{"id":48879,"date":"2018-11-16T09:48:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T12:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=48879"},"modified":"2020-08-07T14:03:11","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T17:03:11","slug":"favela-community-land-trusts-blockchain-and-sustainability-discussed-at-colaboramerica-conference-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=48879","title":{"rendered":"Favela Community Land Trusts, Blockchain, Sustainability Discussed at ColaborAm\u00e9rica [VIDEO]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On November 9 and 10, Fundi\u00e7\u00e3o Progresso<\/a>\u00a0in downtown Rio teemed with an air of innovation, transformation, and social justice. The cultural center in Lapa<\/a> hosted the ColaborAm\u00e9rica<\/a> conference, an event focused on showcasing the \u201cnew economies\u201d of Latin America in order to rethink ways of creating positive impact and promoting inclusivity. This year\u2019s theme was \u201cLooking at the Whole” to explore the world\u2019s vast interconnectedness and address problems from a holistic\u00a0point of view. Approximately 10,000 were in attendance.<\/p>\n

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\nAmong the 120 speakers from more than seventeen different countries was Theresa Williamson<\/a>, founder and executive director of Catalytic Communities<\/a>* (CatComm). A longtime advocate for Rio de Janeiro\u2019s favelas, Williamson participated in a panel entitled \u201cInnovation for the Common Good,<\/a>\u201d alongside Ashoka Finley from ConsenSys<\/a>, a software company based in New York, and Jonathan Dawson, a senior lecturer at Schumacher College<\/a> in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

Williamson presented<\/a> CatComm’s work toward supporting the development of\u00a0Favela Community Land Trusts<\/a> (CLTs). As Williamson explained, the Favela CLT model guarantees<\/a> a greater degree of land tenure security for communities by granting favela residents permanent collective ownership of the land, while providing them with individual titles to their homes which can be bought and sold, ensuring permanent affordability while allowing residents to invest in their homes, and equipping residents with a robust\u00a0defense mechanism to guard against gentrification\u00a0and eviction<\/a>. Williamson also compared the CLT model to individual land titling in favelas, emphasizing how individual titles can pulverize favelas’ greatest asset–their collective social fabric–by shifting a community’s underlying logic structure when inserting communities into the speculative real estate market. Favela CLTs, however, allow communities to preserve the qualities they have developed through informal community-building (solidarity networks, organic architecture, community-controlled development, affordability, etc.), within the formalizing structure of the CLT. Collective ownership of the land also means that residents have greater bargaining power to pressure the public sector for improvements. A Favela CLT can become, as occurred in San Juan, Puerto Rico<\/a>, one of the largest land owners in a city, as opposed to how owners of small individual parcels of land are treated by the authorities.
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\nTo further illustrate this issue, Williamson presented a quote from Maria da Penha, a resident of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a>\u00a0in Rio’s\u00a0West Zone<\/a>\u2014a community that suffered from intense\u00a0forced evictions<\/a>\u00a0in advance of the 2016 Olympic Games<\/a> due to the construction of the Olympic Park. In Penha’s words: \u201cTitling isn’t a guarantee of our permanence on the land. I had two concessions of use rights<\/a> from the government and [in the end] I almost died to remain on the land.”<\/p>\n

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When asked what sorts of criticisms of CLTs she has heard from favela residents as her organization works to introduce and debate the model in Rio, Williamson responded: \u201cThe truth is that we haven\u2019t had the kind of questioning that we thought we would get. One of our partners is the Observat\u00f3rio de Favelas<\/a> and they say<\/a> that this is a \u2018seaming instrument\u2019. It\u2019s as if it’s the missing tool that brings together a lot of different elements we already know work.\u201d She noted that among the dozens of favela organizers visited during workshops in August<\/a> with members of the successful Ca\u00f1o Mart\u00edn Pe\u00f1a CLT in Puerto Rico, and those involved in the Favela CLT Working Group<\/a> recently established in Rio, the focus of questions tends to be about the technical logistics of establishing a CLT and how to mobilize the community around it. There appears to be a general acknowledgement of the potential of the overall instrument to address land insecurity in Rio, she says.<\/p>\n

Ashoka Finley, Chief Anarchy Officer of ConsenSys, also touched on the topic of community land titling for favelas but from a blockchain<\/a> approach. Finley is a software engineer and user experience designer and works at ConsenSys, using blockchain technology to design new social and economic institutions.<\/p>\n

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\nAccording to Finley, blockchain software has the power to design institutions that are better equipped to address present and future challenges, particularly those of institutions that rely on trust as a key feature of their operation (such as banking, voting, etc.). Finley’s presentation questioned the tragedy of the commons<\/a>\u00a0and discussed the use of blockchain technology to govern the commons in ways that allow communities to exercise ownership over their territories, establish rules for coexistence, and hold all those involved accountable.<\/p>\n

During the final segment of the panel, Jonathan Dawson, a sustainability educator, challenged traditional economic and social impact tenets. \u201cHow do we make collective decisions to maximize the common good?\u201d he rhetorically asked the audience. \u201cWe need to be able to build an economy using public wealth and private restraint.\u201d Dawson criticized the development of sustainability goals<\/a> through the lens of growth, suggesting a paradox between the two concepts in a world of strained ecosystems.<\/p>\n

Watch the panel at ColaborAm\u00e9rica (Williamson in Portuguese; Finley and Dawson in English) on YouTube<\/a> here:<\/h3>\n