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Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
Sat Sep 11, 2021, 01:24 AM Sep 2021

'On the map': App shines light on 5,000 'invisible' families in Brazil's Cerrado

by Sarah Sax on 10 September 2021

Thousands of families from traditional communities in Brazil have finally been granted visibility through a digital mapping platform that’s allowed them to demarcate their lands, according to a new report released at the global conservation congress being held this week in Marseille, France.

The report, presented Sept. 9 at the IUCN World Conservation Congress, highlights the first results from the Tô No Mapa app, which shines a light on more than 5,000 families in 76 communities from 23 Brazilian states, whose territories amount to 350,000 hectares (865,000 acres) that, until now, have gone unrecognized on official government maps.

“It looks like a small number but it shows a huge gap between the official data of the state agency and the first results of the mobile app,” Suzanne Scaglia, a technical adviser with the Brazilian civil society organization Institute for Society, People, and Nature (ISPN), one of the organizations behind the app, said in a phone interview from the congress in Marseille.



Babassu coconut breakers are one of many traditional communities who have lived off the unique diversity and richness of the Brazilian savanna and whose livelihoods are increasingly threatened by agricultural conflicts. Image courtesy of Peter Caton/Institute for Society, People, and Nature (ISPN).

The platform, launched in October 2020, also allows communities to list significant points of interest and conflict, according to the ISPN.

. . .

Hundreds of traditional communities — from Quilombolas, the Afro-Brazilian descendants of runaway slaves, to peasant and agro-extractivist communities — live in the Cerrado. Studies have shown their stewardship of these areas have kept deforestation at bay, conserved more remaining areas of native vegetation, conserved the native wildlife, provided food, contributed to the recharge of aquifers and water sources, and helped maintain the land’s capacity to store carbon dioxide.

“Traditional communities hold centuries-old knowledge about the fruiting of plants, the distribution of native species, fire management and other techniques integral to the Cerrado environment,” says Valney Dias Rigonato, a geography professor at the Federal University of Western Bahia, who wasn’t involved in the creation of the report and has been studying traditional communities and livelihoods in the Cerrado for two decades. “Traditional communities both conserve and even positively enhance the landscape composition.”

More:
https://news.mongabay.com/2021/09/on-the-map-app-shines-light-on-5000-invisible-families-in-brazils-cerrado/

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