Burning Reasons: Traditional Land Management Using Fire and Environmental Conflicts in Serra da Canastra National Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Abstract

Several traditional communities in Brazil use fire as a constitutive element of their agricultural management system and such practice is, thus, an important aspect of their culture. However, government environmental agencies often regard traditional management using fire as a technique that should be overcome by management practices based on conservation biology. The imposition of environmental management regime forms based on modern science upon traditional communities’ cosmology results in significant impacts on the territory, not only on the people, but also on the environment. In this chapter, we present an investigation into the conflict between the traditional communities that live in Serra da Canastra National Park, located in southeastern Brazil, and the federal environmental agency, which claims to be responsible for biodiversity conservation in that area. Local ecosystems, predominantly savannas, have been managed by such communities over the last three centuries, and fire is considered by them a central element in the dynamics of the landscape, especially for the renewal of pastures. The establishment of a protected area in their territories, in 1972, and its expansion into other traditional areas, since 2005, resulted in several conflicts related to the management using fire, among other reasons. According to the communities’ reports, the new procedures imposed by the state aiming at restricting the use of fire as a management method has caused both an alteration of pasture areas and a decrease in local biodiversity. Although environmental agencies have recently begun to incorporate traditional knowledge about fire as a way to manage the territory, overcoming governmental reason remains a challenge, so as to ensure the territorial rights of traditional communities and the conservation of biodiversity.