Gabriela Santa Rosa, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Campinas (Brazil), will present her work on on-going changes in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil—specifically in relation to social movements enacted to protect areas of the forest.

In the last decades the intensification of the use of natural resources as well as changes in technology, demography, culture, and economy have caused transformations in the terrestrial globe, mainly in regions with vast tropical forests which is the case of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. As a response to these changes, important movements have been occurring to protect areas where traditional populations live, such as on Sustainable Development Reserves (RDS). An exciting case that illustrates this initiative is the situation of Quilombolas communities that have been incorporating new practices into their production systems, such as the adoption of Agroforestry Systems (SAFs) mainly for guaranteeing their autonomy to obtain food and to self-govern their territories. Changes to the structure of the local socio-ecological system by introducing new productive systems (SAFs) have raised some questions with regard to the their perceptions about this process and the effect of these shifts in the land use and governance of their territories. Thus, the aim of my research is analyze this scenario and I expect that the results of this work will bring contributions as a support for the territorial sustainable management, subsequently adding to social and environmental public policies.