Assessing the impacts of sustainable development projects in the Amazon: the DURAMAZ experiment

Abstract

Since 1992, a boom of "sustainable development projects" has been registered in the Brazilian Amazon, turning it into a kind of open-air laboratory for sustainability. But their real impacts remain unclear, especially because of inadequate evaluation tools. A new device is therefore needed to unveil the inner mechanisms of development aid despite the difficulties linked with the diversity of contexts or the heterogeneity in the relevant parameters. Those are the challenges we met when we engaged in comparing the impacts of sustainable development programs in 13 sites throughout the Brazilian Amazon in order to identify determining factors of sustainability. To achieve our objective, we conceived an indicator system based on the results of intensive fieldwork, including social, economic, environmental, and biographical issues. Our results show that the most prominent problem of sustainability--evaluation of effectiveness--has not been tackled; life conditions and environmental preservation continue to appear antagonistic. At the same time, variability appears among outwardly coherent social groups, showing that a case-to-case approach is definitely indispensable and confirming the need to go "beyond panaceas" to find resolutions. This article successively addresses three points. First, we present the starting point of our research, or how the Amazon region was turned into a laboratory for sustainability and how our research project aimed at analyzing the consequences of this trend. Second, we discuss how available indicator systems fail to respond to the need for a multidimensional evaluation at the local level and, therefore, how we constituted our own analytical tool. Third, we focus on some results that can be derived from our system, especially in terms of identifying key factors needed to achieve sustainability in the Amazon

A social and ecological assessment of tropical land uses at multiple scales: the Sustainable Amazon Network

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Drivers, impacts, and policy options to address land use changes at multiple scales : implications of food production, rural livelihoods, and ecosystem conservation

“…Elevated vulnerability at state-scale in agriculture-forest interfaces may have been supported, indirectly, by policies and decision-making encouraging rural development through agricultural expansion and natural resource extraction (Diversi, 2014). In some instances, such policy-making has successfully catalysed socio-economic improvements (Le Tourneau et al, 2013). However, Ioris (2016) established that concentrating solely upon agricultural intensification and/or resource extraction may provide only marginal socio-economic gains, and may be responsible for longterm environmental costs (Weinhold et al, 2015).…”

Examining Distinctive Indicator Scopes Measuring Well-Being in Sustainable Development Assessment

“…Given the multi-dimensionality and essentiality of basic (human) needs, they can be embedded in the concept of SD. SD is understood to comprise three pillars of the planet system (e.g., environmental, social, and economic) and can be achieved, considering their interdependency, interrelation, and interconnection, although each pillar is independently important (Bleys, 2012;Le Tourneau et al, 2013;Moser, 2009). Basic (human) needs in the environmental pillar (e.g., clean air and water) are fulfilled by enjoying natural resources and a healthy environment; and by sustaining ecosystem, given that the environmental pillar aims to secure ecosystem's productivity and capacity that respond to pressures, produced by human activity, such as exploiting natural resources and emitting pollutants (Bleys, 2012;Kjell, 2011;Sirgy, 2011).…”