The forest handling developed by communities in Amazonia has practically 20 years of
existence and it is still considered unviable in the way that it is conceived nowadays, and their
guidelines need to be discussed. The initiatives that exist are subsidized by the public
authorities, or private organizations that decide the intensity of field exploration based on
legislations directed to a timber extraction business and opposite to the principles and habits
of local communities. The work has as objective to analyze, in an integrated way, the adaptive
management and local governance, as the approaches that can support community forest
management in the Brazilian Amazon. The research was structured from the studies in the
RESEX Green Forever, in Pará, seeking, through the trajectory of five communities, to set up
the community forest management according to its conditions and needs, making use of the
logging resources through traditional practices. The investigation has happened for seven
years (2010-2016), using a method based on the observer-participant technique and
diagnostic tools of participatory organizational development methodology for the qualitative
and quantitative information collection, complemented by bibliographic and documentary
research, as well as depth interviews. To analyze the empirical data, it was used a theoretical
and methodological framework that met this search, being able to support future research, and
a study about forest economical viability to decide if the management plans will get the desired
success. The results showed that the RESEX are cultural forests where the family's way of
life, their histories and traditions must be recognized. In this logic, the management plans were
adapted to the reality of the communities and it is economically viable, as well as the local
government was considered the most appropriate arrangement to make the management and
use of forest goods, suggesting a system of governance between communities and State that
can build a new institutionalism in protected areas. In this context, there is the appearance of
the “new common”, described by protagonism and autonomy in decision making and by a
network of collaboration among communities that practice extractivism, seeking in collective
actions to ensure their human rights and social environmental justice. The community forest
management in the Amazon needs to be urgently resignified, which implies a conceptual
change that is able to corroborate with simplified laws and public policies adjusted to forest
peoples.
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