Due to its controversies, oil palm cultivation has been targeted by regulatory innovations. Among these, transnational efforts—such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and corporate commitments to zero deforestation have been highly influential but often tend to overvalue environmental over socio-economic outcomes. This article discusses to what extent domestic governance models of palm oil producing countries can be better equipped to reconcile domestic demands such as economic development and poverty alleviation, and transnational concerns about forest conservation. We do so by looking into the Brazilian case, where the government intended to drive oil palm expansion in the Amazon through a program launched in 2010 that simultaneously only allowed expansion into already deforested areas and offered companies incentives to engage smallholder farmers in their supply chains. Our findings, drawn from primary research activities and existing literature, indicate that Brazil has managed to avoid deforestation typically associated with oil palm expansion elsewhere. Oil palm establishment involved the conversion of 0.8% and 1.3% of primary forests for corporate and smallholder plantations, respectively. However, the Brazilian government did not manage to optimally enhance smallholder participation in the sector, as significant differences in performance were observed between farmers, ranging from very successful (17%) to highly unsuccessful (12%); and failed to achieve sectoral development and competitiveness targets. While some failings can be attributed to external factors such as context, broader domestic governance frameworks and alignments, and private supply chain initiatives, the program itself did not manage to reconcile social, environmental and economic objectives into a single coherent sectoral governance model. Yet, this case study suggests that domestic governance strategies can enable commodity production in a way that is more coherent with national priorities, at the same time as preventing deforestation and minimizing social risks more effectively

Due to the construction of the Itaparica Hydroelectric Plant in 1988, the Tuxás were displaced from their lands and resettled, generating internal conflicts and various socio-environmental impacts. Historically dedicated to agriculture and fishing, the resettlement of Tuxás changed their livelihoods, affecting nutrition and their relationship with their livelihoods. For those who still have access to fishing on the São Francisco River, the availability of fish has been reduced as a result of water polluting eutrophication, due to the disposal of sewage and fertilizers. The results include new elements, often disregarded, to reexplore the socio-environmental trade-offs of the installation of hydroelectric plants in Brazil. He concludes by proposing alternative perspectives (mainly from the bottom up), to rethink the delicate balance between economic progress driven by energy generation in Brazil and also the negative impact on the livelihood of the country’s most vulnerable communities.

As mudanças climáticas são consideradas globalmente um dos principais vetores de transformações socioambientais, sobretudo em biomas, ecossistemas e populações mais vulneráveis. Nesse contexto, o conceito de resiliência tem sido frequentemente empregado, sendo utilizado na ecologia para entender os limiares de transição ecossistêmicos pelo qual florestas e outros habitats conseguem se estruturar diante das diversas perturbações externas. No entanto, o conceito de resiliência ante os impactos e riscos das mudanças climáticas pelas lentes de riscos socioambientais no Brasil ainda é pouco desenvolvido, sobretudo na escala de biomas. Neste artigo, utilizamos a teoria das transições críticas à modelagem de distribuição de nicho ecológico em cenários futuros de aquecimento global até o final do século, a fim de evidenciar a alteração da resiliência ecológica dos biomas da Amazônia, Caatinga, Cerrado, Mata Atlântica e Pampa, e de que forma as alterações na resiliência podem levar a um aumento da exposição, vulnerabilidades e riscos à segurança socioambiental. O artigo mostra como a abordagem interdisciplinar na modelagem de resiliência dos biomas pode ser um instrumento auxiliar para tomada de decisões no âmbito das políticas públicas de mitigação e adaptação às mudanças climáticas e redução de riscos à segurança socioambiental.

Population growth and rising incomes have led to increasing global demand for meat products. Meeting this demand without converting remaining natural ecosystems or further degrading ecosystems is one of the largest global sustainability challenges. A critical step to overcoming this challenge is to increase the productivity of livestock grazing systems, which occupy the largest land area of any type of agriculture globally. Integrated crop−livestock systems (iCL), which re-couple crop and livestock production at the farm scale, have been considered a promising strategy to tackle this challenge by restoring degraded pasturelands and providing supplemental nutrition to livestock. However, few studies have analyzed the economic viability of such systems, especially in Brazil, an important player in global food systems. This paper presents an economic analysis of iCL in Mato Grosso, Brazil, the largest grain and beef producer in the country, which spans the ecologically diverse Amazon, Cerrado and Pantanal biomes. We compare the economic performance of an integrated soybean/corn and beef cattle system to a continuous crop (soybean/corn) system and a continuous livestock (beef cattle) production system from 2005 to 2012. We use empirical case study data to characterize a ‘typical’ farm for each production system within the study region. We find that the integrated crop−livestock system has a higher annual net present value (NPV) per hectare (ha) than continuous cropping or livestock under a range of discount rates. However, under a scenario of substantially higher crop prices, the continuous cropping outperforms iCL. While iCL is not feasible in all regions of the Amazon and Cerrado, our results indicate that in places where the biophysical and market conditions are suitable for production, it could be a highly profitable way to intensify cattle production and potentially spare land for other uses, including conservation. Nevertheless, additional credit and technical support may be needed to overcome high upfront costs and informational barriers to increase iCL areas as a sustainable development strategy for agriculture in the Amazon and Cerrado regions.

How can you move a team of scholars of the most varied academic backgrounds out of their multidisciplinary comfort zone and towards genuine interdisciplinarity (integration and collaboration) in the climate change research field? This was the challenge that a project faced concerning the climate change perceptions of smallholder farmers from four Brazilian biomes (Amazonia, Cerrado, Pantanal, and Semiarid region), coordinated by the Brazilian Research Network on Climate Change (Rede CLIMA). Interdisciplinary clashes among scientists went well beyond semantics and reached the core of concepts such as perception, resilience, vulnerability, adaptive capacity and even climate change. Challenges included thinking collectively about a problem with so much ambiguous and contradictory knowledge, conflicting interests, and diverging epistemologies. This case study – which focused on the internal debate about climatic change apparent “misperceptions” by family farmers – confirmed that there is no blueprint for interdisciplinary climate change research projects, as well as the clear need for project-specific and context-sensitive research strategies. Critical factors going into successful interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary integration included early involvement of different groups (such as researchers, decision-makers, and local actors and stakeholders) as essential for finding common objectives and priorities. The experience of Rede CLIMA confirmed that the barriers to successful climate change adaptation (such as the mutual incomprehension or distrust between scientists themselves, and between scientist and end-users) could be overcome by creating collaborative enterprises. The co-creation of science, which included switching roles between knowledge producers and end-users, facilitated horizontal work and the identification of climate-related risks among family farmers.

O artigo discute os desafios do nexo água-energia-alimentos-clima no contexto da região do Submédio rio São Francisco, identificando conflitos históricos e perspectivas atuais para a governança dos recursos naturais. A evolução dos processos sócio-históricos de ocupação do território e de implementação de políticas públicas será apresentada numa primeira seção, com foco nos projetos energéticos e suas interações com a utilização de recursos hídricos e com questões produtivas e agrárias. A segunda seção apresenta os dados primários de investimento público na região, cujo alvo tem sido os projetos eólicos, e as interações interinstitucionais para a execução destes recursos. A terceira seção discute os riscos apresentados pelos projetos eólicos, no sentido de reproduzir os padrões desiguais de investimentos no território e aumentar a vulnerabilidade socioambiental, apesar do potencial destes projetos em promover a mitigação das mudanças climáticas.

A pesquisa realizada entre 2017 e 2018 buscou produzir conhecimentos que subsidiem ações voltadas à resiliência e à adaptação de sistemas socioecológicos na região semiárida do estado da Bahia – Semiárido Baiano, com foco nas Comunidades de Fundo de Pasto (CFP) localizadas no município de Uauá. Utilizaram-se dados secundários e primários (entrevistas semiestruturadas com tomadores de decisão e lideranças comunitárias). Para a sistematização dos dados primários no marco de capacidades adaptativas para mudanças climáticas foram selecionadas cinco dimensões de análise: territorial, sociocultural, ambiental, econômica e político-institucional. As CFP ocupam e usam o bioma Caatinga há cerca de 200 anos de forma comunal, com base em sistemas agrossilvopastoris. Os resultados indicaram o caráter resiliente das comunidades para lidar com os estresses climáticos nas dimensões territorial e sociocultural, a partir de processos de auto-organização em associações e na organização em redes, por meio das quais fluem conhecimentos e são tomadas decisões coletivas. Os resultados também indicaram os riscos climáticos aos quais as CFP estão expostas nas dimensões ambiental, econômica e político-institucional, com potencial para limitar capacidades adaptativas.

The Brazilian Research Network on Global Climate Change (Rede CLIMA) is an interdisciplinary network composed of 16 research groups, which interact in different levels and programs. This work aims at building climate change cause– effect research from a ‘Nexus+’ perspective, considering the added value of flexibility and adaptability of the concept. The article draws on the Nexus literature alongside a case study in Sa˜ o Francisco River Basin, Northeast Brazil. An additional pillar to the Nexus approach is proposed here, the socio-ecological security, which can be defined as a political-territorial dimension of coupled social and ecological systems. A collaborative research-practice frame was applied to the study region, a hotspot of climate vulnerability in Brazil. Our results highlight the need for this fourth component to address socioecological sustainability into context.

Abstract

One of the main consequences of climate change in Brazil is the increase in the occurrence of extreme rainfall, which in turn trigger Hydrometeorological disasters; the Brazilian continental dimension, the regional characteristics of biomes and socioeconomic inequality are conditioning factors for the impacts of extreme events in the country.  This work analyzes Brazil’s socioeconomic and urban infrastructure vulnerability, combined with the regional exposure of the population, based on disasters observed and future scenarios for the occurrence of rainfall extremes. As a result, it points out that climate change impact differently on large Brazilian regions, due to population density and the poor quality of urban infrastructure services

Abstract

Over the known history of Brazilian sertões migration has been recorded as a human response to drought episodes. Social protection policies beginning around 2003 had dramatically diminished poverty rates and, within this context, migration changed compared to other periods, becoming more heterogeneous and diffuse. The article aims to explore the link between drought, migration and social protection in the Brazilian semiarid region based upon the analysis and conceptual discussion about two case studies: Submédio São Francisco and Seridó Potiguar. In contrast with the past, actual migration holds an indirect relation to climate. Public policy softened the impacts of the climate over livelihoods and changed the coping strategies. In this sense, mobility outside the semi-arid was not a strategy to survive. Yet, the role of the state in the preceding decades and the region’s historical path ”“ inseparable from its climate ”“ drew persistent migration flows that still reverberate in present dynamics.