RESILIENCE IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON: FOR A POLICY AND EDUCATION SYSTEM FOR TRADITIONAL GATHERER POPULATIONS

The Brazilian Amazon is characterized by its biological, sociocultural richness and ecosystem services to the living populations of the planet. Nowadays, pressures and threats to its ecological systems are growing, especially with the advance of livestock (cattle) and intensive agriculture in the region — which models a future scenario of uncertainties with potential global impacts. If current trends continue, the transformation of the Amazon into a savannah is a real possibility.
Faced with these increasing contemporary pressures — economic, cultural, and political — maintaining the resilience of local traditional populations is a major challenge. This is a strategic key to solutions in this risk scenario. It is important that the federal government of Brazil, state governments, civil society organizations, foreign governments, and other interested parties unite in a joint medium-term effort, listening to the voices that emerge from these populations and constituting a process of reciprocity with them to increase resilience. In this sense, the school and educational systems are important instruments for interventions that seek lasting and effective change for sustainability.
Here, we recommend the design, modeling, and implementation of a differentiated education system for traditional gatherer populations living in Nature Conservation Units in Brazil (with a focus on the Brazilian Amazon), with a view to leveraging local development with resilience — based on ontologies, epistemologies, and other constituent elements of these traditional territorialities.