The Governance and Infrastructure in the Amazon (GIA) Project is led by the University of Florida’s Tropical Conservation and Development (TCD) Program and aims to create, strengthen and expand a Community of Practice and Learning (CoP-L) for exchanges of experiences and reflections on the use of tools and strategies for infrastructure governance by conservation and development practitioners in the Amazon.
The Pan-Amazon Workshop: "Sharing experiences and reflections on strategies to improve infrastructure governance" was held online May 24, 25 and 27, 2021. In this 13th edition of the GIA newsletter, we present the main results of the event and the next steps of the project. Happy reading!
Pan-Amazon Workshop by the numbers
We had over 50 participants on each day, from a diversity of sectors and countries as shown below:
You can watch the opening event and welcome messages from our directors and collaborators here:
GIA Project Conceptual Framework
The GIA conceptual framework shows how GIA partners from NGOs, community organizations and academia in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru use strategies such as communications, knowledge, and legal approaches to improve upon “Business as Usual” infrastructure governance:
You can watch a detailed presentation of the conceptual framework here:
Access the recordings and key takeaways of Workshop Panels on infrastructure governance strategies
Workshop days 1 and 2 included 4 panels on findings and recommendations from GIA Working Groups on key infrastructure governance strategies. Over 35 GIA partners presented experiences and reflections at these panels which are summarized below:
Day 1 – Panel 1 “Integrating knowledge and communications for political impact“
Key takeaways:
- Importance of respecting existing community organizations and structures.
- Work from the inside out: strengthen and further develop community communicators and existing grassroots organizations.
- Collaboration between grassroots organizations, NGOs, academia, and the press are important but should start from respect for community agendas and the forging of shared goals.
- Effective communication has the ability to translate complex information to communities in understandable ways but it also has the ability to counter false claims about what is happening on the ground to the wider public.
Day 1 – Panel 2 “ Knowledge management: applied research to strengthen communities’ participation in infrastructure governance”
Key takeaways:
- Different types of knowledge can complement and strengthen one another.
- The exchange of knowledge and experiences should be bi-directional.
- Academia and NGOs can act as translators of different types of knowledge, strengthening community voices.
- Traditional knowledge should be employed in problem identification, planning, and the creation of an inclusive social agenda, particularly for resource use and management.
- To produce information that is both useful and understandable to the community, 1) start by defining needs & research agenda with the community and 2) co-generate knowledge.
- Co-created knowledge should be returned to the community in ways accessible to all.
Day 2 – Panel 3 “Legal and policy approaches to strengthen communities’ participation in infrastructure governance”
Key takeaways:
- The need to focus pressure on funders of infrastructure projects.
- The need to decolonize academia and the role of the researcher.
- The need for alliances across different segments of society.
- The importance of risk/burden sharing.
Day 2 – Panel 4: “Opportunities for collaboration and synergy among grassroots, NGOs, academia and government”
Key takeaways for facilitating effective collaborative relationships:
- Need for bi-directional exchange (of people, experiences, and information) between communities and external organizations (academia/NGOs).
- Potential for community alliances to be built with external organizations beyond NGOs and academia, including in the private sector, the government, public-private entities, and the Church.
- Collaborations should build on the strengths of the partners.
- Support for territorial protection, program implementation, and the strengthening of existing community/indigenous institutions is critical.
- Alliances and collaboration must be anchored in respect for diverse temporalities, traditions, values, cultures, knowledges, and rights of communities.
- Based on this respect and in the recognition of historically asymmetrical relationships, local communities should be setting the terms of collaborations.
- Alliances give communities the possibility of reaching new audiences and connecting with those facing similar challenges.
- Academia is entangled with infrastructure development and this merits self-reflection moving forward.
Discussion: Participants’ experiences and application.
Building on the panel discussions, participants were invited to contribute experiences, reflections and suggestions for future work. Guiding questions to the small groups were:
Workshop discussion and recommendations for “Next steps of GIA Project”
On the last day of the Workshop, we asked how the GIA Community of Practice and Learning (CoP-L) would like to advance. The discussion focused on 4 topics that emerged from days 1 and 2:
- Intercultural education and knowledge management
- Dialoguing with the ‘Iron Triangle’ (banks, politicians, private enterprise)
- Strategic communications and the integration of different forms of artistic expression
- Exchange between mosaics
The community of practice responded with a multitude of ideas which you can see in this Mural and are summarized below:
Regarding intercultural education and knowledge management: more ethical research (like institutionalizing the returning of research results), broadening communication strategies through TV and the radio, creating more spaces for conversation between academics and other groups to bring academia outside of university walls, valorizing indigenous and traditional knowledge, building knowledge about rights and legal pathways, mapping community needs.
For engagement with the “iron triangle:” making community losses visible, the use of webinars as a first step to engage them, creating a subnetwork of key persons, immersive training of CEOs and CFOs in Amazonia, and both interacting with financers of projects and mapping what they are financing.
In the case of strategic communications and art: the use of radio and engaging with the media were suggested, as were developing training and exchange programs to develop this further within the CoP-L.
Exchange between the mosaics received a lot of support, with ideas for creating ways to communicate and exchange experiences, actual exchange programs between different organizations, students, researchers, and community members with specific goals in mind (for example, coalition building), and to create more spaces of dialogue and exchange that are accessible to all members of the CoP-L.
Other ideas not included in these categories included exploring alternatives to dominant models, seeking financing to support academic education for local actors, reach beyond the CoP-L to groups facing similar issues, and the use of blogs to socialize the strategies of different actors.
Workshop Closing Celebration
In appreciation for all of the hard work by GIA participants during the 3-day workshop and over the past 2 years, we shared a joyous moment of celebration with amazing artistic performances from GIA participants and partners:
Welson Tremura:
https://youtu.be/-jy3cb_AX00
El Seringal de la Universidade Amazónica de Pando:
https://youtu.be/qfrgqLNpv6Y
Iremar Ferreira
https://youtu.be/LAIc8twe4Sc
Jazmin Tovar:
https://youtu.be/jECSe66rKdE
