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Disaster education outcomes are highly dependent on the political context of that education. Based on a rich, in‐depth case study of the creation of community monitors in a landslide and flood‐prone city in southeast Brazil, this paper demonstrates how developmental and political environments add much additional nuance to existing theories of behaviourist and transformative education for disaster preparedness and mitigation. Beyond identifying the benefits of education, it argues that disaster risk reduction outcomes are reliant on governance frameworks that alter over time. The study reveals the political complexity associated with programme implementation and cites the perspectives of a number of participants. Disaster education is shown to be the necessary yet underappreciated twin of the militarised and technical approaches that dominate disaster response in Brazil. Understated, however, is education's situatedness: how it can become an arena of conflict between government and civil actors over matters of state and society in increasingly hazardous urbanisation settings in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional understanding of environmental governance implicitly assumes a priori presence of citizen rationality that underpins constitution of civil society vis-à-vis state. This assumption tends to overlook the economic and ecological consequences of social interactions through which people with diverse forms of rationality gradually produce distinction between state and society and shape environmental governance as an embedded process. This paper presents a case study of spontaneous settlers called posseiros in the south-east of the state of Pará in the Brazilian Amazon and examines ways that their social interactions lead to the so-called emancipation movements for municipal making on the agrarian frontier and open civic places in which environmental governance is negotiated. It pays particular attention to the role of religion, especially the Pentecostal Church of Assembly of God in relation to the traditional Catholic Church, in influencing the posseiros' ecological rationality and the articulation of emancipation movements and argues that the focus on religion sheds new light on the linkage between the environment, livelihoods and local governance. The paper concludes by discussing pragmatic implications of the case study for promoting sustainable rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the governance of hydroelectric dam planning in Brazil with a particular focus on two factors: first, governmental institutions that aim to provide participatory mechanisms for civil society, and second, new participatory institutions created by civil society to remedy the lack of meaningful participatory measures. One example of the latter are new collaborative research projects, which have changed dam building policies and governmental thinking about participation. It is argued here that these kinds of collaboration are fundamental to making dam-building policy more accountable to local citizens. The analysis demonstrates that lay/expert collaborations provide pathways through which affected people can contest inaccurate official scientific reports, in turn influencing the policy process. I examine six such participatory projects across the country: four are nationally based and two are international in scope. A four- pronged typology is used to analyse the processes and outcomes of these collaborations. This typology reveals multiple types of knowledge-sharing that constitute concrete means to implement participation in environmental policy, hence advancing the democratisation of environmental governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can institutions foster greater environmental awareness in a developmental state? Can a policymaking process driven by “autonomous” bureaucrats include civil society and does this affect policy outcomes? With these questions in mind, I explore the politics behind hydroelectric dam construction in environmentally and culturally sensitive locations in Brazil. Using mixed methods to compare two distinct developmental periods, I find developmental policy makers are becoming more sensitive to the environmental and social costs of large dams instead of solely prioritizing economic objectives. Constitutional protections, indigenous rights, a licensing process with mandated public audiences, and an active public prosecutor are compelling the democratic developmental state to better engage civil society and the environment. Ultimately, the Brazilian state is building a more inclusive developmental model and my research demonstrates how democratic political institutions and environmental protections changed the policy-making process and created a preference for less damaging but less efficient run-of-the-river dams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quest to solve the climate change problem mobilizes representatives from governments, academia, private companies and civil society organizations ( CSOs). Several CSOs around the world have demanded urgent measures by governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to support adaptation measures in vulnerable communities that face extreme events, such as droughts, hurricanes and storms. This article identifies and analyses the strategies developed and implemented by a group of Brazilian CSOs between 2005 and 2010 regarding national and international policies on forests and climate change. It finds that CSOs define and change their strategies as a result of specific political contexts and interactions with other social actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the major global trends linked to the process of globalization is the expansion of agro-industry into the humid tropics. Although agro-industry is an important source of income for Brazil, it is also leading to the displacement of local populations and extensive clearing of native vegetation. In this context, we focus on a second trend resulting from globalization in which financial institutions have demonstrated increasing concern with environmental and social responsibility, notably through the inclusion of environmental and social conditions in loans to the agricultural sector. In this article, we provide an assessment of the potential for this type of economic instrument to help reduce the negative impacts of agro-industrial expansion, and how the different actors who are shaping this debate (non-governmental organizations, industries, the finance sector, government) can best help to realize this potential. We evaluate this broader question through the lens of two International Finance Corporation loans to Brazil's Grupo Maggi, the world's largest independently-held soybean exporter. We identify four areas in which private sector self-regulation can improve to realize environmental and social performance goals: (a) Financial institutions and firms can increase the clarity, quality, timeliness, and regularity of monitoring and reporting; (b) Civil society can develop a more sophisticated approach to distinguishing between companies and initiatives that essentially maintain the status quo and those that are trying to improve; (c) Civil society can help to develop simple, standard measures of environmental and social performance of agricultural lands for use by financial institutions and firms in establishing environmental and social management systems; and (d) Governments can develop strong regulations that capitalize on voluntary regulation mechanisms' flexibility and efficiency, as well as developing incentive systems for producers and firms that demonstrate high social and environmental performance in their operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until the 1980s, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon had largely been the result of public policies (incentives, investment). Since the 1990s, with basic infrastructure installed and cattle-ranching turned profitable due to innovations, deforestation has relied on its own endogenous dynamics. To stop this trend, politics will have to use both traditional and modern instruments for influencing economic behaviour, that is, control and sanctions as well as dialogue and negotiation. Since democratisation, civil society organisations (CSOs) have grown in the Amazon region, often with imp ortant support from foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Today, they are important partners for sustainable, bottom-up development strategies. This has become evident in the political mobilisation against two large public infrastructure investment projects: the dam and hydroelectric plant of Belo Monte; and the paving of the federal highway BR-163 between Cuiabá and Santarém. This article explores how local CSOs perceive these projects, what importance they assign to the environmental dimension and what alliances they build with other, local, national and international actors in order to achieve their objectives. Jusque dans les années 1980, la déforestation de l'Amazonie brésilienne a largement été causée par des décisions publiques (politique fiscale, investissements). Depuis les années 1990, en raison de l'infrastructure mise en place et de l'élevage devenu profitable grâce aux innovations, la déforestation repose désormais sur une dynamique auto-entretenue. Afin de renverser cette tendance, il est nécessaire d'utiliser à la fois des instruments traditionnels et modernes pour influencer le comportement économique, c'est-à-dire non seulement le contrôle et les sanctions, mais aussi le dialogue et la négociation. Dès que le processus de démocratisation s'est enclenché, les organisations de la société civile ont pris de l'importance dans la région amazonienne, souvent avec l'appui d'ONG étrangères. Aujourd'hui, ces organisations sont des partenaires importants pour la mise en pratique de stratégies de développement durable du bas vers le haut (bottom-up). Ceci s'avère évident lorsque l'on considère la mobilisation politique contre deux grands projets publics d'investissement dans l'infrastructure: le barrage et la centrale hydro-électrique de Belo Monte et l'asphaltage de l'autoroute fédérale BR-163 entre Cuiabá et Santarém. L'article montre comment les organisations civiles locales perçoivent ces projets, quelle importance elles accordent à la dimension environnementale et quelles alliances elles construisent avec d'autres acteurs locaux, nationaux et internationaux pour atteindre leurs objectifs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralisation, the transfer of powers to a lower level of government, is thought to encourage more efficient and equitable management of natural resources. Participation of civil society organisations (CSOs) is considered critical to create positive outcomes of decentralisation. Here we examine aspects of civil society participation in decentralised management using the case of Brazil's water resources management. Several Brazilian states have enacted reforms mandating watershed committees in which the participation of civil society is either encouraged or required. However, actual participation of civil society is not yet well understood. To assess participation, we collected qualitative data on watershed districts in three Brazilian states (Bahia, Paraná and São Paulo). Our findings reaffirm the importance of the state in establishing a transparent legal framework to encourage participation and in defining“civil society”. The ability of civil society leaders to obtain and deploy local environmental knowledge, which frames environmental issues in new geographical scales, is useful to achieve the efficiency and efficacy objectives of decentralisation. However, by“upscaling” political activities beyond decentralisation's new territories, CSOs could make decentralisation irrelevant to local environmental issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]