Historically, the policy framework in Brazil has played a decisive role in shaping land use and changes in the rural landscape. Over the last three decades, the country has made impressive gains on socioeconomic, environmental and rural development policy fronts. Nonetheless, an overall analysis of Brazil’s policy framework pertaining to land use shows contradictions and constraints that need to be addressed in the long run. One such contradiction is given by disparities in rural credit and finance policies, with greater amounts favoring large-scale farming as opposed to family farming, despite the key role of smallholders in food production and job creation, and still low resources allocated to programs promoting low-carbon agricultural practices. Another contradiction is the dichotomy between climate change policies and mainstream agricultural and rural development policies. Brazil’s overriding challenge is harmonizing and effectively coordinating these different policy agendas at their various levels of implementation so as to effectively manage trade-offs. The question is what measures can be put in place to enable continued growth of agricultural production while also reducing its negative social and environmental costs? The answer lies partly in increasing support for implementing and up-scaling initiatives to promote low emissions agriculture and providing other economic incentives for adopting more sustainable use and conservation-oriented agricultural and land-use practices. Ultimately, reconciling agricultural production with conservation and rural livelihoods requires greater coordination and harmonization among sectoral policies at various levels of government. Achieving this goal requires the adoption of a combination of a value chain-based and territorial approach to land-use planning with more integrated farming systems in order to enable making improved decisions according to multiple trade-offs and impacts.

This book considers the principle of ‘sustainable development’ which is currently facing a growing environmental crisis. A new mode of thinking and positioning the ecological imperative is the major input of this volume. The prism of co-viability is not the economics of political agencies that carry the ideology of the dominant/conventional economic schools, but rather an opening of innovation perspectives through science. This volume, through its four parts, more than 40 chapters and a hundred authors, gives birth to a paradigm which crystallizes within a concept that will support in overcoming the ecological emergency deadlock.

This book focuses on empirical experiences related to market development, and specifically new markets with structurally different characteristics than mainstream markets. Europe, Brazil, China and the rather robust and complex African experiences are covered to provide a rich multidisciplinary and multi-level analysis of the dynamics of newly emerging markets. Rural Development and the Construction of New Markets analyses newly constructed markets as nested markets. Although they are specific market segments that are nested in the wider commodity markets for food, they have a different nature, different dynamics, a different redistribution of value added, different prices and different relations between producers and consumers. Nested markets embody distinction viz-a-viz the general markets in which they are embedded. A key aspect of nested markets is that these are constructed in and through social struggles, which in turn positions this book in relation to classic and new institutional economic analyses of markets. These markets emerge as steadily growing parts of the farmer populations are dedicating their time, energy and resources to the design and production of new goods and services that differ from conventional agricultural outputs. The speed and intensity with which this is taking place, and the products and services involved, vary considerably across the world. In large parts of the South, notably Africa, farmers are ‘structurally’ combining farming with other activities. By contrast, in Europe and large parts of Latin America farmers have taken steps to generate new products and services which exist alongside ongoing agricultural production. This book not only discusses the economic rationales and dynamics for these markets, but also their likely futures and the threats and opportunities they face.

Desenvolvimento territorial rural e meio ambiente: debates atuais e desafios para o século XXI, oferece um debate acerca das políticas públicas aplicadas no setor ambiental, destacando questões como agricultura sustentável e suas formas e exaltando a agricultura familiar, que de acordo com as análises feitas, "possibilita uma política educacional voltada para a educação do campo". O objetivo é mostrar aos leitores estratégias de práticas ecológicas atuais e fomentar essas práticas entre jovens e também mulheres.

The Routledge Handbook of Community Development explores community development theory and practice across the world. The book provides perspectives about community development as an interactive, relevant and sometimes contradictory way to address issues impacting the human condition. It promotes better understanding of the complexities and challenges in identifying, designing, implementing and evaluating community development constructs, applications and interventions. This edited volume discusses how community development is conceptualized as an approach, method or profession. Themes provide the scope of the book, with projects, issues or perspectives presented in each of these areas. This handbook provides invaluable contextualized insights on the theory and practice of community development around core themes relevant in society. Each chapter explores and presents an issue, perspectives, project or case in the thematic areas, with regional and country context included. It is a must-read for students and researchers working in community development, planning and human geography and an essential reference for any professional engaged in community development.

This book aims to contribute to the transdisciplinary study of the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus in cities and to help policy makers adopt a more integrated approach to natural resources management in urban environments to face the challenges and threats of climate change. This approach is based on a multidimensional scientific framework that seeks to understand the complex and non-linear interrelationships and interdependencies between water-energy-food under climate change and to generate solutions to reduce trade-offs among development goals and generate co-benefits that help encourage sustainable development and contribute to the achievement of SDGs, mainly SDG 11 (make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable) and SDG 13 (take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts). Governing the WEF nexus in cities is one of the greatest resource challenges of our time, as cities consume large amounts of WEF, but one that can also generate relevant alternatives with which to tackle climate change. To help fostering these alternatives, this book analyzes the governance, institutional and political economy factors that determine the effectiveness of the nexus approach and reviews the potential, the benefits and the policy implications of the adoption of the WEF nexus approach at the urban level. Through a series of hands-on cases, chapters in this book present the opportunities of the WEF nexus approach to achieve innovation and transformative change and discuss concrete areas of synergy and policy initiative to raise urban resilience. Water-Energy-Food Nexus and Climate Change in Cities will serve both as a guide for policy makers as well as a useful resource for students and researchers in fields such as urban studies, public health, environmental sciences, energy studies and public policy interested in learning how cities can represent possibilities to navigate and manage sustainability from local to global.