Grace Iara Souza

Provisional Research Title 

People, Parks and Public Policies in the Twenty-First Century: Human Security and the Political Ecologies of Conservation of the Brazilian Amazon.

This thesis examines how top-down environmental conservation is shaping human-environmental relations in the Mosaic of Protected Areas of the lower Rio Negro, Amazonas. More specifically, it analyses the effects of strict-use protected areas upon the human security of the rainforest dwellers in the 21^st century. Drawing on a combination of participant observation and interviews conducted in Amazonas and in the federal capital Brasília, this thesis provides a qualitative account of the political ecologies of conservation of the Brazilian Amazon. It argues that despite restrictive environmental conservation measures, rainforest dwellers and protected areas’ managers have found some degree of agency at the local level, which has been facilitating bottom-up approaches to enhance local human security. It reveals that, although rainforest dwellers have become marginalised as a consequence of top-down environmental conservation, local resistance and forms of organisation resulted in the improvement of their human security in comparison to what it was before the creation of parks. It shows that the pro-poor global agenda has been a crucial incentive for the Brazilian government to invest in policies to reduce poverty and improve access to basic needs across the country, including in remote areas such as the communities living in the rainforest. However, there are fundamental gaps between policymaking and the reality on the ground, which directly affect the management of protected areas and the human-environmental relations of that territory. Paradoxically, given the multiculturalist agenda of the 21^st century, local rainforest dwellers have found in cultural identities a weapon of the weak; a form of local resistance to overcome displacement and natural resources limitations resulted from top-down environmental conservation, and a way to access targeted policies of their interests. Finally, evidence shows that without addressing the challenges involved in the implementation of both environmental conservation and socio-development for rainforest dwellers, policies and objectives for socio-environmental conservation fail to achieve their long-term goals.