Ecologia e sustentabilidade do extrativismo do ouricuri (Syagrus coronata (Mart.) Becc.) pelos índios Fulni-ô no Nordeste do Brasil em um cenário de mudanças ambientais e culturais

Abstract

The main issue of this thesis was to understand how cultural and environmental changes influence the relationship between human groups and natural resources available in the environment. Specifically, we aimed to: (i) verify if ethnicity and socioeconomic factors were related to the use of a culturally important species by an indigenous group; (ii) investigate harvest practices and the perception of changes in the abundance of the populations of this species; and (iii) observe if leaves harvest and environmental characteristics interfered in the population structure and in rates of leaf production and infructescence production by the individuals. We conducted semi-structured interviews, used participatory methods with the Fulni-ô indigenous people of Águas Belas, Pernambuco, Northeast of Brazil and collected ecological data of the species Syagrus coronata (Mart.) Becc. (ouricuri) at harvest sites indicated by leaf harvesters. We also collected ethnicity information from indigenous artisans (who used and did not use ouricuri leaves for handicraft production) and indigenous non-artisans. Our results evidenciated that knowledge and harvest of S. coronata leaves were maintained by those who diversified the resources for the production of handicraft. In addition, leaf havesters were younger and had another type of occupation beyond the handicraft, indicating that the diversification of income and resources contributed to the maintenance of the practice of collecting ouricuri leaves. Artisans who used S. coronata had higher ethnicity in comparison to artisans who did not use this resource and with non artisans, showing that the use of the species and the maintenance of the ethnicity of the Fulni-ô indigenous people were related. The sustainability of the harvest practice was explained only by the time of experience and we verified a low convergence between the perceived abundance and the measured abundance of the populations of S. coronata. The Fulni-ô perceived the scarcity of the resource, but indicated that the main cause is the rent of land, which suggests difficulties in establishing strategies that aimed the species conservation. Through ecological data, we verified that leaf harvest seemed not to affect the population structure and the production of leaves and infructescences of S. coronata, but anthropized areas were not favorable for the establishment of populations of the species. We conclude that environmental and cultural changes influenced ouricuri knowledge by Fulni-ô people. In addition, we have shown that conservation of culturally important species is extremely necessary in a scenario which traditional ecological knowledge systems held by human groups undergo major tranformations.