Project description

The main objectives of the project were defined as follows:

• To compare different European and Panamazonian countries' (PAC) approaches and to elaborate a joint approach to assessing and measuring sustainable development, especially sustainable land and resource use in the basin of the river Amazonas/Solimões.
• To integrate these approaches and instruments into PAC university training programs and study schemes.
• To elaborate recommendations for innovative actors and policy makers and to establish long term relationships between scientific institutions and these actors for promoting sustainable development in the PAC
  

The key activities involved:

• Theoretical and empirical development of a set of measurable parameters and indicators for sustainable socio-economic processes, which give practical political and economic orientations for actions directed to shift actual economic activities towards a more sustainable use of Amazonian biodiversity.
• Probation of the applicability of material flow accounting in the PAC on local, regional, interregional and national levels.
• Case studies upon structural change and ecological modernisation in key sectors of the Amazonian economy with respect to sustainability parameters.
• Structural analysis of innovative actions and policies in selected Amazonian regions in order to identify patterns of sustainable practice in human development, land and resource use, combined with technical assistance to these actors on local and regional levels thus establishing long term relationships between practicioners and scientists.
• Capacity building in sustainable development project elaboration and land and resource management by integrating the academic and field research into a university training programme.

The results of the project were presented at a final public conference in Belém, Brazil. The conference was attended by the project partners, external field research partners, other scientists, representatives of international organisations, non-governmental organisations and governmental officials from PAC. Both, the results and experiences from the project and the inputs from the conference participants, can be downloaded from the project's homepage.