COMMUNITY FOREST MANAGEMENT FROM PARTNERSHIP IN BRAZILIAN AMAZONIA: THE CASE OF FLONA DO TAPAJÓS

Abstract

The paper discusses community forest management in the Brazilian Amazonia, particularly how partnership as theory and practice contributes to its implementation and consequently for environmental governance and local development. In this paper, partnership is taken as an important dimension of environmental governance that contributes to management of sustainable productive activities in public forests such as community forest management. The research takes as case study the Tapajós National Forest located in western Pará state and also the community cooperative that carries out forest management in this forest. The research reveals that community forest management in the Tapajós National Forest started and developed from stakeholders' networks that involve government, civil society and local communities that resulted on partnerships. These partnerships contribute to formation of forest resources collective management that in its turn has been considered an efficient and qualified process to creation of jobs and income. It also allows technical and professional training to forest dwellers. The research shows that the management pattern of the Tapajós National Forest has been considered national and internationally as a reference in forest management. It emerged as an outcome of the stakeholder networks performance in which each partner uses its own expertise to promote sustainable local development in west Pará, Amazônia.