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• 1 2016-03-18T15:38:10-07:00 4.3 | Creating attractive conditions for the youth 6 plain 2016-03-29T18:43:50-07:00 <<< 4.2 | Building infrastructure for sustainability
  
  Several interviewees stressed that “keeping the youth on the land” (i.e. in assentamentos) is a prominent shared concern among assentados [17:69, 19:34, 31:124]. The problem was usually framed in terms of life in an assentamento being perceived by youth as “less attractive” than life in urban centers—a description consistent with the strong pattern of rural-urban migration that has characterized Brazil and other Latin-American countries during the past five decades (Dufour & Piperata, 2004). Given the scope of our research, our intention here is not to discuss rural-urban youth migration in depth, but simply to highlight the common elements associated with this topic in assentamentos, derived from our data.
  
  Migration of youth threatens the endurance of assentamentos for obvious demographic reasons. However, the presence of youth in these communities can contribute to their sustainability prospects not just because it represents the very possibility of having a “future generation”, but also because it can influence the social dynamics of an assentamento in ways that are potentially conducive to enhanced sustainability. The clearest example raised by interviewees was that young individuals could function as vectors of new knowledge for the community, bringing in fresh ideas that may improve the community’s capacity to meet its needs (and continue to meet them in the future) [7:97, 17:22, 17:75, 19:33, 23:70].
  
  
  
  
  Young people can also question established belief systems working against the development of more sustainable living or production methods, and may play a relevant role in bringing about change. This was suggested by one assentado who favors organic production methods and who explained that, in order to convince neighbors to stop the “inertial practice” of using “agrotoxics”, he had realized by experience that it was better to approach his neighbors’ children [17:76].
  
  
  We identified three main sets of challenges related to creating attractive conditions to the youth: providing attractive jobs, offering leisure options and creating room for them to build their houses.
   

  4.3.1 | Providing attractive job opportunities for youth

  Interviewees reported that children in assentamentos have, in the vast majority of cases, access to basic (primary) and secondary education—usually in the public schools of the nearest town or, in the case of one relatively large settlement, in a public school that had been built specifically for it. However, they also reported that the process to secure that access can be hard, involving long negotiations with local government authorities [7:90]. An even more critical challenge may appear in the case of access to technical or professional education programs, for which there are only limited opportunities in rural areas. Interestingly, however, assentados did not raise this point in interviews, emphasizing instead the challenge of providing attractive job opportunities for qualified youth within assentamentos. After all, most of those who receive higher education do not necessarily want to directly work with agriculture, but still could bring their acquired skills to improve the communities in which they grew in and their parents still live on.
  
  Offering those jobs, however, is not easy, as it seems to require forms of collective organization—such as cooperatives and associations—that are not always present in assentamentos, and tends to be stronger in those communities that do not rely only on the primary sector. For example, in one case in which the assentamento had developed strong cooperatives for production and commercialization (COPAVA), interviewees noted that challenge and proudly highlighted that assentados’ children had temporarily left to pursue programs in agronomy, accounting, pedagogy, and medicine—but then had come back to work in the assentamento as service providers or technicians in cooperatives or agroindustries, notably in the production of cachaça [17:26, 19:33].

  
  4.3.2 | Offering leisure options for the youth

  Another challenge is the provision of leisure or cultural activities in assentamentos, where “today, leisure just means soccer on Sunday” [17:70]. “There is no sport, culture, theater, dance. Workshops and cultural activities are scarce in rural culture and in general. So we just have a soccer field and that is it, nothing more.” [19:34]. Currently, in order to obtain those, young people need to travel to nearby cities and, sometimes, just end preferring to move there [9:111]. As clearly stated by assentados, there seems to be a widespread perception of isolation in rural areas, and more strongly so for the youth. If leisure options are not provided, it becomes harder to maintain attractive conditions for young people in an assentamento.
  
  
   

  4.3.3 | Finding space for the youth to stay (or move in)

  Finally, we identified a structural problem deriving from the particular property rights arrangements present in almost all assentamentos we visited. As the design of assentamentos is based on the notion of family as the fundamental unit, only the parents are granted partial property rights over parcels of land in the assentamento’s establishment. At this stage all available parcels are granted to families and none are reserved to the future generations, making it very difficult to accommodate new residents thereafter.
  
  There are only two alternatives to hold property rights over land in an assentamento after the initial distribution of land: by inheritance (a case in which land cannot be divided in smaller portions) [1] or by buying land from an assentado that acquires full property rights. However, as explained in the previous chapter, there are strong legal restrictions over this last option. As a result, grown-up adolescents might not stay in that specific assentamento and look for housing in a urban or rural area nearby, or may even take part in the process of becoming assentados themselves at other locations (interview 11).
  
  >>> 5 | Two domains for the design of solutions to sustainability challenges in assentamentos
   

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  [1] Law 8.629/93, Art. 18-A.
• 1 2016-03-18T15:41:01-07:00 5.1 | Access, use and dissemination of sustainability know-how 5 plain 2016-03-29T18:45:22-07:00 <<< 5 | Two domains for the design of solutions to sustainability challenges in assentamentos
  
  Access to knowledge seems essential for developing sustainable assentamentos for various reasons. First, as most assentados come from very underprivileged backgrounds, many (especially older adults) are illiterate, and most of the things they have learned are connected with practical know-how acquired by experiences they had in the past. Assentados who have lived in the city their whole lives probably know little about agricultural techniques or life in a smaller community. If an assentado lived in rural areas, chances are high that she used to be an employee in a large farm and, as stated by an interviewee, “was born with a poison pump on their back” [17:76]. If she is to change towards more sustainable methods, others will need to somehow convince her of the benefits and teach how it can be done.
  
  Access to knowledge, however, goes beyond formal education and learning, because knowledge required for sustainability comprises skills, practices, capabilities and technologies that can empower assentados to produce, build, communicate and live more sustainably. Many of these capabilities are not included in the official school program and are not disseminated in most big agribusiness farms or in cities. Examples of knowledge assentados could learn include techniques for energy production [19:38]; processing of agrarian goods [7:33]; organic fertilizers [13:19]; bio-construction techniques [23:75], and agroecological practices [19:20, 21:9]; and about relevant public policies available to them [33:27]. Although we found these sorts of knowledge to be relevant for fostering sustainability in agrarian reform, they were often missing and not always easily available for assentados.
  
  Our data shows that knowledge in assentamentos is usually accessed by means of (i) courses offered directly or indirectly by MST; (ii) residents taking part in external courses and returning to the community [19:38]; (iii) technical assistance provided by government or universities [33:27]; (iv) by assessing and experiencing the positive results from others (learn by seeing others do); (v) through partnerships with national and international organizations; (vi) or simply obtaining information from internet.
  
  In Terra Vista, the use and dissemination of ecological know-how was especially present through participative research for organic cocoa production, a collective initiative that has led to results enabling them to move towards organic methods while increasing their production and revenues, reforesting their land, and recovering their natural resources while deeply involving the youth. Terra Vista also hosts a technical school that offers courses on agroecology and rural technologies with students from all ages from seven different municipalities in the surroundings. The school constantly hosts events, which help to diffuse knowledge and learning from others, and act as touchpoint between the assentamentos and local communities. Instituto Cabruca—an NGO of which some Terra Vista residents are members—has become a partner institution providing them with technical assistance and, with knowledge produced in Terra Vista, promoting sustainable economical development consultancy for other small farmers and traditional groups. Another noteworthy spillover from this knowledge dynamics was in the audiovisual sector, which was recently created and employs mainly the youth, who produce videos and broadcast music, talks and news on the Internet and in their recently-acquired radio station.
  
  Accessing, using and disseminating sustainability know-how as a way to address those challenges became an even more salient topic after our interaction with ecovillages. All ecovillages that we visited exhibited high stocks of sustainability know-how and an explicit intention to translate them into practices, as well as disseminating them as part of their model. Two big strands of know-how seemed more prominent: knowledge for ecological sustainability—such as bioconstruction, compost toilets, agroforesting, permaculture—and knowledge for community- building. These types of know-how were used in different forms: as source of income (through courses and workshops); as enablers for building more sustainable infrastructure; and as drivers for creating a stronger community and for attracting new residents and visitors who can learn, implement and disseminate this knowledge in their own environments. Finally, sustainability know-how is also appealing to young volunteers and can help to attract and keep the youth.
  
  >>> 5.2 | Enabling cooperative collective dynamics through conflict resolution