Practicing sustainability transformations in the Amazon
Fieldwork, stories of change, and the documentary “Resist to Educate”
Notes from the field by: Vinícius Mendes, Radboud University
The Santarém region of the Brazilian Amazon is a crucial case to understand what is at stake, and what kind of transformations we need, to safeguard the future of global biodiversity. Located in the Tapajos river basin, a large affluent of the Amazon River, the region is home to Indigenous Peoples (IP) of various ethnicities, including the Munduruku, Arapiun, Tupinambá, Sateré-Mawé, Apiaka, Borari and Juruna[1]. The Tapajós River is a biodiversity hotspot, holding unique fish species and aquatic mammals (WWF, 2023). The region contains 11 Conservation Units (CU) of Full Protection, 19 CUs of Sustainable Use, and 34 Indigenous Lands[2]. It is also home to the Tapajós National Forest (Flona), a Conservation Unit of Sustainable Use where timber production, community-based sustainable tourism, handicrafts and other sustainable activities are allowed. Flona is rich in biodiversity, while also being home to traditional populations of rubber tappers, riverside villages and artisanal fishermen, Quilombolas (Afro descendants), IPs and local communities (LC) practicing sustainable extractivism (e.g., nut collectors). What is striking is that this is not only a biodiversity-rich area, but also currently one of the most threatened segments of the Amazon (Kröger, 2024; Sauer, 2018).
According to NGOs such as WWF[3] and others[4], threats to biodiversity and traditional populations in the Tapajós basin range from agro-extractivism, infrastructural projects for dams, waterways and railways, mining, pesticide contamination, forest loss and land grabbing. Between 1985-2020, there was an increase of 6,5M ha of pasture and 4,4M ha of area allocated to agriculture in Tapajós, particularly for soybean cultivation, which represented 94% of the agricultural area in 2020 (WWF, 2023, p.17). Tapajós is the only one of the large tributaries on the right bank of the Amazon River that has not yet been dammed for large-scale electricity production. It is thus considered the most relevant frontier for hydroelectric power generation in western Amazonia. Greenpeace has named the companies who would profit the most with the project to build the “São Luis do Tapajós” hydroelectric complex, including Camargo Correa, Allianz, JP Morgan Chage & Co, and others (Greenpeace, 2016). Currently, 44 hydroelectric plants are being planned in the Tapajós basin and are expected to flood an area of around 3,08M Km2 (WWF, 2023).
Projects such as Ferrogrāo, a railway line for transporting agricultural commodities from Sinop (Mato Grosso state) to the river port of Miritituba (Pará state) are also in planning stage. River ports have been supported by the state and built by multinational trading companies. In 2003, Cargill installed a port in Santarém, to export grains produced in Mato Grosso. In April 2014, Bunge inaugurated the Miritituba-Barcarena port complex. These examples illustrate the political economy of social-environmental threats in the Amazon. Violence does not come only from deforestation and mining, but also from “infrastructure development” (Moran, 2016), which promises “progress and economic growth”, while advancing a One-World World (OWW) model of capitalist expansion (Escobar, 2019). As we know, in such a model people and planet are considered resources for extraction and consumption. To challenge the OWW, I have been investigating resistance practices for sustainability transformations in the region. Backed by notions of relational ontologies (Escobar, 2010), intersectional environmental justice (Malin and Ryder, 2018) and epistemic justice (Cummins et al., 2023), I’m particularly interested in understanding how collaborations and alliances between Indigenous peoples, peasant women, Quilombolas, agroecology farmers and other local populations marked by “intersectional oppressions” (Crenshaw, 1991) are articulated to resist the above-mentioned threats.
Practice 1. School surrounded by soybean fields in the Santarém region – large soy farmers practicing non-sustainability
This has led me to a fieldwork in the Santarém region from October 2024 to February 2025, in the context of the PLANET4B project[5]. In PLANET4B I focus on how soy and beef trade between Brazil and Europe/Netherlands[6] is associated with biodiversity loss and human rights abuses along these supply chains. During the field, I also explored how IPLCs articulate against the impacts of cattle ranching and soy monocrops via “resistance knowledge projects” (Hill Collins, 2019) taking place, for example, in social-environmental mobilisations. My goal was to interact and learn with the communities, exchanging knowledge and experiences. And hopefully doing something to support them.
I visited for successive rounds the local NGO “Projeto Saúde e Alegria”[7], to understand their projects and engagement with different communities. I also visited and conducted observations on the Indigenous village “Vista Alegre de Capixauã,” the Quilombo “Murumuru,” and the Union of Rural Workers of Santarém, or “Sindicato dos Trabalhadores e Trabalhadoras Rurais de Santarém” (STTR). Additionally, I’ve interviewed the leader of the Indigenous village “Açaizal,” and several Indigenous peoples, small farmers, activists and academics. In this process, I’ve developed connections in the Federal University of Westen Pará (UFOPA), through which I was invited to workshops such as “Climate Change in Debate,” a 2-days event featuring IPLCs leaders and community members to discuss the impacts of climate change and deforestation in their territories. I’ve also interviewed small farmers in agroecology markets. And participated in cultural events such as the II Festival Tapajós Alive, or “II Festival Tapajós Vivo,” which called for the Tapajós River to be recognized as a subject of rights.
To my surprise, this collection of moments was soon to be disrupted by an experience I had never faced before, neither in this fieldwork nor in previous ones: a large protest calling for the (maintenance of the) right of Indigenous students to receive education in their territories. Led by Indigenous peoples and teachers, the protesters demanded the repeal of the recently approved Law 10.820/2024, which proposed to cut resources for teaching in Indigenous villages. With this backdrop, I was invited by Maike Kumaruara, an Afro-Indigenous university teacher at UFOPA, to join him and his students in an “outdoors class,” part of a course named “Social-Environmental Conflicts in the Amazon.” The mobilisation site was at the base of the Munduruku, Bragança and Marituba indigenous territory, at the entrance of Flona. The outdoors class aimed at introducing the students to a real-world experience of socio-environmental mobilisation. By joining the protests, these students learned in practice the crucial role of community engagement. And the relevance of “agents of change,” such as Indigenous leaders and activists, in sustainability transformations for safeguarding biodiversity. With the authorisation of the organisers, I’ve conducted informal conversations with several of the protesters, took pictures and recorded videos.
Practice 2. Indigenous peoples partner with teachers in a mobilisation for the right to education in the state of Pará, Brazilian Amazon – the practice of relational ontology
As a result, we decided to take a step further, and document this experience in the form of a short film. A transdisciplinary collaboration then emerged between PLANET4B and TransAct, the NGO “Projeto Saúde e Alegria,” and UFOPA to co-produce the documentary “Resist to Educate” (Mendes et al., 2025). Resist to Educate is the outcome of an experiment of action-research. With the documentary, I wanted to explore the potential of educational activities/experiences, such as “outdoors classes” in the forest, as practices of transformative change. But the film is also an attempt to support local communities (for the right to education and to remain in their territories) by sharing their struggles to a wider audience in Brazil and Europe. Importantly, the background of the documentary is the rapid advance of soy monocrops in the region, challenging the rights of IPLCs to remain in the territory.
Practice 3. Practicing an “outdoors class” in indigenous territory at the entrance of the Tapajos National Forest
On May 28, 2025, we released the documentary in Nijmegen, in a film screening followed by a hybrid dialogue between the audience (Dutch majority) and three of the co-producers, who joined us online from the Brazilian Amazon.
Practice 4. Documentary screening – the practice of sharing stories of change as an effort to reshape values and mindsets
The screening was followed by a rich dialogue. The audience raised a series of questions about the production of the film and the impacts of rampant soy monocrops in Santarém. People were also curious to know more about “outdoors classes” as practices of transformative change. Many of the questions were about what can be done at the EU level to reduce the impacts of soy and cattle ranching in the area. Participants were interested in understanding what can each of us do, even at the individual level, to mitigate these problems. And, broadly, what kind of transformations we need in relation to the international Trade sector to safeguard the forest and its peoples. As the documentary shows, restructuring food systems, considerably reducing meat and soy consumption, changing the development model based on extractive soy monocultures and livestock farming, and stopping financial flows funding large agribusiness in the Amazon are some of the structural shifts urgently needed.
Practice 5. Debating the documentary – practicing Dutch-Amazonian dialogues in Nijmegen, Netherlands
Our fieldwork material and documentary provide an empirical contribution to crucial scholarly debates in biodiversity governance and politics. We explore the role of culture and education in sustainability transformations. In particular, we show how filmmaking and story sharing can potentially make these transformations more inclusive (empowering those whose interests are currently not being met) and pluralist (recognising and incorporating different knowledges, beyond scientific knowledge) (see Visseren-Hamakers et al, 2021, p.22). In doing so, we add concurrently to two other debates. We demonstrate the added value of communicating research findings to broader audiences, to increase support for policy change towards biodiversity prioritisation. This is an ongoing challenge in transdisciplinary projects, as we explore in PLANET4B (see. Mendes et al., 2024, p.19-20). We also illustrate how epistemic justice can be put into practice via intercultural translation - “hybrid forms of cultural understanding and intercommunication may be useful in favouring interactions and strengthening alliances among social movements” (Santos, 2016, p.22). In our case, alliances among social movements, scholars and NGOs in the Brazilian Amazon and in Europe/Netherlands to co-construct translocal resistance (Bobby Banerjee et al., 2021) against soy monocrops and cattle ranching in the Amazon. Conceptually, the documentary also connects to the notion of relational ontology (Escobar, 2019). The dances and songs performed in part of the film are rituals through which IPs connect to the sacred territory, spirits and forest, calling for protection. Such relations constitute a specific world (ontology), of which humans and non-humans are co-constituents. The “dense network of interrelations” (Escobar, 2019, p. 48) between the Indigenous world and the Western world (e.g., teachers, government officers, researchers, etc.), both featured in the documentary, illustrates relational ontologies in movement. Moreover, our documentary conceives outdoors education as a form of “resistance knowledge project” (Hill Collins, 2019). For such a project, instead of obstacles, intersectional inequalities become drivers of transformation and change.
References
Bobby Banerjee, S., Maher, R., & Krämer, R. (2023). Resistance is fertile: Toward a political ecology of translocal resistance. Organization, 30(2), 264-287.
Cummings, S., Dhewa, C., Kemboi, G., & Young, S. (2023). Doing epistemic justice in sustainable development: Applying the philosophical concept of epistemic injustice to the real world. Sustainable Development, 31(3), 1965-1977.
Escobar, A. (2019). Thinking-feeling with the Earth: Territorial Struggles and the Ontological Dimension of the Epistemologies of the South. In Knowledges born in the struggle (pp. 41-57). Routledge.
Greenpeace. (2016). Damning the Amazon: the risky business of hydropower in the Amazon. Available at: https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-netherlands-stateless/2018/06/Greenpeace_Damning_The_Amazon-The_Risky_Business_Of_Hydropower_In_The_Amazon-2016.pdf
Hill Collins P. (2019). Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Kröger, M. (2024). Land-grabbing mafias and dispossession in the Brazilian Amazon: rural–urban land speculation and deforestation in the Santarém region. Globalizations, 1-19.
Malin, S. A., & Ryder, S. S. (2018). Developing deeply intersectional environmental justice scholarship. Environmental Sociology, 4(1), 1-7.
Mendes, V., Inoue, C. Y. A., Barton, D., Binder, L., Bonetti, M., Booth, C. ... & Zolyomi, A. (2024). Workshop report on theories and its implication for practice. (Report No D1.6). Project 101082212 –PLANET4B. Brussels: European Research Executive Agency. Available at: https://planet4b.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/PLANET4B_D1.6_Theories_for_Practice_wsreport.pdf
Mendes, V.; Kumaruara, M., Ramos, L., Aoki Inoue, C. Y.; Perez, N. P. (2025, April 9). Resist to Educate: The struggle of Indigenous peoples for the right to education in the Brazilian Amazon [Video]. Available at:
Moran, E. F. (2016). Roads and dams: infrastructure-driven transformations in the Brazilian Amazon. Ambiente & Sociedade, 19(2), 207-220.
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. (2016). Epistemologies of the South and the Future. From the European South: A Transdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Humanities 1: 17-29.
Sauer, S. (2018). Soy expansion into the agricultural frontiers of the Brazilian Amazon: The agribusiness economy and its social and environmental conflicts. Land use policy , 79 , 326-338.
Visseren-Hamakers, I. J., Razzaque, J., McElwee, P., Turnhout, E., Kelemen, E., Rusch, G. M., ... & Zaleski, D. (2021). Transformative governance of biodiversity: insights for sustainable development. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 53, 20-28.
WWF (2023). Mapeamento Sociocultural, Econômico e Ambiental do Tapajós. Available at: https://wwfbrnew.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/mapeamento_sociocultural.pdf
STATEMENT
I have not used any AI or AI-assisted technology in the process of writing this research note.
[1] https://cartasindigenasaobrasil.com.br/cartas/dos-povos-indigenas-da-bacia-do-tapajos-para-o-brasil-10-10-2017/
https://www.wwf.org.br/?85081/Garimpo-hidreletricas-e-agropecuaria-estudo-lista-ameacas-aos-povos-tradicionais-do-Tapajos
https://www.wwf.org.br/?85081/Garimpo-hidreletricas-e-agropecuaria-estudo-lista-ameacas-aos-povos-tradicionais-do-Tapajos
[4] https://wwfbrnew.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/mapeamento_sociocultural.pdf
https://planet4b.eu/
[6] We opted to study these supply chains because Brazil is the largest soy exporter in the world, and the Netherlands is the main importer of Brazilian soy in the EU. In 2022, soy represented 40% of Brazil’s agricultural exports, and beef represented 14% - i.e., soy and beef alone represent 54% of Brazil agricultural exports. The production of these commodities threatens the two largest biomes in the country – the Cerrado and, increasingly, the Amazon.
https://saudeealegria.org.br/