Sustentabilidade e saúde no uso de plantas medicinais na ótica das populações ribeirinhas da Amazônia

Abstract

The use of medicinal plants is a reality present in the life and history of the different groups that make up the Amazon. The practices and techniques developed by traditional peoples are constituted by sociocultural values based on a man-nature relationship and sustainability. In view of this reality, the dissertation had the general objective of analyzing the perspective of social and cultural sustainability in the use of medicinal plants in health care by the riverside populations of the Amazon. The methodology was qualitative in nature, not excluding quantitative data, in this sense bibliographic and documentary sources were used, the data presented about medicinal plants and the riverside communities of São Lázaro and Santa Luzia were taken from the Final Report of CNPq/MCTI Edital No. 025/2015, entitled: "Assembling the knowledge landscape: a strategy to rescue, value and protect knowledge of herbs and medicinal plants in traditional communities in the Amazon", and from the Database of the Interdisciplinary Group for Socio-environmental Studies and Development of Appropriate Social Technologies in the Amazon (Inter-Action Group). The method adopted in the study was the historical-dialectical, and content analysis of Bardin (2011), which allowed to create categories with greater precision to the set of information obtained. In view of this, the results of the dissertation revealed: a) the identification of species and forms of use of medicinal plants; b) the importance of traditional knowledge in the lives of riverine people and the contribution of this knowledge to society, for the maintenance, preservation and conservation of all the socio-biodiversity of the country and especially the Amazon; c) it was possible to identify the cultural and social elements present in the forms of learning and dissemination of traditional knowledge linked to medicinal plants; d) the riverside dwellers have created legal systems to identify, diagnose, treat, cure, and prevent diseases/symptoms that affect the family and community; e) the use of medicinal plants cuts across cultural and social elements, and is linked to other dimensions such as environmental, territorial, economic, and political. Thus, the study points to the need to rethink the materialities and the operationalization of public policies, so that sustainability does not remain only in the technical-scientific textual content, but that this sustainability bias is realized beyond the theoretical-methodological level. Thus, the principles and dimensions of sustainability tend to contribute to the confrontation of social inequalities, the fight for justice, and the guarantee of social, civil, and political rights, contributing to human, social, and citizenship development.