Woods pharmacy: socioenvironmental changes and medicinal plants use in the Cantareira and Fernão Dias Environmental Protected Areas (EPA)

• Grant number: 08/10631-0
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: December 01, 2009
• End date: November 30, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: João Luiz de Moraes Hoefel
• Grantee: João Luiz de Moraes Hoefel
• Host Institution: Universidade São Francisco (USF). Campus Bragança Paulista. Bragança Paulista , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The practices related to the popular use of medicinal plants are what many communities have as a viable alternative for the treatment of diseases or their health maintenance. However, continuity may be threatened by interference from factors external to the dynamics of the social groups such as: a) greater exposure of communities to economic pressures and external culture; b) easier access to modern medicine; c) displacement of people of their natural environment to urban areas, which leads to the loss of a popular knowledge accumulated over generations and, consequently, to its disappearance. Besides that, the breakdown of traditional lifestyles accompanying environmental degradation and the introduction of new cultural elements threat a body of empirical knowledge and genetic resources invaluable for future generations. In this context is inserted the study area of this work, the Bragantina Region, who still has a significant rural population and significant remnants of Atlantic Forest that are used as sources of plants for medicinal use, but in recent decades is passing through intense process of environmental changes, which justifies further studies to analyze the repercussions of the changes underway in the identity, habits and customs of the regional population. (AU)