Organizations and social movements that make up ÓSócioBio, including ISA, also denounced the environmental dismantling of the Bolsonaro government.
With information from the Senate Agency
In a hearing at the Senate's Environment Commission, this Wednesday (22), civil society organizations and social movements that are part of the Observatory of the Economy of Sociobiodiversity (ÓSócioBio) denounced the negative impacts for peoples and traditional communities of the environmental dismantling of the Jair administration. Bolsonaro and criticized the lack of public policies to expand the economic production of these populations (learn more about sociobiodiversity in the box at the end of the report).
integrated by ISA, ÓSócioBio also presented a list of recommendations for the next president-elect to stimulate the sociobiodiversity economy. So far, the delivery of the document to the coordination of the government program of Luís Inácio Lula da Silva has been confirmed.
“The economics of sociobiodiversity is one of the ways to face the resurgence of climate change scenarios, the loss of biodiversity, water and food insecurity, and the increase in social inequalities”, says the text.
Protection of territories
“Unfortunately, the context in which we are living does not prove to be a very favorable moment for this socio-environmental agenda in the country,” lamented Dione do Nascimento Torquato, executive secretary of the National Council of Extractive Populations (CNS) at the hearing.
He stressed that the economy of forest products and other biomes depends on the officialization and protection of Indigenous Lands and Extractive Reserves - which has not been done in the Bolsonaro administration. “The biggest reflection of this sad reality is the countless cases of territorial and land conflicts, the death of activist leaders in the countryside and the massive invasion of our traditional territories”, he continued.
Torquato defended the resumption of policies dismantled by the federal administration that supported the production of traditional peoples and communities in the past, such as the National School Feeding Program (PNAE), the Food Acquisition Program (PAA) and the Minimum Price Guarantee Policy. for Sociobiodiversity Products (PGPM-Bio).
“Traditional communities, quilombola communities, indigenous communities that are true defenders of the environment, they are playing the role of the State, but they are being decimated. There's no other word. They are being decimated with anti-environmentalist, anti-life policies”, reinforced Senator Fabiano Contarato (PT-ES), who led the hearing.
Torquato, Contarato, indigenous leaders and others who spoke at the hearing expressed regret the murders of journalist Dom Phillips and indigenist Bruno Pereira, associating them to the context of invasions of protected areas, land conflicts and violence resulting from the Bolsonaro government.
Public policies
“[Support is needed for] everything that involves the guidance part so that things happen as they have to be. Because there is a lot of legislation, a lot of bureaucracy, there are many obstacles. Having people, having a team, having a public policy that allows people to support the ventures is of paramount importance”, defended Dionete Figueiredo, from the Cooperative of Sustainable Family Agriculture based on Solidarity Economy (Copabase), from Arinos (MG), in an interview with ISA (see video below).
“No less important is access to credit. Without credit, it is not possible to develop these works”, he continued. “The market is cruel, there is no room for error. In our projects we do not have access to public credit policy. We deliver everything to the bank, which gives a non-favorable answer. This is our reality,” she said. She demanded the resumption of official initiatives of Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (Ater).
At the hearing, the Socio-Environmental Diversity facilitator of the ISA, Jeferson Camarão Straatmann, argued that the products of sociobiodiversity cannot be treated only as inputs and raw materials, but must be considered in their potential for generating knowledge and innovation and demand differentiated and adapted regulation and stimuli (see video below).
“We need to move from this logic of input providers to a logic of economies that innovate based on traditional knowledge, are developers of technologies and solutions for health, fashion, food, governance, economic models, management and are service providers that deliver ecosystem benefits. for the entire planet”, he defended.
“Local and territorial arrangements and their management must have specific management and regulation policies and programs that see these arrangements in a different light from the prism of private sector regulations,” he commented.
“The future that Brazil desires is a future of innovation that recognizes the values of socio-biodiversity economies, with the guarantee of rights, protection and security of their territories and ways of life", says Jeferson Straatmann (ISA), in the @Federal Senate. #ÓSócioBio pic.twitter.com/rt1t2Zmocm
— socioenvironmental (@socioambiental) June 22st, 2022
'Information blackout'
Professor and researcher at the University of Brasília Mônica Nogueira drew attention to the difficulty caused by the lack of systematized data on traditional peoples and communities.
“We have a fragmentation, a dispersion of information regarding traditional peoples and communities in Brazil, their territories, the conflicts to which they are subjected. And, even more, about what they produce, how their production circulates, how it energizes the local economy,” he pointed out.
“The blackout of information naturally makes it difficult to design appropriate public policies that consider the specifics of the sociobiodiversity economy. And worse, it marginalizes this economy and its subjects”, he added.
Researcher and professor at USP Ricardo Abramovay informed that, according to some studies, the bioeconomy corresponds to 5% of the US GDP, something around US$ 1 trillion. On the other hand, he reiterated that, in Brazil, there is no consolidated information on the sector, especially for the Amazon and the Cerrado.
“Brazil practices, especially in the Amazon, an economy of destruction of nature. We need a knowledge economy of nature,” he stressed. “The economy of the destruction of nature has not provided development in the Amazon. The Amazon today is the part of Brazil where its worst social indicators are, where the law is systematically disrespected, institutions fail to play their role, especially in a government of fundamentalist fanatics that encourages violence and disrespect for the law and the invasion of protected areas”, he commented.
What is sociobiodiversity?
Biodiversity
Biological diversity or biodiversity is the variability of living organisms from all sources, including, among others, terrestrial, marine, other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part. It also encompasses diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.
Traditional peoples and communities
A National Policy for Sustainable Development of Traditional Peoples and Communities defines these populations as “culturally differentiated groups that recognize themselves as such, that have their own forms of social organization, that occupy and use territories and natural resources as a condition for their cultural, social, religious, ancestral and economic reproduction, using knowledge, innovations and and practices generated and transmitted by tradition”.
In addition to Indians and quilombolas, they can be considered rubber tappers, riverside dwellers, caiçaras, gypsies, beradeiros, babassu coconut breakers, geraizeiros, sertanejos, background communities and pasture fences, among others, a fundamental part of the sociocultural diversity of Brazilian society. There are at least 27 different segments recognized by the State, according to the Decree No. 8.750 / 2016, which establishes the National Council of Traditional Peoples and Communities.
sociobiodiversity
The concept of sociobiodiversity was developed along lines of research that confirmed the role of small farmers, peasants, indigenous peoples and traditional communities in preserving and promoting the biodiversity of ecosystems. It is a notion that encompasses the relationships between this biological diversity and the knowledge, information and practices on its use and conservation developed by these populations over centuries and even millennia.
In general, the economics of sociobiodiversity refers to non-timber products generated from the sustainable exploitation of biomes. Some of the best known examples in Brazil are: açaí, Brazil nut, pequi, babassu, carnauba, andiroba, copaíba, piassava and derivatives (food, medicines, cosmetics, essences, oils, etc.).