Ancestral Livelihoods in Amazon River Floodplains

Summary

Amazon’s historical peasantries, the Caboclos, are the legitimate heirs of aboriginal knowledge, displaying a good repertoire of imaginative forms of natural resources management, adapted to climate change and its extremes in temperature and rainfall. Caboclos are capable of restarting livelihoods and breeding life after each flood, surviving on multiple functions, activities and tasks, maintaining a respectful relationship with the forest and the floodplains, as with numerous waterways that drive away from the Amazon and penetrate the jungle. Vegetable farming uses organic fertilisers, Caboclos tending the alluvial rich soil every time the river falls shorter in order to stock food surplus for the rainy season, to fulfil ongoing household nutritious needs, as to get cash to meet other basic necessities. The fundamental research objective is to recover traditional organic farming and forest management practises along Lower Brazilian Amazon River margins so that they might be presented as models for similar tropical environments.