National Exchanges
Being a Reference Program in the Amazon, during the period from 2012 to 2014 we celebrate academic and institutional cooperation with national and international Programs that solidify the Program and emphasize the team's ability to attract resources as well as the importance in the Brazilian geography scenario. Through the PROCAD Official notice - New Frontiers, the Program established between 2009 and 2013, cooperation of shared resources with the State University of São Paulo (UNESP) of Presidente Prudente and Federal Fluminense University (UFF); and the PROCAD Project - Casadinho, with resources from the agreement with the Human Geography Graduate Program, University of São Paulo (USP). The project is entitled "Territory Organization, Natural Resources and Regional Development in the Amazon". It was coordinated by three professors from the PPGEO-UFPA; by the professors Janete Marília Gentil Coimbra de Oliveira and Ester Limonad, of the Geography Graduate Program of the Federal Fluminense University and by Professor Antônio Cezar Leal, of the Paulista State University - Presidente Prudente Campus. The project team was composed by the professors of the PPGEO-UFPA: João Santos Nahum, João Márcio Palheta da Silva, Carlos Alexandre Leão Bordalo, Carmena Ferreira de França and Márcia Aparecida da Silva Pimentel; of the PPGEO-UFF: Jorge Luiz Barbosa, Rogério Haesbaert da Costa, Sandra Baptista da Cunha and Marcio Piñon de Oliveira; and PPGEO-UNESP-PP: Antônio Thomaz Júnior, Eliseu Savério Spósito and Messias Modesto dos Passos.
One of the objectives of this joint research is to establish research groups linked to existing lines in the PPGEO-UFPA. These groups will be composed of professors and students of the three HEIs involved here, thus promoting the consolidation of current research lines, as well as studying their reformulations or even the creation of new lines.
Thus, the project meets the objectives of PROCAD regarding the consolidation of new Programs, promoting scientific-academic interaction, supporting the development of joint projects aimed at accelerating studies and research in the Amazon region. It also responds to the guidelines contained in the 2007 Capes Triennial Evaluation, which reinforce the need to consolidate the Program, improving its conceptualization. Finally, this academic cooperation project will not only allow the consolidation of the Master's degree in Geography, but also contribute, in the medium term, to the implementation of the Doctorate Program of the Geography Graduate Program of UFPA.
The cooperation aimed to: a) consolidate the Geography Graduate Program of UFPA; b) promote integration between professors and students of the masters of UFPA, UFF and UNESP - Presidente Prudente; c) strengthen PPGEO research lines; d) to form research groups constituted by professors and students of the agreed institutions; e) contribute to the creation of the Doctorate Course of the PPGEO.
During this PROCAD, we sent six students to hold a sandwich master's degree at the Fluminense Federal University and six to the Paulista State University, Presidente Prudente Campus. In addition to them, our researchers annually conducted research missions at these institutions, where they met with research groups, shared disciplines, taught minicourses, delivered lectures, and did fieldwork. We also receive researchers from these Universities to carry out research missions at PPGEO.
Among the fruits of this academic and institutional cooperation we highlight the realization of the 5th International Symposium and VI National Symposium on Agrarian Geography, held in October 2011. We have gathered more than 2000 people from various states and countries, representatives of organized civil society and public power. Moment where the Program reaffirms its role as proactive protagonist in proposing to the debate of topics so dear to Amazon society. The International and National Symposium on Agrarian Geography (SINGA) was constituted as an academic and institutional space where the university, civil society and social movements meet to discuss subjects so dear to agrarian geography. It prevailed in dialogue, communicative action, the concern to build a prudent knowledge for a decent life, socially committed to the historically silenced and invisibilized social segments, whose way of life is constantly shaken by intense offensives of the multiple faces of capital, which it diffuses a single societal pattern across all quarters. Peasantry, conflicts over land, expansion of agribusiness, land regularization, rural education, food security, state policy for the countryside, among others, are debated themes, giving everyone the feeling that it is possible to build another territorial dynamic in the field, presided, sustained, and structured according to those who use the land to produce food and thus fulfill their natural and social function.
Through PROCAD official note - Casadinho 2012, it develops the project "Amazon and the Geographic Understanding of the Brazilian Space: territorial diversity, public policies and new spatial configurations". The proposal establishes cooperation between the Geography Graduate Program of the Federal University of Pará, PPGEO-UFPA, as an Unbound Program and the Human Geography Graduate Program of the University of São Paulo, as a Consolidated Program. The overall objective of the Cooperation is to strengthen and consolidate PPGEO-UFPA through cooperation between the research groups of this program and PPGH-USP. As specific objectives, the promotion of scientific-academic interaction between institutions in the Amazon region and the Southeast of the country stands out, constituting a network of cooperation and promoting the mobilization of professors - mentors and students of postgraduate and scientific initiation among the research groups involved; the stimulation of the joint technical-scientific production of research groups through the publication of technical-scientific articles in recognized and indexed national journals as a result of the work of the research groups involved; the promotion of the integration of postgraduate courses and research topics, in a continuous interaction of personnel training and scientific production; the analysis of the extent to which the Brazilian Amazon is currently revealing broader socio-spatial processes in Brazil and the world; the analysis of the way in which the Brazilian State has acted in the current period in the sense of the production of the regional Amazónian space, especially with respect to Pará, in order to identify the new spatial configurations resulting from these processes; the subsidy to the State in the elaboration of public policies directed to the territorial ordering and the socioenvironmental management in the different scales of power in the Amazon. The procedures for achieving these objectives are based on the implementation of articulation mechanisms, namely, the research missions and teaching of the PPGEO-UFPA and PPGH-USP professors. The team is composed of the professors of the PPGEO-UFPA: Coordinator Professor Maria Goretti da Costa Tavares, Vice-Coordinator Professor Cristina do Socorro Fernandes de Senna, Professor Saint-Clair Cordeiro da Trindade and Professor Sérgio Cardoso de Moraes; and professors of the Postgraduate Program in Human Geography at USP: coordinating professor Rita Ariza Cruz, professor Valéria de Marcos, professor Sandra Lecioni, professor Marta Medeiros, professor Wagner Ribeiro and professor Ariovaldo Oliveira. This team conducts research missions, often consisting of meetings with research groups, ministries, lectures, and masters and doctoral degrees. In addition to these researchers, we have undergraduates in the scientific initiation modality and a master's and doctorate, who carry out study missions, with a view to exchanging experiences between different academic environments and cultures.
As a result of this PROCAD, we can list the realization of the First Congress of Amazónian Agricultural Geography: dynamics and territorial conflicts in the Amazónian agrarian space. Again, the PPGEO proposes a panel of debate in the academic, institutional and political field, having as a structuring axis the serious and responsible criticism of the uses and abuses of the territory by the capital. The tables and themes of the dialogue spaces highlight the scientific and political importance of this Congress. In the first table, "Dialogues between geography and rural studies: theories, methods, trajectories and perspectives" aims to situate geography within agrarian studies developed by economics, history, sociology, anthropology, among others, which seek to understand the constitution of the field and its role in the region. In the table "Socio-environmental conflicts in the Amazon: land, water and forest", we emphasize that the constitution of this field occurs under the sign of disputes over the use of land, water and forest. Conflicts that manifest themselves in the forms of appropriation of local knowledge, as discussed in the table "Traditional Knowledge / Practice, Biopiracy and Patents in the Amazon". Local knowledge built and shared by the different ways of life of the region, object of discussion of the table "Way of life, identity and peasantry in the Amazon". Ways of life threatened by the expansion of capital, thus we have the theme "Dynamics and territorial conflicts in the Amazónian agrarian space: actors, conflicts and processes" focusing on recent situations in the Amazónian agrarian space.
International Exchanges
In November, 2014, PPGEO-UFPA established institutional cooperation with the University of Cape Verde. That month, professors Clay Anderson Nunes Chagas, Christian Nunes da Silva and João Marcio Palheta da Silva conducted a five - day mission in Cape Verde - Praia, to recognize the academic activities developed at the University of Cape Verde (UniCV). During this visit of the professors of the PPGEO, meetings were held with professors and directors and the rectory of the institution. These meetings were based on the formation of agreements and partnerships between the Uni-CV and the PPGEO and had as main focus the discussion on the PPGEO Land Use Planning Line, an area to be the basis for the extension of the UFPA partnership with the Uni-CV, focused on the discussion of Public Security, which is the demand of the current master's degree of that public university in Cape Verde, whose accomplishment has counted on and continues to count on the strong support of UFPA. At these meetings, the PPGEO researchers looked for ways to form partnerships during their visit to Cape Verde. Among them, the exchange of professors, the opening of vacancies for students from that African country can take a Masters in Geography at UFPA, the joint publication of articles and books, among others, always aiming at promoting an exchange of relations between universities. The mission with Geography professors was essential to create a real possibility of expanding the partnership with Uni-CV in land-use planning, allowing the perception of similarities of problems in this area, between the city of Belém and the capital of Cape Verde, Praia, generating knowledge exchange. In addition, it seeks to contribute to strengthen relations with the National Police of Cape Verde, whose agents have been master’s students in Public Security at UFPA and are interested in the continuity of training in the area.
Through the CAPES Official Notice for Transnational Cooperation, Bilateral Agreements, the Program concluded an agreement between the University of Coimbra, represented by Professor Norberto Nuno Pinto dos Santos; and Federal University of Pará, represented by Professor Maria Goretti da Costa Tavares, based on the research project "Patrimony and Tourism in the Transformation of Marginal Spaces in Portugal and Brazil." The project lasts for three years from 2015 onwards and investigates the opportunities for development and reversal of the disadvantage of marginal spaces, according to the dominant development model, affected by poverty, exclusion, discrimination and isolation from the use of equity and tourism. Socio-spatial marginality is expressed at various scales in various types of spaces, from remote rural regions and indigenous territories to critical areas within dynamic metropolises, aging historic centers, deindustrialized areas, and poor suburbs. Based on case studies that cover these various categories of spaces in the Portuguese and Brazilian territories, each one with specific resources and problems, the positive and negative points of the commodification of patrimony and the promotion of tourism are discussed and it is checked how far and under what conditions these can be solutions for socioeconomic revitalization and the cultural and geographical reintegration of these spaces.
The Study Group on Territorial Dynamics in the Amazon (GEDTAM), coordinated by Professor José Antônio Herrera, carries out research projects in partnerships with national and international institutions, funded by CNPq and FAPESPA. We highlight the projects with the respective partnerships in their executions: "The multiple transformations in the municipality of Altamira caused by the hydroelectric project of Belo Monte", project funded by CNPq via official notice Human Sciences of 2014, term March 2016. It has as partner the Center of Population Studies (NEPO – Portuguese acronym) of the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP).
"Social cartography of violence and public insecurity in the municipalities directly affected by Belo Monte's project in the state of Pará", a project financed by FAPESPA via Thematic Notice 08 of 2014, until August 2016. Its partner is the Laboratory of Geoecology and Environmental Planning of Federal University of Ceará (UFC). "Belo Monte hydroelectric plant and the environmental, social, cultural and economic impacts in the municipalities of Vitória do Xingu and Senador José Porfírio, state of Pará", a project financed by FAPESPA via thematic notice 05 of 2014, until August 2016. Its partner is Energy and Environment Laboratory - College of Technology, Michigan State University (USA). "Production of the agrarian space in the Altamira - Pará microregion: study on the deterritorialization of family farming and indigenous communities (Arara and Xipaya) against the Belo Monte project", a project financed by CNPq via Universal Notice of 2014, March 2017. It has as partner the Federal University of Amazonas / Faculty of Geography / Geography Graduate Program (PPGEOG) - Manaus; Brown University (USA) and Universität Freiburg (Germany). In the last three years, four PPGEO professors had research proposals in international cooperation approved in the PACI Official Notice, an initiative of PROPESP-UFPA, to foster the international exchange of the Institution's professors with programs abroad. The following professors are included in the aforementioned official notice: Professor Christian Nunes da Silva and Professor João Marcio Palheta da Silva, for Cape Verde; Professor Carlos Alexandre Leão Bordalo, for University of Coimbra / Portugal; Professor Maria Goretti Tavares, for the University of Porto / Portugal; Professor Sérgio Cardoso de Moraes on an international mission builds an exchange with Eduardo Mondlane University (Mozambique) based on environmental project; Professor Gilberto de Miranda Rocha, representing UFPA, established Exchange with Leeds Metropolitan University (England); Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain); Universita de Roma Tre (Italy) and State University of Amazonas within the project AguaSociAL Project. The Program is in the process of formalizing an international cooperation agreement with Michigan State University, with the primary objective of counting on visiting researchers and students; make it possible for students and students from the Program to travel to and from the United States to take courses in sandwich training, post-doctoral training, and other activities.
The PPGEO is part of the Program of Alliances for Education and Training (PAEC-OEA-GCUB), which consists of receiving students from OAS member countries in Brazilian universities to complete full-time graduate courses, masters and doctorates.
The activities described here relate to the institutional partnerships established by the Program at the regional, national and international levels. In the last three triennia, the researchers' dialogue with other research centers is well-known, which has favored the national and international exchange of PPGEO-UFPA and effectively minimizes the geographic distance between the North Region and other centers.