in PNAE, the success of public policy and its sustainability depends on the relationship between local management and family farmers. In a way, the authors demonstrate the importance of political-institutional dimension for sustainable development, especially in small counties in Amazon region, as in  case of Marapanim, chosen to a case study.

The cultural dimension of sustainable development is addressed by Luz, Azevedo and Chagas Júnior, who discuss construction and reproduction of identity, particularly quilombola identity. The authors debate how the quilombola identity is constructed, reconstructed and reproduced within of a school, based on the analysis of the pedagogical practices used in the classroom. Quilombos represent a type of protected area under Brazilian law and are one of the guardians of the environment and traditional culture. The authors demonstrate that sustainability of quilombos goes through the strengthening of identity, which, in turn, depends on the involvement and understanding of its inhabitants as quilombolas. The authors show, in the case of the Guajará Miri Quilombo, that identity is still weakened, which leaves it vulnerable to the exclusionary economic model and unable to propose new directions for sustainable development of the territory itself.

Within an organizational and legal debate, Rodrigues et al seek to demonstrate the relationship between environmental standards and laws and the reuse of waste and reverse logistics technologies in Brazil. The authors emphasize the importance and possibilities of reverse logistics as an instrument of shared responsibility within the National Solid Waste Policy (PNRS). Indeed, authors emphasize the possibilities of reverse logistics as an instrument of economic and social development in context of sustainability.

Coutinho et al that deals with the invasion of computer technologies in the daily lives of families. The work demonstrates how this invasion influences the socio-emotional relationships of families. Amartya Sen theorizes that development is achieved when individuals have capacities that lead them to express their freedoms. Coutinho et al demonstrate, in a way, that the invasion of computer technologies in the daily lives of families is more imprisoning than freeing people to face the adversities of the capitalist system's predominant development logic. For Sen, the centrality of development is people; however, for the capitalist system, economy prevails, even if it invades the private spaces of families.

The articles for this special issue presents are as diverse as the debate on sustainable development in its multiple dimensions (ecological, social, economic, cultural and political-institutional). However, they bring interesting contributions that, certainly, will instigate readers to reflect on the complexity that this concept still presents and the long way that we still have to go towards its full deciphering and application.

We wish you a good reading!

Belém, January 21, 2021.

Ana Maria de Albuquerque Vasconcellos

Universidade da Amazônia

Mário Vasconcellos Sobrinho

Universidade da Amazônia e Universidade Federal do Pará

Ronaldo Lopes Rodrigues Mendes

Universidade Federal do Pará