All posts by : Glaucimara Silva

By Elisa Malta (GIZ Brasil)

Isabel Chagas learned her current trade as a child. From an early age, she would watch and accompany her family in the trade – as she would later find out – that was to become the trade of her life. “I’ve been accompanying my mother while she fishes since I was six years old. We would go to the mangroves to harvest shellfish and oysters and sell them at the market, while doing a little bit of everything,” she says. At 54, Isabel continues to make a living from fishing, and her family’s main source of livelihood is fish and shellfish. Born into a family of seven siblings, Natália Santos started fishing at an early age with her father. As a teenager, she came to work in the kitchen, but she realized that what she really liked was fishing.

Isabel and Natália are some of the fisherwomen who make a living from various trades associated to artisanal fishing in the Costa dos Corais area. Most of these women are engaged in shellfishing, crab harvesting, and rod or net fishing, in addition to preparing and selling their catch. They are also responsible for household chores and child care. Amid so many tasks to ensure the livelihood and welfare of their families, many of these women were not even aware that fishing was their trade. “I work with oyster farming and I didn’t perceive my job as fishing, nor did I know that there were women in fishing. I imagined that only men had this as a job,” says fisherwoman Jaqueline dos Santos.

Traditional fisherwomen and fishermen are largely made invisible in Brazil and have limited involvement in political decision-making processes. This affects fisherwomen in particular, and also those who process or sell fish products.

A transformational meeting – When attending a TerraMar Project seminar on artisanal fishing in 2018, these women decided to take their destiny in their own hands. Despite the fact that the majority of attendees were men, women engaged in the group discussions. They developed so much rapport that they asked TerraMar for support. This was the inception of the Costa dos Corais Network of Fisherwomen.

With the support of GIZ Brazil, about 400 women became involved in a training effort to enhance their knowledge of their rights, their appreciation of their identity and culture and their sense of belonging to a traditional community. For six months, they attended seminars, workshops and talks that not only strengthened their ties, but also made them more knowledgeable and empowered with an awareness of their rights and better understanding of their roles in the community. Some benefits from this training are now apparent. Natalia emphasizes that the meetings brought about changes to the entire community. “The Network has made us feel more empowered and confident and has given us knowledge about environmental education in the fishing trade, which will help in the sustainability of several families.”

Creation of the Women’s Network also provided several lessons about the potential to bring women together, which can be beneficial both for the maintenance and development of the Network itself and for other projects designed to help in the organization and strengthening of women’s groups.

These women felt more capable of taking on roles. They are standing up for their positions and have a better understanding of their importance in the artisanal fishing trade. Now, they are not simply taking on roles to support fisher husbands, but because they are fisherwomen too. They were empowered to claim this position that was previously impossible.

To learn more about the history of the Costa dos Corais Network of Fisherwomen, read the publication.

Project: Protecting Brazil’s marine and coastal biodiversity (TerraMar)
Partner: Ministério do Meio Ambiente (MMA) (Brazilian Ministry of the Environment)
Commissioned by: Federal Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection (BMUV in German)

Diverse ethnic groups, ecosystems, lands, customs, histories, and realities. Yet, we have shared desires. Traditional peoples and communities seek recognition and protection of their rights.

The Traditional Territories Platform is a one-stop source of information on traditional lands in Brazil, thus providing integration across these communities, raising their profile and providing access to public policies.

It’s an opportunity to say: We do exist!

By Sandra Damiani (Sapopema Comunicação Socioambiental)

As warriors, mothers and guardians of culture and ancestral knowledge, indigenous women want to find their way into joint participation with men in the decision-making involving their people. Eliane Xunakalo, from the Bakairi people, has a busy routine on long journeys that can take days to reach distant villages to visit different peoples spread across Mato Grosso, a state in the Amazon which is nearly three times bigger than Germany. With two postgraduate degrees under her belt, she managed to break with the constraints of access to education imposed on indigenous people and works as an institutional advisor for the Federation of Indigenous Peoples and Organizations of Mato Grosso (Fepoimt) in Cuiabá. Her goal is to set up the Womens Department, an achievement that comes with the support of GIZ Brazil.

Just like Eliane Xunakalo, indigenous women want to have more opportunities to participate in decision-making and are coming together. Currently, the state has nine indigenous women’s associations and one state representation, the Organization of Indigenous Women of Mato Grosso (Takiná, a word in Karajá that means ‘star’ and can only be pronounced by women).

“This is primarily a patriarchal culture, so it is difficult for women to have a say, but this is changing – you now find female chiefs and leaders. It’s a matter of education and understanding that we don’t want to change the culture, but rather have the opportunity to influence and have an input in decisions since woman are also part of the community. This will not hurt, on the contrary, it will be an enriching process,” says Eliane.

Despite the increased number of indigenous women in school, access to schools outside indigenous lands is hard. Few women have access to universities, which are far from the villages and involve costs for food, transport and accommodation. In many villages, such as those inside the Xingu Indigenous Park, where 16 people, live, a trip to the capital city of Cuiabá takes up to 3 days by boat, car and bus. “Going to school in quite hard. I’m giving back not only to my community, but also to other peoples. With the knowledge I have, I can help other people. I feel honored,” says Eliane Xunakalo.

She notes that cultural aspects need to be respected, such as the fact that indigenous women are not separated from their children and husband. Respect for these cultural differences provide the enabling conditions for their involvement. “We don’t separate from our small children. These are details that need to be understood and supported. As indigenous women, we cannot fail to get involved because we have a child,” she emphasizes.

A pioneering process in the consultation of indigenous peoples

A key impetus for strengthening indigenous female leaders in the state took place during the public consultation process under the REM-MT Program (REED Early Movers). This initiative is intended to reduce forest deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions through financial compensation for forest conservation, with indigenous peoples as one of the key actors as they are the guardians of the largest preserved areas in the Amazon rainforest.

The public consultation ran for more than a year and a half, and was a pioneer in Brazil for the full compliance with the recommendations in ILO’S Convention 169. This involved listening to and engaging directly with the indigenous peoples, where they articulated their claims to ensure protection of their lands, sociocultural heritage of individual peoples, and keeping a standing forest. Despite the various mixed workshops held, women were under-represented. “We raised the idea of ​​a women-only workshop. GIZ Brazil helped to raise the funds and, in my opinion, this was the best workshop ever since there were 250 women in attendance,” says Eliane Xunakalo.

In total, 1,500 members from 42 peoples attended the public consultation, which was held as part of twelve regional replication and pre-consultation workshops. The goal was to establish the indigenous subprogram under the REM-MT Program, which required not only complex logistics efforts to gather representatives of peoples who live far away from each other, hiring interpreters and preparing informative materials. The booklets for the womens’ workshop also had unique content, including topics such as domestic violence.

Bringing the indigenous peoples of Mato Grosso together in a public consultation process is an enormous challenge. To give you a sense of it’s cultural richness, this Amazonian state has 50,000 indigenous people from 43 ethnic groups who speak 35 languages, in addition to those living in voluntary isolation. A meeting of these peoples who live in remote locations scattered across more than 70 indigenous lands only worked out because their leaders were heard and had the institutional support of the REM-MT Program.

“Historically, our State has no appreciation of indigenous peoples. The REM gave us the opportunity to engage with the State. We do have disagreements, but we recognize that GIZ Brazil plays a facilitation role to avoid potential conflicts and supports us because indigenous issues are complex and are not understood,” says Eliane Xunakalo.                                                                                             

Project: REDD+ Program for Early Movers (REM)
Lead executing agency: Mato Grosso State Environment Department (Sema/MT), Acre State Environment Department (Sema/AC) and Acre State Climate Change Institute (IMC/AC), Ministry of the Environment (MMA)
Financier: KfW Development Bank

Cities are everything at once. It’s where we have some of our best experiences and also a lot of problems that drive us crazy. Everything is so connected and moving so fast that sometimes a question comes up: How can we improve all of this in order to have the city we want? Cities need to accommodate everyone’s perspectives, but each city is unique and so is the space it provides. For this reason we often cannot have everything we want in the same place and at the same time. That’s our major challenge. Will we be able to drive changes and have a more balanced and respectful relationship with our planet? GIZ Brasil’s video on Urban Transformation takes you straight to the heart of these issues.

Urban transformation is one of the central topics of the Brazil-Germany Cooperation for Sustainable Development. Learn about the main approaches and initiatives implemented by GIZ and its partners in this domain in Brazil.

By João Gonçalves and ProAdapta team

Only those who have closely experienced the consequences of extreme weather events know the impacts they can cause and the importance of actions that minimize damage. This is the case for the residents of Monte Serrat, in the city of Santos, in Brazil, an irregularly occupied hillside area that historically suffers from landslides.

The community leader and resident of Monte Serrat, Arquimedes de Souza, tells that the landslides of 2020 were frightening and, nowadays, every thunder and rain makes him scared and worried. He experienced the problems of the landslides, actively helping those affected, including his sister and aunt, remembering similar passages from his childhood when his family and the whole community helped each other as best as they could.

The storms of 2020, still fresh in Arquimedes’ memory, besides being the most intense of the last 80 years in Santos, were the ones that caused the greatest damage to the community. The impact of these events is due to the occurrence of increasingly intense rains in a terrain debilitated by the replacement of native vegetation by irregular occupations.

In realities like the Monte Serrat hill, the implementation of climate change adaptation measures plays a key role in reducing damages and dealing with the new climate reality. Interventions to increase the stability of slopes by restoring vegetation cover are adaptation options that are called Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA). EbA uses the capacity of ecosystems themselves to provide what are called ecosystem services or “green infrastructure” to reduce vulnerabilities and can be complementary to “grey” measures or conventional infrastructure. 

In collaboration with the Santos City Hall, the ProAdapta Project worked together with residents of Monte Serrat to implement EbA actions. Through workshops and other activities, people were made more aware of the theme and proposed, actively and collectively, effective measures such as the planting of native and fruitful species of medium size and deep roots in the most exposed areas. Besides retaining the slopes, the action provides several co-benefits such as the improvement of thermal comfort through shading and potential income generation for the community through fruit production, while beautifying the landscape and being a source of leisure for the population. More than just new trees, the action has awakened a sense of collective belonging, culminating in the creation by the population of the campaign “Let’s take care of our hill”.

“What keeps me excited about staying in Monte Serrat is reforesting the hillsides to keep them healthy and taking care of the large trees that are near the houses. We can take advantage of the land we have here, with a community garden and small fruit trees. Because we are afraid that we have too many jackfruit or avocado trees…. It’s good to eat jackfruit, but to live under a jackfruit tree… I’ve lived there. It’s scary!” said Archimedes.

The actions promoted in Monte Serrat were also concerned with empowering the local community and promoting gender equality, as well as the equal participation of women in the workshops. The cooker Cícera Juca de Oliveira Silva, for example, was responsible for providing the food for the workshop participants. A thirty-year resident of one of Monte Serrat’s communities, Cícera used to come down the hill daily to sell her snacks and sweets in downtown Santos. With the Covid-19 pandemic, she had to reinvent herself and the work in the streets of more than 15 years became a work for orders. The request for ProAdapta was the first event request attended by the cook. “It was an opportunity for the people who live here in the community. There are many people here who make very good things, but people look outside because they think it’s better. I wish people would value us more, because it is very good here,” says Cícera, who herself lives in a hillside area and has already had a sister affected by landslides. “In 2019, it was very hard for my sister. She lost her house and all her belongings. We feel insecure, even though my house is very safe, because my husband built it and he did it really well. It takes a lot of rain to bring the house down!” Is it?

The Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) approach in Monte Serrat will provide the return of fauna, the protection of steep slopes and community safety. And what flourishes, multiplies: with the support of GIZ Brazil, the measures will be replicated in other communities and neighborhoods with similar problems in the Metropolitan Region of Santos, called Baixada Santista.

Project: ProAdapta – Support for Adaptation to Climate Change
Partner: Ministry of Environment (MMA, in portuguese) and Santos City Hall
Funder: Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV, in German)

By Sandra Damiani (Sapopema Comunicação Socioambiental)

Motor boats travel for hours and hours on the Paraguai and Içana rivers carrying Michely Kaiowá and Francineia Bitencourt Fontes, from the Baniwa people. Geographically separated by thousands of kilometers, one in the Pantanal wetlands in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, and the other in the Amazon in the state of Amazonas, they had a long journey and faced some obstacles to go to far-off lands to portray the reality of indigenous peoples on video. These two women are part of a group of fourteen filmmakers from different ethnicities who recorded 15 audiovisual pieces covering all biomes from north to south of Brazil.

The audiovisuals were part of the Indigenous Lands Project by GIZ Brazil, and were produced under a partnership with the National Indigenous Peoples Foundation (FUNAI).  To this end, it supported indigenous filmmakers with equipment and a grant, in addition to an on-line training and mentoring program throughout the process, which was conducted by Associação Filmes de Quintal.

The indigenous people show in video their view of life in the villages with regard to food and territorial security, culture, health, and other aspects. The goal was to provide a local illustration of how indigenous people experience the themes in the National Policy on Territorial and Environmental Management of Indigenous Lands (PNGATI), the most important national public policy designed to safeguard the rights of these peoples and the sustainability of their lands. The audiovisual educational materials will illustrate the on-line training course on PNGATI, which was designed as part of the project for the training of FUNAI officials and other audiences working with indigenous peoples in Brazil.

A long journey to show life on indigenous lands

Michely Kaiowá rode a boat for six hours to reach Ínsua Island, where he stayed for seven days to collect inputs on the Guató ethnic group, the last canoeing peoples in the Pantanal wetlands. To her, the most striking aspect was the difficult access to food. “They have nothing to eat, just fish and game when they catch them. “They receive a staple food basket once every three months,” she reports, and she explains that the crops were damaged by the severe drought and dry spell. Many areas were also affected by the major fires that occurred in the Pantanal wetlands. There are 419 indigenous people living in the Guató Indigenous Land, who also reported difficulties in taking their handicrafts outside the island to sell them.

The filmmaker also produced an additional film about traditional Guarani Kaiowá medicine in which she showed herbs, songs and dances used by her people in healing rituals. the Panambizinho Indigenous Land is located in Dourados, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, and it is home to 414 people and covers 1,000 hectares. “I went to the swamp to show how we reach the medicine,” says Michely Kaiowá, who received his first new 4K camera as part of the project.

Fran Baniwa – as she likes to be called – traveled for eight hours by boat under rain and sun to reach the Assunção village in the Rio Negro Indigenous Land, in São Gabriel da Cachoeira – the most indigenous town in Brazil –, which lies near the border with Colombia and Venezuela. The first idea in the script was to look into income generation with the pepper houses in the production of a mix of special peppers, but this was not possible due to the high cost of travel.

The pandemic was also a hindrance to Fran Baniwa and the other cameramen who visited other indigenous lands. During the shooting sessions, many leaders of this and other peoples died from Covid-19. So she decided to focus on the art of Baniwa basketry.

All stages of basketry were documented: the collection of inputs in the forest and the production of arumã fibers, which is a plant that grows in half-flooded areas; fiber preparation; pigmentation; and weaving. The meaning of various graphic representations in the art of Baniwa basketry was featured. “It was a learning process for both the young people and the people who are going to watch the documentary because I managed to interview the wisest people, who are artisans and experts in this art. We would form a circle and the wise people would start talking and everyone was learning. It was a moment of exchange,” says Fran Baniwa, who received equipment as part of the project.

“Today, I am fully equipped to carry on and improve my work. I have a powerful instrument to record and to continue producing videos. I benefited a lot from this project, in addition to receiving recognition, growing stronger as an indigenous woman and elevating my work as a filmmaker,” she says.

Project: Protection and Sustainable Management in Indigenous Areas of the Amazon
Partner: National Indigenous Peoples Foundation (FUNAI)
Commissioned by: Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ in German)

By Ascom MDR and Elisa Malta

A destination that attracts many tourists from all over the country for its paradisiacal beaches, 30 years ago the municipality of Itacaré, in Bahia, housed an open-air dump that was inconsistent with the natural endowments of the place. The Itacaré Dump was an inadequate waste disposal site with more than five hectares in size in the middle of the Atlantic Forest, and it received approximately 30 tons of untreated waste every day. The site was a threat to biodiversity, public health and local tourism since it was a source of water pollution, deforestation of the Atlantic Forest, increased emission of greenhouse gases, and erosion.

Twenty-two waste collectors and their families obtained their livelihood from that site by picking up recyclables in the middle of the dump under inadequate working conditions. Adriana Santos, who has worked as a waste collector since she was a child, is all too familiar with this reality and all of its hardships, the constant threat to health and even social prejudice. “Sometimes we get sick, but we are forced to work come rain or shine. People look down on us because we work at the dump,” she says. It was at the dump that she met her husband, José Emerson de Carvalho. A collector for 23 years now, José is the president of the Vitória Association of Recyclable Collectors in Itacaré. Adriana, José and their children are one of the families that rejoiced when the dump was closed down.

In August 2022, the site was the first in the middle of the Atlantic Forest to be decommissioned following enactment of the New Legal Framework on Sanitation. The law provides for the closure of 3,000 sites for inadequate final disposal throughout the country. Decommissioning of the Itacaré landfill was supported by the Ministry of Regional Development (MDR) and GIZ Brasil. “There is a huge number of open-air dumps along the Brazilian coastline. As these sites are expected to be decommissioned, we are making headway in the rehabilitation of the sea in these areas,” says the national secretary for sanitation at the MDR, Pedro Maranhão.

In order to ensure that the Itacaré landfill is closed down and solid waste is properly managed, technical analyses, training, seminars and public awareness campaigns were conducted. The actions were launched in 2021, and from 2022 they’ve relied on support from the ProteGEEr project. “Closing down a dump entails thinking about integrated and sustainable solutions for waste management, and this can only be done through political will, engagement, technical advice, and several people working together. Going forward, it is important to expand selective waste collection and make the system financially sustainable,” says project director Hélinah Cardoso.

Improving sanitation conditions helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, preserve natural resources, develop eco-businesses, and generate jobs and income. In addition to decommissioning the landfill, transshipment, sorting and eco-business sites were established. The site has 25 families working in better conditions and is equipped with machinery for the reuse of discarded materials, a digital scale and a glass crusher.

“We are going to have decent work with an equipped shed. It is a joy not only for me, but for the entire community,” says José. It is also an opportunity to promote a fairer future for younger generations. “I never wanted my children to work with waste all around them, and I always wanted to give them the best. Now this will change, it will be much better for everyone,” celebrates Adriana.

Project: Support for the implementation of the National Solid Waste Policy considering climate protection (ProteGEEr)
Partner: Ministry of Regional Development (MDR)
Funding Partner: Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV, in the German acronym)