Ilhas ao Sul da Grande Belém-Pará: dimensões socioambientais de comunidades insulares

Abstract

The anthropogenic impacts/effects on Amazon estuaries are diverse and dispersed, and among the most serious are: deforestation in their surroundings, pollution of rivers, contamination due to the absence of a sewage system and regular collection of solid waste, the precariousness of daily life due to the lack of piped and adequately treated water, among others. For many, the islands are uninhabited, nor do they have ways of life in these places, a fact that, in the social imagination, seems like untouched nature, conserving biodiversity. On the contrary, the islands are places of traditional people and communities, which preserve a way of life, whose daily life is intertwined in relationships with the landscape and the city. Based on this line of thought, we insert the problems of the islands into a socio-environmental debate. The research aimed to analyze the socio-environmental dimensions that the Islands south of Greater Belém, state of Pará, present as a result of territorial interventions and their ecological and social effects on island communities, whose knowledge, sociocultural relations, practices and ways of use of this environment are specific. The study followed a documentary character and brief field research in the form of a survey; used semi-structured and free interviews with community leaders, fishermen and older residents of the islands who fight for their preservation and defense of their territory. Along this path, the island's riverside residents notice changes/transformations in the island environment, changes in their way of life, loss of territory through “illegal” land sales and irreparable damage to biodiversity. The island dimension presents a growing urban expansion, interfering in the territorial planning, the landscape, the ways of life of riverside communities, who are forced to temporarily move to other islands and the continental area. This expansion and environmental effects cause a reduction in land for planting, a reduction in fish and shellfish stocks, and notably, the impoverishment of food resources in the floodplain forest due to pollution.