Bringing together nearly 80 extractivists, the Observatory of Sociobiodiversity Economies (ÓSocioBio) held the workshop “Sociobiodiversity of the Cerrado: Babaçu, Baru and Pequi” on Thursday (14) and Friday (15), during the X Meeting and Fair of the Peoples of the Cerrado, at the TV Tower, in Brasília. Check it out. here A complete report of the event, with participants from Goiás, Maranhão, Tocantins, Bahia, and Minas Gerais.
The meeting aimed to gather opinions and experiences from the communities so that proposals can be developed by the ÓSocioBio network for the National Sociobioeconomy Plan, a public policy to be launched by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MMA). Using participatory methodologies, with guiding questions and a card-pasting activity, community members were divided into three groups: strengthening the productive base, access to markets (national and international), and environmental services.
Dona Teodora, a leader of the Kalunga quilombola people from the municipality of Monte Alegre (GO), emphasized that her battle for the structuring of the socio-biodiversity chains of the Cerrado has been going on for years. “I have been working for quite some time in favor of the fruits of the Cerrado, the baru, the pequi, the mangaba, the jatobá, the buriti, the vanilla. It is very important that we are together and united to strengthen ourselves even more; together we are stronger. We know these fruits, and in our community we need help with the sale of these products,” she said.
Mayk Arruda, from Central do Cerrado, explained that the supply chains are at different stages of development. “And here, we will join forces. We have, for example, workers who sell baru nuts at the market and others who export to Europe. Regarding babassu, we have been working on building the free babassu consortium, which is an integration of 12 productive organizations, and we have been organizing ourselves to present this product in an appropriate way and promote fairer commercial relations,” he commented.
The program included members from the Institute for Society, Population and Nature (ISPN), the Socio-environmental Institute (ISA), WWF Brazil, the International Institute of Education of Brazil (IEB), Central do Cerrado, the Cooperative of Sustainable Family Farming Based on Solidarity Economy (Copabase), and the Nucleus of Pequi and other Cerrado fruits. Laura Souza, executive secretary of ÓSocioBio, explained that the idea is to bring together the demands of socio-biodiversity economies with the public authorities, so that there are adjustments in the formulation of public policies in this resumption of socio-environmental policies in Brazil.
Dialogues with the Federal Government
As a public policy monitoring network, ÓSocioBio carries out activities to strengthen and improve policies within the federal executive and legislative branches. Therefore, representatives from the Federal Government were invited and attended: Carina Pimenta, Secretary of Bioeconomy, and Cássia Barbosa Saretta, from the Directorate of Forest Conservation and Environmental Services of the Ministry of the Environment (MMA); Moisés Savian, Secretary of Land Governance, Territorial Development and Socio-environmental Affairs of the Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA); Márcia Muchagata, coordinator of the Ministry of Social Development (MDS); and Sílvio Porto, director of Conab.
“This dialogue is fundamental. The National Secretariat of Bioeconomy is linked to the socio-biodiversity agenda, and we work with other secretariats to develop robust strategies. This is a new stage of joint construction, also in partnership with other ministries, such as the Ministry of Agrarian Development and the Ministry of Social Development, and other autonomous agencies like IBAMA and the Forest Service, so that we have effective actions,” commented Carina Pimenta.
Sociobiodiversity of the Cerrado
The Brazilian Cerrado, the most biodiverse savanna on the planet, is threatened by increasing rates of deforestation, a result of the uncontrolled expansion of agricultural activity. Therefore, extractive activities are seen as an alternative for conserving the biome, since traditional communities and indigenous peoples, with their ways of life, make sustainable use of natural resources.
Among the main challenges faced by extractivists in stimulating socio-biodiversity economies, the following stand out: lack of sanitary, environmental, and fiscal regulation of enterprises; difficulties with transportation and general logistics for the collection of baru and other fruits; lack of incentives for carrying out extractive activities; limited access to technical training; bureaucracy in legalizing community enterprises; and others.
Text: Dominik Giusti/ISPN Communication