4.2 | Building infrastructure for sustainability
Infrastructure matters for assentamentos because it provides the basic physical resources to support the livelihoods and activities of their inhabitants. This is as true in assentamentos as it is in any other human settlement—however, the salience of infrastructure-related challenges for assentados is remarkably intense, and the repercussions of lacking or having inadequate infrastructure bear particular relevance for the prospects of fostering their sustainability. As expressed by one assentado,
The former president of INCRA recognizes the issue by stating
We identified two main sets of challenges concerning infrastructure for sustainability: obtaining basic infrastructure and moving beyond standard conventional infrastructure.
4.2.1 | Obtaining basic infrastructure
In the vast majority of assentamentos, infrastructure needs to be built from scratch [36:11, 21:16]. As mentioned before, INCRA—in coordination with other government agencies—is legally responsible for providing basic infrastructure within a period of three years after an assentamento’s establishment. However, we observed that adequate water supply, sanitation and sewage disposal were absent in two assentamentos that were beyond that time limit; roads were also in very precarious conditions. Lack of water was singled out as the most important factor limiting opportunities for agrarian production [13:4]; some assentamentos do not even have enough water for household consumption [29:61] and many recently-established assentados have thought about leaving fundamentally because of this factor [31:92].Without government-provided infrastructure, assentados see no alternative but waiting and struggling to live without it [31:41]. After all, they have few options available. On the one hand, they have very limited monetary resources and low chances of being offered individual credits.
However, we have seen that when assentados develop strong collective initiatives (such as cooperatives or associations), they tend to be more successful in pressing government agencies to comply. Indeed, demanding infrastructure is a common issue that may have the potential of unifying assentados and motivating collective action (as reported in assentamentos Pequeno William and Dom Tomás Balduino).
4.2.2 | Moving beyond standard conventional infrastructure
Government-provided infrastructure tends to be standardized for purposes of mass implementation, seldom taking into consideration the particular environmental characteristics of each assentamento. In other words, infrastructure provided by the government offers little flexibility [33:XX]
In addition, it focuses on conventional models that consistently leave out sustainability as a main concern in their design. If a community wishes to implement anything other than the standard, they need to discuss, plan and formally present it to INCRA before the assentamento’s establishment—a moment in which most communities have not yet recognized the long-term benefits that could be brought by context-adapted infrastructure designed for sustainability. An example was put forth in Assentamento Terra Vista, where residents today regret having accepted the infrastructure plan provided by the government, without making any customizations [23:75].
Furthermore, when building their own infrastructure, assentados tend to opt for low-cost alternatives, especially those they can manage to do themselves with the knowledge they have available—and usually those are not the most sustainable alternatives. A frequent example is sewage disposal [11:74]. In most of these cases other, more sustainable options (as those noted before), could cost even less. In many assentamentos, for instance, food leftovers are thrown away without being composted, a process that could easily and cheaply transform them into organic fertilizer for their plants [11:38].
Most assentados have no access to knowledge on how infrastructure-related needs could be covered sustainably at relatively low costs—an area of knowledge that has been promisingly advanced by ecovillages, as it was noted before. In ecovillages we observed several examples of relatively cheap, efficient, and sustainability-geared methods or technologies that could be adapted in the establishment of assentamentos or even in the precarious conditions of the encampment phase, where there is no possibility for building permanent infrastructure. They include technologies such as compost toilets, banana circles, rainwater-capturing devices and bioconstruction techniques. Although still timidly disseminated, some of these techniques are starting to be observed inside assentamentos through positive examples of neighbors who start using them, reporting their success and thus indirectly disseminating them [31:XX]
>>> 4.3 | Creating attractive conditions for the youth