Partnership inside Governance Spaces: the case of the Municipal Development Forum of Igarapé-Açú, Pará, Amazonia

Abstract

This paper discusses how partnership between local organisations and Government inside governance spaces affects local development. The aim is to raise some critical issues about the concept of partnership and about partnership effectively for municipal development. Thus, the article uses partnership as its central theory. Specifically, it explores to what extent partnership is an effective strategy for local development in areas of historical conflict between local Government and local organisations in Pará State, Brazilian Amazonia. It focuses particularly on the municipality of Igarapé-Açú, located in north-east of Pará State. Igarapé-Açú was chosen because it is a singular case of local organisations and Government partnership since 2008 when a governance space was created to carry out a partnership process called Municipal Development Forum (MDF). Methodologically, the case study was carried out from a qualitative analysis with data gathered from documents and semi-structured interviews with key-informants. The paper shows that the great challenge to build partnerships between local Government and local organisations is not in these actors capacity to represent the state and civil society in a governance forum, but in their capacity to change the local institutional environment to enable this forum to propose changes in terms of rural development. The paper shows that institutional change does not happen rapidly; changes depend on a particular historical context. In conclusion, the case of Igarapé-Açú shows that in an environment where there is great political conflict much time is needed to create links between the rural actors.Keywords: Partnership. Governance Space. Rural Development. Municipal Development. Parceria em Espaços de Governança: o caso do Fórum Municipal de Desenvolvimento de Igarapé-Açú, Pará, AmazôniaResumo O artigo discute como a parceria entre governo e organizações locais em espaços de governança afetam o desenvolvimento local. O objetivo é levantar pontos críticos sobre o conceito de parceria e sobre a efetividade da parceria para o desenvolvimento municipal. Assim, o artigo utiliza a parceria como teoria central. De forma específica, a pesquisa analisa em que medida a parceria é uma estratégia efetiva para o desenvolvimento local em áreas historicamente marcadas por conflitos entre o governo e organizações locais no estado do Pará, na Amazônia brasileira. O estudo foca-se particularmente no município de Igarapé-Açú, localizado ao nordeste do estado do Pará. Este município foi escolhido por ser um caso singular de parceria entre governo e organizações locais desde 2008 quando foi criado um espaço de governança para estabelecer um processo de parceria, denominado Fórum de Desenvolvimento Municipal (FDM). Metodologicamente, o estudo de caso foi realizado a partir de uma análise qualitativa com dados obtidos por meio de documentos e entrevistas semiestruturadas com informanteschaves. O artigo demonstra que o grande desafio para a construção de parceria entre governo e organizações...

Logging Community-Based Forests in the Amazon: An Analysis of External Influences, Multi-Partner Governance, and Resilience

“…The co-management aspect of a governance systems refers to the process that involves both private and public actors in formal interactions towards NRM. Governance in this context means a new arrangement of management in which in some way the social actors share values, ideas, power, and resources in favor of a common goal [68,69].…”

“…There is uneven power among partners [69,100,113]. However, mutual cooperation in partnerships can be a mechanism for balancing unequal power relations [69,102]. Indeed, it was observed that there is mutuality in the cooperation between the core groups of partners in TNF.…”

“…For example, IFT and IEB offer training to community members; UFOPA offers scientific research related to timber management to Coomflona in exchange for Coomflona receiving students to develop fieldwork activities in its forest management area. Additionally, good partnerships require transparency, communication, planning, and trust [69,114]. Research participants pointed out that some problems observed between the multi-partner governance in TNF were related to a lack of communication, planning, and definition of the role of each partner involved in the CFM.…”