O povo da floresta e a conservação da sociobiodiversidade da Amazônia: uma análise a partir da Reserva Extrativista Riozinho do Anfrísio

Abstract

Brazil is one of the countries with the greatest socio-environmental diversity in the world, and the traditional populations that inhabit the country's protected areas (Indigenous Lands - TIs and Conservation Units - UCs) have demonstrated their importance for conservation by maintaining and generating biological, social, and cultural diversity through positive landscape management. Extractive Reserves (RESEX) are Conservation Units aimed at ensuring the sustainable use of natural resources by traditional populations. Based on the assumption that the CUs and the populations living within them are threatened by recent socio-environmental dismantling policies, and given the increase in pressures on these areas, this research intends to conduct a landscape analysis and characterize the dynamics, degradation, and conservation state over the last 20 years in the Riozinho do Anfrísio RESEX in Altamira, Pará, located within a complex of protected areas known as Terra do Meio. The methodology supporting this thesis follows a systemic approach, adapted for a geo-systemic and integrative landscape analysis, emphasizing in this analysis the importance of traditional peoples and populations for the conservation of protected areas in the Amazon and their role in the future of humanity. The results allowed us to conclude that the creation of the Sustainable Use Conservation Unit RESEX Riozinho do Anfrísio in 2004 was an important tool for halting deforestation, land grabbing, and timber theft, which threatened the permanence of traditional populations and the conservation of socio-biodiversity. In the 13 years following the creation of the CU, the average deforestation rate was 138 hectares per year, considered low given the territorial extent and observation period. On the other hand, between 2018 and 2022, the dismantling of environmental policies led to renewed pressures, and the average annual deforestation rate more than doubled in the CU (386 hectares per year) in just four years. The resilience of forest peoples and the way they manage forest resources and various landscapes is a crucial factor for conserving the multiple diversities in these territories, which, despite pressures and threats, show greater resilience over time compared to areas without the presence of traditional peoples and populations. Thus, the presence of traditional peoples and populations in CU areas is essential for the conservation of life both within and beyond the forest