Socio-economic and environmental performance in cooperatives in Southeastern Pará

Abstract

Cooperatives are considered an alternative for dealing with socioeconomic and environmental problems and achieving a more sustainable society due to their forms of work based on cooperation. This research proposes to identify how cooperatives can contribute to local sustainability through indicators. By collecting information through field research and applying a questionnaire containing questions about the members and indicators in the social, economic and environmental dimensions, the level of sustainability of the cooperatives and the performance of indicators were determined. The study showed that the cooperatives are characterised by medium sustainability. In the social dimension, it was evident that the indicators of employment opportunity and family succession in the cooperative showed the lowest performance. In the economic dimension, cooperatives manage to ensure financial returns to their members, but they still present weaknesses in economic income, in alternative sources of income, in the efficiency of their production system (Cooper and Mulheres de Barro [lit. Women of Clay]) and in commercialisation (Mulheres de Barro). Regarding the environmental dimension, Mulheres de Barro performed better than Cooper and the research identified that both cooperatives carry out practices to conserve natural resources, and believe that their activities help preserve the environment.