Isaura Daniel*
São Paulo – Ten Brazilian projects whose objectives are to improve the living conditions of populations have been nominated for the Dubai International Awards for Best Practices. The award is an initiative promoted by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and by Dubai Municipality, in the United Arab Emirates, and the objective is to recognize actions that help cities, neighbourhoods or communities to live better. This year, 703 projects from 88 countries are competing.
The 12 best initiatives will receive the award between October and November in Dubai. The exact date has not yet been defined, according to the Institutional Relations manager at the Federal Savings Bank (CEF), Stella Maris Martins Garcia. CEF is the organization that selects Brazilian projects to participate in the competition. Still this week, according to Stella, the 100 best projects should be presented among those enrolled, as should the 48 finalists.
The Brazilian projects participating in the competition promoted by Dubai Municipality were selected in a similar award, whose objective is also to recognize the best practices for the improvement of living conditions in Brazil, promoted by the bank. The organization established the award based on the UN model. "The finality is to provide incentives to the replication of projects that have proved themselves successful in other countries so that they may apply the same solution to similar problems," stated the manager.
Among the national initiatives nominated for the Dubai award are from Baú da Leitura (Readers Chest), a project promoted by the Movement for Community Organization, in the city of Feira de Santana, in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia, which helps promote reading among children who stop working with sisal to go back to school, to the waste recycling program implemented by the city of Lençóis Paulista, in the interior of the southeastern Brazilian state of São Paulo. The competitors are from the states of Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul, midwestern Brazil, São Paulo, in the southeast, Rio Grande do Sul, in the south, and Bahia.
Settling
One of the projects is that of the Cascata settling, established by former members of the Landless Movement in the city of Aurelino Leal, in Bahia, which promotes agricultural production together with an environmental management program. The settling, which has been in existence since 1997, covers an area of 587 hectares and includes 40 families. Approximately 30% of the farm is turned to environmental preservation. The Brazilian government requires 20%. On another 40% of the area is an agro-forestry system: with products like cocoa and bananas growing among plants native to the Atlantic Forest and other fruit trees.
"Therefore, 70% of the area is preserved," explained Luiz Costa, one of the leaders at the project. The program was implemented by the Cooperative of Small Producers and Agro-ecological Producers of Southern Bahia (Coopasb), of which the settlements are part, the Socio-Environmental Movement of Jupará, which works in preservation of the Atlantic Forest, and NGO Jupará. On the remaining 30% of the farm they grow food like beans, maize, cassava and vegetables and raise cattle. Costa is the agro-ecology coordinator at the NGO.
The settling also has in practice a biodigestor recycling system for organic waste. Fruit skin and animal manure are transformed into biogas, for the drying of cocoa, and into bio-fertilizer, for use on the plantations. When they were still living at a campsite, the families participated in an environmental education program. The National Institute for Colonization and Land Reform (Incra) and the Ministry of Agrarian Development are partners in the settlement project.
Ideas from Brazil
Apart from the three projects mentioned, others competing for the Dubai Award include a project by sisal producers in Valente, Bahia, who jointed forces and established an association to produce and sell more; the city of Mucugê, which plants flowers; students from Orizona, in the midwestern Brazilian state of Goiás, who learn how to be farmers at school; and families of farmers from the city of Pelotas, in southern Brazil, who meet to distribute agricultural food to impoverished populations.
There are also projects like Cooperserrana, through which poor populations meet in a cooperative to build their houses; Cerrado em Pé, from Diorama, in Goiás, in which a group of farmers works on production together with preservation of the cerrado, the Brazilian savannah; and a project from Campo Grande, in Mato Grosso do Sul, through which families from the outskirts of the city implemented an urbanism program that improved the local living conditions and took residents out of areas of risk.
*Translated by Mark Ament
