Piaçabeiros e piaçaba no médio rio Negro (Amazonas-Brasil), socioeconomia da atividade extrativista e ecologia da Leopoldinia piassaba Wallace

Abstract

The piaçaba fiber extractivism remains in the middle Negro river as an important economical activity to the families in the city and for the communities in the interland. The lack of data and current knowledge systematization related to the activity socioeconomical and the biological data of the species have not helped in the objective evaluation of the commercial relations by the shipment in the historical and geographical context where the resource exploration is done. In one hand, the species endemism (Leopoldinia piassaba Wallace), the new productive strategies, the market demands maintenance and the territorial restrictions in the use of the resource can lead to under-pressure sceneries of this palm tree which is susceptible to weather changes. In the other hand, the rural exodus that happened in the last decades and the lack of alternatives in the urban buffer area consolidates the extractivism of forest resources to the city inhabitants as a highlighted economical activity. In the context, it is proposed the characterization of the extractivist activity in the historical social, cultural, economical and environmental contexts in which is inserted, comparing the resources exploration ways among the different uses strategies and aiming to evaluate the impact to the level of the human being, the population and the environment. The systematization and complementation of data about the species biology and ecology will support this analysis. This study methodology combines the gathering and bibliography analysis of cartographies and geographical images, productive data in official organs of coordinates of the species presence, through the observation and biological and ecological experimentation (with demarcation of transects and individuals counting, germination tests and oil extraction) and of the social research along with the actors and commercial chain agents. The detailed shipment description show relations over the economical act, halved by strategies (‘jogo d’água’, tare, deduction of the weight of balance and impurities) that generate conflicts and disagreements. The economical balance of the chain illustrates the credit and debit flow that goes from the exporter to the customer and the profit concentration. The lack of alternatives, the shipment solidity in the geographical space, the practical habit and the extra-economical commercial relation functions should guide the system analysis that can be improved through the addition of value and the integration of small local lords. The over-pressure detected in the gathering of the middle Negro river and the urban deterioration reinforce the need of taking into consideration the use of resources coming from the urban collectors in territorial boundaries with using agreement. The modeling through algorisms of maximum entropy (MAXENT) and the complementation of biological and ecological data consolidate the piaçaba as an indicator species of the impacts of weather changes, with the goal of foreseeing alternatives in case the more dramatic sceneries are confirmed.