ABSTRACT
BOX 8.10 DEVELOPMENT OF NEW MATERIALS AND BENEFIT-SHARING IN THE MOTOR INDUSTRY
R R B Leakey (School of Tropical Biology, James Cook University)
At first sight there would seem to be little in common between building top-of-therange deluxe cars, agroforestry and poverty alleviation. However, in the early 1990s, Daimler-Benz set up an environment department to examine the durability and quality of their products, their life cycle, the opportunities for recycling parts and the possibility of applications for natural materials in vehicle production. One of the outcomes was the decision that the company should support basic and applied research on the use of renewable natural materials in automobile manufacturing. To do this, it established the Poverty and Environment in Amazonia (POEMA) Programme, in cooperation with the Federal University of Pará (UFPA) at Belém, Brazil, and a cooperative called PRONAMAZON. Working with local communities POEMA established activities in various sectors, such as basic sanitation, health and education, multistrata agroforestry, renewable energy and the processing of non-timber forest products (Mitschein and Miranda, 1998).
