Innovation for sustainability: using drones as an empowering tool for protection, monitoring, and mapping in Brazil nut harvesting communities.

Abstract

This study aims to provide the traditional extractive communities of the Jari River – Quilombo São José and Santo Antônio da Cachoeira communities – with training in the use of drones to map, monitor and record images of chestnut trees to combat possible invasions by squatters, loggers, prospector
s or forest fires. Our fundamental basis is other projects already developed in the Amazon with a theme and objectives similar to what we propose. Our proposal is to implement and permanently monitor training, knowledge updates about the use of drones, and training of new community members to participate as monitoring agents of the communities' chestnut groves. Through bibliographical research on the subject, we were able to highlight some projects already developed in quilombola, indigenous and traditional communities in the Amazon in which the use of technology was added to traditional knowledge, resulting in significant advances in quality of life, environmental balance and a decrease in invasions of these lands, in addition to re-establishing the feeling of belonging to the forest, the land and the environment. With the application of the questionnaire, it was possible to verify the glimpse and the desire that community members have to acquire new knowledge and the empowerment that traditional peoples have when combining their traditional knowledge with technology, with the way of seeing and perceiving the forest, with the new look – never before had – when seeing the forest from a new angle. It is evident that despite the age and limited knowledge of the interviewees, the community as a whole wants and needs this assistance to monitor and map their chestnut groves.