Traditional communities, multinationals and biodiversity: the example of an innovative partnership between the cosmetic firm Natura and the Brazil nut extractivists of São Francisco in the Sustainable Developement Reserve of the Iratapuru river region

The Iratapuru Sustainable Development Reserve is mainly exploited by the community of the São Francisco village. Due to its efforts to organize its members around a production co-operative and to improve their standard of living, but also as a result of massive funding from local and international institutions, this community has become a symbol for the actions of sustainable development undertaken with and in the benefit of « traditional » communities living in protected areas in the Amazon region. After a long period of support by several public policy institutions, Brazilian as well as international, a new private actor is continuously taking the place of the state since 2004, when an innovative partnership was established between the Brazilian cosmetics company Natura and the São Francisco village. During the last five years, this community-company deal has clearly exceeded the limits of a pure commercial contract in order to develop into an “all-inclusive” sustainable development model for the extractivists of São Francisco induced by the representatives of Natura. Corresponding to their marketing strategy as a socially and environmentally responsible firm, this model should be based on several agreements between the community and the company that would allow economic growth and social equity through the exploitation and transformation of Natural resources (above all, the Brazil nut) by the local cooperative, as well as the preservation of the Natural habitat of a community that has traditionally been making its living from a rational use of tropical forest products. However, if a certain economic stability of the extractivists of São Francisco can be affirmed during the last six years, a number of questions arise nonetheless around the degree of sustainability that their partnership with Natura has brought to the community in social and cultural terms. This article tries to discuss these issues on the basis of a several fieldworks done by the authors in the region