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Looking beyond a normative analysis of oil palm expansion, this paper offers a nuanced analysis of landscape transformations in the Brazilian Amazonian region of Tomé-Açu. Based on quantitative and qualitative data deriving from interviews with key stakeholders, focus groups and surveys with smallholders and migrant workers, contextualized and cross-checked with observations between 2011 and 2017 and secondary sources, we discuss the processes and outcomes of Brazil's Sustainable Oil Palm Production Program (SPOPP). Despite its participatory component and innovative design, simultaneously tackling environmental, economic and social dimensions, the program underwent rapid structural change and suffered from discontinuity. A new boom and bust cycle emerged in the region, however, both "boom" and "bust" periods were marked by mixed outcomes. Notwithstanding the current governance shift characterized by absent state, reduced participation and disinvestment, local agency has been able to reorganize the sector on the ground and a transformed landscape emerged. However, under the current setting if expansion recommences there is no guarantee the sector will be able to avoid many of the socio-environmental problems experienced in the past. • SPOPP is an example of the emergence of participatory governance modes in the Brazilian Amazon. • SPOPP triggered a new boom and bust cycle in the researched region. • Outcomes of both cycles were mixed, from euphoria and criticism to disenchantment and reorganization. • Despite state withdrawal and reduced participatory governance the sector reconfigured under local and global drivers. • If expansion recommences there are several socio-environmental risks under the current governance shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The conventional understanding of environmental governance implicitly assumes a priori presence of citizen rationality that underpins constitution of civil society vis-à-vis state. This assumption tends to overlook the economic and ecological consequences of social interactions through which people with diverse forms of rationality gradually produce distinction between state and society and shape environmental governance as an embedded process. This paper presents a case study of spontaneous settlers called posseiros in the south-east of the state of Pará in the Brazilian Amazon and examines ways that their social interactions lead to the so-called emancipation movements for municipal making on the agrarian frontier and open civic places in which environmental governance is negotiated. It pays particular attention to the role of religion, especially the Pentecostal Church of Assembly of God in relation to the traditional Catholic Church, in influencing the posseiros' ecological rationality and the articulation of emancipation movements and argues that the focus on religion sheds new light on the linkage between the environment, livelihoods and local governance. The paper concludes by discussing pragmatic implications of the case study for promoting sustainable rural development. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Over the last decades, hundreds of thousands of families have settled in the Brazilian Amazon within the framework of the Agrarian Reform Program (ARP). The rationale behind the program is to enable settlers to earn their living by small-scale farming and producing an agricultural surplus for the market. This paper aims to analyze the settlers' livelihood strategies under the framework of the ARP and its objectives. The paper considers more than just land use shares. Income composition, capital (human, physical, natural, social, and financial), mediating process, and context are also included, and these reveal three groups of livelihood strategies. Most of the settlers have achieved the ARP goals, mainly by deploying livestock strategies, particularly milk production. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]