Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: MARIA CLARA BEZERRA TENÓRIO CAVALCANTI

Uma banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
DISCENTE : MARIA CLARA BEZERRA TENÓRIO CAVALCANTI
DATA : 25/10/2017
HORA: 09:00
LOCAL: Sala didático I
TÍTULO:

The resilience of social-ecological systems in semi-arid regions: improving Caatinga conservation

PALAVRAS-CHAVES:

Drylands, protected areas, socioeconomic vulnerability, subsistence, use of natural resources

PÁGINAS: 50
GRANDE ÁREA: Ciências Biológicas
ÁREA: Ecologia
RESUMO:

To date forests remain a source of several goods and services for human groups all over the globe. Dryland forests, for instance, play a crucial role in promoting ecological, social and economic balance, supporting people’s livelihoods. Nevertheless, dryland regions have been imperiled by ineffective environmental policy, droughts that are increasingly more intense and sequential, and adverse human activities, such as intensive land use for agriculture and pasture, rapid urbanization, and population growth. Also, human populations living in dry landscapes are often some of the poorest and most vulnerable in the world. Poverty is one of the aspects that lead people to overexploit natural resources to supply their needs, accelerating environmental degradation. This situation claims for effective policies to promote social equality and biodiversity conservation, which could be facilitated through an integrated understanding of: (1) the conditions that drive people to use and  depend on local natural resources; (2) the importance of the environment to supply subsistence and financial needs for the poor; and (3) how vulnerable people would respond to strategies to promote local biodiversity conservation that limit the access to the natural resources they depend upon. This research approaches these three points, each one corresponding to a different chapter, with the overall goal of achieving a better understanding of the social, economic, and ecological dimensions of the resilience of social-ecological systems in semi-arid regions. The study was conducted in the Caatinga, a biodiversity rich biome that lies in the northeast portion of Brazil and encompasses the highest rates of poverty in the country. We used semi-structured questionnaires to interview 254 respondents living in 21 rural communities, spread throughout five distinct previously selected polygons in the state of Rio Grande do Norte. In the first chapter, we found that some of the rural households’ socioeconomic characteristics, together with urban insertion conditions that rural communities are submitted to, played a part in driving the frequency of use of natural resources in a local context. Cultural habits may explain why some resources are continuously used regardless of differences in income or of urban influences amongst the respondents. The second chapter approaches the importance of the Caatinga natural resources to improve both financial and subsistence needs of rural households. This chapter is under construction. Finally, in the third chapter we found that people who felt that an eventual prohibition to access the resources would harm their families tended to accept less restrictive conservation scenarios, in opposition to those with a higher level of formal education.  Thus, we should direct environmental policies to support especially those people that depend the most on local resources in order to enhance their adaptation process to deal with the impacts of promoting conservation efforts. By doing so, the resilience of this social-ecological system could be improved

MEMBROS DA BANCA:
Interno - 1803589 - ADRIANA ROSA CARVALHO
Interno - 1718346 - EDUARDO MARTINS VENTICINQUE
Presidente - 1718747 - PRISCILA FABIANA MACEDO LOPES