The expansion of oil palm crops in the Brazilian Amazon over the last decade seems to be negatively affecting indigenous populations that claim to have been suffering a range of social and ecological problems, resulting from land-use changes and intensive pesticide use around their lands. The State of Pará is the largest Brazilian palm (Elaeis guineensis) producer, and since 2010 it has tripled its plantation area, recently reaching 167 thousand hectares. According to the agro-ecologic zoning for this palm, the plantations can occupy 31.8 million hectares of areas of supposed degraded land in Brazil. We currently seek to comprehend, from an indigenous perspective, which social and environmental changes occurred since the palm crop establishment around an indigenous land. We analysed how this form of land-use by a neighbouring local oil palm company has been transforming their territories, and possibly affecting their livelihoods and well-being, by disturbing the natural resources they rely on (e.g., freshwater availability and quality, biodiversity, hunting areas, among others). We aim at analysing water and sediments of small streams for pesticide contamination, and mapping land use changes around an indigenous territory. Our research is focused on the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Land, located in North-eastern Pará, in the heart of an oil palm production area in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon. With a joint anthropological and ecotoxicological approach, we have conducted participative observation, remote sensing and lab agrochemical determination. Field data show that changes affecting the Tembé people have been perceived throughout distinct phases of the plantations’ set up, from the initial stage that comprises land conversion, all the way to the land clearing and plantation itself, and during the growing stages as well. While the immediate problems they describe are related to deforestation of secondary forest, streams´ degradation, hunting areas restriction, loss of game species, intensive use of pesticides and health complaints, during the plant growing stage over six years of plantation new impacts were perceived and considered relevant by the indigenous community, along with the ones previously identified, such as climate change at a local scale and proliferation of snakes and insects. Our findings suggest that changes in previous land-use to oil palm monoculture are negatively affecting the Tembé People´s livelihoods, and shed light on the need for public policies to adopt more restrict standards of sustainability on agro-industrial plantations close to indigenous communities. In the context of this ongoing study, further inquiries are underway that will allow us to understand this issue better.
Acknowledgments: We are grateful to the field work support graciously provided by colleagues from the Fundação Nacional do Índio (Indigenous National Foundation, Brazil) and from the Evandro Chagas Institute (Health Surveillance Department, Ministry of Health, Brazil). This work has been financially supported by the Brazilian Funding Agencies CAPES and CNPq.
Keywords: sustainability, indigenous land, oil palm, social-environmental impacts, pesticides, deforestation, water degradation
0b Indigenous, afro, and rural communities involvement with sustainability
