Participatory monitoring of traditional territories: digital platform for co-production of data on sociobiodiversity in Amazonian areas

• Grant number: 25/00174-6
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: March 31, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Rodrigo Constante Martins
• Grantee: Rodrigo Constante Martins
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Jéssica Pires Cardoso

Abstract

This proposal seeks to develop a mobile, digital platform that records and catalogssociobiodiversity through the co-creation of local, traditional and indigenous knowledge(s). Carried out in 9 communities within 3 states in the Legal Amazon: Pará, Amazonas and Maranhão, researchers will cooperate with traditional Amazonian communities with aim of developing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system to develop an inventory of traditional knoweldges with the biodiversity of traditional territories. The co-creation strategy associated with the digital platform will enable these traditional knowledges associated with biodiversity to be better integrated with more normative Scientific ecological (i.e. socio- biodiversity) data. The main objective of theproposed project is for this digital tool to record and scientifically validate traditional practices and knowledge of biodiversity and relate them to globally available scientific databases, whilst enabling communities to maintain epistemic control over their knowledges and consequently territories. The records made by traditional peoples and communities will be collated with information from the collections of the Brazilian Biodiversity Information System (SiBBR) - an online platform that integrates data and information about biodiversity and ecosystems from different sources, making them accessible for different uses (SIBBR, 2024). The co-creation strategy will also allow the platform to be regularly updated by traditional communities, and thus to become a tool for monitoring biodiversity in their territories. The platform will also consist ofa tool-kit that can be used resolve conflicts between these communities (and similarly positioned social groups) and market-based actors that enter traditional territories to extract, profit and otherwise exploit from their rich biodiversity. The recognition and validation of such traditional knowledge associated with biodiversity in these Amazonian territories is crucial for the development of institutional strategies that enable the continuity of conservation practices of traditional peoples and communities, thus ensuring compliance with the provisions of Article 8 of the Biodiversity Convention - specifically that pertaining to legal disputes between market-agentsand traditional Amazonian peoples and communities. (AU)