Outside of official maps, traditional peoples and communities use the "I'm on the Map" tool in the fight for territorial rights that are not yet recognized; conflicts over land, invasions, fires, and contamination by pesticides are the main threats they face, a report indicates.
More than five thousand families from traditional peoples and communities and small farmers have used Tô no Mapa, an application that enables the self-mapping of their territories, which are not yet recognized on official Brazilian maps. This is what the first report about the tool announced this Wednesday, the 30th, by IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute) and ISPN (Institute for Society, Population and Nature), with the support of the Cerrado Network and the Cerrados Institute.
These include quilombola communities, indigenous people, riverside dwellers, artisanal fishermen, extractivists, babaçu nut breakers, among many others, who accessed the tool to demarcate the boundaries of their lands. Data from IPAM and ISPN, produced through a survey in part of the Cerrado, show that there are 3,5 times more traditional communities in the region than are counted by the responsible government agencies. This gap makes the application an essential tool for portraying the reality of these populations.
The "Tô no Mapa" (I'm on the Map) project was launched in October 2020 by IPAM and ISPN, in partnership with the Cerrado Network, based on workshops and dialogue with communities in the Matopiba region. The app allows users to input land use characteristics and locations, as well as conflict zones. The goal is to create a map with information about traditional and rural communities and peoples throughout Brazil.
Invisible communities, threatened territories
To date, 53 communities from 23 Brazilian states have mapped their territories on the app. The largest number of registrations is found in the Cerrado biome in Goiás (25%), Mato Grosso do Sul (23%), Tocantins (19%) and Maranhão (17%). The sum of all mapped territories is 290 hectares.
According to Isabel Figueiredo, coordinator of the Cerrado and Caatinga Program at ISPN, maps are political tools. "Through this initiative, we want to provide a tool so that communities can take ownership and define their own territories, thus contributing to the guarantee of these territories," she says.
During the registration process, families reported problems due to territorial disputes and land invasions – a situation that represents 53% of the conflicts reported in the application, according to the report. The lack of recognition of traditional territories and the lack of regularization contribute to leaving traditional peoples and communities unprotected against threats. Self-mapping is a first step so that communities can, in some way, be considered in the development of public policies and protective actions.
Guardians of nature
If the invisibility of traditional peoples and communities and family farmers represents a risk to the lives of these people, their cultures and their age-old traditions, it also jeopardizes the survival of the environment.
“The mapping aims to give visibility to a series of actors who are fundamental to the conservation of the Cerrado and other biomes,” explains researcher and project coordinator at IPAM, Isabel Castro.
Agroecological production, farming, and raising small animals define the activities of 70% of the families registered on the app. Often, through the common use of the land, traditional peoples and communities adopt sustainable practices for the conservation of water sources and the biodiversity of the surrounding fauna and flora.
Impact of the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible to continue in-person workshops that, since 2018, had been taking place in priority locations in the Matopiba region to discuss mapping. The adapted format was virtual, but the instability of internet and telephone signals in the communities impacted the possibilities of participation.
The risk of contagion with the new coronavirus also made it difficult for communities to register on the app, since one of the requirements for registration is holding a meeting between community members in order to guarantee a collective and participatory process.
Among the next steps are improving the application and bringing together more organizations and communities interested in the topic of territorial rights of traditional peoples and communities.
The organizations also intend to integrate Tô no Mapa into the platform for traditional peoples and communities of the National Council of Traditional Peoples and Communities and the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF).
The "I'm on the Map" project received support from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), a joint initiative of the French Development Agency, Conservation International, the European Union, the Global Environment Facility, the Government of Japan, and the World Bank. A key goal is to ensure that civil society is involved in biodiversity conservation.