Tracing gender variation in traditional knowledge: participatory tools to promote conservation in a Quilombola community in Brazil

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-4682138/v1

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Research Article

Tracing gender variation in traditional knowledge: participatory tools to promote conservation in a Quilombola community in Brazil

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4682138/v1

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Background

Based on participatory research tools and analysis with a gender focus, we aim to identify the knowledge associated with native plants of the Atlantic Forest in a Quilombola community whose territory is juxtaposed with a protected area, in South Brazil.

Methods

Through the perception of the local residents of the Quilombola community of São Roque, we classified the availability, harvesting intensity, abundance and importance of fourteen plants native to the Atlantic Forest found in their territory. A participatory workshop was built with the community to collect data through three activities: four-cell tool, environment matrix, and importance matrix. In order to identify the diversity of intracultural knowledge, all activities were separated into two groups based on the gender of the participants and researchers.

Results

The species Pau-pra-tudo (Picrasma crenata), Quina (Coutarea hexandra) and Cipó-milome (Aristolochia triangularis) were similarly classified as important by both groups, which indicates the cultural and environmental relevance associated with them disregarding gender. The perception of other species were expressed in different ways between the groups, showing the variance of the ecological knowledge and the relationship between the socio-cultural contexts of gender with the knowledge manifested. The final part of the workshop was a lecture given by two community experts about herbal medicines based on forest species found in the territory.

Conclusions

Based on the plural results recorded in the workshops, we discuss the demand of traditional communities inclusion in land management plans of environmental agencies, highlighting how individual characteristics, such as gender, can fill gaps in data about local biodiversity.

Traditional knowledge

Traditional ecological knowledge

Ethnoecology

Ethnobotany

Atlantic forest

Participatory tools

The relationships between human knowledge and plant resources can be studied by different ethnobiological approaches. Ethnobotany deals with the concepts developed by any society regarding the plant world [1] encompassing the way a social group classifies plants and the uses they attribute to these resources [2], among other aspects. Ethnoecology focuses on processes and human adaptations to the environment [3]. These disciplines also investigate the cultural characteristics of people and how these characteristics participate in the knowledge construction.

Gender is one of these characteristics that influences and is influenced by each society, economy and culture [4]. Thus, behaviors and cognitive processes can be directed, and gender differences can be attenuated due to segregation and classification of groups according to their gender characteristics and ideologies [4]. The traditional stereotyped characterization of genders sort those in two main groups based on their sexual characteristics: females and males – the binary classification of gender –, where those stereotypes reflect general expectations about members of particular social groups [5]. Here we understand that genetic factors define the person’s sex, but gender identity refers to how people identify themselves and how they express this identity externally, which can imply several gender definitions [6]. However, in this article we assumed a binary gender characterization, since it is how the community recognizes themselves: women and men.

During their day-to-day routine, women and men are exposed to different experiences and develop different skills in relation to the environments in which they live, which contributes to the development of “gender-specific knowledge domains” [7, 8]. This means that a person’s gender directly influences the entire process of acquiring, processing and transferring knowledge [7], driven by one’s functional gender role in familiar and community routines.

Participatory research tools are useful in ethnobiological approaches because they allow the simultaneous understanding and confrontation of the multiple perceptions that a community has about a given subject. Participatory tools involve the community as agents in research and open ways for their role in decision-making processes about their own territory, such as decisions related to the management, protection and use of species [9, 10]. Furthermore, participatory tools are particularly appropriate as they make it possible to approach different groups within a human community, and the different values attributed to plant resources by those groups [11]. This type of research can trace variation of ecological knowledge about natural resources, enabling the incorporation of traditional knowledge from the perspective of the local stakeholders in the management of the territory, which consolidates their autonomy regarding the use and conservation of natural resources [12]. However, when using participatory tools it is important to recognize that there are different levels and degrees of participation in these methodologies. For example, participation can be passive, in which interaction occurs in only one direction (usually from local people to researchers); contractual, when the community participation is done in some activities and through formal agreements; consultive, when the initiative is external but is based on the desires, needs and opinions of the community [13, 14]; collaborative, when it starts from an external idea but both parties participate in the same way in all stages of the research; among colleagues, when it starts from an external stimulus but encourages local projects and community self-mobilization (i.e, [10]); and community self-mobilization, in which the community mobilizes itself in identifying and solving a given problem [9]. In this research, our approach was between consultative and collaborative [13, 14].

10% of The Brazilian Atlantic Forest territory is classified as protected areas [15]. However, many of these protected areas historically belong to traditional territories and native peoples, who live in and around them [16]. Before the creation of the protected areas, and today together with them, traditional people are co-responsible for the in situ conservation of biodiversity, for maintaining a relationship of interdependence and survival with the territory and its natural resources [17]. It is known that protected areas that are juxtaposed with traditional territories maintain a better index of conservation and regeneration of the forest [18]. The inclusion of traditional peoples as an active part in projects and decision-making that deal with traditional territories, avoids conflicts between interested parties and allows collaboration to environmental protection and to solve territorial issues [19]. In Brazil, one important group recognized as traditional people are the Quilombolas, which are people with African and indigenous ascendance.

The massive African Diaspora to Brazil happened between the 16th and 19th centuries after a cruel and large enforced movement of black people. Those people were forced to work in the farms and fields, in the hunting of whales for oil production, in the houses of lords as servants and maids, in the coffee plantations, cane fields, mines, ships, and even as a sexual commodity, all ‘activities ́ with minimal conditions and associated with physical, psychological and emotional abuse [20, 21, 22]. After the 19th century Brazil approved the abolition of slavery and those people organized themselves in communities, some of them were classified as Quilombola’s Communities. Nowadays, Quilombola communities have the right of land and the manifestation of their own social and cultural behavior, protected by the Brazil Law, Decree 6040/07 [23].

With the objective of identifying the knowledge associated with native plants of the Atlantic Forest in a Quilombola community whose territory overlaps with two protected areas, we aimed to support discussions and actions for sustainable management and conservation of the territory based on the diversity of Quilombola knowledge. We focused on two specific objectives: 1) identify the perceptions of women and men of the remaining Quilombola community São Roque, in Santa Catarina, about environmental availability, harvesting, distribution and importance of fourteen Atlantic Forest native plants present in their territory; and 2) collaborate with the integration between traditional and technical-scientific knowledge on sustainable management and conservation of species. Our research started with an ethnobotanical focus about the plants known and used at this community [24, 25], and then developed to a participatory approach in which the stimulus for the research is external but based on the opinions and ideas of the community. The community had an active voice to interfere in the research when they felt it was necessary.

Study area

The research was conducted in the remaining Quilombo community of São Roque Pedra Branca, whose territory is within the Atlantic Forest domain in southern Brazil (Fig. 1a;b). Located between the municipalities of Praia Grande/Santa Catarina (SC) and Mampituba/Rio Grande do Sul (RS) (Figure c;d), the community has a history of occupation of this territory since 1824, associated with the transit of enslaved peoples who farmed in the coastal plains of Serra Geral, accompanied by the “Sir of Engenho”, slaveholders and farm owners from that time from São Francisco de Paula [26]. Thus, the time of occupation in this territory by the enslaved people and their descendants count more than 180 years. On June 17, 2004, the community was recognized as a Quilombola community by the Palmares Cultural Foundation [27], with the Technical Report of Identification and Delimitation published in 2007. The process of territorial regularization is still underway through the Brazilian Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA). Formerly, the community was known as the Pedra Branca community, because of the geological formation that provides one of the community's postcards, as a tourist destination (Fig. 2).

The original Quilombola territory has about 7 thousand hectares, with 36.42% of this area overlapping with two protected areas: the National Parks of Aparados da Serra and Serra Geral (Fig. 1b). These protected areas were created in the 1960s and 1990s respectively, and the percentage of the current community use in areas overlapping the national parks is 0.078% of the total parks area, but the intended percentage is 9.69% [26].

Figure 1 – Geographical representation of the Quilombola Community in Brazil and southern states.

Legend: a and b) Geographic location of Quilombola Community of São Roque; c) Overlapping areas of the Quilombola territory (SR) and National Parks Aparados da Serra (PNAP) and Serra Geral (PNSG); d) Quilombola territory (SR).

Figure 2 – Local landscape view of the Quilombola Community and its surroundings.

Legend: a) Quilombola banana plantation with Pedra Branca in the background; b) Part of the territory of the Quilombola community São Roque, and Rio Mampituba seen from the top of Pedra Branca; c) Quilombola house with Pedra Branca in the background. Photos by Danilo Barreto.

Data collection

This research followed the ethics guidelines of research with human beings, with previous free informed consent for all data collection (see Supplementary Material 1). In the first step of this research, from November 2018 until June 2019, we interviewed all men and women residents of the community who were over 18 years old, and who live in the original territory (n:44), 25 men and 19 women. Semi-structured interviews were carried out to collect socio economic information and a free listing technique was used to register the native plants known and used by each interviewee.

We then collected botanical samples of the main species mentioned in the interviews, for botanical identification. Most of the species collected were identified and had their determination confirmed by specialist Dr. Pedro Fiaschi from the Botany department UFSC. Plant vouchers were deposited in the herbarium EAFM of the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Amazonas, which has an ethnobotany collection (vouchers 13013;13035;13041;13043;13056;13090;13108;13116;13117;13124;13128;13154;13169;13170;13221;13291;13335;13337;13405). For some species, it was only possible to collect non-reproductive vegetative material, making their detailed botanical identification impossible.

In the following months we organized participatory workshops to collect data about the community's perception of the intensity of harvesting, environmental availability, and cultural importance of plant species previously selected from the interviews. The workshops happened on July 20th 2019, during the whole day, in the São Roque Communitarian Center. We organized the groups for the workshops based on the gender of the participants, in two simultaneous working groups. The activities of each group were facilitated by a team of three people external to the community, responsible for guiding the activities, recording the participants' speeches, and taking photographs. The first author carried out participant observations with both groups, without influencing or interfering in their dynamics. In the women's group, only women researchers facilitated the activities, and the same was done with the other group, with only men researchers. This choice was made due to the recognition of the interlocutor as a similar, which provides a comfortable environment for the manifestation of the participants' knowledge [28], besides providing more accurate information [29]. All the people interviewed in the previous stage of this research were invited to participate in the workshops. Twenty-two people participated in the activities (nine women aged between 25 and 65 years old, and thirteen men, the youngest aged 24 and the oldest aged 71 years old.

In the first part of the workshops we proposed the four-cell tool activity, adapted by Zank et al. (2015) [14]. For this step, we selected the most important native plant species using the criterion of frequency cited to each species in the previously free listing interviews, but with flexibility to include other species according to suggestions of the workshop participants. We drew a graph in which the horizontal axis represented the harvesting intensity and the vertical axis the availability of species in the territory (thus, the bottom quadrants indicated low availability and the right ones high collection intensity). In each group the participants were asked to locate each of the previously selected plants in the quadrants. The risk status of each species was accessed by consulting the National Flora Conservation Center (CNCFLORA) national list of extinction risk for the Brazilian flora [30] and the state red lists of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul [31, 32].

In the second part of the workshop we used an environment matrix and invited the participants to indicate the environments where the selected species were found. We used amounts of seeds (from a local variety of beans) to estimate the abundance of each species in a table that listed the environments, previously mentioned in the interviews, and the species. Before starting the activity, the participants were asked about the characterization of each environment. As in the first activity, it was also possible to add environments that had not been previously selected.

During the afternoon, for the third part of the workshop, we invited the participants to discuss the value and importance of each plant species. The species were compared with each other regarding their importance for each group. Three levels of importance were established in a ranking matrix (very important, important, and not very important) and a maximum of five species could be allocated in each level.

To conclude the workshops, two Quilombola residents (the third and fourth authors) who are unanimously recognized as specialists on plants shared their knowledge about uses and preparation of remedies with forest species. They are brothers, whose houses and land are located in the area overlapping with the National Parks, which made the practice of agriculture and the use of traditional species unfeasible for some years due to conflicts between the community and the environmental institution. This part of the workshop was demanded by the community, also being a form of appreciation of the community's permission and contribution to the research.

Data analysis followed a qualitative approach and was based on Zank et al. (2015) [14] and Poderoso et al. (2017) [33]. To analyze the gender characteristics related to the knowledge about the plant species, we contrasted the responses of the groups in each activity and also compared the results with the free lists previously made.

From the free listings we selected the specie mentions during the first round of individual interviews: Cipó Pata-de-Vaca (Phanera microstachya, n = 11), Pata-de-Boi (Bauhinia forficata, n = 2), Açoita-Cavalo (Luehea divaricata, n = 8), Cipó Milome (Aristolochia triangularis, n = 10), Canjerana (Cabralea canjerana, n = 8), Guavirova (Campomanesia guaviroba, Campomanesia xantocharpa, Campomanesia sp., n = 10), Pau-pra-tudo (Picrasma crenata, n = 11), Quina (Coutera hexandra and other unidentified species, n = 16), Araçá (Psidium cattleyanum, n = 9), Terramicina (Alternanthera brasiliana, n = 14), Ingá (Inga marginata, n = 14), Casca D’anta (unidentified, but probably Drymis winterii, n = 6), Canela-de-Velho (Mikania sp., n = 2) and Tansagem (Plantago sp., n = 3). In addition to the most frequently cited species, some plants were included due to their presence in conversations, tales and stories (Pata-de-Boi, Açoita-Cavalo, Canjerana, Casca D'anta) or at the request of workshop participants (Canela-de-Velho and Tansagem). The main characteristics of these plants and information about their use are described in Supplementary material 2 [34–47].

1. Environmental availability, harvesting, distribution and importance of native plants

1.1. Four-cell tool: Environmental availability and Harvesting intensity

Half of the fourteen plants were allocated in the same quadrants by both groups (men and women) (Pata-de-boi, Canjerana, Cipó-milome, Pata-de-vaca, Açoita-cavalo, Pau-pra-tudo and Quina) (Fig. 3). Two species (Pau-pra-tudo and Quina) were allocated in the lower right quadrant, by both groups, classified as at risk, reflecting the community's perception of plants that may be under threat. In the women's group, Quina was considered under threat due to its intense harvesting, while in the men's group several opinions stood out, some participants indicated that they were concerned with its conservation because it has a high value of cultural importance in the community; others reported that it is a rare species. Of the thirteen men in the workshop, only three harvested the species. Both groups reported the low availability of Pau-pra-tudo, but did not delve much into its use value or importance.

Figure 3 – Four-cell tool reflecting perception of use and availability of vegetal species in the territory.

Legend: Observe in bold the species that share the same quadrants for both groups a) Female Group graph; b) Photograph result female group; c) Male group graph; d) Photograph result male group.

1.2. Classification matrix: Environments x Perception of abundance

Figures 4a and 4b illustrate the main environments identified from the interviews. Farm (lavoura) is the vegetable garden that is cultivated close to the residences, and swidden (roça) is a cultivation area further away from the residences and with a greater amount of food produced. However, for some residents, the terms roça and lavoura can be used with the same meaning. It was established by consensus that we would treat farms (lavouras) in the sense of vegetable gardens close to the houses and yards (terrero, which is locally related to the terra batida, or a compacted soil area) as the space surrounding the houses, similar to backyards or gardens. There is a consensus in both groups about the presence and abundance of species in the forest (mata) and riverbank (beira de rio) areas. In the women’s group, the terrero environment is perceived with a greater species abundance than for men, that is, the same plants were allocated in this environment, however, the perception of quantities were different. For swiddens and farms, the perception differs quantitatively and qualitatively, with higher richness and abundance according to the perception of the mens' group (Fig. 5). Women's group requested the addition of a roadside (beira de estrada) environment.

Figure 4 – Geographical representation of landscapes identified by the interviewers.

Legend: Identified environments: a) Mountains (serra): thick continuous line; swidden (roça): dashed line; pin locator: São Roque Quilombola Community Association; b) Swidden (roça): dashed line; roadside: dotted line; Terrero: small closed dotted line around the pin; riverbank: dashed line; farm (lavoura): thin continuous line nearby the pin; pin located at a family residence.

Figure 5 – Representation of seed abundance identified in both male and female groups.

Legend: The circles represent the amount of seeds representing abundance: GREEN – 5 seeds, very abundant; RED – 3 to 4 seeds, abundant; YELLOW – 1 to 2 seeds, not very abundant. M: men's group; F: women’s group. Canela-de-Velho and Tansagem and the roadside (beira de estrada) environment are shaded as they were added later by request of the participants, so each contains only results from the group who requested their inclusion.

1.3. Degree of importance

The women's group classified Quina, Cipó Milome, Pata-de-vaca and Tansagem as “very important” because of their medicinal properties (Table 1). The same plants, except Pata-de-vaca, were categorized as “very important” by men. By consensus, in the male group, Quina and Cipó Milome also fall into this category due to their medicinal potential and cultural value. In addition to these, Pata-de-boi was considered “not very important” by both groups. Men put it in this category justifying that its use was by the female part of the community, however, for women, the justification was that it was used only in a few moments as a medicine, with its current use linked to the purpose of firewood. For both groups, all species classified as “very important” were associated with the quality of being medicinal plants, even though for some species other uses were also mentioned. For all other species the perceived importance was allocated at different levels by the two groups.

Table 1

– Perceptions of value and importance of native species for F: women’s group; M: men's group.
	Very important	Important	Less important
Terramicina	F	M
Cipó milome	FM
Pata de vaca	F	M
Pata de boi			FM
Pau pra tudo		M	F
Quina	FM
Ingá		F	M
Casca danta	M	F
Canjerana		M	F
Guavirova		F	M
Açoita cavalo		F	M
Araçá		F	M
Tansagem	F*
Canela-de-velho		M*

Legend: The symbol (*) with identification of sex by italicized letter represents those species added by only one group.

2) Sharing knowledge on medicinal plants

The lecturers, two brothers recognized as local specialists on medicinal plants, shared in practice their traditional knowledge about forest species, including species from previous activities, elucidating their traditional use. They made two preparations: one based on alcohol for superficial epidermal wounds, and one ointment to apply after using the alcoholic preparation, for healing wounds or rashes (Fig. 6). For the preparations, wild plants from the territory, Cipó Milome and Quina, were used. Both preparations are used for “afomentação”, the local name used for the superficial application of the medicine at the site of pain or injury.

Figure 6 – Preparation of afomentações with medicinal plants from the Quilombola territory.

Legend: a: Dirceu Nunes da Silva. b: Vilson Omar da Silva. c: medicinal plants used in the preparations (Cipó-milome, confrei, arruda, palma-crespa, canela-de-velho, quina branca and quina rosa). Photos by Daniele Cantelli and Bianca Morais.

Our research made it possible to identify the diversity of perceptions about fourteen native plants of the Quilombola territory, based on cultural and gender characteristics. For the Quilombolas, ten of the fourteen species are present in forest areas, and of these, more than half are very abundant. In this environment, the perceptions of women and men were similar for most species, which expresses the strong connection and regular activities of the community in the forest areas of their territory. Important species such as Quina (Coutarea hexandra), Cipó-milome (Aristolochia triangularis) and Pau-pra-tudo (Picrasma crenata) are recognized as medicinal and related to their historical use. P. crenata is also vulnerable according to Brazilian Environment Secretariat (SEMA, 2014) [31]. Thus, we recommend that this species receive special attention by the community and environmental agencies, building together action plans involving the conservation of the region's native biodiversity.

C. hexandra is reported in the literature for malaria treatment [48, 49], with anti-inflammatory and antinociceptive effects in lyophilized aqueous extract of the inner bark of the species, showing no toxicity [50]. The traditional use of C. hexandra in the São Roque is to treat fever, stomach pains and, in solution with alcohol, for superficial wounds, avoiding infections. The part used for medicinal treatments is the bark, which can pose risks to its conservation. In the workshops, the species was considered at risk, associated with forest areas and classified as very important by both men and women. We therefore suggest the development of cooperative management and environmental education actions with the management of the National Parks, for the promotion of the species in line with its traditional use.

Traditional use of A. triangularis is to treat stomach aches. This is another very important species for the Quilombola community, but not seen at risk due to its high availability. Species of this genus have aristolochic acid, a toxic substance, which alerts to the recommendation for caution in the use. The ingestion of this acid can cause carcinogenic mechanisms, nephrotoxicity and it has an abortive effect [51]. Being one of the species of traditional use, it is substantially important to provide access to information about its toxicity and the proper care and precautions with its use. Of all the species used in the workshop, this is the only one that poses a health risk.

The other species had different perceptions of availability, harvesting intensity, distribution in environments, and degree of importance. These differences represent the multiple perceptions and perspectives that the same community has on their territory and biodiversity, and, in the case of the gender mediated perceptions, reflects their functional cultural roles [33]. Kelkar (2007) [52] discusses the domain theory of gender-specific knowledge, and this specificity is not exclusive, that is, knowledge can be shared, partially shared or specific [52], and shared knowledge can contain different degrees of a given knowledge domain [33].

Within the gender-specific knowledge domain [52], forest and mountain areas are identified by both the women's and men's groups as areas of male domain. Currently, most women do not go to the forests due to their advanced age, but they reported that when they were younger some accompanied their parents, or even went alone on walks and worked in the forest. However, they themselves stated that much of what they know about the species present in the forests comes from knowledge shared by their spouses or male relatives, which is a partially shared knowledge.

The terrero environment, perceived similarly by both gender groups, is where several species occur. The density of terramicina (Alternanthera brasiliana), guavirova (Campomanesia sp.) and araçá (Psidium cattleyanum) in this environment were perceived as higher for women than for men. The frequency with which women are in domestic areas, such as farms, yards and the road is greater than that of men, due to their social role in the family routine, which justifies these different perceptions of the abundance of species in these environments. The same occurs among the men’s group for forest and swidden environments, where they have more activities linked to these environments. The residences in the Quilombo São Roque are generally on the edge of or close to the roads, justifying the addition of this environment by the female group.

Inspired by collaborative participatory methodologies [9, 12] and socio-environmental management projects [10, 13], the participatory workshop made it possible to include the community in the research as research subjects, with a leading role in its development [9, 12]. The use of these methodologies, in addition to capturing data, promotes a space for collaboration where participants learn from each other and recognize the importance of their own knowledge, especially on the in situ conservation of species [13]. Consensus building on perceptions was encouraged in the classification of species at each stage of the workshop. By dividing the groups by gender, we provide a comfortable environment, especially for women who often avoid expressing their opinions and perceptions around men, a situation we experienced during interviews and free-listings.

The diversity of perceptions about plants and environments between genders justifies the attention and care that researchers and professionals in the field should give to knowledge gaps that are not addressed in socio-environmental studies and projects [28]. Recognition of the diversity of knowledge about natural resources is important, not only for ethnobiological studies, but also for land management, biodiversity conservation and cultural revitalization [28]. Gender, as a predictor of knowledge, is part of a group of factors that influence the construction of knowledge at individual and community levels.

Due to the overlapping of their territory with two national parks, the São Roque Quilombola community faced conflicts related to the management of natural resources for a long time. Based on a Term of Commitment signed in 2013 and in force since 2016, the status of use of the territory and its resources was agreed in parts, as well as the relations between the community and ICMBio (Instituto Chico Mendes para a Conservação da Biodiversidade, which manages the parks). Today, in addition to participating in the management council of the parks with the environmental agency, the community participates in community-based tourism actions, also focusing on conservation, territorial management and environmental education. The intelligence of the traditional management system and contemporary systems of community management for the use of natural resources or common goods have been and are still being rediscovered in the areas of conservation and development [53]. The involvement of local stakeholders and their traditional knowledge has significantly advanced in in situ biodiversity conservation strategies [14, 17]. This involvement can take place not only in the research procedure, but also include the community in the entire process of structuring, building, carrying out and concluding a research project, as exemplified by Rodrigues et al. (2020) [54].

The interaction between natural, social and academic systems enables the feedback of information on local biodiversity, in addition to empowering community and institutional stakeholders [55]. Thus, institutional interactions, connected by space or by level of organization, enable favorable environments for exchanges that contribute to the resilience of natural and socio-cultural systems [19, 55].

The improvement of management systems that opt for the diversity of institutional and social stakeholders and, taking into account individual characteristics such as gender, allows a flexible management to deal with environmental disturbances, making the system less fragile and more capable of dealing with adversities. Added to all this, the recognition and promotion of increasingly participatory research processes within the scope of community inclusion is also necessary.

This project marks the contribution and sharing of knowledge by an important holder of traditional knowledge, Mr. Dirceu Nunes da Silva, the fourth author of this article, who passed away two years after the workshop that provided unforgettable moments sharing stories, knowledge and feelings, and for this we are genuinely grateful.

CNCFLORA

National Flora Conservation Center

CNPq

Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development

EAFM

Herbarium of the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Amazonas

ECOHE

Laboratory of Human Ecology and Ethnobotany, Federal University of Santa Catarina

ICMBio

Instituto Chico Mendes para a Conservação da Biodiversidade/Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation

INCRA

Brazilian Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform

PNAP

National Park Aparados da Serra

PNSG

National Park of Serra Geral

Rio Grande do Sul state

Santa Catarina state

SEMA

Brazilian Environment Secretariat

SISGEN

Brazilian System for the Management of Genetic Heritage

Quilombo São Roque

UFSC

Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina/Federal University of Santa Catarina

Ethics approval and consent to participate

All information obtained was preceded by an individual previous informed consent. We followed all community protocols and this research was registered at the Brazilian System for the Management of Genetic Heritage (SISGEN) register AE2E0E3, and approved by the Ethics Committee for the Research with Human Beings of Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (18847013.0.0000.0121).

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Availability of data and materials

All data is available in the manuscript. Other information can be requested to the first author.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Funding

This study was funded in part by the Higher Education Personnel Improvement Coordination, Brazil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001, and DC master grant and MCG doctoral grant. Thanks to CNPq for NH research productivity scholarship (304515/2019-1 and 306789/2022-1).

Authors' contributions

DC designed the study, collected and analyzed data and wrote the manuscript. MCG collected the data and contributed in the final version. VOS and DNS conducted part of the workshops in the community sharing their traditional knowledge. NH designed the study and was a major contributor in writing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript, except DNS who agreed with this publication before passing away.

Acknowledgements

To all residents of the São Roque Quilombola community who in a receptive and tender way participated in the activities proposed by the workshop, sharing their notorious knowledge about biodiversity. Thanks to Caroline Cantelli, Bianca Morais, Bianca Minink Villa, Rinaldo Oriano Junior, Matheus Costa Barros and Julian C. Andrade for participating in the planning and implementation of the workshops; to the working group of the Laboratory of Human Ecology Ethnobotany (ECOHE); to Professor Pedro Fiaschi for identifying the species; to Danilo Barreto for the photographic record.

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No competing interests reported.

Supplementarymaterial1.docx
Supplementary material 1; File format: Word (.docx*); Title of data: Interview protocol; Description of data: Interview protocol and free listing used during the interviews with São Roque Quilombola Community residents.
Supplementarymaterial2.docx
Supplementary material 2; File format: Word (.docx*); Title of data: Ethnobotanical information: plants selected for the participatory workshops; Description of data: Table of plants used by the residents of São Roque Quilombola Community, according to the registers obtained during the interviews.

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Tracing gender variation in traditional knowledge: participatory tools to promote conservation in a Quilombola community in Brazil

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Abstract

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Figures

Introduction

Methods

Study area

Data collection

Results

1. Environmental availability, harvesting, distribution and importance of native plants

1.1. Four-cell tool: Environmental availability and Harvesting intensity

1.2. Classification matrix: Environments x Perception of abundance

1.3. Degree of importance

2) Sharing knowledge on medicinal plants

Discussion

Conclusions

Abbreviations

Declarations

References

Additional Declarations

Supplementary Files

Status:

Version 1