Abstract
The rise of community-based conservation (CBC) from the 1980s, heralded a paradigm shift in the global conservation and development agenda, increasing the engagement of conservationists towards the cause of the needs of Indigenous people. As a result, many international agreements were implemented, such as Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (1989) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992). In Brazil, a National Policy for the Sustainable Development of Traditional Peoples and Communities (PNDSPCT) was introduced in 2007, which came to recognise the rights and existing sustainable use practices of 'traditional communities'. This paper uses data from a long-term ethnography of both the local people and the conservation agenda in the Pantanal wetland, Brazil, to discuss how environmentalists used the PNDSPCT to justify the displacement of local people by claiming they do not fit in any traditional community category, and instead should be called 'rural poor'. Interview-based evidence from these communities shows the contrary—pointing out a long history of occupation in the region, customary practices that guarantee sustainable use and self-recognition as a culturally differentiated group. The results are used to explore how narrow notions of indigenous identity have been used to oppress communities in Brazil and in other parts of the global south. The paper concludes that a flexible and fluid categorisation of traditional peoples or indigenous groups should be used in order to avoid reinforcing the already oppressive restrictions placed on local communities that are close to or part of conservation initiatives.
Highlights
Established in 2007, the policy was an output of a long-term political struggle that started in the 1960s during Brazil’s military period (1964–1984) and came to recognise the rights and sustainable use of natural resources of ‘traditional people’ (Silva 2007)
Even though the Brazilian policy on traditional peoples and communities states that self-identification is the formal way to recognise traditional communities and there have been no in-depth studies establishing who these people are, environmentalists argued that fishers from the western border of the Pantanal cannot be considered a traditional group because there are no sugarcane mills and there have never been permanent settlements in the area
The Brazilian National Policy for the Sustainable Development of Traditional Peoples and Communities (‘Political Nacional de Desenvolvimento Sustentável de Povos e Comunidades Tradicionais’; PNDSPCT) was an important instrument to guarantee that conservation interventions respect local groups who depend on natural resources for their livelihoods and wellbeing (Calegare et al 2014)
Summary
Even though the Brazilian policy on traditional peoples and communities states that self-identification is the formal way to recognise traditional communities and there have been no in-depth studies establishing who these people are, environmentalists argued that fishers from the western border of the Pantanal cannot be considered a traditional group because there are no sugarcane mills and there have never been permanent settlements in the area. They claim that riverine communities living in the Western Border of the Pantanal (‘ribeirinhos’) have neither historical links with the region nor customary systems of management of natural resources in ways that would protect local biodiversity; on the contrary, they are over-exploring local fish populations (Franco et al 2013).
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