Building bridges between environmental and political agendas is essential nowadays in face of the increasing human pressure on natural environments, including wetlands. Wetlands provide critical ecosystem services for humanity and can generate a considerable direct or indirect income to the local communities. To meet many of the sustainable development goals, we need to move our trajectory from the current environmental destructive development to a wiser wetland use. The current article contain a proposed agenda for the Pantanal aiming the improvement of public policy for conservation in the Pantanal, one of the largest, most diverse, and continuous inland wetland in the world. We suggest and discuss a list of 11 essential interfaces between science, policy, and development in region linked to the proposed agenda. We believe that a functional science network can booster the collaborative capability to generate creative ideas and solutions to address the big challenges faced by the Pantanal wetland.
BackgroundWild plants are used as food for human populations where people still depend on natural resources to survive. This study aimed at identifying wild plants and edible uses known in four rural communities of the Pantanal-Brazil, estimating the use value and understanding how distance to the urban areas, gender, age and number of different environments available in the vicinity can influence the knowledge and use of these plants by local people.MethodsData on edible plants with known uses by communities were obtained through semi-structured interviews. A form with standardized information was used for all communities in order to obtain comparable data for analysis. For the quantitative analysis of the factors that could influence the number of species known by the population, a generalized linear model (GLM) was conducted using a negative binomial distribution as the data consisted of counts (number of citations).ResultsA total of 54 wild species were identified with food uses, included in 44 genera and 30 families of angiosperms. Besides food use, the species are also known as medicine, bait, construction, technology and other. The species with the highest use value was Acrocomia aculeata. Older people, aged more than 60 years, and those living in more remote communities farther from cities know more wild edible plants. Statistical analysis showed no difference regarding gender or number of vegetation types available in the vicinity and the number of plants known by locals.ConclusionThis study indicated more knowledge retained in communities more distant from the urban area, indifference in distribution of knowledge between genders and the higher cultural competence of elderly people in respect to knowledge of wild edible botanicals.
(Ethnobotany of medicinal plants in the Monjolinho settlement, Anastácio, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil). Th is work carried out an ethnobotanical survey of the medicinal plants used by the inhabitants of the Monjolinho settlement inAnastácio city, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Th e goal of this work was to verify how residents congregate information brought from their place with information obtained where they live now, and to verify how the knowledge of spontaneous and native species from cerrado varies in relation to the specie cultivated. A total of 35 inhabitants were interviewed using the snowball method (33 women). Th e species (210) recorded belong to 72 families. Of these, many are native Cerrado species and the remaining species are cultivated next to the houses. Fabaceae and Asteraceae were the most cited families. Of the 23 species of Fabaceae, 20 are native. Th e species with the highest number of citations were jatobá (Hymenaea spp.) and barbatimão (Stryphnodendron obovatum Benth.). Th ose with a high agreement index of use (CUP) were barbatimão (S. obovatum) and cancorosa (Maytenus ilicifolia (Schrad.) Planch). Leaves represented the most used parts. Diseases of the respiratory and genitourinary systems were cited. Th e species use diversity (H' = 5,03) was high. Th e information was acquired from friends (37%), courses (17%) or family (39%), and shows that there is use of medicinal species, and knowledge about these plants, in the community.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.