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Fostering sustainability in Brazilian agrarian reform: insights from assentamentos and ecovillages

4 | Analyzing sustainability challenges in assentamentos

<<< 3.6 | Synthesis: assentamentos and ecovillages side-by-side

In the last chapter, we provided the context in which our research is embedded, by

summarizing the historical background and central features of the Brazilian agrarian reform process, as well as its main actors;
detailing what assentamentos are and the different phases that lead to their existence; and
highlighting the most relevant characteristics of ecovillages, our contrast case.

In this chapter, we will move ahead and analyze the data we gathered in the field in order to provide an answer to our first ‘broken-down’ research question: which are salient challenges to fostering sustainability in assentamentos?

In order to identify prominent sustainability challenges faced by assentamentos, we followed a constant process of interaction with our data. The particular set of challenges we identified was obtained from interview quotations that expressed problems, challenges, obstacles and difficulties faced in their communities. Those quotations were organized into broader categories (families and ‘superfamilies’) built around a common element (e.g. “agrarian production”). Therefore, the challenges we will describe mainly represent the views of interviewees filtered, selected and cross-checked by the researcher team using governmental reports, legislation and other references.

Before starting, we need to emphasize again that given our research purposes, we decided to adopt a broad understanding of sustainability not just as a “capacity to endure”, but also to

“meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (from the well-known Brundtland report; (WCED, 1987)).

This is a “malleable” definition that denotes the many disagreements that may arise in the practical implementation of the concept (Kates, Parris, & Leiserowitz, 2005). We have chosen it as a “working definition” because it highlights three central aspects of ‘sustainability’ that we found useful as conceptual background for understanding the cases and developing our analysis.

First, that sustainability does not relate solely to an environmental or ecological dimension; indeed, the Brundtland definition encompasses “needs” of present and future generations—and thus points to wider social, political and economical dimensions underlying the concept.
Second, it also calls attention to an essentially temporal aspect; under the lens of sustainability, it is pointless to merely think about needs of future generations without contemplating needs of the present one (or vice versa).
Third, it implies a sense of empowerment of agents, expressed in the notion of abilities to meet needs (which are collectively confronted or chosen).

As described in the previous chapter, an assentamento history comprises three different phases: pre-establishment (including grassroots engagement, occupation and encampment), establishment, and maintenance—with the latter pointing to an indefinite time period that extends into the future. In each of these moments, decisions, processes and actions are undertaken, with consequences for the capacity of an assentamento to endure sustainably. During those phases and in the transitions between them, abilities are acquired, needs are defined, new problems arise and internal dynamics change. Decisions taken in one phase may have an impact on how sustainability can be addressed at that moment and in the future. For instance, the spatial distribution of the assentamento (formalized in the establishment phase but shaped in pre-establishment) seems to be related to the nature and extent of collective initiatives that will be pursued in the future. Therefore, although we tried to identify sustainability challenges in established assentamentos that seemed critical to their capacity to endure sustainably, we still had to look at the initial stages, where the roots of such challenges (and hence potential insights to address them) may often be found.

Given those clarifications, we have defined ‘sustainability challenges’ as

situations that need to be addressed in order for an assentamento to meet its present needs, and endure in ways that can support the ability of future generations to do the same.

After iterating with the data collected, we decided to create clusters under which identified challenges would be put. Those clusters are centered around activities that we have found to be relevant to foster sustainability in assentamentos. Each cluster was built to provide a synthetic view of a large set of challenges, using a title that captures their main common descriptive element. The three clusters are:

In the following pages, we will briefly characterize each one of them.

>>> 4.1 | Moving towards sustainable production