Socio-environmental and cultural georeferencing for territoriality in agro-forest communities: theoretical and methodological bases

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate the use of a socio-environmental and cultural georeferencing methodologydeveloped and applied in traditional communities interconnected by the Mamuru and Arapiuns rivers, inthe municipalities of Juruti and Santarém, western Pará State. The methodology based on the GeneralTheory of Systems had the purpose of delimiting the territory of use of the communities with the purposeof preserving them from the flogging imposed by the logging activities resulting from the concessionsof public forests to the private sector since 2010 in the region. As methodological procedures, primaryinformation on land use was collected from interviews with key actors in the communities, whose contentaddressed the use of natural resources in the community territorial environment. The communities weregeoreferenced, using cartographic points, whose cardinal directions and distances were estimated froma "reference point" taken in the villages, necessary for the marking of lines, directions, and areas of useof natural resources. The data were exported to the QGIS software, to obtain polygonal land use, as a domain environment and community control. Five years after the beginning of logging activities, the samemethodology was applied again to verify the spatial situation of communities regarding land use, due toforest public policies implemented in the study area.