In the second report of the special series on the 30th anniversary of the Ecos Fund, we present the importance of territories for maintaining livelihoods and sustainable production
In the early 1990s, ISPN understood that traditional populations, indigenous people, quilombolas and family farmers tend to conserve their territories through their ways of life – the result of the strong connection with the land in the places they inhabit.
The departure or removal of communities from territories, in search of a certain “preservation” of the environment, on the other hand, is a way of making ecosystems more vulnerable to invasions, land grabbing and deforestation, in addition to generating violence and conflicts with native and local populations.
“Traditional communities and indigenous peoples, due to their ways of life, protect their territories against the advance of deforestation, while the organization of these communities leads to the strengthening of territorial governance, generating an increase in production, income and permanence in the countryside”, highlights Lívia Moura, geographer and technical advisor at ISPN.
At that time, the challenge for ISPN, and other Brazilian civil society organizations, was to support communities with resources so that they could remain in their territories and generate income, implementing sustainable extraction projects, marketing fruits of sociobiodiversity, installing community agroindustries, among others.
“This could generate economic benefits, as well as environmental ones – such as a source of income for communities that could sell açaí, nuts and other sociobiodiversity products,” explains sociologist and one of the Institute’s founders, Donald Sawyer.
Created in 1990, the Institute was founded with financial support from the MacArthur Foundation to conduct research on a society undergoing change and to defend and encourage environmental policies. The Brazilian political context was one of resuming a democratic model after the military dictatorship, and the socio-environmental agenda had been of great importance in the drafting of the 1988 Federal Constitution.
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, ECO-92, echoed the protests of organized civil society seeking resources to implement projects that had previously been concentrated in governments. The Global Environment Facility, or GEF, had been created a year earlier, in 1991, as a cooperation initiative between countries.
In 1994, ISPN was selected by the GEF to execute the Small Grants Programme (SGP), translated as Programa de Pequenos Projetos, in Brazil, through a partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Supporting rural communities, especially in the Cerrado, has become the institutional mission of ISPN and the primary task of PPP, the acronym that gave the program its name in Portuguese. Over the last 30 years, the concept surrounding this work has been transformed into major initiatives and projects, giving rise to the Ecos Fund.
The more detailed context of this story was explained in the first special report on the 30th anniversary of the Ecos Fund. Read here.
The Pasture Closures
Eldo Barreto, a resident of the Praia community, in the municipality of Correntina (BA), and member of the Community Association of Small Farmers of Fecho de Pasto de Clemente, states that “for a long time, we were invisible, and making our way of life invisible helped to increase deforestation and poisoning of our territory”.
The association received support from the Ecos Fund of ISPN for the first time in 2013, through the project “Strengthening traditional communities of Fechos de Pastos and the management and sustainable use of sociobiodiversity in the Cerrado”. Since then, three other projects of the association have been executed with the Institute.
Pasture enclosures are traditional peasant communities that incorporate into their secular way of production and life the use of communal, collective lands, called “enclosures” or “general”, for raising cattle and extracting medicinal and food plants.
They are legally protected by the Federal Constitution of 1988, ILO Convention No. 169, Federal Decree No. 6.040/07, Article 178 of the Constitution of the State of Bahia and State Law No. 12.910/13, among other legislation.
Eldo explains that the people of the Fechos have been in the territory of western Bahia for more than 300 years. “Starting in the 1970s, with the advance of agribusiness and the expansion of farms in the Cerrado, our territory was illegally occupied,” he protested, adding that the local population was forced to smaller portions of land. Today, the pasture fences total 150 thousand hectares in western Bahia.
“Compared to what we had at the beginning of the 3th century, today only about XNUMX% of our territory remains,” the entrepreneur points out. According to him, the large companies that arrived in the region poisoned the territory, exploited young people, violated communities and cut down part of the Cerrado.
One of the most threatened regions of the Cerrado, western Bahia is still home to many closed communities, which resist on the banks of the Arrojado River, among other mighty rivers.
The enclosures are the native areas of the Cerrado where cattle are taken for part of the year. Some examples of enclosures in the region are: Clemente Enclosure, Bonito de Baixo Enclosure, Bonito de Cima Enclosure, Busca Vida, Caititu, Bonsucesso and Capão das Antas, Morrinhos Enclosure, Brejo Verde Enclosure, Morrinhos Enclosure between Morros and Gado Bravo, Vereda do Rancho Enclosure and Tarto Enclosure. Communities and places of residence are not always located within the enclosures, and in some situations the enclosure operators travel several kilometers to reach the enclosures.
ICTCAs in Brazil
The third project carried out with the Ecos Fund in the region, in 2021, supported communities with a focus on strengthening the governance of nine Fechos de Pastos communities.
The support is part of a series of two Ecos Fund calls, between 2020 and 2023, dedicated to concept of Territories and Areas Conserved by Indigenous Peoples and Traditional and Local Communities (TICCAs). The initiative received financial support from the Government of Germany (BMU) and support from UNDP for territories where populations had deep connections, strong governance and implemented conservation practices.
As a result of this experience of the Ecos Fund, then PPP-ECOS, with TICCAs, the publication was born Strengthening Community-Owned Conservation Areas (TICCAS) in Brazil – The PPP-ECOS experience.
“Territorial protection is essential for maintaining Brazil’s immense cultural diversity, but also because [Cerrado communities] protect native vegetation, generating the provision of essential ecosystem services for the entire society,” comments ecologist and one of the authors of the material, Isabel Figueiredo, who coordinates the Cerrado Program at ISPN.
Ecosystem services are benefits generated by ecosystems in terms of maintaining, restoring or improving environmental conditions, directly impacting people's quality of life. Examples include water production, biodiversity maintenance, energy transfer, nutrient cycling and climate regulation.
The name TICCAs resembles the Brazilian definition of territories of traditional peoples and communities established by Decree 6.040 / 2007, but is used in international discussions to refer to conserved indigenous and community territories and their fundamental roles in biodiversity conservation.
These areas and territories are also known as territories of life, where communities and groups of people live who have a strong connection to the place. “Without the territory, there are no people, no production and no environment,” summarizes ISPN technical advisor Lívia Moura.
In 2019, with the support of the Government of Germany/UNDP, ISPN organized a workshop in Brasília to help stimulate the debate on how peoples and communities could benefit from registration. The meeting was attended by public and private institutions and representatives of indigenous and traditional populations participated. That same year, the systematic collections of the workshop and the knowledge of experts resulted in the publication "TICCAs: Analysis of the Legal Situation and Implementation in Brazil”, prepared by Cláudio C. Maretti and Juliana F. Simões.
The TICCAs calls for proposals, promoted by the Ecos Fund, also fall within this context. The projects selected in the call sought diverse solutions to strengthen community governance of traditional peoples and communities in the Cerrado and its transition areas.
In the initiative carried out by the Fecho de Clemente Association, the management of collective areas with traditional preventive practices – for example, through integrated fire management – was an important axis of action.
“We were able to promote fire-fighting actions by discussing the issue in the community. This process strengthened people’s identity with the territories, even culminating in the creation of two new associations,” explains Eldo.
The fencer also says that the more than three thousand families involved were able to understand the fence not only as a collective territory but also as a place with a diversity of ways of life, leisure and culture. The springs were also mapped with the support of the project: there are 72 in nine fenced territories in western Bahia.
Strengthening governance
Indigenous peoples and traditional communities rely on the right to free, prior and informed consultation, established by Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO), to guarantee the protection of the territory against external intervention.
They must be consulted whenever administrative or legislative measures may directly affect them. Brazilian legislation itself recognizes the convention, which was ratified by Congress in 2002. Despite this, consultation is not always respected.
Therefore, to strengthen the governance of their territories, some documents can be added to the process as a security measure, such as terms of commitment, consultation protocols and territorial and environmental management plans.
The consultation protocol is one of the instruments for free, prior and informed consultation, which seeks to meet the prerogatives of ILO Convention 169. It brings together the methods and flows of decision-making by peoples for their territories in relation to factors that impact them positively or negatively, from internal or external actions. It is an important document. Its function is to protect the rights of peoples and prevent the violation of actions, projects or even policies that directly affect them, without their being heard or respected.
“The consultation protocol works as a true governance map, that is, it indicates how a people makes important decisions for their territory and their population, taking their own mechanisms and ways of life as a reference,” explains João Guilherme Cruz, coordinator of the Indigenous Peoples Program at ISPN.
In the case of the Vacarianas communities, so named because of their connection to the Vacarias River, in the upper-middle reaches of the river, north of Minas Gerais, they created a map of the territory that shows the area where they are established. “Before, there was a lot of disrespect for the territory, with fires and pollution,” explains Ms. Olívia Ferreira, a community leader who followed the mapping process.
The activity was carried out with the support of Alternative Agriculture Center of Northern Minas Gerais (CAA), within the scope of the project Recognition and Protection of the Traditional Vacariano Territory in the valleys of the Vacaria and Peixe Bravo Rivers (MG), selected in the 30th Ecos Fund call for proposals.
“We are fighting for our Vacarias River, fighting for recognition. Before, we didn’t have much understanding that the river needed to be better preserved. Today, people are more aware and there is no more deforestation along the riverbank,” adds the Vacarias resident.
For Olívia, after the project was completed, people in the communities better understood their rights and the importance of the fight, and the territory became stronger against mining.
Among the Karajá people, the Araguaia Indigenous Park, on Bananal Island (TO), uses ethnotourism to generate income and also to promote the Karajá indigenous culture. The ultimate goal: to strengthen governance and protection of the territory.
With support from the Ecos Fund, after the Covid-19 pandemic, the Karajá Cultural Center in São Félix do Araguaia (MT) carried out a project to structure tourism activities on indigenous land. The technician in charge, Samuel Karajá, a resident of the Kuryala village, explains that the project included training for indigenous guides, such as “tour guides” and built a shed to house a camping space to receive tourists, with kitchen facilities.
The Karajá Tour Operator is also a result of the project and works among five villages in the IT, bathed by the Araguaia River. “We are open to receiving other peoples to train,” says Samuel.
He says that in January of this year, the Casa de Cultura submitted the visitation plan for the villages to Funai in order to be able to start operating legally, a mandatory document for visitation activities for tourist purposes.
The deadline for the federal agency to respond, according to the law, should be 30 days. “While we wait, we will work on what is pending.”
The idea, once the documentation is regularized, is to promote planned tourist activities, such as trails, safaris, river bathing and camping on the beaches. Samuel, however, ponders: “the expectations are very high, but how we will deal with this new activity, the benefit of income generation, we still cannot measure”.
The technician points out that the project contributed to the unity of the territory. “We are closer together, the villages understood the importance of being closer together,” he said, adding that the appreciation of culture and the environment, the opening of paths to seek more resources and new partnerships, and the knowledge of other tourism initiatives were also positive consequences of this process.
“There is still a lot to do to work in favor of the climate. It is very hot for everyone, burning a lot on Bananal Island,” lamented Samuel.
Golden rods of protection
The golden stalks of the golden grass are a source of income for many families living near the Jalapão State Park and the Serra Geral Ecological Station in Tocantins. Although the species is not found only in this state, it is there that the production and sale of handicrafts has become popular.
In the Mumbuca community, located in the municipality of Mateiros, the activity has been a tradition for over 70 years.
Plant extraction is a way to conserve the biome, generating jobs and income. However, to do so, it is necessary to observe limits for sustainable or “rational” management that protects the species.
Golden grass is a type of “everlasting plant” that grows in humid fields near trails and is native to the Cerrado. Everlasting is the popular name for several species of plants that, once harvested and dried, can withstand the test of time without losing their color or spoiling.
In 2004, the then PPP, now the Ecos Fund, supported the research “Studies for the Sustainable Use of Capim Dourado and Wet Fields in Jalapão”, carried out in partnership with the Mumbuca Community, since August 2003, by the organization Pesquisa e Conservação do Cerrado (PEQUI) and by the Ibama Forestry Directorate.
Seeking to develop techniques for the conservation and sustainable management of golden grass, through observation of the effect of harvesting, the study concluded that harvesting by local communities carried out during traditional periods does not negatively affect the plants, leading to a better understanding of the plant's cycle: flowering, production and seed dispersal. The effect of fire on the species was also studied, and all the results were presented to associations of artisans in the region.
The researched material served as a basis, in 2024, for the environmental agency of Tocantins, Naturatins, which issued an ordinance regulating the period and form of collection of golden grass.
The result was also presented in the booklet “Golden Grass and Buriti – Practices to ensure the sustainability of crafts”, which guided the term of commitment, or collection protocol, ensuring cohesion between the desires of the communities involved, extractors of the plant, and the consequent strengthening of community governance.
The golden grass primer is just one of dozens of publications produced by the ISPN team and partner organizations, with support from the Ecos Fund, to systematize and disseminate good species management practices.
The idea behind the research and products was to strengthen the marketing of socio-biodiversity products, in this case with an emphasis on golden grass handicrafts, through networks and support for small projects. Finally, achieving the priority objective: the conservation of natural resources in the territories and the improvement of income and quality of life of rural communities.
After all, as the three decades of Fundo Ecos have already demonstrated, without territory there are no people, production or environment.
Text by Camila Araujo, ISPN Communications Advisor