Forest citizenship for disaster resilience: learning from COVID-19

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Citizenship from below, a process through which marginalized peoples self-organize to create citizenship through claiming recognition and rights, is crucial to disaster recovery, resilience, and societal renewal and reportedly being drawn upon in responses to COVID-19. Brazilian Amazonia provides an arena to examine how marginalized people---disproportionately affected by COVID-19---are using citizenship to mitigate the pandemic's negative societal effects, supporting a bounce forward to greater resilience in the post-pandemic world. Amazonians engage in forest citizenship, which we define as struggles for recognition from different institutions, enabling claiming of rights from those institutions (e.g. territorial rights). We see COVID-19 as a rupture that forest citizenship can respond positively to, delivering societal renewal through improved democratic governance and political participation. FORTE assembles a multi-disciplinary team to understand and enhance forest peoples' collective action and transformational change in strengthening disaster resilience. We will advance empirical and theoretical understandings of forest citizenship---placing approaches to citizenship and resilience from Brazil, the US, and UK into dialogue---through a Trans-Atlantic research network supporting on-the-ground improvements in disaster resilience. Our objectives are:(1) quantify linkages between forest citizenship and COVID-19 resilience;(2) understand practices of forest citizenship in relation to COVID-19 experiences;(3) understand and disseminate learning on conditions for promoting forest citizenship and enhancing disaster resilience across Amazonia. We address these through three interlinked Work Packages (WPs): quantitative analysis of secondary health, governance and environmental data (entire Brazilian Amazon) (WP1), qualitative fieldwork in selected municipalities in Amazonas and Acre State (WP2), and action-research (WP3). Our research is based in an interdisciplinary and non-hierarchical 'team science,' which includes diverse voices, kinds of knowledge and value systems (including those of forest peoples), leading to better outcomes. Our ambition is for the project's legacy to be a Brazilian Amazonian society which is more equal, inclusive and resilient.