Ação coletiva e desenvolvimento sustentável

• Main Authors: Maria da Glória Batista de Araújo, Antônio Carlos Pires de Mello, Ghislaine Duque
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal do Paraná 2012-06-01
• Series: Desenvolvimento e Meio Ambiente
• Subjects: Collective action; Sustainable development; Semi-arid; Family farming; Rural communities
• Online Access: http://ojs.c3sl.ufpr.br/ojs2/index.php/made/article/view/22884/18577

This paper intends to show the connection between collective action and sustainable development. After presenting the semi-arid zone in Paraíba, wherein this case study is located, the problems which affect its population are outlined: problems linked to the soil and climatic issues in that region, and to other political factors, manifestly by the domination of political patronage, as well. It shows how the collective action has begun from coping with the necessities experienced by the population, the roads that have been taken to find out solutions and make them viable, taking advantage of the ancestral knowledge in harmony with technical knowledge, and how the participating communities releasing themselves from such dependence have gained autonomy and self-esteem. It has resulted from that process the creation of an organization, the “Collective”, whose contribution has been conclusive to widen the collective action, enhancing the basic experiments and thus encouraging its release, and finally integrating the communities in a common struggle against the problems identified. Those experiences with the “Collective” and other groups operating in various regions of the semiarid zone of Brazil resulted in the formation of a larger organization: the “Articulation in the Semiarid” (ASA), which building on successful experiences of the communities proposed and managed that those were enforced by the Government as public policies. The paper concludes that the sustainability of the current development derives primarily from the fact that the solutions proposed have not been planned and imposed “from above”, but grounded on experience at base.