Assessing the Degree of Sustainability in Extractive Reserves in the Amazon Biome Using the Fuzzy Logic Tool for Decision Making

Abstract

The Extractive Reserve (RESEX) was designed to protect rubber tapping communities and their livelihoods, thus guaranteeing environmental health. This study was carried out between 2021 and 2023 and aimed to propose a methodology based on the fuzzy logic method to assess the degree of sustainability in RESEXs in the state of Amazonas, Brazil. For this assessment, 10 indicators were used, represented through input variables in the fuzzy inference systems represented by the Environmental Subsystem (ES), Economic Subsystem (ECS), Social Subsystem (SS), and Institutional Subsystem (IS), with performances that converged so that the Sustainability System in the RESEX (SRE) system reached a performance value of 30.0, on a scale of 0 to 100, which translates into low sustainability in these spaces in the state of Amazonas. The methodology’s ability to represent the main phenomena that impact sustainability in the RESEX studied through linguistic variables and weight them in their complexities, as well as inferring a set of decision rules that reflect the knowledge of experts and which aim to quantitatively contextualise sustainability under uncertainty and imprecision in these areas, makes it a viable instrument to be applied and used by managers and decision-makers in the management of these spaces.

The Key to the Sustainability and Conservation of Extractive Reserves in the Amazon

“…This study prioritizes the category of RESEXs, which are areas that aim to conserve environmental resources and sustainable productive practices of agriculture, extractivism, and livestock, essentially for the subsistence of traditional communities [48][49][50]. RESEXs aim to reconcile nature conservation with sustainable productive activities [51], as well as allowing income generation through green economy and bioeconomy [52,53].…”