Discute-se neste artigo a contribuição da governança ambiental para o êxito de programas e projetos de desenvolvimento local na Amazônia brasileira. Especificamente, debate-se a conformação de um modelo de governança ambiental liderado por uma cooperativa de base comunitária para o manejo florestal. A discussão é derivada de uma pesquisa piloto realizada com atores-chave da cooperativa a partir de entrevistas e observações durante oficina de treinamento para aplicação de ferramenta de análise financeira de empreendimentos florestais comunitários. Identificou-se que parcerias, redes de relações socioprodutivas e acordos de cooperação resultam no empoderamento de atores locais e, consequentemente, em governança ambiental. Esta última facilita o uso sustentável dos recursos naturais e o desenvolvimento local de base comunitária. Considerando fatores políticos, organizacionais e de gestão, a cooperativa estudada pode ser considerada referência nacional e internacional de caso bem sucedido de manejo florestal comunitário, governança ambiental e desenvolvimento local baseado no uso sustentável de floresta pública na Amazônia brasileira.

Over the last few years, forest-based communities have faced two different but related phenomena. On the one hand, they have become more integrated with global economies, accessing regional and international markets. On the other, they have been pressured by economic groups into becoming part of the ecologically unequal exchange that exports natural resources and generates social and environmental problems at a local level. However, within new approaches to managing common-pool resources in common properties such as sustainable-use protected areas, communities are finding their own ways to be resilient and to face the two phenomena that are part of the same global economic system. Communities have built a multi-partner governance system for forest management and community development that involves agents from the civil society, state and market. Accordingly, multi-partner governance has proven to be a strategy to protect community-based forests against increasing timber market pressure. The question that then emerges is, to what extent has multi-partner governance been effective in supporting forest-based communities to be resilient and to face pressures from the global timber market in forests under community use? The aim of this paper is to analyze forest-based community resilience to the global economic system in situations where common properties are under governance of multiple stakeholders. The research is based on a singular case study in the Tapajós National Forest, Brazilian Amazon, which is a sustainable-use protected area with 24 communities involved in a multi-partner governance system. The article shows that forest-based communities under pressure have been resilient, and facing the global economic system have created a community-based cooperative for managing timber and engaging all partners in the process to improve their collective action. The cooperative provides timber sales revenue that supports community development both through diversification of agroforestry production and building of infrastructure as collective benefits.

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