Monitoramento participativo como subsídio para a gestão adaptativa de unidades de conservação no Amazonas

Abstract

Participatory biodiversity monitoring programs have become indispensable tools for assessing the quality of biodiversity conservation management in a context marked by the progressive loss of biodiversity. These programs are characterized by the ability to aggregate the communities that directly survive from the use of biodiversity to the monitoring activity. This process is intended to produce data on trends in natural resources and biological species, assisting managers in decision-making on conservation priorities. In this sense, participatory monitoring contributes to the management of protected areas being closer to adaptive management, considered the most adequate to deal with the complexity of biodiversity. As we place this debate in the Amazon scenario, particularly in the state of Amazonas, we have evaluated the importance in the last years of four participatory monitoring programs, namely ProBUC, SIMUR, monitoring of the Mamirauá RDS and PROMUF, so that management of the units conservation approach in which they are situated is approaching an adaptive perspective. Based on a qualitative research, we interviewed the three main social subjects involved in the construction of these programs - community, managers and researchers - so that, at first, their information allows us to make a diagnosis of the functioning of these programs, highlighting their limitations and potentialities. Thus, problems related to financing, feedback to communities and expansion of monitoring targets can be identified as the main challenges, although the participatory process has been ensured in the construction of all programs. In a second moment, we identify the contributions that they confer to the viability of the Amazonian adaptive management, observing that there was no management program or creation of new monitoring that could be attributed to any of the programs, except for the monitoring of the RAR Mamirauá, which exists as a result of local community management In general, the control of the technical teams on the data produced and the inclusion of interests regarding the food security of the Amazonian communities was detected. Thus, the contribution of these participatory monitoring programs to adaptive management is still at an unsatisfactory level.