Arenas conservation of the caatinga: decision-processes and conflicts in the Brazilian semiarid

• Grant number: 17/11924-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: October 09, 2017
• End date: April 09, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Lúcia da Costa Ferreira
• Grantee: Amanda Sousa Silvino
• Supervisor: Eduardo Sonnewend Brondizio
• Host Institution: Núcleo de Estudos e Pesquisas Ambientais (NEPAM). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Indiana University, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 16/06890-6 - Arenas from caatinga conservation: decision-making and conflict in the Brazilian semiarid region, BP.DR

Abstract

Different stakeholders have acted and disputed their interests to reach their goals in the context of the Brazilian Semiarid region. These actions and disputes have interfered in the conservation of the Caatinga biome seeking to influence decision-making processes. Therefore, arenas are set up around the Caatinga, where interests and disputes among different stakeholders at multiple levels of social organization (local, regional, national, and international) have promoted a re-signification of the importance of this biome's conservation, changing the ways of thinking and acting upon it. This work aims to characterize and analyze the process of emergence and expansion of such arenas around the Caatinga conservation in the Brazilian semiarid region. Being currently at the beginning of the third year of research, field work has already been carried out. A work has already been published and the qualification exam is scheduled for May 2017. With the fulfillment of the schedule originally proposed, it is intended that the PhD student carries out a six-month exchange abroad, specifically at the Center for the Analysis of Social-Ecological Landscapes (CASEL), Indiana University, for a deepening of the theoretical-methodological reference that is been used, which is widely at CASEL, in addition to deepening in its integrative geospatial methodologies, institutional analysis and ecological assessments. This is an interdisciplinary proposal between social sciences and ecology, aiming to understand the social dynamics that interfere with the conservation of the Caatinga. This project has significantly highlighted an environmental problem in a Brazilian region that has not yet been well studied, and also contributing by proposing a theoretical-methodological approach that has not yet been applied in studies about this region. (AU)