Producing sovereignties or colonized peoples in the Amazon? Socio-environmental funds in Barcarena-Abaetetuba, Pará, Brazil

Abstract

The creation and implementation of environmental funds has been considered a significant instrument for promoting a global environmental agenda. The global (geo)political strategy considers such funds as mechanisms for coping with and building resilience to climate change, through financing environmental projects and programs. Logically, such environmental funds have also been marked by diverse interests and uses: in the economic, political and counter-hegemonic fields. The Amazonian community funds (counter-hegemonic field), for example, were created as a mechanism and a tool to strengthen (the autonomy and) movements of struggle and resistance of indigenous peoples and traditional communities – at the same time making them protagonists in the fight against systemic, historical and structural socio-environmental crises and justice. Other funds, created by multinationals in the context of social responsibility and compensation for socioenvironmental crimes committed, demonstrate in practice the struggle between autonomy, dependence, strengthening and division in communities. Therefore, the objective of the article is to describe and analyze the origin of the creation of the Hydro Sustainability Fund and the BarcarenaAbaetetuba Environmental Community Fund, as well as the objectives of the funds, the social
groups benefited and the results already achieved.