Expertise in biotic environment and hydroelectric projects: assessments and mitigation of impacts on the River Juruena basin, Mato Grosso

• Grant number: 15/17349-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: January 01, 2016
• End date: December 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Anna Catarina Morawska Vianna
• Grantee: Ana Cecília Oliveira Campos
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims at developing an ethnography of the techniques used in environmental impact assessments of biotic environments and their corresponding mitigation measures as part of the environmental licensing of hydroelectric projects in the Juruena River Basin, Mato Grosso. The expertise of those who produce reports and documents that are part of the environmental licensing is the life sciences, which account for calculating both the impacts of the projects (in impact assessments) and how to minimize them (the mitigation measures). An anthropological questioning of the techniques involved in producing data of such kind leads to some of the central questions of this research: What techniques involve the selection and mobilization of the fauna and flora in environmental impact assessments of the biotic environment? How are the environmental impacts calculated (the techniques that determine and quantify changes)? How are they the impacts in the fauna and flora made compatible with mitigation measures? The objective of this research project is to discuss how techniques are deployed in producing a biota in areas of hydropower projects, considered here as a particular context of data gathering/production which is linked not only to the technical-scientific procedures but also to legal and administrative ones. (AU)