“Cooperatives in the spotlight, profit in the companies' pockets”: behind the scenes of the sociobioeconomy in marginalized Amazonian communitiesAbstract
Abstract This study critically analyzed the effects of raw material supply contracts and benefit-sharing agreements for access to traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources, signed between companies and agro-extractive cooperatives in the Amazon, questioning their effectiveness in promoting socio-environmental justice. Semistructured questionnaires and textual analysis were integrated using qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Data collected during interviews with 107 cooperative members from ten communities in the state of Pará, Brazil, were analyzed. Results indicated a lack of contractual transparency and weaknesses in cooperative governance, which directly affect the communities involved. Most cooperative members are unaware of the terms of the benefit-sharing agreements and the current legislation (Law no. 13.123/2015), while the benefits are specific and limited. Our analysis suggested that, rather than promoting autonomy, the sociobioeconomy has been captured by the market logic that reinforces the subordination of communities. Thus, this study contributed to deepening critical debates on the bioeconomy in the Amazon by showing how legal and institutional mechanisms legitimize asymmetrical relations under the discourses of social inclusion and sustainability.
Keywords:
agro-extractivism; traditional knowledge; benefit-sharing; cooperative governance; power asymmetries
Resumo
Resumo Este estudo analisa criticamente os efeitos dos contratos de fornecimento de matéria-prima e acordos de repartição de benefícios pelo acesso ao conhecimento tradicional associado ao patrimônio genético, firmados entre empresas e cooperativas agroextrativistas da Amazônia, questionando sua eficácia na promoção da justiça socioambiental. Utilizando metodologia qualiquantitativa que integra questionários semiestruturados e análise textual, foram analisados dados coletados em entrevistas com 107 cooperados em dez comunidades rurais do estado do Pará. Os resultados indicam um cenário de falta de transparência contratual e fragilidades na governança cooperativa, com impactos diretos sobre as comunidades envolvidas. A maioria dos cooperados desconhece os termos dos acordos de repartição de benefícios e a legislação vigente (Lei n.º 13.123/2015), enquanto os benefícios percebidos são pontuais e limitados. A análise aponta que, longe de promover autonomia, a sociobioeconomia tem sido capturada por lógicas mercantis que reforçam a subordinação das comunidades. Assim, o artigo contribui para aprofundar os debates críticos sobre a bioeconomia na Amazônia ao revelar como dispositivos jurídicos e institucionais legitimam relações assimétricas sob os discursos de inclusão social e sustentabilidade.
Palavras-chave:
agroextrativismo; conhecimento tradicional; repartição de benefícios; governança cooperativa; assimetrias de poder
1 Introduction
Bioeconomy1 has emerged as a response to the socio-environmental crisis2, combining environmental conservation, social inclusion, and economic growth on a global scale (Ollinaho & Kröger, 2023; Ciervo, 2025; Fattori & Souza, 2025). In the Amazon, however, its application reveals contradictions; sustainability narratives coexist with practices that reinforce inequalities and compromise the central role of traditional knowledge (Santilli, 2005; Araujo & Araujo, 2024). By assuming bioeconomy as the only possible model, the plurality of ways of life and local economies in the Amazon is disregarded. In this context, bioeconomy functions as a homogenizing mechanism, reducing the complexity of the Amazon into a productivist approach. Thus, it overlooks forms of existence and resistance that do not fit market logic (Bastos Lima & Palme, 2021; Garrett et al., 2023; Vieira et al., 2024).
The sociobioeconomy, a branch of bioeconomy that values traditional knowledge, prioritizes the protagonism of the peoples who live in the forest and promotes social inclusion, equity, and conservation based on sociobiodiversity (Garrett et al., 2023; Ferreira et al., 2024; Brasil, 2015). Garrett et al. (2023) highlighted that the Amazonian sociobioeconomy can be considered sustainable only if associated with valuing standing forests, keeping rivers flowing, and strengthening the territorial economy of the local population. Therefore, bioeconomic models guided exclusively by market logic tend to reproduce historical inequalities and limit community autonomy.
In addition, sociobioeconomy aims to promote fair benefit-sharing arising from access to genetic resources (GR) and associated traditional knowledge (ATK) (Brasil, 2025a; Ferreira et al., 2024). Although legal instruments in Brazil, such as the Biodiversity Law and benefit-sharing agreements (BSA)3, have been created for that purpose, there are still significant challenges for the effective implementation of these instruments, especially related to traditional communities accessing benefits from them and, above all, fair redistribution of revenue generated from products developed through this access (Dias, 2018; Sousa et al., 2018; Folhes & Folhes, 2023; Shiraishi Neto & Porro, 2024).
Agro-extractive cooperatives play a key role in mediating relationships between companies and communities that supply products from sociobiodiversity. Although these organizations are considered spaces for participatory governance and economic democracy, they may face institutional weaknesses, power concentration, and limitations due to organizational models that prioritize specific production lines (Witkoski et al., 2020; Rocha et al., 2024). These dynamics can compromise community autonomy and contribute to workplace alienation, in which productive effort is separated from the value generated, as discussed by Marx (2023).
In the Amazon, agro-extractive cooperatives vary in their relationships with companies in the cosmetics industry and their BSA adoption. This variation involves different forms of relationships between cooperatives and companies. In some cases, commercial interaction is limited to product supply, without BSA. In other cases, there are formal mechanisms for monetary payments to cooperative families under BSA. Some cooperatives receive cash payments under BSA but do not distribute them to their cooperative members. Others do not receive cash payments under BSA but instead receive compensation in the form of services or goods. This heterogeneity reflects different levels of economic inclusion, governance, and socio-environmental impact, which directly affect the autonomy and living conditions of the communities (Dias, 2018; Araujo & Araujo, 2024).
Questioning whether the commercial relationships between companies, cooperatives, and communities meet sociobioeconomy assumptions is critical for showing the gap between discourse and practice. Thus, we conducted this study in ten agro-extractive communities in the state of Pará, Brazil. We critically analyzed the effects of raw material supply contracts and the BSA signed between companies in the cosmetic industry and Amazonian agro-extractive cooperatives. We aimed to understand how these agreements influence the way of life of cooperative communities, considering the socioeconomic and environmental effects, as well as the challenges in governance and equality in accessing socio-biodiversity resources under the Biodiversity Law.
This study considers the hypothesis that, by combining power asymmetries in negotiations, insufficient governance in cooperatives, and limited knowledge of the legislation by cooperative members, the BSA signed between companies and Amazonian agro-extractive cooperatives has not promoted, effectively and equitably, structural improvements in the life conditions of the communities and cooperative families.
In addition to a theoretical contribution to the critical dialogue on sociobioeconomy, this study aimed to enhance public policies on cooperative governance and benefit-sharing, as well as safeguard the rights of Amazonian agro-extractive communities.
2 Theoretical Foundation
2.1 Marxist Critique of the Homogeneous Bioeconomy: The Illusion of a Single Model for the Diverse “Amazons”
While Marx, by criticizing political economy, argues that the logic of capital tends to centralize productive processes, extract value from natural resources and labor, and reproduce structural inequalities, Max Weber considers that modern economic rationality, by shaping social practices, forces uniform and disciplinary patterns on different contexts. This criticism shows how expanding the instrumental logic of the market and bureaucracy imposes universal patterns that disregard specific sociocultural contexts.
For Weber, capitalist modernity functions by the standardization of rules and procedures that convert social relationships into technical and interpersonal processes, a phenomenon that Weber linked to the "disenchantment of the world." In the contemporary Amazon, this rationality is expressed through the institutionalization of productive protocols, certifications, and training that aim to align agro-extractive communities with global market demands, converting traditional knowledge into administrative routines. This dynamic contributes to the bureaucratization of day-to-day cooperative operations, limiting local autonomy and replacing collective decision-making with external rules guided by economic efficiency.
By bridging Weber (2013) and Marx (2023) in the analysis of the relationship between agro-extractive cooperatives and companies in the cosmetic industry, we can observe that the bureaucratic rationalization reinforces labor alienation, since it separates the cooperative members from the value generated by their productive effort and distances them from the cultural and symbolic sense of their extractive practices, reducing them to mere technical operations. Almeida & Tourinho (2022) showed how the Amazonian bioeconomy, particularly in the cosmetic industry, appropriates forest knowledge and esthetics while subordinating agro-extractive cooperatives to industrial and commercial standards, converting them into executors of the global value chains without ensuring cultural recognition or proportional benefits. This economic and cultural cleavage highlights that a homogeneous bioeconomy4, supported by disciplinary and standardizing approaches, tends to subordinate community practices to commercial and bureaucratic mechanisms, limiting their capacity for self-determination.
Thus, bioeconomy, as a contested concept, cannot be understood homogeneously (Bastos Lima & Palme, 2021; Vieira et al., 2024). Pimenta & Azevedo (2020) showed that reducing bioeconomy to a single model renders diverse social realities invisible and disregards structural inequalities that characterize the Brazilian context. In the Amazon, the appropriation of natural resources and traditional knowledge by market logic does not always produce direct benefits for local communities (Bergamo et al., 2022; Lopes & Chiavari, 2022). From an institutional perspective, Coase (1937) argues that organizations emerged as mechanisms for economic coordination to reduce transactional costs in market relationships. For Amazonian agro-extractive cooperatives, these structures play a key role in mediating between traditional communities and private companies; however, they cannot always reduce informational asymmetries and power inequalities in these relationships.
The inclusive bioeconomy category, proposed by Pimenta & Azevedo (2020), aims to integrate environmental conservation with social inclusion and the prominent role of traditional knowledge holders. Lopes & Chiavari (2022) highlight that the Amazonian bioeconomy remains marked by conceptual and institutional ambiguities, including different interpretations of sustainable development, environmental conservation, and biodiversity-based economic activities. According to the authors, the absence of higher regulatory coordination and institutional mechanisms focused on community inclusion tends to increase asymmetries among companies, cooperatives, and traditional communities.
Paula Filho & Meirelles (2026) argue that organizational models are structured by dynamic processes of value creation, configuration, and appropriation, coordinating resources, capacities, governance mechanisms, and activities throughout supply chains. In the Amazonian context, these dimensions became particularly relevant to the disputes over sociobiodiversity, territorial organization, and distribution of economic benefits derived from the use of biodiversity. According to Domingues & Rover (2026), access to technical and organizational services in Brazilian rural areas remains strongly influenced by economic, territorial, and institutional factors, promoting supply chains that are more deeply integrated into markets and territories characterized by greater economic dynamics.
From an international perspective, Levidow, Birch & Papaioannou (2013) argue that the knowledge-based bioeconomy (KBBE), promoted in Europe, is consolidated as an agenda strongly oriented by technological innovation and economic competitiveness, often subordinating social and ecological concerns to market demands. The authors demonstrated that different paradigms of bioeconomy coexist in conflict and highlighted that models exclusively centered on productive efficiency tend to reproduce asymmetries and marginalize local knowledge and social organization. This criticism interacts directly with the Amazonian context analyzed in this study, in which the sociobioeconomy can function as a commodification of sociobiodiversity behind discourses of sustainable inclusion.
The relationships established between agro-extractive cooperatives and private companies can also be understood based on the institutional perspective proposed by Coase (1937) and Williamson (1985). According to them, organizations and economic contracts function as coordinating mechanisms to reduce transaction costs and manage conflicts. However, in contexts characterized by deep social and informational inequalities, these structures can reproduce power asymmetries and limit local actors' decision-making autonomy.
2.2 “New Outfit, Old Patterns”: Who Benefits from Benefit-Sharing in Brazil?
Benefit distribution refers to the sharing of economic and financial gains throughout the value chain, reflecting power relationships and market dynamics (Bastos Lima & Palme, 2021; Bergamo et al., 2022). In contrast, benefit-sharing associated with GR and ATK focuses on legal and ethical obligations to fairly share profits from finished products that use GR and ATK with the communities that own these resources, according to the Convention on Biological Diversity and Biodiversity Law (Brasil, 2015).
Benefit-sharing is a central and politically sensitive aspect of the relationships between companies and communities that hold traditional knowledge, reflecting the conflicts for recognition, power, and justice in the bioeconomy. Brazil was the first country to regulate access to this knowledge by establishing the Provisional Measure No. 2.186-16/2001, aligned with the Convention on Biological Diversity (Brasil, 2001). However, its practical implementation remained deficient (Araujo & Araujo, 2024).
The Biodiversity Law reformulated the benefit-sharing logic by linking its purpose to the type of access: GR or ATK. When access involves only GR, the Union is recognized as the beneficiary, receiving the funds to be allocated by governmental agencies. For ATK, the benefits extend, at least formally, to family farmers, indigenous peoples, extractivists, and traditional communities (Brasil, 2015). This distinction reveals a paradox: by overlooking the interconnection between GR and ATK in practice in the territories, the Law undermines collective rights and local autonomy regarding the management of financial resources for benefit-sharing.
Benefit-sharing can take monetary or non-monetary modalities, both associated with FNRB5, as presented in Table 1. When accessing GR or ATK from an unidentifiable source, the user must deposit 1% of the annual net income derived from the sales of a specific finished product or reproductive material (or up to 0.1% by sector agreement) to FNRB (Brasil, 2015).
Modality, purpose, and amount of benefit-sharing based on the object of access according to the Biodiversity Law
When sharing ATK from an unidentifiable source, companies must combine a direct agreement with the community holding the traditional knowledge and the transfer of 0.5% of the annual net income to FNRB (Table 1), ensuring sharing with co-holders (Paragraph 3 of Article 47 of Decree No. 8.772/2016). In practice, this model shows the complexities and ambiguities among legality, distributive justice, and effective inclusion of communities.
Benefit-sharing in the non-monetary modality, applied to access to ATK from an identifiable source, is provided by Paragraph 3 of Article 47 and Article 50 of Decree No. 8.772/2016. This modality must involve direct agreements with indigenous peoples, traditional communities, and traditional farmers, establishing the contributions provided by Item II of Article 19 of Law No. 13.123/2015 (Brasil, 2015, 2016). Although it is provided by law, this sharing is rarely enforced and often characterized by power asymmetries and a lack of collective decision-making (Dias, 2018; Witkoski et al., 2020).
Non-monetary benefit-sharing, despite the name, can include monetary payments from companies to suppliers. More frequently, it covers actions, such as training in forest conservation, public access to products with no intellectual property, donations to social programs, free licensing, technology transfer, and projects for biodiversity and traditional knowledge protection, preferably implemented in the territory of origin (Sousa et al., 2018; Brasil, 2015, 2016; Araujo & Araujo, 2024). However, these initiatives tend to be ineffective and welfare-oriented, limiting community autonomy (Dias, 2018; Witkoski et al., 2020). In this context, analyzing the effects of the Biodiversity Law is crucial to create safeguards that ensure a fair bioeconomy and prevent legitimizing inequalities.
3 Methodology
The fieldwork aimed to directly understand how raw supply contracts and BSA affect productive practices, cooperative governance, and local ways of life. It highlighted contradictions between the purposes of these instruments and their practical effects on communities' autonomy, power distribution, and socioeconomic and environmental strategies.
The methodological procedures were based on a quantitative-qualitative approach. The study analyzed how cooperative members understand socioeconomic, environmental, and political-institutional dynamics in their local contexts. The transformations in the productive systems, the motivation to participate in cooperatives, and the impacts of BSAs through access to ATK were analyzed. The research process enabled us to identify contradictions, tensions, and asymmetries between formal market arrangements and traditional practices of the Amazonian sociobiodiversity.
The fieldwork was conducted in ten agro-extractive communities in the state of Pará, Brazil, located in the municipalities of Bragança, Santo Antônio do Tauá, Cametá, Abaetetuba, Breves, Capanema, Irituia, São Miguel do Guamá, Igarapé-Miri, and Santa Luzia do Pará (Figure 1).
Among the ten communities analyzed, five were related to cooperatives that signed BSAs, while the remaining cooperatives did not have this legal instrument. To preserve information confidentiality, communities' names, cooperatives, and companies in the cosmetic industry were coded.
A semistructured questionnaire was used6 to characterize the agro-extractive communities and analyze cooperative members' perceptions and limitations regarding their participation in cooperatives and BSAs, as well as their understanding of current challenges. Purposive sampling (Marconi & Lakatos, 2017) identified cooperative members from ten selected communities that integrate different agro-extractive cooperatives. These cooperatives have raw supply contracts and may or may not have BSA with companies. The questionnaire consisted of objective and subjective questions. It was conducted between February and May, 2025, with 107 cooperative members. This amount represents 75.3% of the overall sample of 142 cooperative members distributed among the ten selected communities, ensuring broad coverage of the study population and greater analytical robustness. Among the participants, 59 (55.1%) were male, and 48 (44.9%) were female, with an average age of 47.3 years.
Although purposive sampling enabled us to access cooperative members directly involved in the dynamics analyzed, we recognize that this procedure can introduce selection bias, since we selected participants based on criteria related to cooperative membership and their availability to participate in the research. Therefore, our results are not intended to be statistically representative of all Amazonian agro-extractive cooperatives, but rather an analytical and interpretative approach focused on understanding the context under investigation. The broad coverage of the study population (75.3% of cooperative members from the selected communities) can reduce the sampling limitations and increase the analytical consistency of the findings.
In addition, we recognize potential bias in participants' perceptions, particularly regarding institutional relationships, governance conflicts, and the evaluation of cooperatives and companies. To minimize these limitations, triangulation procedures for both objective and subjective questions were adopted. A comparison was made between communities with and without BSAs, which enabled greater consistency in interpreting findings.
The questionnaire for data collection was based on specialized literature on cooperative governance, sociobioeconomy, and benefit-sharing. Before administration, the questionnaire underwent technical analysis by researchers in environmental sciences and rural development areas. In addition, a pre-test was conducted with cooperative members of a community not included in the final sampling, enabling language, clarity, and adequacy adjustments of the questions to the local sociocultural context.
The questionnaire was structured into two main sets of variables to analyze the cooperative members' perceptions. The first set focused on characterizing the participants: the cooperative's structure and democratic governance, the participation of cooperative members, and their understanding of the decision-making processes and knowledge and evaluation of BSAs. These quantitative data were organized in a spreadsheet and analyzed using descriptive statistics. The estimated sampling error was ±4.7 percentage points, at a 95% confidence level (p=0.5), a parameter that ensures the results' statistical validity.
The second set covered the answers to five subjective questions on the questionnaire that better capture the cooperative members' perceptions of the communities with and without BSAs about the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of the raw supply contracts and the BSAs signed between cooperatives and companies. The questions were: 1) In your opinion, how do the current commercial relationships between your cooperative and companies contribute to your community and family?; 2) What changed in the community from the moment the cooperative started to sell its production to companies?; 3) Was the agro-extractive production of the cooperative members affected after the cooperative signed BSAs with companies?; 4) In your opinion, have collection and management activities performed by the community following the cooperative and companies' actions impacted the environment? How?; and 5) Have you noticed whether raw supply contracts and/or BSAs with companies have affected the community's environmental practices (such as forest preservation, conservation of natural resources, or changes in extractivism)?
The answers to these questions enabled us to analyze how commercial partnerships affect agro-extractive communities' autonomy, sustainability, and living conditions. The answers were organized and analyzed qualitatively using IRaMuTeQ (R Interface for Multidimensional Analysis of Texts and Questionnaires), version 0.8-alpha-7. This approach integrates multivariate statistical procedures into interpretive analysis of social and environmental sciences to reduce the complexity of textual data and highlight significant patterns and relationships. The analysis employed the descending hierarchical classification (DHC), which groups recurring terms into thematic classes based on similarity between text segments (TS), as observed by Winters et al. (2022). Each TS was defined as a block containing up to 40 terms, following the software's methodology guidelines (Camargo & Justo, 2013). With this segmentation, each TS functions as a unit of analysis in DHC, ensuring consistent identification of lexical co-occurrence patterns.
Each thematic class resulting from DHC is characterized by the chi-square (χ2) calculation, which indicates the strength of the association between the terms and their corresponding class. The thematic classes identified by DHC reflected socioeconomic and environmental aspects, enabling us to associate the contents with the questionnaire questions. This procedure provides an intermediate view between the raw results, comprising the direct answers, and a more detailed discourse analysis, which examines patterns of meaning and relationships between the thematic classes. Therefore, the method used not only organized and quantified the answers but also supported the understanding of the impacts of raw supply contracts and BSAs on the economic, social, and environmental life of agro-extractive communities.
4 Results and Discussion
4.1 The Reconfiguration of Community Ties: To What Extent do Agro-extractive Cooperatives Denaturalize their Collective Roots?
In the social organization and governance arrangements, we observed a strong formal membership in cooperative institutions in communities with and without BSAs. Among the cooperative members in communities with and without BSAs, we observed great attendance in meetings and general assemblies. However, in both contexts, the quality of this participation remained a critical point, since a reduced share of the cooperative members (regardless of benefit-sharing) perceived themselves as having an active voice in the decision-making processes (Table 2).
Participation, active voice perception, and governance assessment among cooperative members, 2025
This scenario is reinforced by a broad perception, among cooperative members from communities with and without BSAs, that governance is not organized democratically or collaboratively. The stories indicated recurring management problems such as power concentration by some leaders and a lack of transparency in strategic decision-making (Table 2).
Although 54.2% of the cooperative members declared to be "totally satisfied" with the raw supply contracts and BSA in effect between cooperatives and companies, their reports suggested a satisfaction contingent on the absence of other market alternatives and the expectation of a long-lasting commercial relationship, despite the asymmetric negotiating power. In addition, there is a recurring lack of knowledge about the terms of the contracts signed with companies, since 95.3% of the cooperative members stated that they do not fully understand them, especially the mechanisms of the raw supply contracts and/or BSAs.
Despite the high formal attendance of cooperative members in meetings and general assemblies, the effectiveness of their presence is reduced, since only 17.5% and 18% of respondents with and without BSAs, respectively, felt they had an active voice in the decision-making processes. Our findings highlight that, regardless of BSA, cooperatives' governance structures reveal a centralized-representative pattern, with limited collective decision-making in strategic guidelines, particularly during negotiations with companies.
According to Williamson (1985), economic governance structures are organized to manage transaction costs, contractual conflicts, and risks of opportunism among actors. However, in contexts characterized by institutional and informational asymmetries, these mechanisms can concentrate decision-making power and limit the effective participation of the most socially vulnerable groups.
This configuration is also discussed by Jacaúna (2020), who argues that the Amazonian environmental governance is often structured by asymmetric power networks in which specific actors concentrate decision-making capacity and control over strategic information. Under these conditions, formally participatory mechanisms can operate with low deliberative effectiveness, limiting the autonomy of local communities.
Our results showed that 94.7% of cooperative members from communities with BSAs and 92% of members from communities without BSAs recognize that governance is not democratically organized and shared, which confirms the persistence of practices that concentrate power and the lack of transparency in strategic decision-making. Therefore, the comparison of these two contexts suggests that BSAs do not significantly change governance patterns, which contradicts the principles of economic democracy and self-management (McGinnis & Ostrom, 2014; Jacaúna, 2020) and contributes to undermining trust relationships and community solidarity.
Therefore, the denaturalization7 of collectivities emerges as the insertion of communities into formal market circuits introduces new organizational rationalities, often driven by productivity and efficiency criteria. Although these movements can lead to specific benefits, such as training programs, equipment purchases, and infrastructure improvements, they also require changes in social organization and how productive activities are conducted. This results in gradual changes in community practices and traditional cultural references.
The search for more participatory governance models emerges as a fundamental strategy to reduce internal asymmetries and strengthen elements of solidarity and autonomy that have historically characterized the Amazonian agro-extractive communities (Rocha et al., 2024). In this process, it is important to recognize the role of informal activities—which already significantly contribute to local livelihoods—without assuming their incorporation into the cooperative scope, since their permanence outside the formal structure can represent a source of flexibility, productive diversity, and community autonomy.
4.2 “Showcasing Bioeconomy, Communities in the Shadows”: Who Sets the Rules in the Amazonian Socio-environmental Governance?
Figure 2 presents the dendrogram generated by the DHC, highlighting two main thematic classes based on cooperative members' perceptions of their agro-extractive communities that participate in cooperatives with and without BSAs. Class 1 corresponds to the socioeconomic impacts, derived from answers to questions 1, 2, and 3, while Class 2 represents the environmental impacts, associated with answers to questions 4 and 5. These classes concentrate, respectively, 97.1% and 95.7% of the association of text units with their class (TS), representing a high internal consistency and statistical robustness of the clusters, with statistical significance (p < 0.0001).
Dendrogram generated by DHC presenting the main socioeconomic and environmental impacts among communities in cooperatives with and without BSAs based on the implementation of contracts and agreements with companies, 2025.
Class 1, with 795 TSs, is strongly associated with terms related to social and economic impacts generated through partnerships with companies. Terms such as “resource” (χ2 = 23.5), “advantage” (χ2 = 21.1), “income” (χ2 = 21.7), and “profit” (χ2 = 20.5) showed that, in communities with and without BSAs, the cooperative members' perceptions tend to be guided by market parameters, a recurring feature in the operation of cooperatives. Terms such as “survival” (χ2 = 20.7), “life” (χ2 = 19.5), “livelihood” (χ2 = 18.5), “partnership” (χ2 = 15.4), “family” (χ2 = 15.1), “help” (χ2 = 20.5), and “opportunity” (χ2 = 15.4) also highlighted that these impacts go beyond the economic dimension, affecting aspects associated with improvements in the quality of life and well-being of cooperative families.
Class 2, with 792 TSs, showed terms related to environmental issues, highlighting concerns about the sustainability of production systems. Terms such as “balance” (χ2 = 87.5), “nature” (χ2 = 75.4), “conservation” (χ2 = 72.0), “environment” (χ2 = 85.3), “sustainable” (χ2 = 81.7), and “care” (χ2 = 78.5) suggested that the participants from communities with and without BSAs identify a direct relationship between the contracts and agreements established with companies and the need for conservation of natural resources. In addition, terms such as “extractivism” (χ2 = 28.3), “maintenance” (χ2 = 21.4), “protection” (χ2 = 42.1), “harmony” (χ2 = 30.3), and “collection” (χ2 = 25.7) reflected an understanding of the importance of traditional practices in balancing economic exploitation and environmental conservation.
In Class 2, the high association of terms such as “training” (χ2 = 43.1), “knowledge” (χ2 = 75.7), and “awareness” (χ2 = 25.7) indicated a growing demand for technical and political strengthening of communities due to challenges in socio-environmental governance.
The dendrogram analysis highlighted significant differences between the discursive repertoires of cooperative members from communities with and without BSAs. The lexical associations that structured the two thematic classes differ between the two groups, including both socioeconomic and environmental dimensions.
Our findings related to the environmental dimension do not provide direct ecological evidence of biophysical impacts on ecosystems. Instead, they reflect social representations of conservation provided by cooperative members based on their everyday experience in the relationship between cooperatives and companies. The frequent occurrence of terms such as “balance”, “conservation”, “sustainable”, and “care” in the lexical analysis indicates the internalization of an environmental discursive repertoire that associates the commercial integration of agro-extractivism with forest protection, reflecting perceptions, values, and narratives driven by the context of institutional partnerships. Therefore, the environmental dimension observed in this study should be understood as a context-dependent symbolic and cognitive construction, mediated by technical discourses, contractual demands, and training practices. It does not represent an objective measurement of environmental changes, which would require specific, methodologically distinct biophysical approaches.
The intersection of these two thematic classes, by considering the presence and absence of BSAs, highlights the development of discursive coherence in which economic gains and environmental conservation are integrated as part of the same rationality, which contributes to normalizing the idea that the commercial integration of agro-extractivism is compatible and frequently presented as a driving force toward forest conservation.
However, the dendrogram analysis shows that, despite noticeable material gains among respondents, in communities with and without BSAs, these advances are grounded in a model that still calls for caution regarding its long-term sustainability. The data indicate that increasing income and productivity resulted directly from integration into the formal market, mediated by cooperatives. This suggests that cooperative members understand contracts with companies as mechanisms directly associated with income generation and livelihood maintenance.
The frequency of the term “contract” in both thematic classes, particularly in communities without BSAs, highlights that contracts expand market access and increase income, but are associated with pressure on natural resources and shaping local autonomy through external demands (Sousa et al., 2018). For Jacaúna (2020), this tension between economic benefits and contractual obligations is embedded in a governance structure that operates under power asymmetries, limiting environmental justice and the self-determination of Amazonian communities. Thus, there is an urgent need for governance models that balance economic and environmental justice and consider socio-territorial contexts. The tension between immediate economic gains and socio-environmental risks can compromise the sustainability of cooperatives if they do not restructure the negotiation practices and increase equality in their relationships with companies.
This issue extends beyond the Amazon. Swick (2015) investigated adaptive governance and community development in Appalachian mining regions and demonstrated that models of natural resource management often reproduce power concentration, limiting local communities' capacity to deliberate over their territories. The author emphasized that adaptive policies and participatory forms of governance can only produce effective outcomes when followed by decision-making autonomy, institutional transparency, and community control over economic benefits derived from natural resource exploitation. This perspective reinforces the need to rethink the governance mechanisms of Amazonian agro-extractive cooperatives beyond mere formal inclusion.
Class 1 (socioeconomic) of the discourse analysis indicates that, despite improvements in income and productivity in communities with and without BSAs, market logic is at the center of decisions. This can weaken traditional and community practices that are more oriented by subsistence and sustainability than immediate profit. In contrast, Class 2 (environmental) reflects a sustainability concern by associating business contracts and agreements with the need for natural resource conservation.
However, according to Dias (2018), this perception of balance between economic exploitation and environmental protection conflicts with negotiation practices, which are characterized by power asymmetries between communities and companies. In addition, Carvalho (2025) problematized the bioeconomy as a corporate solution, highlighting that business strategies can instrumentalize environmental discourses and practices, prioritizing market goals over local communities' autonomy and demands.
The lexical analysis showed significant differences in the distribution of terms between cooperatives with and without BSAs, indicating these institutional arrangements are not neutral in shaping local perceptions. Contrary to what a more comprehensive analysis of the sociobioeconomy might suggest, the two groups presented distinct discursive repertoires, as reflected by the selection of terms and their intense statistical associations. Although formally conceived as participatory instances, the cooperatives analyzed showed limitations in the substantive deliberation of cooperative members, particularly when defining contractual and environmental rules that guide relationships with companies.
In communities with BSAs, the lexical analysis indicated that the socioeconomic discourse is structured around terms such as “survival”, “life”, “livelihood”, and “family”, showing an understanding of extractive activity associated with social reproduction, domestic safety, and collective care. This finding reinforces recent discussions on technical support and agricultural extension that emphasize the importance of organizational strengthening, information flow, and place-based capacity building as essential elements to expand the autonomy of rural communities and their capacity for institutional participation (Domingues & Rover, 2026).
In contrast, the most frequent terms emerging from communities without BSAs are associated with immediate market logic, such as “income”, “profit”, “production”, and “commercial”, suggesting a discursive framing focused on economic performance and market transaction. These distinctions suggest that the presence or absence of BSAs not only affects the flow of resources but also shapes socioeconomic rationalities that organize how each group understands extractivism, cooperatives, and their place in the supply chain, creating distinct semantic frameworks between both contexts.
These differences are not merely lexical; they reveal distinct ways of interpreting the relationship with companies, the role of cooperatives, and their understanding of sustainability. Therefore, the presence or absence of BSAs not only influences productive practices but also shapes cognitive frameworks that provide insights into the territory, the forest, and institutions. The variations in the discursive repertoire highlight a significant thematic heterogeneity between the groups, indicating that BSAs introduce new rationalities, expectations, and tensions in community life. This dynamic highlights that training programs, information flow, and institutional strengthening directly influence how communities develop their perceptions on territorial sustainability, participation, and autonomy (Domingues & Rover, 2026).
In sum, our results suggested that BSAs produce symbolic and discursive effects that undermine the idea of a uniform sociobioeconomy, showing that communities develop their experiences grounded in distinct, context-specific, and politically informed references. In this context, Amazonian socio-environmental governance is not primarily defined by communities, but it is structured based on contractual provisions, legal frameworks, and market demands shaped by companies and mediated by cooperatives that operate with limited deliberative capacity (Dias, 2018; Porro & Porro, 2023), particularly in contexts characterized by the low availability of ongoing technical support and the institutional weakness in rural areas (Domingues & Rover, 2026).
Therefore, although the sustainability discourse indicates participation and inclusion, the rules governing resource use, productive dynamics, and conservation criteria are established outside the territories, reproducing historical power asymmetries associated with the commodification of sociobiodiversity (Santilli, 2005; Carvalho, 2025). A governance form that functions more as a symbolic showcase of sustainability than an effective space for community deliberation is consolidated, in which communities appear as agents formally included but politically sidelined. This leads to a process of marginalization that does not appear as explicit exclusion, but rather by undermining local decision-making capacity, converting participation into a tool for validating externally defined arrangements and reinforcing who truly sets the rules for Amazonian socio-environmental governance.
4.3 The Benefit-Sharing Dilemma: “When the Forest is Exploited, Who Benefits from It?”
Among the 107 participants, 57 cooperative members (53.3%) belonged to cooperatives with BSAs with three companies in the cosmetic industry that developed finished products from Amazonian extractive species: bacuri (Platonia insignis Mart.), tucumã (Astrocaryum vulgare Mart.), patauá (Oenocarpus bataua Mart.), murumuru (Astrocaryum murumuru Mart.), açaí (Euterpe oleracea Mart.), ucuúba (Virola surinamensis (Rol. ex Rottb.) Warb.), and pracaxi (Pentaclethra macroloba (Willd.) Kuntze) (Table 3).
The participants' perceptions regarding the actual effects of benefit-sharing are critical. Among the 57 members of cooperatives with BSAs, only 17.5% identified tangible improvements in their communities resulting from the BSAs signed with companies. Among the benefits mentioned, we can highlight, occasionally, the purchase of production equipment (8.7%), training, lectures, and workshops (5.3%), and community infrastructure improvements (3.5%). Even though a few benefits have been reported, uncertainties remained among the cooperative members about whether these improvements are, in fact, a consequence of BSAs.
However, the remaining participants (82.5%) stated that they were unaware of BSAs' terms, the amounts involved, the criteria for resource allocation, and, consequently, how these resources were used, or they did not notice any collective or individual benefit. A cooperative member from community C2 stated, "They say the agreement exists, but to us, that's just words. I've never seen any benefit, and I don't even know who's benefiting from this."
Our findings indicated that most cooperative members, although included in BSAs, demonstrated a significant lack of knowledge about the Biodiversity Law (Law No. 13.123/2015), which regulates the use and sharing of Brazilian biodiversity resources. Among the 57 cooperative members, 94.7% reported they were unaware of this law. This indicates a significant gap in the dissemination of information and access to educational content on legislation.
The analysis of cooperative members' perceptions showed a widespread lack of understanding about BSAs. This can be explained by the lack of capacity-building and awareness-raising programs that effectively and accessibly address the rights and responsibilities of cooperative members under the Biodiversity Law. This hinders their effective participation in discussions and processes concerning biodiversity management.
There is a significant gap between stated commitments in the agreements and the actual changes in everyday community life. Among the 57 members of cooperatives with BSAs, only 17.5% identified tangible improvements, highlighting an inconsistency between institutional discourses and actual effects of these initiatives. Dias (2018) already emphasized that the rhetoric of sharing is based more on expectations than on verifiable results.
In addition, the fact that most respondents (82.5%), among the 57 participants, did not notice tangible benefits suggests a systemic failure in communication and monitoring. Sousa et al. (2018) also identified a widespread lack of understanding among cooperative members about the terms of agreements signed with companies.
The technical language of contracts and agreements, together with the lack of legal support for cooperatives, limits transparency in contractual arrangements. The poor understanding of the contractual terms among cooperative members, particularly concerning benefit-sharing, highlights the governance weaknesses and the limited legal and political capacity of these communities. This lack of transparency, together with the weaknesses of monitoring mechanisms, reinforces Folhes & Folhes's (2023) statement on the urgent need to review sharing implementation models to ensure traceability, fairness, and effectiveness in the relationships with traditional communities.
Isolated benefits, such as equipment purchase, training, and infrastructure improvements, although important, have a limited scope and do not reflect a structural change that promotes long-term, wide-ranging transformation in the living conditions of cooperative members. The availability of productive equipment represents a technical improvement; however, it only increases income and quality of life if combined with effective capacity, market access, and incentive policies that enable the distribution of production.
Consistent progress requires strengthening cooperative governance with higher participation and transparency, expanding technical, legal, and financial capacities, diversifying income sources by adding value to sociobiodiversity products, investing in community infrastructure to increase productive autonomy, and integrating traditional activities into food security and environmental conservation strategies. These measures, supported by locally tailored public policies and participatory monitoring mechanisms, are fundamental to reducing asymmetries and expanding the autonomy and negotiation capacity of communities in the market.
Uncertainty about the source of the few benefits received, even in a small portion of cooperative members, highlights the lack of transparency in BSAs and the centralization of decision-making (Dias, 2018). This scenario also shows a possible heterogeneity in achieving these results, suggesting that these improvements, when they occurred, were not widely distributed in the communities or did not generate long-term impacts.
In addition, critical questions emerge about the effectiveness of monitoring mechanisms and the allocation of funds generated by these companies, since only a few respondents noticed collective and individual benefits. The lack of clarity regarding the funds generated by BSAs demonstrates a failure in agreement implementation, which, in turn, can lead to a lack of trust in communities and weaken their engagement with cooperatives and companies (Dias, 2018; Sousa et al., 2018; Folhes & Folhes, 2023). This lack of transparency can also compromise the long-term sustainability of partnerships, since it creates frustration and disinterest, directly affecting the community's capacity to promote new agreements that are actually beneficial to their cooperative members.
Considering that only 3 of 57 cooperative members reported knowing the legislation, we observe a lack of effective public environmental and legal education policies, which is essential to guarantee active and informed participation of communities. This scenario reflects an exclusion pattern in which the local population, those holding the traditional knowledge essential to conservation, is distant from legal and political discussions on the sustainable use of natural resources (Santilli, 2005; Sousa et al., 2018; Folhes & Folhes, 2023). Thus, implementing initiatives that enhance community awareness and capacity-building is essential, so that they can understand and claim their rights within the biodiversity governance system.
We observed that companies are the primary sources of information about legislation for cooperatives and communities, particularly regarding benefit-sharing, which indicates a significant asymmetry in knowledge distribution. The prevalence of corporate information in guiding communities can lead to inaccurate or incomplete interpretations of the legal rights of cooperative members, particularly the benefits derived from the use of biodiversity. The ineffective mediation by public institutions weakens the community's capacity to challenge or renegotiate unfair conditions, maintaining asymmetric dynamics.
In addition, this lack of alternative sources of information contributes to the invisibility of specific provisions of the law that distinguish holders of associated traditional knowledge from mere suppliers of raw materials (Santilli, 2005; Sousa et al., 2018). The limited understanding of rights guaranteed under the legal framework prevents cooperatives and communities from exercising active, informed participation in negotiations, resulting in companies maintaining significant control over the benefit-sharing process.
The lack of independent and critical legal interpretations weakens the natural resource management and benefit-sharing. From an institutional economy perspective, Williamson (1985) highlights that contractual relationships in an environment marked by information asymmetries and unequal organizational capacities tend to increase risks of dependency and economic opportunism. This situation becomes particularly relevant in BSAs involving agro-extractive cooperatives and private companies.
Overcoming this gap requires collaboration between cooperatives, the public sector, and cooperative organizations, with clear information and community autonomy. Benefit-sharing demands solid governance, cooperative members' participation, and transparency to promote social inclusion and reduce inequalities (Dias, 2018; Araujo & Araujo, 2024). Sociobioeconomy presupposes social inclusion and local economic empowerment (Garrett et al., 2023; Ferreira et al., 2024). However, at the local level, the lack of transparency on the application of benefit-sharing funds weakens the model, which depends on participatory governance to produce long-lasting economic and environmental benefits for communities.
Our results presented significant implications for the formulation of public policies for the Amazonian sociobioeconomy. Among them, we highlight the need to strengthen public mechanisms of technical, legal, and organizational support designed for agro-extractive cooperatives, particularly concerning the understanding of raw material supply contracts and BSAs. Expanding locally tailored legal and environmental education policies is necessary to ensure that traditional communities understand their rights and participate effectively in decision-making processes regarding the use of biodiversity.
In addition, our findings highlighted the importance of institutional monitoring mechanisms and transparency in agreements between companies and cooperatives, including participatory accountability and social oversight. These measures can reduce information asymmetries, strengthen community governance, and expand the distributive effectiveness of the benefits derived from the economic exploitation of Amazonian biodiversity.
5 Conclusions
This study provided a complex and paradoxical overview of the dynamics of Amazonian agro-extractive cooperatives and communities and their relationship with companies in the cosmetic industry, specifically regarding raw supply contracts and BSAs. Our findings indicated that, in communities with and without BSAs, cooperatives play a structural role in organizing productive activities and in integrating farmers into formal markets. This mediating function, although it contributes to some stability in commercialization, highlights structural limits to promoting far-reaching social, economic, and environmental changes.
The discursive analysis showed that BSAs produce symbolic effects by shaping different rationalities between communities with and without BSAs, without generating concrete improvements for most cooperative members. While terms related to social reproduction (“survival”, “life”, and “family”) were more prevalent in the discourses of communities with BSAs, communities without BSAs presented terms associated with economic performance (“income”, “profit”, and “production”), indicating that these agreements reorganize perceptions but do not actually change living conditions.
From a socioeconomic perspective, contracts and agreements with companies increase income and productivity but reveal severe limitations in the positive impact on communities as a whole. Most cooperative members did not notice tangible improvements resulting from BSAs, which are often limited to promises of training and infrastructure development in the communities. The lack of understanding of the Biodiversity Law, together with the lack of transparency and democratic governance, limits community empowerment, concentrates power in the cooperatives, and reduces cooperative members' trust.
From the environmental perspective, our analysis highlighted that the sustainability discourse coexists with market pressures that guide production practices. In addition, the lack of transparency in natural resource management is a challenge for biodiversity conservation and the maintenance of living conditions.
Thus, this study reported that the Amazonian sociobioeconomy is often presented as a sustainable solution. However, behind the scenes, particularly in the relationship between cooperatives and companies with BSAs, there is an imbalance. Cooperatives are presented in the “sustainability showcase” as a symbol of inclusion, while companies concentrate most of the profit. Communities, although essential, remain marginalized in contracts and BSAs. Therefore, exploitation logic disguised as partnership prevails, in which the “green discourse” legitimizes unequal practices.
Our findings also demonstrated that strengthening the Amazonian sociobioeconomy relies on implementing public policies that focus on contractual transparency, the democratization of cooperative governance, and the expansion of the technical and legal capacities of agro-extractive communities. In this context, ongoing assistance policies, territorial formation, and participatory monitoring play a key role in preventing BSA from functioning merely as formal mechanisms for market legitimacy, without any effective redistribution of economic gains or community empowerment.
Future studies should investigate more inclusive models of cooperative governance. In addition, further studies should investigate the effectiveness of monitoring BSAs' mechanisms and transparency and assess which technical training and legal education programs can strengthen cooperative members’ understanding of their rights and enhance their negotiating power, thereby contributing to a more equitable and participatory sociobioeconomy.
Data availability:
The research data is available upon request, respecting ethical and confidentiality criteria.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the research project entitled “Contribuições de cooperativas agroextrativistas para a implementação da Lei da Biodiversidade: estudo de desafios e oportunidades” (Contributions of Agro-extractive Cooperatives in Implementing the Biodiversity Law: A Study on Challenges and Opportunities), coordinated by the professor and researcher Dr. Roberto Porro and funded by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) under Grant No. CNPq/SESCOOP no. 11/2022 (Cooperativism Research), whose financial support made the fieldwork for this study possible. We thank Centro Avançado em Pesquisas Socioecológicas para a Recuperação Ambiental da Amazônia (CAPOEIRA), coordinated by the researcher and professor Dr. Joice Ferreira, for the financial support provided for the publication of this study. We thank the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) for granting the scholarship and the Environmental Science Graduate Program (Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Ambientais, PPGCA) from the Federal University of Pará (UFPA) for the opportunity to conduct this research. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their contributions to improving this publication. The authors are especially grateful to the cooperative members of the agro-extractive communities who devoted their time to the interviews and visits conducted in this study.
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1
A development model based on biological resources and scientific innovations for sustainable production. It seeks to integrate social, economic, and environmental dimensions. However, this concept reflects a conflict between the promotion of sociobiodiversity and the commodification of nature (Bastos Lima & Palme, 2021).
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2
A historical-structural process characterized by the intensification of conflicts, vulnerabilities, and collapses in the relationships between society and nature (Marx, 2023; Ollinaho & Kröger, 2023; McGinnis & Ostrom, 2014).
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3
Law No. 13.123/2015 (also known as Biodiversity Law) establishes benefit-sharing, i.e., the sharing of benefits arising from the exploitation of genetic resources or traditional knowledge of peoples and communities related to the use of those resources (Brasil, 2015; Araujo & Araujo, 2024).
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4
It is a standardized model for the economic exploitation of natural resources that ignores traditional knowledge and cultural, social, and environmental diversities and prioritizes market efficiency over community conservation and inclusion (Uma Concertação pela Amazônia, 2023; Ollinaho & Kröger, 2023; Ferreira et al., 2024; Vieira et al., 2024).
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5
On May 20, 2025, the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment and Banco do Brasil signed a management contract for the National Benefit-Sharing Fund (Fundo Nacional de Repartição de Benefícios, FNRB), beginning its implementation with an amount of R$ 11 million (Brasil, 2025b).
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6
This research was submitted and approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the Institute of Health Sciences of the Federal University of Pará (CAAE: 74659323.6.0000.0018).
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7
It consists of the imposition of market logics and external norms that disrupt traditional practices, local knowledge, and community relations, subordinating them to external economic and institutional criteria (Witkoski et al., 2020; Rocha et al., 2024).
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How to cite: Botelho, M. G. L., Ferreira, J., & Porro, R. (2026). “Cooperatives in the spotlight, profit in the companies' pockets”: behind the scenes of the sociobioeconomy in marginalized Amazonian communities. Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural, 64, e305811. https://doi.org/10.1590/1806-9479.2026.305811en
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Financial support:
The research project entitled “Contribuições de cooperativas agroextrativistas para a implementação da Lei da Biodiversidade: estudo de desafios e oportunidades” (Contributions of Agro-extractive Cooperatives in Implementing the Biodiversity Law: A Study on Challenges and Opportunities), coordinated by the professor and researcher Dr. Roberto Porro and funded by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) under Grant No. CNPq/SESCOOP no. 11/2022 (Cooperativism Research), whose financial support made the fieldwork for this study possible. The Centro Avançado em Pesquisas Socioecológicas para a Recuperação Ambiental da Amazônia (CAPOEIRA), coordinated by the researcher and professor Dr. Joice Ferreira, for the financial support provided for the publication of this study.
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Ethics approval:
This research was submitted and approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the Institute of Health Sciences of the Federal University of Pará (CAAE: 74659323.6.0000.0018).
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JEL Classification:
Q13
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Edited by
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Section editor:
Flaviana Cavalcanti Silva
Source: Created by the authors based on data from fieldwork, 2025.
Source: Created by the authors based on data from fieldwork, 2025.