barriers to empowerment: fighting eviction for conservation in a southern brazilian protected area

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Barriers to empowerment: fighting eviction forconservation in a southern Brazilian protected areaTiago Almudi a b & Fikret Berkes ba IPAM – Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia, Varzea Project, Avenida RuiBarbosa, 136. Prainha., Santarem, 68005080, Brazilb University of Manitoba, Natural Resources Institute, 303-70 Dysart Road, Winnipeg,Manitoba, Canada, R3T 2M5Published online: 12 Mar 2010.

To cite this article: Tiago Almudi & Fikret Berkes (2010) Barriers to empowerment: fighting eviction for conservation ina southern Brazilian protected area, Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability, 15:3,217-232, DOI: 10.1080/13549830903575570

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Barriers to empowerment: fighting eviction for conservation in a

southern Brazilian protected area

Tiago Almudia,b� and Fikret Berkesb

aIPAM – Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia, Varzea Project, Avenida Rui Barbosa,136. Prainha., Santarem, 68005080, Brazil; bUniversity of Manitoba, Natural Resources Institute,303-70 Dysart Road, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3T 2M5

How do nation states accommodate people who live in regions declared as protectedareas (PAs)? In Brazil’s Peixe Lagoon National Park, established in 1986, eviction offisher communities has been occurring gradually through license non-renewal and ill-treatment of fishers by Parks authorities. We examined fishers’ interactions with othergroups and the role of partnerships and linkages in fighting for fishing rights. Resultsshow that the new national law on PAs (SNUC) approved in 2000 could be used toenable this particular group of fishers to safeguard their culture and livelihoods.However, fishers and their representatives considered themselves weak anddisempowered. Existing partnerships were sufficient to fight eviction in the shortterm, but not to safeguard resource access rights in the long term. We identifiedobstacles to empowerment in the form of “missing linkages” and institutions,specifically with respect to service and support functions to build capacity to defendrights to remain physically within the park and politically in the conservation process.

Keywords: environmental justice; multi-level governance; political ecology;partnerships; protected areas

Introduction

Displacement is one of the major impacts of protected areas (PAs). It is a worldwide

problem: by 2005, over 100,000 PAs covered more than 2 million sq km or 12% of

Earth’s land surface (Adams and Hutton 2007). Most of the high-profile controversies

over displaced people have been from Africa where parks and game reserves have been

set up on lands in which people used to live (Brockington 2004). Available reports

suggest that over half of the national parks and other stricter PAs in South America and

Asia are used or occupied by people. Data collected in the 1990s demonstrate that 86%

of Latin American PAs were inhabited (Amend and Amend 1992), and this is also the

case in the Peixe Lagoon National Park, Brazil, the subject of this paper. Much of this

resource use and occupancy is technically illegal. The rapid expansion of the global PA

system has been accompanied by the creation of a large and vulnerable population.

More strict enforcement of PA legislation may create millions of environmental refugees

(Brockington and Igoe 2006).

ISSN 1354-9839 print/ISSN 1469-6711 online

# 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13549830903575570

http://www.informaworld.com

�Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Local Environment

Vol. 15, No. 3, March 2010, 217–232

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Potential evictions and the creation of refugees is only one angle of the problem.

The questions of social justice and social impacts of conservation are much broader than

displacement issues, and political ecology has contributed to this debate (Diegues 2000,

Adger et al. 2005, West et al. 2006). The larger question embraces the whole relation

between biodiversity conservation and human well being, particularly the compatibility

of conservation and poverty alleviation (Berkes 2007). There has been an ongoing inter-

national debate on the question of whether “win-win” policy strategies are possible and

whether resident people or users of PAs can be considered as allies rather than

“enemies” of conservation. Being allies and partners requires participation in decision-

making – co-management, or the sharing of power and responsibility between the govern-

ment and local resource users (Berkes 2009). As Algotsson (2006, p. 80) puts it, the issue is

“conservation that includes local people, both physically within parks and protected areas

and politically in the conservation policy process”.

Approaches that integrate conservation with development can provide a solution in

some of the cases. Finding synergistic approaches has been on the international agenda

for decades, in the hopes that poverty reduction through development can be reconciled

with biodiversity conservation (Berkes 2004, Timmer and Juma 2005). The international

policy environment discourages evictions and has become conducive to developing win-

win policy strategies for conservation–development projects. The displacement of

people from PAs was recognised as a major concern by the 1970s. In 1975, the International

Conservation Union (IUCN) General Assembly passed the Kinshasa Resolution on the Pro-

tection of Traditional Ways of Life, calling on governments not to displace people from

parks. The idea that parks and PAs should be socially and economically inclusive

became part of mainstream conservation thinking by the 1990s, but the controversy has

not abated (Adams and Hutton 2007).

In Brazil, as in many countries, parks and PAs have followed a “no-people” approach

(Diegues 2000). The first Brazilian PA that did not prohibit human residence and resource

use was Alto Jurua Extractive Reserve, created in 1990 (Ruiz-Perez et al. 2005). As a con-

sequence of the exclusion of local communities, conflicts over land and resource use in

parks are quite common all over the country (Charity and Masterson 1999, Diegues

2008). To tackle this problem, a new national law on “conservation units” (term used to

refer to PAs in Brazil) was approved in 2000, with innovations in terms of requirements

for stakeholder participation in PA creation, implementation and management. All conser-

vation units are under this national law, which applies to both strict PAs and those that allow

sustainable use.

This new law (the so-called SNUC) defines guidelines that must be followed for the cre-

ation and management of conservation units, which include the recognition and protection

of the culture, knowledge and livelihoods of traditional indigenous and “grassroots” people

(Brazil 2000). Scholars and government have recognised that one of such grassroots groups

are the acoreanos fishers from the southern Brazilian coast living in areas such as Peixe

Lagoon (Diegues 2008). SNUC provides for the mandatory consultation of indigenous

and traditional people prior to the establishment of PAs and the mandatory establishment

of a multi-stakeholder body for each conservation unit. These institutions must include

representatives of traditional people living in the area, giving them opportunity to

provide inputs for the conservation unit management.

Consistent with the participatory approach required by SNUC, many jointly managed

PAs were created in Brazil over the last decade. The most common models have been

Extractive Reserves (RESEX) and Sustainable Development Reserves (RDS). These

models aim at combining environmental protection with improvement in local quality of

218 T. Almudi and F. Berkes

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life through sustainable resource use strategies. As of 2006, 78 RESEX and 15 RDS were

established in Brazil, most of them in the Amazon region (Kalikoski et al. 2006). With the

emergence of participatory approaches, a substantial literature developed in Brazil on the

co-management of reserves and other areas (Kalikoski and Satterfield 2004, Pinto da

Silva 2004, Castello et al. 2009).

The environmental agency responsible for the implementation of SNUC is the Chico

Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), named after the legendary

leader of RESEX in the Amazon.

Although SNUC provides guidelines for ICMBio to negotiate with resource users and

to solve existing conflicts, there are some shortcomings in this mandate. Part of the problem

is that SNUC also provides guidelines that call for the establishment of strict PAs where the

main goal is preservation. SNUC applies to two main categories of PAs: (1) sustainable use

conservation units that allow for livelihoods maintenance and (2) integral protection con-

servation units requiring strict preservation. National Parks are among integral protection

conservation units. The possibility of creating those categories has allowed for the interpret-

ation that some conservation units may expel people living in areas designated to be con-

servation units. Following the same interpretation, conservation units created prior to

SNUC (i.e. prior to year 2000) in a top-down manner are not required to be adjusted to

the more democratic and participatory approach provided by the new legislation.

The Peixe Lagoon case is informative because it is representative of many of the PAs in

Brazil (and perhaps elsewhere), in which the situation of the local people is precarious, as

their resource use and occupancy are technically illegal. They can easily be evicted from

their area and become environmental refugees. The case calls for an understanding of the

conditions of disempowerment and of possible solutions. Although there are many ways

to handle this question, we are using an approach that considers empowerment as the

product of a network of interactions that build capacity through institutional collaboration

and partnerships (Adger et al. 2005, Cash et al. 2006). The justification for this approach

comes from some recent findings on conservation–development projects. Chosen from

the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Equator Initiative database, these

cases indicate that institutional linkages and partnerships for capacity building are key

factors for empowerment (Berkes 2007, Seixas and Davy 2008). There were two major

findings in these studies, based on a sample of nine UNDP Equator Initiative cases

(Berkes 2007).

First, the projects typically involved a surprisingly large number of partners (10–15),

including local and national NGOs; local, regional and (less commonly) national govern-

ments; international donor agencies and other organisations and universities and research

centres. Thus, partnerships often cut across four or five levels of organisation and were

characterised by multi-level interactions (Eckerberg and Joas 2004). Secondly, these part-

ners interacted with the local community to provide a large range of services and support

functions that a successful conservation–development project apparently needs. This

included raising funds, institution building, business networking and marketing, innovation

and knowledge transfer, technical training, research, legal support, infrastructure and

community health and social services (Berkes 2007).

These findings support the general idea that institutional linkages help local user groups,

strengthening the ability to protect their environment and increasing their acceptance of

rules created at higher levels (Adger et al. 2005). Linkage building increases the ability

of a management system to identify and assess relevant issues (Cash et al. 2006). Well-

networked management systems show an improvement in the flow of information, the

identification of knowledge gaps and the ability to mobilise expertise for innovative

Local Environment 219

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management (Olsson et al. 2004). Hence, in this paper, we explore the idea that institutional

linkages and partnerships (or lack thereof) are critical for empowerment.

We explore the hypothesis that the lack of such linkages or interactions (terms used

interchangeably) is an important part of what is missing for empowering Peixe Lagoon

fishers to the point that they are able to demand that SNUC’s fairness and participatory

management principles be respected and implemented. We identify “missing” linkages

and institutions (Walker et al. 2009) to provide service and support needs, and we

further examine how additional linkages could build capacity to help fishers to defend

their rights to remain physically within the park and politically in the conservation

policy process.

Regarding terminology, we are using the concept of institutional interplay in which

institutions may interact horizontally (across the same level) or vertically (across levels

of organisation) (Young 2002, Young et al. 2008). These horizontal and vertical interactions

have also been referred to as cross-scale interactions or cross-scale networks (Adger et al.

2005). We define scale as the spatial, temporal or other dimension used to measure or study

a phenomenon and level as the unit of analysis located at different positions on a scale

(Cash et al. 2006).

Study area, background and methods

The Peixe Lagoon, approximately 35 km long and 1 km wide, is located in the central

portion of the Rio Grande do Sul State coast, in the narrow sandy strip between the

Patos Lagoon and the Atlantic Ocean (Figure 1). Due to difficulties of access, the urban

development of this region is sparse. Only two small towns (Tavares and Mostardas),

which together have around 18,000 inhabitants, are found in the Peixe Lagoon area

(Tagliani 1995). Local economy is mostly resource-based and includes cattle raising,

onion and rice agriculture and fishing. The most economically important lagoon resource

Figure 1. Peixe Lagoon National Park location, southern Brazil.


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is the pink shrimp, Farfantepenaeus paulensis (Tagliani 1995). Tavares municipality

organises every 2 years an “onion and shrimp festival” to call attention for two of the

most important productive systems of the town.

The biologically rich lagoon environment that shelters pink shrimp populations also

creates suitable conditions for feeding and reproduction of migratory and endemic birds.

The richness and abundance of these impressed the first researchers in the region in the

early 1980s (Resende 1988). Based on their studies about the importance of the lagoon

for migratory birds, the Brazilian government declared an area of 34,000 ha surrounding

Peixe Lagoon as a National Park in 1986.

Traditional communities of acoreanos fishers have inhabited the area of the National

Park for around 300 years. Most fisher families (94 families) live by the beach in five com-

munities: three located inside and two just outside the National Park border. The remainder

(72 families) lives in the nearby towns. Peixe Lagoon fishers were granted a temporary

license to fish inside the National Park by ICMBio. Although the creation of the park

helped to conserve fishing stocks and restrict access to outsiders, having positive impacts

for local fishers, it also resulted in the possibility of eviction. Ranchers and farmers who

have properties within the PA also face major restrictions and loss of livelihoods. The

creation of the park made the rural people in Tavares and Mostardas municipalities very

uncomfortable, as there were 331 rural properties located within the borders of the park.

Most of those (68%) were smaller than 50 ha; together they encompassed an area of

about 22 kha and employed 774 rural workers. Of this, only about 3 kha was acquired

by the government with proper compensation (Knak 2004).

The temporary licenses granted to traditional fishers are not transferrable to fishers’

children and expire when the fisher quits fishing or when the government has resources

to relocate families outside the PA. Peixe Lagoon fishers use relatively simple fishing

equipment and non-motorised open boats. Their fishing activities have limited impact

on fish stocks and the environment (Resende and Leeuwenberg 1987, Loebmann and

Vieira 2006). Locally devised resource management strategies include control of

fishing spots, adaptive fishing closures and annual opening of the lagoon mouth, allow-

ing the exchange of water, nutrients and organisms with the ocean. This last point is

particularly important. Fishers have been opening the lagoon mouth for such a long

time (at least since the 1800s) that the migratory birds and other species of the

lagoon have adapted to the habitat conditions created by human actions – traditional

human activity has become part of local ecological processes (Saint-Hilaire 1987,

Resende 1988).

The case study used a diversity of methods and multiple data collection strategies based

on specific local characteristics, opportunities and problems (Creswell 1998). Field work

was carried out during two periods, in 2005 when 10 officials and 40 fishers were inter-

viewed and in 2007 when an additional 36 fishers and 10 officials were interviewed, includ-

ing the National Park chief, local politicians, the president of a multi-stakeholder body and

employees of the Agency for Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (EMATER).

Approximately 20% of the fisher total population was interviewed. Each interview took

from 1 to 2 h, most of them tape-recorded.

At the end of the fieldwork period, a focus group was carried out with key informants

of the community to clarify questions and to double-check important findings. Data

triangulation (Creswell 2003) was carried out to check for consistency. Results were

validated through participant observation throughout fieldwork (Bernard 1988). Participant

observation followed fishers’ daily activities, including social events, community gather-

ings and multi-stakeholder body meetings. Participant observation facilitated the


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administration of interviews, making the research closer to the community and helping the

understanding of local people’s worldviews. More details of study methods may be found

in Almudi (2008).

Results

Existing linkages

There exist different levels of interaction involving fisher communities and other groups or

institutions. We ranked the levels of interaction as (1) strong interactions: those in which

fishers have continual contact with a group or institution and that entails consequences

to important matters such as access to resources; (2) moderate interactions: those in

which fishers have almost a continual contact with a given organisation, but those inter-

actions are not as important and frequent as strong interactions and (3) weak interactions:

occasional contacts that usually do not have major influence on the fisher communities.

A fisher labour union (locally known as Colonia Z11) and a multi-stakeholder body are

the organisations designed to represent the interests of Peixe Lagoon fisher communities;

these organisations have strong interactions with fishers. Most of the additional vertical lin-

kages involving fishers are made possible through these two organisations. Peixe Lagoon

Fishing Forum is the above-mentioned multi-stakeholder body that brings together munici-

pal governments, fisher labour union, the National Park Land Owners’ Association and

EMATER, as well as fisher and ICMBio representatives (Figure 2). Since its creation in

1998, this forum has been headed by a local politician (a councilor from Tavares munici-

pality), who together with a councilor from Mostardas municipality and some support

Figure 2. Strength of interactions involving fisher communities.


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from politicians at the state level have provided most of the assistance Peixe Lagoon fishers

have had for their cause.

The Peixe Lagoon National Park administration is a local ICMBio office that reports to

ICMBio at the state and federal levels. Its role is mainly to implement ICMBio policies to

the local conservation unit. That includes the creation of specific rules, the development of

projects and programmes to the conservation unit, the enforcement of national laws and

locally designed rules, and heading a multi-stakeholder body – the National Park Advisory

Council – meant to give opportunity to local stakeholders to provide inputs for the conser-

vation unit management. Despite this, the park administration has been seen by the locals as

a top-down ruler, since the park was created without proper consultation. There has been

lack of resources for compensation for evictions, but the park administration and staff

have found ways to make life difficult for the fishers. For example, houses inside the PA

must not have running water or electricity, and fishers are forbidden to receive visitors over-

night, even relatives.

Moderate interactions occur with the National Park Advisory Council, which is a multi-

stakeholder body led by the National Park administration (i.e. the local ICMBio office).

This council has a broader scope than the Fishing Forum and does not have fisheries

issues in focus. It was created as an SNUC requirement for furthering public participation

but without enabling or devolving decision-making authority to non-state actors.

Nevertheless, the Council makes it possible for fishers to interact with institutions such

as environmental NGOs and universities, which tend to be concerned with environmental

preservation. Other examples of moderate interactions are those with the Federal Fisheries

Secretariat (SEAP) and with Federal and Rio Grande do Sul State governments. Interactions

with those organisations are mostly related to the receiving of monetary or infra-structure

assistance, which occur via labour union and EMATER.

Environmental Police is a group within the military police that occasionally patrols the

Peixe Lagoon region. They are based in a municipality about 200 km from the National

Park and tend to visit Peixe Lagoon only when called to assist local ICMBio patrols

with specific enforcement procedures. Some local organisations such as the National

Park Land Owners Associations also have interactions with fisher communities, an

example of weak interactions.

We identified a few horizontal linkages involving Peixe Lagoon fishers: a positive one

with neighbouring exclusive beach fishers and a negative one with local (and mostly unem-

ployed) people who fish with illegal dragnets in Peixe Lagoon, the so-called coqueiros.

Peixe Lagoon fishers associated with exclusive beach fishers in fish storing and processing

houses, but coqueiros are not regarded well, as they compete for the same resources and

damage legal fishers’ working equipment.

Functions and consequences of linkages

Institutional linkages are not always positive relationships for all the parties. According to

Cash et al. (2006), institutional interplay can be either asymmetric or balanced. Such inter-

actions never result in a “zero-sum” game, creating winners and/or losers (Adger et al.

2005). The activity of higher-level institutions, for example, inevitably produces either

positive or negative impacts on local level institutions. Therefore, the nature and strength

of the interactions that Peixe Lagoon fishers have established with other groups and organ-

isations have major consequences for their rights and roles within the National Park.

Table 1 summarises the functions and consequences of the main linkages involving

Peixe Lagoon fishers.


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Interactions through multi-stakeholder bodies

The main purpose of the Peixe Lagoon Fishing Forum is to facilitate dialogue between

fishers and National Park administrators, mainly about fishery issues related to the PA.

This forum has no power to modify policies or rules applied to the National Park, but it

has the important role of giving fishers opportunity to express their concerns and National

Park administrators to respond directly to them. As interactions between ICMBio and

fishers are the most important for determining the livelihoods of the latter, the Fishing

Forum has an essential role to play as a negotiation arena. This forum also makes it possible

for local politicians and EMATER officers to intervene more directly in negotiation pro-

cesses, assisting fisher representatives to dialogue with National Park administrators, thus

reducing the power imbalance.

One of the declared achievements of the Fishing Forum has been to temporarily prevent

the extinction of fisher rights inside the PA. However, fishers are allowed to fish and live

inside the park only until ICMBio can raise the financial resources to relocate them. Never-

theless, fishers have acknowledged that without several meetings with National Park

administration, and the involvement of politicians at the municipal and state levels, they

would have already been evicted. With the assistance of EMATER officials as mediators,

fishers have also been able to collaborate with the National Park staff to make rules for

fishing inside the PA. This mediation role was taken on spontaneously by EMATER and

was positively recognised by the fishers.

Although the Peixe Lagoon National Park Advisory Council has the potential to be as

significant as the Fishing Forum, it was still in the development stage at the time of

research. Therefore, we did not have enough information to assess its role as an arena

for multi-stakeholder negotiation. The Advisory Council brings together several additional

stakeholders such as other user-groups, industry, universities and NGOs representatives,

providing an opportunity for the fishers to get into closer contact and to dialogue with

groups to which they hardly had access earlier. However, if fisher representatives did

not have sufficiently strong communication skills, it is likely that the Council would

address the concerns of the more powerful stakeholders. Fishers themselves were not

optimistic on this point:

Table 1. Linkages with Peixe Lagoon fishers: functions and consequences.

Linkages Functions Consequences

Patos Lagoon Fishing Forum Negotiation arena (þ) Maintenance of access rights,participation in creation of rules

National Park Advisory Council Negotiation arena (þ) Increasing in dialogue withseveral stakeholders

ICMBio Top-down ruler (–) Conflicts, threat to livelihoodsFisher labour union Administrative,

bureaucratic(þ) Legal institutional existence,access to governmental benefits

Technical Assistance and RuralExtension Agency (EMATER)

Technical assistance,mediation

(þ) Increased market options,organisation, negotiationcapacity

Governmental agencies (other thanICMBio)

Funding and infra-structure assistance

(þ) Better fishing equipment, infra-structure for labour union

Exclusive beach fishers Cooperation, knowledgeexchange

(þ) Fish storing and processinghouse co-participation

Illegal coqueiros Competition (–) Impact on fisheries stocks


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Our representatives are just like any of us, they don’t have the skills to negotiate with peoplefrom IBAMA.1 They can’t do much, but I understand it is not their fault. . . They are big, we aresmall. . . (Middle-aged fisher from Tavares city)

Interactions outside multi-stakeholder bodies

The majority of the interactions taking place outside the Fishing Forum and the Advisory

Council, and probably the more important ones, occur with the labour union and with organ-

isations that have access to fishers through the labour union. This organisation has an impor-

tant bureaucratic role, officially representing fisher views to the government, validating their

documents and controlling access to government benefits such as unemployment funds

during periods of fisheries closures. Through the labour union, fishers get to interact with

several governmental organisations such as SEAP (Fisheries secretariat), CONAB

(Agency for Supply and Services) and with state and federal governments. These organis-

ations provide some benefits to fishers related to financial and infrastructure assistance.

EMATER is the only organisation that has staff working at the local level for providing

technical assistance for fisher communities. Beyond assistance provided with participation

in multi-stakeholder bodies, EMATER has had the role to assist fishers to become eligible

for accessing governmental funding programmes. In addition, this organisation helps with

the establishment of fish storing and processing houses and assists in the creation of

community associations to administer them.

In regard to horizontal linkages, interactions between exclusive beach fishers and

Peixe Lagoon fishers are quite scarce but positive, with co-participation in fish storing

and processing houses and exchange of knowledge on fisheries and market opportunities.

Resource user communities make common cause with groups at the same level for sharing

best practices, working cooperatively and exchanging learned lessons (Adger et al. 2005).

In contrast, horizontal interactions can also be conflictive. Coqueiros have been blamed for

stealing shrimp from Peixe Lagoon fisher nets, causing damage to equipment, and perhaps

most importantly, harvesting before the legal season, with negative impacts on juvenile

pink shrimp.

Looking for gaps in community empowerment

Empowerment is a process in which a group develops the ability to have an input into

decisions that affect their livelihoods and become more independent in defending their

interests. The discourse from Peixe Lagoon fishers is consistent in indicating a sense of

powerlessness in the face of loss of rights and possible eviction from the PA:

There is nobody to help us make our points; there is not much we can do by ourselves . . . we goto the meetings but it is like when a bad team plays against a good . . . you already know whowill win even before the match starts. (Middle-aged fisher from a beach village)

Their feeling of inferiority can be perceived in expressions such as, “it all depends on

what the big guys decide” (Elder fisher member of the Labour Union administration) and

“one of their lies is worth a hundred of our truths” (Middle-aged fisher from Tavares

city). The number and quality of existing linkages do not seem to have been sufficient to

empower the fisher community. That is to say, the existing linkages have not enabled

them to secure long-term access to the resources for their livelihoods or to trigger the devel-

opment of a PA co-management arrangement.


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To analyse this situation and look for possible solutions, first we identify the major bar-

riers for empowerment. Next, we discuss how the establishment of new interactions with

possible partners could help overcome some of these barriers. Here, we are referring to

groups and organisations that have had some interest in the National Park or small-scale

fisheries, but have not happened to develop any significant interaction with Peixe

Lagoon fisher communities. The main barriers responsible for lack of fisher empowerment

seem to be threefold:

(1) Weak assistance for developing community organisational capacity and leader-

ship. Fishers have been supported in negotiations with the National Park adminis-

tration through local politicians acting as their representatives. Although this may

be a good palliative measure, it does not ensure the sustainability of the negotiation

process and fisher empowerment. For example, in the Brazilian Amazon, Pastoral

da Pesca, an organisation within the Catholic Church, provides capacity building

for ribeirinhos, part-indigenous river-fishing communities. Development of strong

fisher institutions and the emergence of leaders from the communities have made it

possible for the ribeirinhos to “walk with their own legs” and not depend on exter-

nal agents to guide their actions (Queiroz 2005).

The importance of community organisation and representation is related to the

community’s ability to mobilise itself around common goals, which will drive

the creation of linkages and partnerships, rather than simply following outsider

interests or suggestions. Although Peixe Lagoon fishers and their representatives

have clear goals (e.g. long-term access to resources, participating in fisheries man-

agement and rights to transfer fishing licenses to children), they still lack organis-

ation, leadership and a sense of community cohesion necessary for collective action

to achieve such goals.

(2) Lack of basic knowledge on laws and fisher rights. The exercise of power depends a

great deal on the control of, and access to, relevant knowledge (Adger et al. 2005).

Our research identified that, in general, Peixe Lagoon fisher communities lack basic

knowledge essential for empowerment. During the fieldwork period, fishers

approached the researcher with elementary questions related to PA laws and

small-scale fishers’ rights. It appears that ICMBio and other institutions have

failed to inform the fishers and to share information on environmental issues and

sustainable use practices. Fishers also lack knowledge about ways of engaging gov-

ernment programmes for improving their market opportunities. Adger et al. (2004)

point out that successful management systems involve institutional interactions in

which communities have access to information as an essential resource.

(3) Issues with trust and reciprocity. Since the creation of the National Park, there has

been a long history of conflict between the National Park staff and the local popu-

lation. The conflict had periods in which material losses and even physical violence

on both parts were frequent. As one fisher relates, “the enforcement staff used to

arrive already pointing guns towards us” (Middle-aged fisher, representative of

his village). Chuenpagdee and Jentoft (2007) explain that participatory structures

should ideally be established at the planning stage and that hostility between

fishers and government in the early history of co-management is a major impedi-

ment for long-term cooperation.

In Peixe Lagoon, not only the early stages of implementation created a bad impression

on the local population, but also many years of conflict have left them suspicious about


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outside organisations. As one fisher commented, “Park creators arrived here like you. . .say-

ing they were just doing research. . . when we realized, officials appeared saying that a Park

had been created” (Middle-aged fisher from a beach village). To make matters worse, there

is also a lack of trust among fishers themselves. This is apparent in statements such as,

“fishers are the least united group that I know, one doesn’t care about the others” and “If

we were united we would not be in the situation we are today. . .” (Elder fisher, representa-

tive of his village).

Filling the gaps: linkage opportunities

The points mentioned above are some of the main barriers to fisher empowerment and

consequently to their ability to negotiate with ICMBio. That is not only an issue of

lack of fishers’ preparedness but also unwillingness of influential players to share

decision-making authority. Powerful players can undermine the trust of less influential

stakeholders. In many cases, government monopolises information and resources, and

lower level players become disempowered or remain disempowered (Adger et al.

2005). The establishment of multiple linkages to complement existing relations

between the local level and powerful stakeholders may be an approach towards creating

more balanced interplay. Based on the views of fishers and stakeholders who have

interactions with them, we suggest furthering fishers’ empowerment through progress

along three fronts: (1) improvement of existing linkages, (2) establishment of new lin-

kages and (3) re-arrangement of conflicting linkages. This assumes that additional or

improved partnerships can provide services and support functions towards empower-

ment (Table 2).

Improving existing interactions

There are a variety of mechanisms that higher level institutions can use to deliberatively

favour those at the local level, such as recognition and support of local institutions, capacity

building, institution building and development projects (Young 2002). Although EMATER

Table 2. Empowerment through institutional linkages and partnerships (partnership functions asclassified according to Berkes 2007).

Empowermentstrategy Possible partners Partnership functions

Improving existinglinkages

Technical Assistance and Rural ExtensionAgency (EMATER)

Training, institution andleadership building

National Agency of Supply and Services(CONAB)

Business networking, fundraising

Establishing newlinkages

Catholic Church (Pastoral da Pesca) Institution building, businessnetworking

Patos Lagoon fishers, RS North and SouthCoast Fishing Forums

Innovation and knowledgetransfer

Tourism entrepreneurs Business networkingUniversities, NGOs Knowledge transfer, institution

buildingRe-arrangingconflicting linkages

National Centre for SustainableDevelopment of Traditional Populations(CNPT), ICMBio

Legal and technical support,institution and leadershipbuilding


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has interactions with Peixe Lagoon fishers, interplay could be enhanced, for example,

through capacity building related to leadership development and institution building.

CONAB has projects for rural populations, helping them with organisation and marketing

(CONAB 2004). Although Peixe Lagoon fishers are eligible for these programmes, com-

munity representatives have just not made the effort of contacting CONAB. They seem

to think that those programmes will take much effort and state that it may take knowledge

or qualifications that they do not have. The programmes require minimal organisation from

the fishers, such as the creation of a formal association, but that means extra time and

energy. As pointed out by Adger et al. (2005), costs associated with initial contacts

and interactions can be a barrier for building networks important for the long term.

Establishing new interactions

At the local level, there are clear opportunities for fisher communities to create linkages

with tourism entrepreneurs and the Catholic Church. The latter has a record of community

organisation and empowerment in the Amazon (Queiroz 2005) and has also assisted the

creation of the Patos Lagoon Fishing Forum in southern Brazil (Kalikoski and Satterfield

2004). Recently, two other Fishing Forums were created on the south and north coasts

of Rio Grande do Sul State. Peixe Lagoon fishers live on the central coast and have not

effectively engaged in any of those forums, missing a valuable opportunity for knowledge

transfer and innovation. Universities and NGOs could also have a major role in promoting

knowledge exchange and capacity building related, for example, to co-management (Pinto

da Silva 2004).

Fishers have difficulty in realising that Peixe Lagoon has considerable potential for

tourism development, especially when the access roads get paved (an ongoing process).

Fisher communities and tourism entrepreneurs could provide benefits for each other

through the establishment of a partnership in which young people and other community

members could be trained to work as park naturalists, bird watching guides, fishing

guides outside the park and in PA maintenance. Such occupations would provide alternative

sources of income, thus decreasing the pressure on fish resources. Some of the income gen-

erated through ecotourism could be captured for PA management as well.

Re-arranging conflicting interactions

The strength of social-ecological governance systems is directly related to the level of legiti-

macy and trust among stakeholders (Adger et al. 2005). Conflicts and low level of trust

among fishers and ICMBio have jeopardised Peixe Lagoon National Park management

system. Therefore, one way to significantly improve PA governance would be the adoption

of a PA status that allows for enhancing collaboration and trust building among local sta-

keholders and ICMBio. Fishers did not have knowledge about RESEX and RDS, but

were interested in what these types of PAwere designed for: livelihoods, cultural protection

and participatory management.

For these two classes of PAs, SNUC requires that the National Centre for the Sustain-

able Development of Traditional Populations (CNPT), an ICMBio department, establish a

Deliberative Council, together with local resource users involved in management. In such

cases, experience in Brazil has shown that involving fisher communities in co-management

requires measures for creating relationships based on trust and reciprocity (Kalikoski et al.

2006). Co-management is an evolving process, based on rounds of experimentation,

problem-solving and learning. Even without the benefit of a positive start, co-management


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can develop, aided by capacity building and the presence of a bridging institution providing

a neutral forum for problem-solving and learning (Berkes 2009).

Discussion and conclusions

We focused on a relatively small park and a small fishing community to study the dynamics

of empowerment and disempowerment in the context of eviction of a local group from a PA.

The Peixe Lagoon case is only one story among many played around the world, as the inter-

national drivers of PAs clash with issues of human rights and social justice. Impressed by

the strong evidence that multiple partners and a rich set of linkages seem to characterise

successful conservation–development projects (Berkes 2007, Seixas and Davy 2008),

we took the approach of analysing the Peixe Lagoon case through the lens of linkages

(or lack thereof) and multi-level governance (Young 2002, Eckerberg and Joas 2004).

The results support our hypothesis that linkages and partnerships are critical for empow-

erment and that the lack of empowerment of Peixe Lagoon fishers is related to an impover-

ished set of linkages and partnerships. However, we cannot prove a cause-and-effect

relationship. The hypothesis could be rejected if we could find a poorly connected group

that is, nevertheless, empowered. Or we would need to take the present case (or others)

and trace the evidence for increasing empowerment as linkages and partnerships become

denser over time.

What we can claim is that the linkages and multi-level governance approach provide a

suitable lens through which to study stakeholder empowerment. The approach has been

useful for the analysis of interactions that decrease or increase the pressure of powerful

actors over the less influential players, such as small-scale fishers. The bottom line for

the development of meaningful linkages is the recognition that such linkages should not

undermine the role and the contributions of each stakeholder (Young 2002). Consequently,

the development of key linkages can be a strategy for stakeholder empowerment and a

means for safeguarding principles of fairness and participation in governance.

Peixe Lagoon fisher communities are disempowered (their own description) and are

poorly supported by partners. Nevertheless, existing linkages have provided some capacity

to negotiate with the National Park administration, allowing for the maintenance of resource

access rights in the short term. Multi-stakeholder bodies, acting as bridging organisations

(Berkes 2009), have provided important links that connect the fisher community to other

groups and facilitate communication with important players such as the National Park

administration. However, the existing linkages have not sufficed to ensure long-term

access rights, leaving the fishers vulnerable.

For fisher communities to become self-sufficient in defending their own interests, we

argue that existing linkages need to be strengthened, negative interactions strategically

modified and new partnerships created. As stated by Adger et al. (2005, p. 9), “the key

is to identify those linkages that promote the obvious potential for enhanced management

and avoid those that have the potential to undermine trust between stakeholder groups”.

There is some evidence from elsewhere in Brazil that strengthening collaborative linkages

is the key for improving governance where multiple interests and power imbalances exist

(Kalikoski et al. 2002). For example, there are opportunities for fishers in the present case to

work with government agencies with the mandate for capacity building for marketing and

community organisation.

However, questions of social justice and social impacts of conservation are broader than

simply building the capacity to fight eviction. The larger issue extends to developing

collaborative relations between local resource users and government managers for the


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joint objectives of biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation (Timmer and Juma

2005, Castello et al. 2009). The present case provides good evidence that traditional

fishing activities in Peixe Lagoon have maintained the wetland habitat and the migratory

birds; otherwise, there would not have been the biodiversity value that the National Park

now aims to conserve.

Furthermore, the lagoon has become a human ecosystem; the fishers are a part of the

environment through the mechanism of lagoon mouth opening that affects salinity distri-

butions, water levels and the movement of species in and out of the Peixe Lagoon. If the

fishers are evicted and their access rights extinguished, there will be impacts on the bio-

physical habitat and the viability of populations in the lagoon. Win-win strategies for con-

servation and development may be possible by recognising the ecological role of Peixe

Lagoon fishers in maintaining the wetland habitat and encouraging them to stay in the

system as stewards of the environment, park guides and maintenance workers. This

would ensure that SNUC’s principles of fairness and public participation are respected,

at the same time contributing to essential PA governance.

Acknowledgements

We thank the many fishers of Peixe Lagoon and other organisations that participated in the study. Wethank Dr D. Kalikoski, I. Davidson-Hunt and T. Booth for their advice and guidance and the two anon-ymous referees for their comments on the paper. The research was supported by the Canada ResearchChairs programme (http://www.chairs-chaires.gc.ca) and the SSHRC with grants to FB.

Note

1. IBAMA was the governmental agency responsible to create and manage PAs in Brazil beforeICMBio took over this mandate.

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barriers to empowerment: fighting eviction for conservation in a southern brazilian protected area

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