Over the past 15 years income sources in the Amazonian community of Carvão have diversified to include government salaries, retirement and welfare benefits, and wages from an evolving informal service sector. These non-farm incomes are now more important to household incomes than the sale of agricultural products. Out of 80 households only three families were found to depend almost entirely on the sale of agricultural goods for cash income. Agriculture is still a part of most familiesÕ livelihoods; however, production today is mainly a subsistence activity. Recent changes in Carvão are consistent with trends of livelihood diversification observed in rural societies across the globe. However, current research reveals that Carvão is different from other case studies in a number of ways. A history of livelihoods illustrates that residents in Carvão have always engaged in a range of activities, including farming, extractive activities, and wage labor. New incomes are the result of new jobs in the public sector and social policies benefiting the rural poor. In contrast to the literature on livelihood diversification, the decentralization of the federal government in Brazil has resulted in greater opportunities for rural income and employment. Consistent with recorded trends, research shows that small farmers in Carvão have down-sized agricultural production. Farmers cite low market prices (the result of vertical integration of local markets) as one cause of this decline. Residents, especially small farmers, interested in diversifying agricultural production are limited by inadequate extension services and credit, and younger residents seek public sector employment. Income diversification has increased livelihoods security; however, future livelihoods will depend on new economic growth. Given the stagnating public sector and a weak industrial sector, production geared toward growing urban markets is a viable means for further income generation in Carvão.

Global environmental change has motivated multiple interventions in pursuit of sustainable outcomes within tropical forest landscapes. Fire is recognised as a key stressor facing forest conservation efforts. Large‐scale accidental fires are increasingly prevalent across the forested tropics, generating negative impacts across sectors and scales. Policy responses to mega‐fires in the Brazilian Amazon have been diverse but all are dominated by an anti‐fire narrative that highlights long‐stigmatised smallholder agricultural practices. Despite forest conservation initiatives and fire management policies, escaped fire (wildfire) remains pervasive. Forest conservation initiatives are often situated in contexts where swidden agriculture prevails, generating a need for an improved understanding of the interplay between fire management and conservation initiatives on the ground. We explore these dynamics through a case study approach in three leading forest conservation initiative types, situated across diverse contexts in the Brazilian Amazon: a Reduction of Emissions of Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) site (in Middle Solimões region), an extractive reserve (RESEX) (in Arapíuns region), and a Green Municipality Pact (GMP) (in Paragominas). Between sites, climate and colonisation histories vary, yet all demonstrate that farmers experience the burden of escaped fire, attesting to the failure of fire management policies and suggesting that fire (as currently managed) threatens forest conservation goals. Restrictive fire management policies do not replace the necessity of fire‐based agriculture and rather serve to disempower swidden farmers by making burning increasingly illicit. We show that awareness of fire‐free alternatives exists, yet experience is limited and constraints are considerable. We argue that marginalising fire use in the context of forest conservation initiatives contributes to a legacy of failed interventions and jeopardises partnerships between communities and conservation practitioners. Finally, we suggest that given the absence of imminent and viable fire‐free alternatives, particularly in sites where swidden and conservation collide, a new model of fire warrants experimentation.

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1. Environment-facing interventions impact the distribution, use of and access of natural resources and have important implications for all dimensions (material, relational, quality of life) of human well-being (HWB). Yet conventional impact metrics routinely surpass the non-material impacts which may be particularly salient in rural contexts where small-scale farmers depend directly on the land and biodiversity. Furthermore, little is known about the comparative performance of distinct interventions along a land-sharing, versus land sparing gradient, on local definitions of HWB.2. We address this knowledge gap, adopting a perception-based impact evaluation within communities across four intervention types representing the land sparing, sharing gradient: intensified industrial soy production (n = 60 HHs), a protected area (n = 70), an extractive reserve (n = 70) and a national forest (n = 70) in Pará in the Brazilian Amazon. We collected data using the Global Person Generated Index (GPGI) with household heads (n = 270) in eight communities (two per intervention type). Focus group discussions (n = 8) solicited residents' perceptions of impact pathways.3. Our findings highlight the important contribution of relational and subjective dimensions to HWB and call in to question the dominance of material measures in standard impact appraisals.4. Furthermore, we show that single sector and integrated approaches generate 'polarized impact footprints' in which integrated approaches achieve (a) more impact, which is (b) more often positive and (c) locally salient, the inverse is true for single-sector sparing style approaches.5. Areas of well-being that matter locally (culture, health and social relations), but are not impacted by interventions are relational, and point towards the potential of rights-based conservation to empower rural smallholders to remain in their communities while flourishing.

Resumo: Este trabalho apresenta um estudo sobre a diversidade da mandioca na região do médio Solimões, enfocando principalmente comunidades localizadas nas Reservas de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá e Amanã, no Amazonas. O estudo associa dados quantitativos e etnográficos. A análise de dados de monitoramento de 13 comunidades de várzea e de terra firme revelou o seguinte padrão de diversidade de manivas (mandioca): riqueza total de 54 variedades, com distribuição ampla de poucas variedades e ocorrência localizada da maioria; riqueza média de dez variedades por comunidade; e coleções familiares com três variedades em média. Uma análise temporal das coleções familiares mostrou a natureza dinâmica da diversidade regional. Ao longo de cinco anos, praticamente todas as 55 famílias acompanhadas alteraram a composição de variedades, mas mudaram pouco o tamanho de suas coleções. Para discutir essa dinâmica da diversidade, realizamos pesquisa qualitativa em três comunidades. Buscamos entender as condições sociais e ambientais que os agricultores enfrentam, as preferências por certas manivas e os padrões de manejo das roças. Mostramos que a diversidade de manivas é resultado de uma prática de experimentação ativa e que a dinâmica das coleções é definida por um conjunto de fatores que inclui o contexto das práticas econômicas, as condições ambientais e a relação histórica da população regional com a mandioca.Palavras-chave: Agricultura familiar. Agrobiodiversidade. Mandioca. Maniva. Rio Solimões. Abstract:The paper presents a study on the manioc diversity in the Middle Solimões region, focusing largely on communities located in the Sustainable Development Reserves of Mamirauá and Amanã, state of Amazonas, Brazil. The study combines quantitative and ethnographic data. The analysis of survey data collected in 13 communities in the 'várzea' and in the 'terra firme' revealed the following pattern of manioc diversity: a total richness of 54 varieties, demonstrating a broad distribution of a small number of varieties and a local occurrence of the majority; an average richness of ten varieties per community; and an average of three varieties maintained per household. A temporal analysis of survey data collected at the household level illustrates the dynamic nature of this regional diversity. Over the course of five years, almost all the 55 accompanied families altered the composition of manioc varieties in their collections; however, the size of these collections showed little variation. To discuss the dynamics of diversity, we conducted qualitative research in three communities. This analysis sought to understand the social and environmental conditions with which farmers contend, patterns of manioc management, and the logic behind farmers' preferences for certain manioc varieties. The research demonstrates that maniva diversity is a result of active experimentation, and that collections of manivas maintained by farmers are dynamic and ever-changing. This dynamism is defined by a series of factors that include economic prac...

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Changing fire regimes in the context of climate change call for new understandings of their diversity, use, policies, practices and politics. While catastrophic fires are redoubling calls for suppression, new political ecologies debate fire prohibition politics and emphasise understanding and incorporating local knowledge into management decisions. Latin American countries are characterised by strong regional tensions associated with environmental policies, agriculture and infrastructure development that often compete with local livelihoods, traditional management and a range of resource use practices. Landscape knowledge systems that inform customary use, access and resource interventions have become a new node of contestation; these are added to the perennial question of land rights, especially as carbon politics and other environmental services become more important in the structuring of autonomy over land uses. This themed section presents research conducted in different countries and biomes in Latin America and explores the historical and current tensions around the development of the science of burning by local populations. Research outlines the contradictions and tensions between fire control policies and rural livelihoods, and the emergent political factors and ideologies that inherent in fire conflicts and could help shape solutions. Our four case studies in different regions of south America (Amazon, Cerrado, Chiquitana), explore the production, application and circulation of knowledge about fire and its consequences using an array of methods: classical descriptive models, analytics from political ecology, and the complex arena of science and technology studies. The latter help us to understand the conflictual dynamics associated with “new fire management,” which relies on more technological means of fire control as well as legislation, payments, and new governmentalities to transform traditional practices. Overall, the papers place fire management in its new active political and ecological framing, namely at the heart of current development debates in the Latin American tropics.

Despite advances in social scientific research on African descended groups in the Americas, scholars call attention to the need for research on human-environment relationships among these groups. This article responds to this call and examines plant management practices in agricultural systems and associated local knowledge systems in the Quilombo community of Mumbuca, Minas Gerais, Brazil. We describe local classifications of environments in the landscape, agricultural practices, and forest extraction activities within the context of residents' struggles to maintain access to their territory—first due to encroachment by large landowners and more recently due to the establishment of the Mata Escura Biological Reserve, overlying 74% of residents' territory. Research reveals that residents maintain complex resource management activities despite environmental restrictions in place for over a decade and that these practices have contributed to landscape configurations, forest cover, and biodiversity within the territory. Wilderness discourses underlying conservation policies, however, render residents and their conservationist practices invisible to policy makers. We argue that Quilombo lands, just as indigenous territories, are important conservation areas, maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services. This paper advances anthropological, ethnoecological, and historical ecological studies on Quilombo communities in Brazil and sheds light on the social condition of rural Quilombo groups and their multiple forms of resistance.