Agrofuel policies in Brazil: paradigmatic and territorial disputes

The expansion of agrofuel crops challenges us to rethink policies, territories, human agency, and the paradigms used to explain them. In Brazil, policies supporting the expansion of agrofuel crops and the intensification of agrofuel production are reorganising rural land use and undermining some forms of participation in the capitalist and family modes of production. To reflect on this new reality, we study peasant movement reactions, proposals, and territorial disputes with agribusiness. Using the Pontal do Paranapanema region of São Paulo state as a case in point, the paper analyses territorial disputes between expanding sugarcane plantations and agrarian reform settlements as well as biodiesel production projects developed by the Landless Workers Movement (MST) and the Western São Paulo Federation of Settlement and Family Farmer Associations (FAAFOP). It also analyses the agrofuel policies of other peasant organisations, including Via Campesina. The production of agrofuels has changed the processes of land acquisition and use by both agribusiness and the peasantry, provoking new insights into the nature of territorial conflicts and thereby stimulating the need to revise perspectives on the agrarian question in Brazil.

Anti-poverty policies in Brazil: Reviewing the past ten years

This article reviews the main anti-poverty policies implemented in Brazil from the early 1990s to the early 2000s. These include focused and universal policies - such as education and health care - as well as the rural development, a 'middle ground' policy. Though the inter-municipal consortium, a new institutional arrangement gathering municipalities together, has emerged as a promising policy implementation tool, anti-poverty policies have faced implementation difficulties. Lack of coordination between different programs, even within the same policy area, has impaired their effectiveness. As a consequence, compensatory programs, based on monetary transfers to poor families, which face fewer implementation problems, have become the dominant type of anti-poverty policies in Brazil. Despite these shortcomings, a small Brazilian state, Santa Catarina, was able to reduce by 46 percent the number of individuals living in poverty in just ten years. This is a sign that fighting poverty can, after all, be a feasible endeavor. © 2004 IIAS, SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi).

Is the environmental policies procedures a barrier to development of inland navigation and port management? A case of study in Brazil

The main objective of this article is to discuss the Brazilian environmental legislation and policies towards the development of navigation and port management. The research illustrated some difficulties faced by the country and make suggestions to overcome it. The construction of the environmental legal framework began in the early 1960s and resulted in a very complex system, as a consequence of policies adopted by the country. Nowadays Brazilian environmental policies are developed in democratic and participative way, although with elevated degree of bureaucracy and lack of integration among the several governmental agencies, which makes the approval of environmental certifications demand several years for new port projects or improvements, which delays the economic development of the country. Efforts have been made to simplify the licensing process. As result of this research two flowchart for environmental licenses of ports installation are shown: The first shows the process until 2009 and the second shows the process nowadays. This become an important issue due the fact that inland navigation is one of the less pollutant modes of transportation, and although, the process of environmental certification was simplified, if compare with 2009, it is still complex and time-consuming, delaying the development of the infrastructure. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.