CALHA NORTE

an interactive map of Protected Areas

USER’S GUIDE
Dear User,

Welcome to Calha Norte.

The document that you hold in your hands will help you to navigate the interactive map
and unlock all the potential of this tool. This guide is part user’s manual, part exercise
book to assist you in beginning to think through this platform to interpret data in ways that
forge connections and allow you curate your own discovery of the Calha Norte region. In
an informal step by step you will be guided through the installation of Google Earth and
the Calha Norte KMZ data file. You will also be provided with some navigation tips to get
you started. Once you have the platform up and running, Calha Norte is at your fingertips.
The aim of the project is to provide you with an interactive tool which will allow you to
explore the region according to your interests and curiosity. The ultimate goal of the
platform is to get you to engage with the data through a comparative framework in order
to better understand the cultural, economic, political and historical dynamics of the region,
and delve into the complexities of conservation politics in the Amazon.

The second part of this guide will provide a few exercises to help you start thinking through
the platform, and hopefully set you off on some research questions of your own. The
project is, and always will be, a work in progress. There is an infinite amount of data that
could be added to it to better understand the Calha Norte region, and an infinite number
of questions with research potential.

The final part of this document includes bibliographical notes. It explains the sources of
the data, discusses some gaps, and provides reference platforms that may facilitate your
own research on this fascinating region.

So, without further ado, fasten your seatbelt and prepare for your self-guided Calha Norte
tour!

Enjoy!

Hannah Reardon

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Table of Contents

PART ONE: Technical Matters

Ø Set-up ……………………………………………...… 3

Ø Navigation 101 ……………………………………... 4

PART TWO: Exercises and applications

Ø Municipalities…..…………………………………… 6

Ø Protected Areas …………………………………… 10

Ø Quilombola territories ……………………………. 14

Ø Indigenous territories …………………………..... 15

PART THREE: Bibliographical notes

Ø Sources …………………………………………...... 17

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PART ONE: Technical matters

SET-UP

If you already have the Google Earth application downloaded and set up on your
computer, go ahead and skip to the next section. If you do not have Google Earth, follow
along.

1. This part is super easy. Go to google.com and search “Google Earth download”.
Download the application from google.com, (it’s free!), and follow the steps on your
installer to get it working.

2. Once you have gone through the installation, open up the Google Earth application
on your Mac or PC. You should get this when you first open up Google Earth:

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 3. Next, go ahead and download the Calha_Norte.kmz file from the site,
calhanorteportal.com. You will find the download button on the Discover page.
When you click on the download button you will get an online preview, click the
download arrow at the top right to get the whole file. You will be able to work with
it offline in Google Earth. Open it in Google Earth by clicking File > Open >
Downloads > Calha_Norte_(final).kmz. You should get this:

Welcome! You are reading to start exploring. The next part of this guide will walk you
through the features of the platform and some navigation tips.

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NAVIGATION 101

First let’s look at the basic features on the map.

On the image below (p.6), the red numbers refer to each of the following items, which will
help you navigate.

1) Number one is the Calha Norte region itself. Each coloured shape is a protected
area, corresponding to the definitions in the legend (#3), and each pin corresponds
to a municipal capital (green for Amapá state and yellow for the state of Pará – you
can also see the state borders in white, and international borders in yellow).

2) Use the zoom and the dragging tool to move around, look closer, look from further
away. You can use your trackpad or the scroller on your mouse to zoom in and
out. Right click on a pin or a protected area to see its corresponding information
bubble pop up. Left click in order to alter the code, in ‘Get info’, or change the
transparency, etc.

3) Refer to the legend at any time to reference the type of protected area you have
selected. Quilombola territories are in yellow, Indigenous territories in pink/purple,
Sustainable use reserves in a lighter blue and Integral protection reserves in a dark
blue. The legend stays on in the upper left corner at all times. If you’d like to make
it disappear you can deselect it in the toolbar on the left (#4).

4) On the left, the toolbar can help you navigate more quickly to find a particular
protected area or municipal capital. Scroll through by type, they are organized in
folders based on their category. All the Indigenous territories are in one folder, the
Quilombola territories in another. The protected areas are divided between one
folder of state-governed areas, and another of federally-governed areas. Right
click on the name of the area or capital to see its information bubble pop up, double
click to fly to that area on the map. Left click and select “Get Info” to edit the code
for the visual pop-up, to change the colour of the shape, or to change its
transparency.

5) On the lower half of the toolbar you can play around with selecting whether you
want borders, roads, places, and other things appear on the Google Earth satellite
image.

6) On the upper toolbar you can find a number of useful Google Earth features. If you
are interested in creating your own pins, shapes, routes and locations, here is
where you will find all your tools.
See https://www.google.com/earth/outreach/learn/ for more information on how to
create your own Google Earth project.
The feature which will be of particular interest to us in this guide is circled, (#6).
This is the time lapse feature. Click on it and drag the slider to look at past satellite
images back to 1960. We will be using this feature especially in part two of this
guide.

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PART TWO: Exercises and Research Applications

In the following section you will find a number of activities to help you start exploring
research questions and understanding the Calha Norte region through this tool. The
exercises are divided up by section. You will find exercises for data on Municipalities, for
Protected Areas (both Sustainable use and Integral protection), for Indigenous territories
and for Quilombola territories.
The latter two require you to do some googling of your own, and so an internet is required
for those particular exercises.

MUNICIPALITIES:

When you click on a municipal capital you will get an information bubble that will look
something like this:

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Each municipality will have a picture relevant to the area, and the following information:

1) Population Breakdown
2) Area of the municipality
3) Population density
4) Cumulative deforestation (in hectares) since 2000
5) GDP in Brazilian Reais (R$)
6) Human Development Index Score
7) A list of protected areas that fall within the municipality’s boundaries
8) A short description of the municipality’s history translated from IBGE records
(Brazil’s national statistics bureau).

We will be using this data to see what we can learn about livelihoods, sociological factors
and ecological concerns across municipal areas.

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EXERCISE #1: POPULATION DENSITY, URBANITY AND DEFORESTATION

In this first exercise we will look at demographics, rural/urban divides and deforestation.

#1: Try to find the municipality with the biggest rural urban divide. Scroll through the list
of municipal capitals in the toolbar on the left and compare, which municipalities have a
rural population that outweighs the urban one? Jot down the names of municipalities with
very large urban populations.

#2: Now, try to find the municipality with the largest cumulative deforestation figures. Note
the names of any that stand out. Return to your previous answers, and as you compare
deforestation figures, try to keep in mind how these map onto areas with higher population
density, and larger or smaller urban/rural divides.

#3: Okay, time to play more with the app’s features. Refer to your answers in question
#1, and zoom in on one of the cities that you have identified as being one of the most
populated or population dense. Use the time lapse feature to see how the city has
changed over time. To do this, click on the little clock icon on the upper toolbar (#6 in
NAVIGATION 101) and use the slider to go back in time and look at older images, it
should look something like this:

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Sometimes the images will have cloud cover or will be a bit distorted. You can try to
correct this by zooming in and out until you find the clearest image. Compare over time
and see how cities grow and change. What do you notice about forest cover in the
surrounding area, proliferation of roads, farmland, etc.? Try comparing Santana (pictured
here) to Laranjal do Jari downriver, and see what differences you observe.

As cities grow, they tend to sprawl. Urban sprawl necessarily means compromising forest
cover as farmlands grow along with towns, and roads and highways snake out to connect
cities to each other and to markets beyond. Cities are hubs of services, they offer better
schools, hospitals and job opportunities. In a region where subsistence-level poverty is
widespread in rural areas, greater migration towards urban centres is understandable.
The question is, at what environmental cost? And, is this process completely unavoidable?
Urbanization is often assumed to be an inevitable stage in the economic development of
a region, but as we know, development often comes with an environmental cost. Could
better city planning mitigate some of the consequences of urban sprawl? What kind of
industries could encourage employment opportunities with minimal environmental impact?
Are economic development and conservation compatible projects? What are the
advantages and disadvantages of establishing protected areas in proximity to growing
urban areas?

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EXERCISE #2: GDP, HDMI AND URBANITY

We’ve looked at demographics, and thought a bit about rural-urban migration, how cities
change over time and what impact this might have on the environment. Now let’s add an
extra factor: economics. How are demographics related to economic potency (GDP), and
to quality of life (HDI)?

#1: As with the first exercise, scroll through the municipalities and jot down those that
stand out for having the highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Read into the history of
the municipality, what industries or historical developments have led this municipality to
be more economically active than others? Are there large-scale mining operations,
hydroelectric projects, corporations? If so, try zooming in, and look around for any visible
signs of infrastructure to support such projects. As you look at GDP, note Human
Development Index (HDI) figures as well. Do those municipalities with a high GDP
necessarily have a higher HDI score as well? What does this tell us about economic
development versus human development? Are they the same thing? Are they necessarily
interrelated?

#2: Look at the municipalities that you jotted down in question #1, and note their
demographic figures as well. What happens when urbanity is included as a third variable?
Do urban municipalities have higher or lower HDI scores? Higher or lower GDP? Why?

The Human Development Index aims measure development through a more human-
focused lens. In other words, it looks at factors such as education, health and opportunity
as opposed to purely economic indicators such as GDP. Generally, scholars agree that
economic development alone does not universally reduce poverty. Just because an
economy is growing, does not mean that the benefits of that growth will be evenly
distributed. In the case of the Amazon this is especially apparent. With the arrival of a
large mine, some work opportunities will be generated for local populations, but most of
the profit will go to large multi-national corporations (MNCs) and only a small portion of
these profits may be reinvested locally. There is a strong case against allowing MNCs to
come in and compromise the ecology of the region. However, we must also keep in mind
that industry brings much needed jobs to a deeply impoverished region of Brazil. People
frequently must move to urban areas to find jobs, which remain scarce, in order to lift
themselves from subsistence-level poverty. We can romanticize the ecological purity of
subsistence-living but it is difficult to argue against opportunities for people in the region
to seek better lives through jobs and opportunity. The question is: How to provide
opportunities that will not compromise the environment, and will ensure reinvestment in
the communities themselves?

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PROTECTED AREAS:

Protected areas in Brazil can be divided into two broad categories: Sustainable use areas
and Integral protection reserves. Within each category there are many subtypes of
protected areas, which also vary depending on whether they are managed at the federal
or the state level. In this section we will look at two different protected areas, REBIO
Maicuru which is an Integral protection reserve and the FLONA Saracá-Taquera, which
is a Sustainable use reserve.

When you click on a protected area, you should get this visual:

Each protected area’s pop-up bubble will contain the following information. Numbers 1-6
appear in a bolded header above the main table.

1) The specific category of the protected area, referring to the prefix of its name. For
example, REBIO Maicuru is a Biodiversity Reserve, or Reserva Biologica in
Portuguese, thus the REBIO in its name.

2) Refers to the level of management. REBIO Maicuru is managed by the state of

Amapá. Federal reserves may have more access to resources, but face unique
management challenges due to the difficulty of administering large territories from
a distance in the federal capital.

3) The general category of use: either integral protection or sustainable use.

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 4) The Brazilian state in which the protected area is located.

5) The physical area of the reserve, in hectares.

6) The year the protected area was created.

In the table there is more detailed information about the protected area, often described
in text.

7) The official decree that created the protected area and the year it was legalized.

8) Where available, this data designates how many people or how many families live
within the protected area. By law, Integral protection reserves should prohibit any
human activity, unless specifically approved by the governing authorities for
research or tourism. In reality, it is difficult to monitor and enforce this law in
practice. In most Sustainable use reserves, communities are allowed to continue
to exist within the boundaries of the area (in REBIOs pre-existing communities
would be evicted), however, they are forbidden from commercializing any natural
resources within the boundaries of the park. This makes the livelihoods of these
communities quite difficult to come by, for they neither own the land they live on,
nor do they have the right to exploit its resources beyond reasonable subsistence
uses. Some Sustainable use reserves such as RESEX (Extractive reserves) or
RDS (Sustainable development reserves), are exceptions to this rule. Although
communities do not have collective ownership of the land under law, they are
permitted to commercially exploit resources found on the land, with government
approval.

9) Indicates any salient cultural features of populations residing within the area.

10) Lists economic activities which underpin the livelihoods of communities residing
within the boundaries of the protected area.

11) Points to any salient environmental/political/social threats to the protected area

(i.e. Any legal or illegal extractive activities which pose a threat to the ecosystem
or to the territorial integrity of the area).

12) Lists any community organizations that support resident populations.

13) The TCU index. This index has been elaborated independently by Brazil’s federal
courts. It measures the level of implementation of a protected area based on 14
different factors and gives a general score between 0 and 4. Look carefully at the
different indicators as they indicate the ways in which protected areas should be
managed in order for them to have a physical presence and degree of
implementation, beyond their colourful shapes on maps of the region.

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EXERCISE #1: REBIO MAICURU

#1: Read through the list of environmental threats to the REBIO Maicuru. Notice that
these include extensive illegal mining and illegal landing strips for small planes. Recall
that all human activity is supposedly forbidden in an Integral protection reserve. Turn up
the transparency on the shapefile for for the REBIO Maicuru and zoom in to try and spot
any of these illegal operations.

To turn up the transparency follow these steps:

§ First scroll through the toolbar on the left and find the REBIO. Left click on it and
go to > Get Info

§ Under “Get Info” go to the the “Style, Colour” tab and turn the Opacity in Area
(where the 50% is highlighted in the image below) down to 0% to be able to see
best. You can always turn it back to 50% (or whatever you prefer) after you
complete the exercise.

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Once the transparency is turned down, start exploring, see what evidence of illegal mining
you can find.

It can be difficult to tell what the deforestation patches are due to exactly, especially since
the closer you zoom in, the more clarity of the resolution on the satellite images diminishes.
Still, you can surely imagine the value of this technology for detecting threats to territorial
integrity and instances of deforestation and illegal activities within the boundaries of such
vast and isolated regions of the Amazon, which are extremely difficult to monitor and
access otherwise.

#2: Given what we know about the REBIO Maicuru, and the threats it faces from illegal
activities, let’s look at its TCU index and think about the relationship between monitoring
capacity and the ability to enforce the boundaries of environmental reserves. Look at the
scores for the REBIO Maicuru and think about how these might relate to the illegal activity
within its boundaries. How might technologies such as satellite imaging play a bigger role
in monitoring such activities? What are their limitations?

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EXERCISE #2: FLONA SARACÁ-TAQUERA

The FLONA Saracá-Taquera is a fascinating case of Sustainable use reserves gone

wrong; it illustrates many of the things that can go array when conservation areas are
poorly managed, or when political interests get in the way of ecological principles.

#1: Click on the Saracá-Taquera info bubble and read up on the case of the MRN bauxite
mine, and the conflicts over contested land claims from Quilombola communities in the
area. If you speak Portuguese, you can also read the article cited in the information bubble
or watch the video by Agência Pública.

#2: Turn down the opacity of the shape file for the FLONA and find the MRN mine. Use
the time lapse feature to observe how the mine has changed over time. You may also
observe changes to the river itself, the surrounding towns, and the forest cover of the
park. (Look especially between 2017 and 1984).

#2 b) Now look at the municipality of Oriximiná, especially at the municipality’s

GDP compared to the profit figures of the MRN mine ($R361 million in 2015).
Recall the previous exercise relating GDP to HDMI and urbanity. Think again about
the trade offs between developing industry and prioritizing conservation and
human-focused development.

#3: Given what you have read in the information bubble (and maybe the Agência Pública
article), how do you think the situation might change if the Quilombola communities
around Porto Trombetas receive their land title? What conflicts of interest could arise from
the dynamics of this situation?

QUILOMBOLA TERRITORIES

Quilombos are ethnic communities of Afro-Brazilians descended from escaped and

liberated slaves; they conserve unique religious and cultural traditions. Quilombola
territories are titled through the INCRA, Brazil’s ministry for land reform. In order to receive
INCRA approval, Quilombola communities must go through a rather elaborate process
which involves developing a community organization which represents the residents and
will technically be the holder of the land. The INCRA process also requires an
anthropologist to visit the community and create report which must evaluate the
“authenticity” of the claim. This process is understandably lengthy, even when
unobstructed by other factors. As we saw in the previous case with the FLONA Saracá-
Taquera, when there is overlap between territorial claims of protected areas and
Quilombola lands, the process can be blocked for decades. For this exercise, we will look
at a group of Quilombola territories and delve into some of the cultural aspects of those
titled lands that do exist.

When you click on a Quilombola territory you’ll get a pop-up that looks like this:

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The following information appears in the pop-up:

1) The type of territory

2) The state in which it is located

3) The area of the territory (in hectares)

4) The year it was titled

5) The year and legal decree

6) Number of families residing in the area

7) Some information about cultural particularities of communities in the region

8) Economic activities and sources of livelihood

9) Environmental threats/ or threats to territorial integrity

10) A list of community organizations

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Because many Quilombola territories are isolated and locally governed, there is a relative
scarcity of data. You may notice that some Quilombola territories do not have much
information. This is because data can be hard to come by, and no truly comprehensive
database really exists for all Quilombola territories in Brazil. The Commissão Pro-Indio
de São Paulo, an NGO which assists with Quilombola land claims, gets pretty close –
through their website you can search almost any Quilombola territory by name- although
even they have only fragments of data for many territories.

Luckily, the municipality of Oriximiná is home to a number of well-established Quilombola

communities and a beautiful website with a wealth of information on Quilombola traditions
and culture throughout he area.

#1: You’re invited to navigate through the map and look at the different Quilombola
territories throughout Oriximiná. Turn down the transparency, try to spot towns and
communities, and how they have changed over time.

#2: Afterwards, you can navigate to http://www.quilombo.org.br/ and surf through the
website to look at pictures and read more about Quilombola culture in Oriximiná (although
the text is in Portuguese).

#3: Check out this link: http://www.quilombo.org.br/tradicoes-festas-e-lazer , and scroll to

the bottom of the page to listen to some samples of Quilombola music in Oriximiná.

INDIGENOUS TERRITORIES

Indigenous territories are commissioned and overseen by the FUNAI, Brazil’s ministry for
indigenous affairs. The FUNAI is a federal organ of the government, so management of
the territories is loosely administered through regional bureaus. Its centralized nature
poses a challenge for monitoring territorial integrity and enforcing the boundaries of
indigenous lands. For this reason, many indigenous communities report frequent
incursions into their territories by illegal miners, loggers and other unwelcome visitors.
There is also a general lack of state presence in the form of public goods and services.
Many indigenous communities in the Amazon live a subsistence lifestyle, and adhere to
traditions and customs passed down from their ancestors, nevertheless, there is a general
stereotype of indigenous communities as frozen in time, and sometimes deviation from
common stereotypes can lead to a questioning of their “authenticity”. In this platform,
many of the images of indigenous communities depict indigenous groups in traditional
activities which adhere to stereotypical perceptions. Of course, the author would like to
provide imagery more representative of contemporary indigenous culture, however a
paucity of open-source images has prevented this at the present stage of the Calha Norte
portal. This reflects the stereotypes which still govern how indigenous people are
portrayed today. Still, it is important to remember that indigenous culture, like any culture,

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is never fixed in time or immune to outside influence. Indigenous communities in practice
are not so different from their Quilombola and ribeirinho neighbours. They often scrape
by on a subsistence base, and face similar threats from outsiders to usurp the natural
resources on which they depend.

The indigenous cultures represented in this database are fascinating and unique, and it
is worth learning more about the different indigenous ethnicities that can be found
throughout the region. Keep in mind as you read that ethnicities are loose and fluid, an
indigenous person may not identify with a single ethnicity, and likely does not adhere to
all the cultural traditions associated with that ethnicity, sometimes by choice, sometimes
not. Still, understanding the wide diversity of cultures, languages and cosmologies that
populate the Amazon region is a fascinating and fundamental exercise in understanding
the wealth of human civilization throughout the area and which existed long before the
arrival of Europeans.

When you click on an indigenous territory you will see a pop-up similar to the one for
Quilombola territories (pictured below). All the categories of information follow the same
format (refer to the Quilombola example on page 16 of this guide).

#1: For this activity, simply surf through the different indigenous territories and read a bit
about each of the different ethnicities. Keep in mind how these categories are fluid.

#2: For those indigenous territories that list mining as one of the environmental threats,
see if you can find any evidence of mining sites by turning down the opacity, zooming in
and navigating around, as you may have done in Exercise #1 of the Protected Areas
section, with the REBIO Maicuru.

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PART THREE: Bibliographical notes

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES:

The data for this project came out of a research internship that with Imazon, a
conservation NGO based in Belem. The goal of the project was to develop an information
database that would serve as the basis for a website about the Calha Norte area. After I
left Imazon the project was continued by my colleagues at the institute. I retained the
Excel sheet in which I had compiled the data, and this spreadsheet became the
framework from which I built this project. The data from the project was compiled from a
number of sources, however, given the immensity of the region, and the difficulty of
gathering and maintaining up-to-date information about each of the protected areas, data
is missing where it is unavailable.

The resources that I used for this project are the following:

• For protected areas information was gathered from Management Plans (Plano de
Manejo) either from ICMBio (the federal organ), or from the state-level ministries
of the environment, Ideflorbio for Pará and SEMA for Amapá.
o icmbio.gov.br. (ICMBio)
o ideflorbio.pa.gov.br (Ideflorbio)
o sema.ap.gov.br (SEMA)

• Where management plans were not available, I referred to the Instituto

Socioambiental (ISA), which has a comprehensive database of basic info on all of
the protected areas in Brazil, and the nation’s indigenous territories.
o You can search protected areas by name here:
https://uc.socioambiental.org/

• For indigenous territories I also used the ISA database. They have a designated
website called “De Olho nas Terras Indigenas no Brasil” where you can search by
indigenous territory and by ethnic group.
o https://terrasindigenas.org.br/

• For Quilombola territories I used the Commissão Pro-Indio de São Paulo database,
which is fairly comprehensive for basic information such as the area and legal
status of particular territories. It is deficient in terms of cultural information,
economic activities and environmental threats.
o You can search Quilombola territories by name here:
http://www.cpisp.org.br/terras/asp/pesquisa_terras_form.aspx

• For the municipal data, I mostly relied on the IBGE (Brazil’s statistics bureau) for
historical information on the municipalities, as well as for area, GDP, and
population figures.

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 o You can search by municipality here: http://www.cidades.ibge.gov.br/
o For GDP figures click here:
http://www.sidra.ibge.gov.br/bda/tabela/listabl.asp?z=p&o=31&i=P&c=593
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o For deforestation by municipality click here:
http://www.dpi.inpe.br/prodesdigital/prodesmunicipal.php

• TCU data on the implementation of protected areas is available from Brazil’s
Tribunal das Contas da União. You can find the report from which I extracted the
data here: http://portal2.tcu.gov.br/portal/pls/portal/docs/2642553.PDF

Additional articles, dissertations, documentaries were occasionally necessary to
supplement the information from the above sources. For example, the article from
Agência Pública, on bauxite mining in the FLONA Saracá-Taquera. Where external
sources have been used, they have been cited properly within the appropriate information
bubble.

The images and photos which appear throughout the project have mostly been taken
from a variety of internet sources. They are all cited appropriately within the project itself.

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