Reflecting upon the Brazilian Amazon. Governmental Development Projects and their impacts on family arrangements, landscape and mobility. The research problem Thais Tartalha Nascimento Lombardi Supervisors: Prof. Anthony Hall; Dr. Ernestina Coast Study area location City of Altamira Belo Monte Hydropower complex location Note: Map elaborated by the author. Age/Sex pyramids: Still a young population Urbanization rates: From lower percentages of urban population to higher percentages than the country Colonization project rural settlements Net Growth Rates (%): Increase on net growth rates for last decade for total and urban population but negative rates for rural population. A rural-urban migration pattern can be visualize on the period, but how to explain that rural’s net growth rate even negative has had better results on last period ( )? Migration patterns for the last decade The idea of the Brazilian Amazon as a frontier meaning: 1. empty land ; 2. unknown; 3. uncultivated; 4. undeveloped. Urbanization and Deforestation start to be pointed as major question to be dealt when thinking about population and environment issues in the Amazon. What we can learn about Altamira’s urban population and how understanding this population livelihoods – as a composition of household structure, social network and surrounding aspects – could help understand how resilient or fragile they can be to changes on its landscape, using a large scale developmental government project like Belo Monte as a study case? How those lessons could be incorporated on future projects, considering that there are current pressures from the civil society to incorporate pre-projects studies with deep knowledge of the population and environment of the settings as part of the design of the project? Twentieth century: 1.Develop the Amazon by implementing large scale governmental development projects; Echoes on the 2000’s and 2010’s decade: 1.Development through the implementation of large scale governmental development projects; 2.Diverging from previous period the main goal is not just develop the Amazon as a region but contribute to the country’s development by the provision of products or resources. Main events/projects: Hydropower dam construction and soy / cattle ranching expansion. Belo Monte dam shows up as the most controversial one. Rural settlements Urban / Rural settlements Indigenous and riverine population (traditional population) + new colonizers Main events/projects: Rubber campaign on the 1940’s Colonization project on the 1970’s and 1980’s Indigenous and riverine population (traditional population) + rural settlers + urban population Does those developmental projects in the region consider a deep knowledge of the local population livelihoods as part of its design, scale or goals? First analysis tend to consider that there is still little considerations, but civil society pressures could be changing it. According to previous studies and analysis about those projects: No The city of Altamira: 1. will have part of its area flooded by the dam; 2. serve as headquarters to of the company responsible for the construct ion of Belo Monte; 3. is one the urban areas in the Amazon that have experienced an expressive growth during the last decade, according to Census ( ); An on-going project: data and first results Census data 2000 and 2010 Altamira Urban Survey – 2010 Neighbourhood + Traditional settlement area Recent settlement area Historical areas; Commercial areas; Mixed sizes of households; Population age structure flowing from young to old; Mixed incomes flowing from low to high; Close to the river margin; Presence of settlers that came during the colonization project; Presence of indigenous communities (or descendants); Presence of traditional riverine population. Close to the Transamazon Road or other main roads; More residential areas; Short households; Larger households; High income neighbourhoods; Low income neighbourhoods; Recent migrants. Common characteristics