Sociobiodiverse territories in Maranhão and Pará: environment, knowledge and sustainability

• Grant number: 22/10359-5
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: February 01, 2023
• End date: January 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Rural Anthropology
• Agreement: CONFAP - National Council of State Research Support Foundations
• Principal Investigator: Emilia Pietrafesa de Godoi
• Grantee: Emilia Pietrafesa de Godoi
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Benedito Souza Filho ; Diego Amoedo Martínez ; Márcia Maria Nóbrega de Oliveira ; Thais Tartalha Do Nascimento Lombardi ; Thiago Romeu de Souza ; Verena Sevá Nogueira ; Xose Xerardo Pereiro Perez
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/22578-9 - Sociobiodiverse Territories and the co-production of knowledge, in a multidisciplinary and multi-local team - year 3 of the project, BP.TT; 24/19941-4 - Sociobiodiverse Territories and the co-production of knowledge in a multidisciplinary and multi-local team, BP.TT; 24/11580-2 - Sociobiodiverse Territories and the co-production of a platform for scientific dissemination and sharing of knowledge., BP.TT; 24/13153-4 - Local systems of sociobiodiversity production and strategies to cop with the homogenization of landscapes, BP.PD; 23/06063-6 - Sociobiodiverse territories and the co-production of knowledge in a multidisciplinary and multi-local team, BP.TT

Abstract

The proposed project concerns both Axis I and Axis II of the Call Amazonia +10, whose problems dialogue with each other. More directly, the project will address problem 1 of Axis 1, which refers to devalued territories, populations and local products, which lead to the replacement of natural systems (in our case, agro-extractive systems) by large-scale exploratory practices and infrastructural elements that they make the multi-scale dialogue of sustainable local production difficult; and Axis II Problems, referring to knowledge about forest and ecological restoration processes in the region and alternatives to livestock and soy (problem 2), such as community-based sustainable tourism, use and management of non-timber forest products ( NTFP) and agroecological food production (problem 4).The empirical loci of the research will be, in Maranhão, communities of the Chapada das Mesas National Park and the RAMSAR Baixada Maranhense Site; and, in Pará, communities that are located in Baixo Tapajós, close to and within the Tapajós National Forest and the Aramanaí Environmental Preservation Area, in the municipality of Belterra. To select these territories, we ask ourselves the question: what is there in common between them, which allows us to dialogue between these different contexts? We verified that all of them are contexts of pressure on territories by agents and logics outside them, all of them live the threat to local systems of biodiversity management and their sociocultural dynamics, and to a large extent they are found in areas of environmental protection. The production chain of soybeans (PA and MA) and buffalo livestock (MA) has caused pressures and threats to the maintenance of the standing forest and the traditional populations that live in it. A complex system of common use of lands, forests, lakes, rivers, and the knowledge linked to this system is threatened. This knowledge and practices capable of creating and maintaining sociobiodiversity and valuing it need to be studied, in order to understand the role of the forms of relationship with biodiversity developed by local populations along their paths that allow the maintenance of biodiversity. This is what we propose to do from an interdisciplinary work, involving several fields of scientific knowledge, and also collaborative between different knowledge regimes (traditional, such as quilombolas and other traditional communities, and the academic). This collaborative construction of knowledge is one of the cornerstones of the project. On the horizon of this proposal are ecosystem recovery and income generation for local communities. (AU)