Facilitating meetings to activate socio-biodiversity business ecosystems in the lower Tocantins and Marajó regions (PA)
Context
The Conexsus Institute's Amazon in Connections Programme was created to activate and promote territorial entrepreneurship in the regions of Lower Tocantins, Lower Tapajós and Marajó, in the state of Pará, and Middle and Lower Juruá, in Amazonas. Conexsus understands that the development of cooperatives and associations in these regions is directly influenced by issues that go beyond their organisational limits, depending on partnerships, resources and solutions for their consolidation. It was therefore important to understand the needs of community businesses in order to implement improvements in the production and distribution of socio-biodiversity products, and from this to build a plan for activating the ecosystem in each region. The first phase of workshops consisted of mapping the needs of community businesses in ten categories of service provision. In the second phase, Conexsus commissioned the Gabiru consultancy to facilitate participatory planning to activate ecosystems for the development of cooperatives and associations operating in the three locations in the state of Pará.
Approach
A two-day meeting was held in each location, involving farmers' cooperatives and associations and ecosystem partners, including universities and research centres, other civil society organisations and representatives of public bodies such as municipal environmental secretariats and Embrapa. The following question guided the journey:
What partnerships, services and solutions, in the view of the regional ecosystem actors themselves, would need to be devised and implemented to support the development of cooperatives and associations?
The design of the agenda included:
Conceptual alignment on community business ecosystems and their role in the development of co-operatives and associations.
Building a collective vision of what healthy ecosystems would look like for community businesses in each region.
Presentation of the results of the diagnosis carried out in the first phase, followed by a discussion about the differences between the ideal (healthy) scenario and the current one - what are they? What makes them exist?
Dialogue with partners (universities, other civil society organisations and representatives of public bodies) about the current and ideal conditions of community business ecosystems, including new perspectives on this context.
Planning the activation of the local ecosystem: definition of priorities in four macro axes, rationale and expected results.
Next steps and the contributions of each actor along the way.
When
October and November 2023
Gabiru's Team
André Maciel
Bruna Viana
