Natural Resource Management in Brasil

Cattle farmers established themselves in the lands of this communities, located in the North Eastern part of Brasil, and started to develop farms near the riverside. This caused huge trouble for the wildlife in the river and surroundings and led to many NGOs to work with the Federal Government to stop this. The battle was long, but finally the government decided to turn this land into a natural reserve. The problem was that informal cattle farms continued to be there.

The process taken by the Brazilian government had two stages. The first one was to give certain kind of property rights to the communities so they will be in charge of the land and other people cannot use it as farms and argue legally that they can do it making the process last many decades while they keep exploiting the resources and damaging the environment. The second stage was based in an education campaign that will help this communities learn some sustainable and productive practices that can give them economic development and the knowledge to better protect the resources they have.

The education program is particularly important because it's not aiming to dominate these people culturally but to inform them of how can they be better economically while keeping their practices in farming and cattle administration.The idea is to protect the communities' knowledge while giving them some advice in the fields where they need help.

This example is very important because it not only leverages the strengths of the communities and the technological developments in the farming field, but it also demonstrates a big deal of tolerance from the federal government towards the riverside communities by not trying to impose foreign practices where they aren't needed.