Including diverse knowledges and worldviews in environmental assessment and planning: : the Brazilian Amazon Kaxinawá Nova Olinda Indigenous Land case

The concepts of ‘ecosystem services’ (ES) and ‘nature’s contributions to people’ (NCP) inform environmental frameworks that set out to include Indigenous and Local Knowledge systems (ILK) and worldviews in policy and planning processes. These frameworks aim to enhance biodiversity conservation and human well-being in a legitimate and effective way. In this article, we explore how the concept of People’s Contributions to Nature (PCN) is complementary to NCP. We use it to investigate challenges that planners and locals face in realizing the legitimate inclusion of diverse knowledges and worldviwes that account for people and ecosystems in a relational way. We introduce a case study where planners drew on ES and NCP and used participatory methods to implement a REDD+ policy in the Kaxinawá Nova Olinda Indigenous Land (Acre-Brazil). We find that both Kaxinawás and planners emphasize both NCP and PCN in their discourses. Nevertheless, differences between knowledge systems and disciplines, uneven power relations between Kaxinawás and planners, and an under-consideration of PCN by global frameworks challenge the legitimate inclusion of the Kaxinawá knowlege and worldviews to craft assessment and planning. We conclude that by explicitly addressing these challenges, science-policy interfaces can further advance knowledge legitimacy and policy effectiveness

Ethnopedology of a Quilombola Community in Minas Gerais: Soils, Landscape, and Land Evaluation

Quilombolas are Afro-brazilian rural peasants who descended from escapedslaves who tried to carve out territories of autonomy (called Quilombos) by collective organization and resistance. Despite many anthropological and ethnopedological studies, little research has been carried out to identify the agricultural practices and the knowledge of people who live in the Quilombos (Quilombolas). Peasant communities who live from land resources have wide empirical knowledge related to local soils and landscapes. In this respect, ethnopedology focuses on their relationship with local practices, needs, and values. We carried out an ethnopedological evaluation of the soils, landscape and land suitability of the Malhada Grande Quilombola Territory, aiming to examine the local criteria involved in land-use decision making, and evaluate the legitimacy of local knowledge. For this purpose, participatory workshops allowed environmental stratification of the Quilombolas into landscape units, recognition of soil types, and evaluation of land-use criteria. This approach was combined with conventional soil sampling, description, and analysis. The Brazilian System of Soil Classification and its approximations to the WRB/FAO system andthe SAAT land evaluation system were compared with the local classificatory systems, showing several convergences. The Quilombolas stratified the local environment into eight landscape units (based on soil, topography, and vegetation) and identified eight soil types with distinct morphological, chemical, and physical attributes. The conventional soil survey identified thirteen soil classes, in the same eight landscape units, organized as soil associations. The apparent contradictions between local knowledge and Pedology were relative since the classification systems were established based on different criteria, goals, and sampling references. Most soils are only suitable for pasture, with restricted Agricultural use, due to water or oxygen deficiencies. The current land use was only inconsistent with the technical recommendations when socioecological constraints such as the semiarid climate, land availability, and economic conditions for land management led to overuse of the land.Local knowledge demonstrated its legitimacy and allowed a useful and fruitful exchange of information with the academic view of soil-landscape interplays. Although mostly unknown by the scientific community, local knowledge proved capable of achieving social welfare and food security. In addition, a participatory survey proved to be a core factor for more grounded and detailed data collection on how Quilombolas decide land use on a local scale