A quest for sustainability: Brazil nut gatherers of São Francisco do Iratapuru and the Natura Corporation
Résumé
The Iratapuru Sustainable Development Reserve is mainly exploited by the community of São Francisco village. To improve their standard of living, this village organised its members around a production co-operative in 1992. Following considerable support from local and international institutions, this community became a symbol of sustainable development projects for 'traditional' communities of the Amazon. This was even more so after 2004, when an innovative partnership was established between the Brazilian cosmetics company NATURA and the village of São Francisco. Although the company claims that it associates its own economic interests with the priorities of the community, a number of questions arise nonetheless around this community-company deal, which our study tries to address. To that end, we first present the Jarí region and describe the Brazil nut production process in Iratapuru. Subsequently we give an overview of the development efforts in Iratapuru since the 1990s, focusing on the recent experience with NATURA. In the last part we analyse the NATURA-São Francisco relationship as a special case of a community-company deal in the Amazon.