 Good morning. I'd like to thank C4 for inviting me to participate in this session and to the organizers of the conference for the opportunity to be here. I will talk today about the development of community-based fisheries in the Brazilian Amazon and relate that then to issues related to market formalization. My coauthors are Leandro Costello of the Woods Hole Research Center and Oriana Almeida of the Federal University of Pará. Thank you. I will organize my talk around first the discussion of artisanal fisheries and market formalization. Talk then about lake preservation movements in the Amazon, Brazilian Amazon. Then get into basically the development of federal policies for co-management of floodplain fisheries in the lower Amazon and related to that the development and impacts of closed season unemployment insurance that was developed. So that would be a federal component. I will follow that by talking then about state-level case studies very briefly and then some final considerations. Artisanal fishers are generally poor with low levels of education. They engage in diverse economic activities and fishing is often for both subsistence and market. They participate in informal marketing chains and very dispersed markets. Hygiene conditions are often marginal in terms of the process of capture, storage, processing of fish products. There is often minimal formal regulation of the fisheries in which they participate regardless of the existence or not of formal fisheries policies. And they generally tend to have a fairly low level of organization and capacity to engage the government in addressing their needs. We've had various discussions already about formalization of trade. Then the idea of the documentation to prove sustainable origins and or chain of custody also to ensure social equity and production and marketing of products. Problems obviously for artisanal fishers often lack the basic documents, identity, social security, birth certificate, etc. The fisheries are often unregulated and poorly documented. Marketing chains are informal and little documentation. And fish products as I noted before rarely meet international hygiene standards. The result that is that artisanal fishers are highly vulnerable to being excluded from formal markets that could provide them with access to higher prices and therefore higher incomes. Work I will describe then, take three case studies. The federal policies I will focus on, the lower Amazon region is here. I discussed the evolution of federal policies in relation to that region which was a key sort of experimental region in the development of policies. I will then also briefly mention the policies in the state of Amazonas, in the western part of the Brazilian Amazon and the state of Pará in the eastern part of the Amazon. In my paper there is a third case study that focuses on the management of one species, the pirarucu. Unfortunately it's not had time today to be able to include that case study. But if you are interested it is perhaps one of the best and most promising examples for how you could take community management in the Amazon could address the demands of formalization. Just a brief timeline here about the development of federal co-management policies. In the 1960s and 80s you had the development of commercial fisheries. As we mentioned technological changes, the development of markets resulted in sort of the growth and intensification of commercial fisheries. And as these fisheries moved out from the major state capitals, they came into contact with and conflict floodplain communities all along the Amazon, not just Brazil, the Peruvian Amazon as well. In the 1980s you had the mobilization of floodplain communities and the development of informal fishing agreements where they sought to assert control over local lake fisheries and prevent access of outsiders. This process was very closely related to the rubber tapers movement at the same time, similar origins, important role of the Catholic Church, but essentially parallel processes. In the 1990s the federal government and key NGOs became involved in legalizing these fishing agreements with the idea that they could form the basis of a new co-management policy for Amazon fisheries. From 1996 to 2002 you had the process then of the implementation of the formal co-management system that evolved. From 2006 to 2013 a second phase that focused on the development of a formal settlement policy that integrated these co-management agreements into the settlement system. Just a brief look at what this floodplain habitat looks like. This would be a transect from the middle of the river to the uplands, a hypothetical island. We could distinguish several different environments, the river fishery, the levees, the higher areas where houses are built, communities are located. Most farming activities takes place here and this is then the zone of sort of the focus of investments by the family. You then have a transitional zone on either side of seasonally-nundated grasslands. These are used for grazing cattle in the dry season and then lakes of the permanent water bodies of the interior of the floodplain. This upper line here would be the flood limit so you would have a fluctuation between these two borders or these two boundaries. And the lake system then really encompasses this whole complex of habitats. These management systems then for the lake fisheries cover this entire system of forested zones, grasslands, and lakes. If we were to look at this from above and look at what the land tenure zones look like, we can see essentially three concentric rates. This is an island. These are the levees. They are clearly, well, back up one minute. The size of property is defined by meters of frontage and the boundary, lateral boundaries are clearly recognized on levees and shoot back to the interior center of the island or floodplain region. That then creates access to three different zones, the levees, the grasslands, and the lakes. These three zones have different property rights associated with them. The levees are individual properties. Property rights are clearly demarcated and respected. The grasslands, nominally, property rights and lateral boundaries are recognized in practice. Cattle move through around this grassland quite freely. In fact, many cattle owners have more cattle than they can hold on their piece of grassland. So that is an indication. And then the lake in the interior, where it makes no sense to have individual property rights, it is considered community territory. So our concern about the development then of co-management systems and issues relating to conflicts between user groups focus on the lakes and this seasonally endodated grasslands where the cattle are grazed. Eventually we'll focus then on three main elements in the development of the system. Fisheries co-management for lakes, cattle agreements for the grasslands, and then the floodplain-land tenure policy. Two key problems in the development of the co-management system. First was criteria and procedures for taking community lake informal agreements and transforming them into legal instruments for controlling fisheries at the community level. Here the key issues were related to access. The Brazilian government insisted that communities could not exclude outsiders who obeyed the rules. They could not charge user fees to fish in the lakes. So then the other key element was the creation of an institutional structure for the implementation of these agreements. The key institution here were the regional fisheries councils. They were inter-community councils representing all the communities of a given lake system. This council is responsible then for devising a fishing agreement in collaboration with the participating communities. Once that agreement has been established, it is submitted to the regional Obama office. Obama is the federal agency responsible for fisheries management at the time. If it meets the Obama's criteria, it would go to Brasilia where it would then become a legalized instrument for management. Returns then to the fisheries council. Obama trains community environmental agents who are responsible for organizing, monitoring and enforcement activities in collaboration with Obama at this level. So then this was the system that was created. Co-management system involves some seven regional fisheries councils, 140 communities, a population of about 35,000 people in this region. The second issue was addressing the problem of conflicts between cattle and fishers and farmers on the floodplain and the problem of overgrazing. Communities sought out the public ministry and came up with a decision to use what was called terms of adjustment of conduct as the legal instrument. There was a binding contract between the community and the ranchers and cattle owners of the community regarding rules for grazing cattle and procedures for resolving conflicts. Some 50 of these agreements were created in this vicinity, both with regard to the fisheries and these cattle agreements. The problems were lack of government support for enforcement and rules that hamstrung communities in terms of taking on enforcement themselves. The third element of this process was the creation of a new settlement and land tenure policy. The floodplain is the property of the government. Individual titles are not recognized, but in fact the entire floodplain is divided into informal properties and there is a market for buying and selling these properties. The key then was to develop a way of addressing these property rights and also the multiple uses and varying forms of property rights that communities recognize. They decided to use what was called the agro-extractive settlement project. The acronym in Portuguese would be PI. This is comparable to the extractive reserve, but separate institutional linkages within the federal government. It creates formal territories in which residents have long-term use rights. It recognizes individual and collective land and resource use. It requires utilization plans that integrate pre-existing co-management agreements. It gives the leadership or the association of the PI the legal capacity to organize management, marketing of PI fisheries and fish products. And most very important, it granted exclusive rights to PI fisheries to the residents. In the lower Amazon region 41 of these PI's were created about 750 hectares within the boundaries. 14,000 families, a total of about 70,000 people. So you get a fairly continuous mosaic around here above and below where missing some of the shapes for the PI's. The next element in this process was the implementation of legislation for unemployment insurance for a closed fishing season. This is not really directly related to the efforts for co-management, but it has impacts that were very important from the perspective of the formalization of markets. First of all, it was designed essentially as an incentive to comply with the four-month closed fishing season. And fishers then would receive one minimum salary per month. The program evolved rapidly, 14,000 fishers in the state of Pará in 2003, 78,000 in 2007. The value of the total volume of benefits, 10 million in 2003, 270 million in 2011. That has a lot to do with the growth in the value of the minimum salary and not just the growth in the number of fishers who are receiving that. Conditions, fishers must have basic government documents. They must be members of the Municipal Fishers Union. The results was obviously to increase union membership and income, but it also brought a large proportion of the floodplain population into the formal economy. They now had all the basic documents to participate in the formal economy. And so that was an unexpected but very important rave zone. The next element was the process of the restructuring of federal institutions for fisheries co-management. From 2003 to 2013, there was a shift, Obama lost control of fisheries. That was initially transferred temporarily to the Secretary of Fisheries and Agriculture. That then became the Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture in 2006. There was some struggle over the definition of who was responsible between the NPA and Obama. And that was finally resolved in 2011, at which point the government, the Ministry of Fisheries transferred that responsibility to the state level and essentially abandoned its involvement in co-management policies. Turn briefly then to the state level. Two case studies. Amazonas is sort of the example of the golden boy or golden child in this process. They had an ambitious program of state policy and institutional framework for sustainable development, a statewide reserve system, passed and implemented legislation for fisheries co-management, recognized and legalized some 30 co-management agreements and also were interested in getting involved in green labeling and certification of community-based fisheries. In contrast, we have the state of Pará, which at first had no involvement in the federal experience in the lower Amazon, which is part of the state of Pará. In 2005, they did pass the legislation, but the co-management provisions were never implemented. In 2006, a state secretary of fisheries and agriculture was created. The emphasis was on social programs for artisanal fishers, and a major priority was agriculture development. Government was sort of wrapping up and evaluating. We had a grassroots movement beginning in the 1980s that set off a process that resulted in community control of formal territories. They achieved exclusive rights over lake fisheries and provides a basis for compliance with the formalization requirements of markets. However, as a result of the restructuring of government fisheries sector, the consolidation of these co-management policies and institutions is stalled. In the state of Amazonas, there was an election, new governor entered political changes at state level that resulted in the abandonment of the co-management policies and programs. Where are we now? Federal and state governments have shown little interest in the sustainable management of artisanal fishers. The underlying assumption is that the natural evolution is from capture fisheries to agriculture. Major government investments that are concentrated in agriculture at a range of scales, and the entire rural extension service is oriented towards agriculture. They have no capacity for fisheries management or collective management of resources. So we're in a situation where if these trends continue, formalization of markets could result in the exclusion of artisanal fisheries and essentially the domination of that sector by agriculture interests at all scales. Sounding a little pessimistic, I think there are reasons for being more optimistic than this, but this is essentially the situation we face right now. Thank you.