Percepção de risco ambiental e estratégias adaptativas por uma população de pescadores artesanais: aspectos socioeconômicos e participação comunitária

Abstract

The increase in population density in coastal areas has aggravated the vulnerability of the ecosystems and the fishing populations in which they live. There is a need to integrate traditional peoples' knowledge into management practices, to understand how they perceive environmental risks and their adaptive coping strategies. Some socioeconomic factors can influence the way in which individuals perceive risks and elaborate adaptative strategies with the active participation of the local population. Thus, our research aimed to understand: i). What is the relationship between socioeconomic factors and risk perception in a population of artisanal fishers and ii). If they perceive adaptative coping strategies carried out in a participatory manner. We will deal here with risks to the environmental quality of the Rio Formoso estuary, state of Pernambuco. Individual interviews were carried out with 102 fishers, 54 men and 48 women, who freely listed and described the risks to the conservation of estuarine ecosystems. Our analysis is divided into three parts: i) Cognitive Salience Index (CSI); ii) Hypothesis test of the number of perceived risks; and iii) Perception network between risks and strategies. We identified 22 risks and categorized them into five major groups: i) Fishing; ii) Boat’s flow; iii) Continental pollution; iv) Urban development; and v) Others. In general, the perception of environmental risks by fishers was mainly related to continental pollution and fishing activity, while the increase in formal education (the most relevant factor) and the presence of complementary income positively affected the number of perceived risks. Another factor is the influence of sex on this perception: men identified more risks than women. We identified 13 adaptative strategies. We categorized seven of them as “governmental” (exclusive responsibility of the municipal, state and / or federal public management) and the other six as “participatory” (performed with some or total participation of residents). We found that the more salient the risk, the greater the number of strategies mentioned by fishers. In our analysis of the perception network, we found three risk modules more related with participatory strategies, involving residents, public management, and universities. This fact exposes a favorable scenario for increasing the active involvement of scientists through their research, extension projects and participation in collectives movements and NGOs in searching for joint solutions with the populations for these environmental problems. We emphasize the importance of understanding context-specific socioeconomic factors and identifying participatory strategies for promoting biocultural conservation in socio-ecological systems of artisanal fishing populations in tropical areas. We suggest deepening future research on questions about how formal and non-formal education, sex, and supplementary income qualitatively affect the perception of risk.