Search

Begin New Search Topic Development Political Geography Amazon Basin

1. Violence Against Women in the Legal Amazon in the Last Five Years

Author:
Melina Risso, Vivian Calderoni, Marina Alkmim, and Katherine Aguirre Tobón
Publication Date:
03-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Igarapé Institute
Abstract:
The Amazon, known for its biodiversity, is the scene of intense geopolitical disputes around the exploitation of its natural resources, involving various significant economic actors, illicit groups, and criminal activities. Among the various illicit activities present in the daily life of the region, we can highlight logging, agriculture, and livestock farming with negative environmental impacts, illegal mining, especially of gold, land usurpation, and other forms of environmental degradation. These criminal activities in the Amazon go beyond the destruction of forest biodiversity, also revealing institutional fragility through complex criminal networks that foster drug trafficking, child sexual exploitation, slave labor, and high levels of violence in its various forms. The Amazon is a region marked by various layers of violence, underdevelopment, and reduced quality of life for its diverse population.6 The high homicide rates in the region, which has a rate of intentional violent deaths 45% higher than the national average and is among the six deadliest cities in Brazil, evidence of a situation of excessive and persistent violence. Although the homicide rate is the most used parameter to measure violence worldwide, it hides the brutal reality of women’s life experiences, who are the main victims of all types of violence, except for homicides. In the Amazon region, this is no different. In this sense, women are exposed to a greater variety of violence considered “less severe” because they do not directly result in death, compared to men. However, the murders of women often represent the final stage of a succession of aggressions. Considering the disproportionality of female victimization in all forms of non-lethal violence – which often do not receive the necessary attention in the formulation of public policies and in debates on the subject, constantly marked by a lack of standardization and reliability in data sources –, the EVA platform and the productions derived from it seek to contribute with the systematization and analysis of data. The goal is to map and understand the patterns of violence against women, providing inputs for the planning of evidence-based public policies, capable of modifying the adverse reality. This report aims to provide a detailed overview of violence against women in the Amazon region over the last five years.
Topic:
Crime, Development, Women, Gender Based Violence, and Violence
Political Geography:
South America and Amazon Basin

2. El Enfoque Territorial en la Política Nacional para Consolidar el Sistema de Ciudades en Colombia (PNCSC): El caso de las Ciudades Amazónicas

Author:
Isabel Peñaranda Currie
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre Desarrollo (CIDER), Universidad de los Andes
Abstract:
La Política Nacional para Consolidar el Sistema de Ciudades en Colombia” (PNCSC),plasmada en el CONPES 3819 del 2014, surgió para fortalecer las ciudades del país como motores de desarrollo local y nacional. La PNCSC busca adoptar un enfoque territorial y diferenciado para incorporar las particularidades locales y regionales del país. La PNCSC es importante para regiones como laAmazonía, donde la mayoría de la población vive encentros urbanos y donde hay grandes obstáculos a nivel local para desarrollar políticas urbanas. Sin embargo, para que la PNCSC pueda responder a estas necesidades, el enfoque territorial debe tener en cuenta las particularidades de esta región y sus ciudades. La PNCSC tiene un sesgo que privilegia a las grandes ciudades enla aplicaciónde los fundamentos teóricos, sus diagnósticos y sus recomendaciones. Este sesgo se manifiesta en los dos pilares de la definición del Sistema de Ciudades (SC), específicamente, en la interpretación de los conceptos de “economías de aglomeración” y “relaciones funcionales”. Este documento busca aportar a la mejora del enfoque territorial del PNCSC con la introducción de la escala subregional y la dimensión urbano-rural, mediante el desarrollo de una tipología basada en las categorías de ruralidad de la Misiónpara la Transformación del Campo, y la tipología de subregiones funcionales adelantado por el Departamento Nacional de Planeación (DNP) y el Centro Latinoamericano para el Desarrollo Rural (Rimisp). Se contrastan los dos pilares – de economías de aglomeración y relaciones funcionales – del Sistema de Ciudades según la interpretación por la PNCSC, y la tipología aquí propuesta que incorpora la dinámica urbano rural y la escala subregional. Se concluye que la tipología propuesta captura mejor las realidades territoriales que la primera. Con relación a las economías de aglomeración, se recomienda desarrollar una metodología para analizar economías de aglomeración urbano-rurales, además de una estrategia para promoverlas. Adicionalmente, la PNCSC debería contemplar expresiones de las economías de aglomeración, especialmente aquellas basadas en la diversidad. En cuanto a las relaciones funcionales, se requiere una definición y aplicación más sistemáticas de dichas relacionesbasadasnosoloenla conmutaciónlaboral, sinotambiénenlas relacionesde servicios comoeducacióny salud, como aquellas identificadas por el estudio de DNP-Rimisp. La PNCSC debe promover una mayor intervención estatal consistente con las características de las ciudades amazónicas que reconozca el papel que éstas juegan en la provisión de servicios vitales.
Topic:
Development, Governance, Rural, and Cities
Political Geography:
Colombia, South America, and Amazon Basin

3. Desarrollo y suicidio de indígenas tikuna en Leticia y Puerto Nariño, Amazonas: un análisis desde la decolonialidad y el postdesarrollo

Author:
Yendri Velásquez
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre Desarrollo (CIDER), Universidad de los Andes
Abstract:
Esta investigación analiza la relación entre el modelo de desarrollo implementado en Leticia y Puerto Nariño, Amazonas y el suicidio de indígenas tikuna. Emplea perspectivas teóricas decoloniales y del postdesarrollo, y una metodología cualitativa. El artículo identifica las principales características del modelo de desarrollo implementado en estos municipios; analiza cómo este modelo restringe la visión tikuna sobre buen vivir, e impacta en el suicidio. Como resultado, se evidencia que las principales características del modelo de desarrollo se fundamentan en una visión eurocéntrica sustentada en lo material y visiones de raigambre moderno/colonial que conllevan a un desbalance de los elementos del ser tikuna: pora, naẽ, maü̃ y kua̰, cuya alteración afecta el bienestar individual y colectivo; produce crisis de identidad y sujetos vulnerables al suicidio. Si el Estado quiere revertir o abordar seriamente esta situación, debe empezar por habilitar las condiciones para poner en práctica la noción tikuna sobre buen vivir.
Topic:
Development, Decolonization, Mental Health, Indigenous, and Suicide
Political Geography:
South America and Amazon Basin

4. Dilemmas of an Expert Witness in the Amazon

Author:
Stuart Kirsch
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This article discusses two affidavits submitted to the Inter-American court system. The first is concerned with Suriname’s refusal to recognize indigenous land rights despite its international obligation to do so. The second addresses problems associated with indigenous land titles in Guyana. Comparing the two cases permits observations about ethnographic research conducted for expert witness reports, including the need to make affidavits legible to three different audiences, each with its own frame of reference: the legal system, communities seeking recognition of their rights, and anthropology (Paine 1996). I also consider the narrative choices in these affidavits, the political dilemmas of being an expert witness, and the compromises of short-term ethnography.
Topic:
Development, Culture, Economic Growth, Social Justice, and Public Policy
Political Geography:
South America, Amazon Basin, and Suriname

5. The Environmental Impacts of Soybean Expansion And Infrastructure Development in Brazil's Amazon Basin

Author:
Maria del Carmen Vera-Diaz, Robert K. Kaufmann, and Daniel C. Nepstad
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
For decades, the development of transportation infrastructure in the Brazilian Amazon has been the government's main social and economic development policy in the region. Reductions in transportation costs have not only opened the agricultural frontier to cattle ranching and logging but have also caused more than two-thirds of Amazonian deforestation. Currently, soybean cultivation is a new economic force demanding improvements to roads in the region. Profitable soybean crops have spread over the Mato Grosso's cerrados and now head toward the core of the Amazon rain forest. One of the main constraints for soy expansion into the Amazon has been the poor condition of roads. In this study, we analyze the effect Amazon transportation infrastructure programs have on soybean expansion by lowering transport costs. The analysis is based on spatial estimates of transportation costs for the soybean sector, first using current road networks and then projecting changes based on the paving of the Cuiabá-Santarém road. Our results indicate that paving the Cuiabá-Santarém road would reduce transportation costs by an average of $10 per ton for farmers located in the northern part of Mato Grosso, by allowing producers to reroute soybean shipments to the Santarém port. Paving the road also would expand the area where growing soybeans is economically feasible by about 70 percent, from 120,000 to 205,000 km2 . Most of this new area would be located in the state of Pará and is covered largely by forests. A Cost-Benefit analysis of the road project indicates that the investments in infrastructure would generate more than $180 million for soybean farmers over a period of twenty years. These benefits, however, ignore the project's environmental impacts. If the destruction of ecological services and products provided by the existing forests is accounted for, then the Cuiabá-Santarém investment would generate a net loss of between $762 million and $1.9 billion. This result shows the importance of including the value of the natural capital in feasibility studies of infrastructure projects to reflect their real benefits to society as a whole.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Economics, Environment, and Infrastructure
Political Geography:
Brazil, Latin America, and Amazon Basin

6. Bolivia: Climate change, poverty and adaptation

Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Bolivia is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change for six basic reasons: It is one of the poorest countries in Latin America and suffers from one of the worst patterns of inequality. Low-income groups in developing countries are the most exposed to climate change impacts. It is the country in South America with the highest percentage of indigenous people, where much of the poverty and inequality is concentrated. It is one of the most bio-diverse countries in the world, with a wide variety of ecosystems that are vulnerable to different impacts from climate change. More than half of the country is Amazonian, with high levels of deforestation which adds to the vulnerability to flooding. Located in a climatically volatile region, it is one of the countries in the world most affected by 'natural' disasters in recent years. It is home to about twenty per cent of the world's tropical glaciers, which are retreating more quickly than predicted by many experts.
Topic:
Climate Change and Development
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, Bolivia, and Amazon Basin