Visualising and Enhancing Value Chains in the Amazon - realising impact

Start date: 1 May 2020
End date: 30 April 2022
Principal investigator: Professor Diane Holt
Co-investigators: Dr Tiago da Silva Jacaúna, Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil

Description

Project overview

Over half of the Amazon Basin is located in Brazil. Most people will never visit the Amazon but may visualise various images of it; as a forest, the Amazon River, its wildlife, indigenous tribes or the recent views of burning forests. What few can visualise though are the complicated value chains that exist linking the resources of the Amazon such as nuts, seeds, oils, fish and timber to goods sold around the world, and the communities that provide these resources.

In the Newton Advanced Fellowships 2016, a collaboration between Professor Holt and Dr Pinheiro explored two of these reserves and their value chain activities with fieldwork set in the Rio Negro sustainable development reserve and in the Medio Juruá extractive reserve, meeting with community members, NGOs and other stakeholders. The team also ran four dialogue workshops where various stakeholders were brought together to build partnerships, share knowledge and develop recommendations focused on supporting community forest management and community-based enterprises within such communities along the Amazon River and tributaries.

A range of impacts has arisen from these prior activities including facilitating the development of a collective trademark for fishermen, sharing of best practice, and mapping of one of the local value chains to feed into community-company negotiations for setting sustainable pricing for those harvesting and processing nuts from the forest.

Across the project, a series of recommendations and suggestions arose that have shaped the direction of these new impact activities that now forms the basis of this project. These extended impact activities (which will include four short films, incubator workshops, academic exchanges and bringing experts from other disciplines to the communities), will support the visualization, development and enhancement of income-generating activities alongside a focus on conserving the biodiversity and resources of the Amazon.

Research overview

- To promote understanding of the value chain activities of the Amazon by producing four films on activities such as community-based tourism, pirarucu fishing, timber, nuts, seeds and oils

- To facilitate practitioner/community dialogue and knowledge exchange through immersion visits in the reserves bringing together experts from other disciplines building on recommendations from the initial project

- To share experiences from Amazonian value chains in webinars, research seminars, social media posts, reports and papers by those from the initial team plus those joining new dialogue

- To facilitate the visit of six Brazilian academics to the UK for networking and knowledge exchange

- To promote inclusive growth for Amazonian producer communities alongside conservation through all the project impact activities

- To provide all open access materials in Portuguese and English, and on various dissemination platforms to facilitate pathways to impact.

Outputs

This film presents the tourism activities owned by families and communities in the Puranga Conquista and Rio Negro Reserves with interviews with researchers, state agencies and community leaders.

The film describes the types of fish supply chains in two conservation units in the Amazon.

The film describes the seed oils supply chain in the Amazon with interviews with community leaders, researchers and cooperatives.

We are keen to hear from UK-based academics interested in participating in the immersive visits and dialogue with reserve communities. For further information, contact Professor Diane Holt.

This work was supported by a Newton Impact Fund Scheme grant, ID 536961829, under the Newton Fund Brazil partnership. The grant is funded by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and FAPEAM (Amazonas) and delivered by the British Council. For further information, please visit www.newtonfund.ac.uk.