LIVING COMMONS - SERRA GRANDE, BA

The Living Commons project emerged from the collaboration between GreenPill Brasil Commons and the community ecosystem Gente do Conduru in Serra Grande, Bahia, within one of the most biodiverse regions of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest near Serra do Conduru State Park.

The territory is located within the Atlantic Forest biome, one of the world’s most threatened biodiversity hotspots. Most of the original Atlantic Forest has already been lost due to urban expansion, agriculture, logging, and tourism-related development pressures.

Serra Grande is also directly connected to the Serra do Conduru State Park, a region containing some of the highest tree diversity ever recorded globally, with up to 458 tree species per hectare and the headwaters of more than 30 rivers and streams.

In Serra Grande you will find cacao agroforestry systems, rivers, waterfalls, forests, traditional food culture, ecological trails, community tourism, and collective forms of organization remain deeply connected.

At the same time, the region faces increasing pressure from tourism expansion, rising land prices, and fragile local economic continuity. It sits between Ilhéus and Itacaré, one of the fastest-growing tourism corridors on the southern coast of Bahia.

After the construction of the BA-001 highway connection in the late 1990s, tourism growth accelerated significantly across the region, driving rapid territorial transformation, real estate speculation, and the expansion of new neighborhoods and tourism-oriented developments.

Photo by Chico Ferreira

Research on nearby Itacaré has documented how uncontrolled tourism growth contributed to disorderly urban expansion, environmental degradation, property speculation, displacement pressures on local residents, and exclusion of local populations from parts of the tourism economy due to unequal access to capital and professional opportunities. Similar dynamics have already been observed in other coastal territories of Bahia, where tourism expansion caused sharp increases in coastal real estate prices, disruption of traditional community life, and gradual relocation of local residents away from central and coastal areas.

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While tourism generates important income opportunities, many local cultural, educational, and stewardship activities in Serra Grande still depend heavily on volunteer labor, informal care networks, and unstable project-based funding. This creates growing overload for the people sustaining community spaces, collective kitchens, cultural activities, ecological experiences, and territorial care infrastructures over the long term.

A central collaborator in this process is Gente do Conduru, a community-led territorial network coordinated by local stewards including Joselita Machado and Wilsa Santana.

Their association has operated in the territory for nearly 17 years, organizing community events, cultural gatherings, fairs, educational activities, and maintaining shared spaces used by multiple local collectives.

Conversations with local organizers, cultural facilitators, and community stewards revealed an already active ecosystem composed of cultural collectives, women-led initiatives, community kitchens, agroforestry systems, shared spaces, ecological experiences, educational activities, local fairs, and territorial hospitality networks. Much of this work operates through reciprocity, trust, volunteer effort, and local organizational capacity rather than stable infrastructure or long-term funding.

One of the community’s long-term goals is the acquisition and structuring of a shared territorial space capable of supporting ongoing cultural, educational, and organizational activities, including collective storage, workshops, meetings, learning residencies, and community infrastructure.

In this context, GreenPill Brasil seeks to strengthen these existing territorial capacities through:

community infrastructure support;
participatory mapping;
cultural and ecological documentation;
territorial learning exchanges;
regenerative economic experimentation;
and lightweight coordination infrastructure.

Project Goals

The project seeks to strengthen the long-term continuity of community-led cultural, ecological, and territorial initiatives in Serra Grande.

More specifically, we aim to:

Shared Infrastructure & Community Continuity

Get the initial support for the structuring of a shared community space and collective territorial infrastructure;
Increased frequency of use of shared community spaces for meetings, workshops, cultural activities, and collective organization;
Acquire basic equipment acquired and actively used for community documentation, communication, and territorial activities;
Incentivize continued use of the space and activities beyond the pilot period.

Learning & Territorial Exchange

Organization of 1-2 immersive learning cycles or territorial residencies;
Participation of approximately 30–50 people per residency cycle;
Organize open workshops, collective activities, mutirões, and community gatherings organized throughout the 6-month pilot;
New collaborations and exchanges emerging between local initiatives and external participants.

Territorial Engagement

Increase direct involvement of local collectives, facilitators, cultural organizers, agroforestry practitioners, and territorial initiatives;
Increase community participation in fairs, workshops, mutirões, and collective activities;
Support with Audiovisual documentation and open records of the learning and territorial processes developed during the project.

Memory, Documentation & Continuity

Creation and maintainance of collective documentation and territorial memory records;
Organization of open archives containing activities, reflections, and learning processes;
Strengthened long-term connections between local initiatives, residents, and participants involved in the exchanges;

Theory of Change

Our core hypothesis is simple: territories that already possess networks of care, culture, and collaboration can significantly increase their long-term continuity when they have access to minimal shared infrastructure, organizational support, and spaces for collective learning and coordination.

Funding from Ma Earth would support:

strengthening shared community infrastructure;
audiovisual documentation;
workshops and cultural activities;
facilitation and community coordination;
territorial gatherings and learning exchanges;
equipment and logistical support;
community kitchens and collective activities;
mutirões and stewardship practices.

Part of the inspiration for this work comes from regenerative cacao coordination experiments already developed within the GreenPill Brasil ecosystem, connecting local production, artisanal cacao processing, open documentation, community circulation systems, and collective learning processes.

The project also intends to organize small-scale immersive territorial residencies connecting local residents, artists, agroforestry practitioners, researchers, educators, facilitators, and people interested in grounded regenerative learning experiences.

These residencies will intentionally remain small-scale (~30–50 participants) to preserve cultural integrity, enable deeper exchanges, and avoid extractive tourism dynamics.

Activities may include:

participatory territorial mapping;
cacao-to-chocolate experiences;
experiences with local marisqueiras;
ecological trails;
cultural workshops;
digital autonomy and security workshops;
audiovisual documentation;
collective memory organization;
local economy and stewardship conversations;
and strengthening of community spaces.

Throughout the pilot, we will document how shared spaces, collective activities, local organization, learning exchanges, and small forms of economic coordination influence the daily life and continuity of the initiatives involved. Some of the things we hope to observe include:

whether community spaces are being used more frequently;
whether more people become involved in collective activities;
whether local organizers feel less isolated or overloaded;
whether new collaborations emerge between initiatives;
whether cultural and ecological activities continue beyond the pilot;
and whether the territory becomes more capable of sustaining its own processes over time.

Conclusion

Through participatory coordination, stewardship support, territorial learning cycles, community documentation, and small-scale regenerative economic experimentation, this project aims to help Serra Grande evolve as a living regenerative territory connected to global commons and regeneration networks. Not as a “startup city,” but as a real community strengthening its own capacities through careful experimentation and collective stewardship, while preserving and valuing grounded experiences rooted in their local culture, and which can offer meaningful learning far beyond the borders of Brazil.

We would be deeply grateful for Ma Earth’s support in helping this process take root and continue growing alongside the people who already sustain it every day, territories like Serra Grande carry important knowledge about how communities can continue caring for culture, ecology, and collective life in increasingly fragile times.