Sustainable Juruti Model: Pluralist Governance, Mining, and Local Development in the Amazon Region

Abstract

The Sustainable Juruti model is an initiative of Alcoa, local government, and community-based associations aiming to promote a sustainability agenda for the municipality of Juruti, west of Brazil’s Pará State, due to the installation of a large-scale bauxite mine developed by Alcoa (Alcoa,2009). Such enterprises in the Amazon are challenged to overcome social and environmental liabilities, as shown by the collapse of the Serra do Navio project in the neighboring state of Amapá which, after a period of 45 years of economic boom and welfare resulting from the mining of manganese,became a symbol of unsustainability for large-size mining projects (Tostes, 2007).