Photo courtesy of Francisca Dionéia Ferreira
Francisca Dionéia Ferreira is a PhD student at the University of Rondônia, in Brazil, and former manager of the Igapó Açu Sustainable Development Reserve. She has been awarded a GEF Fonseca Fellowship for her research into changing societal and environmental conditions along BR-319, a major highway linking the cities of Porto Velho and Manaus, cutting the Amazon forest. In an interview, she shared why this work is close to her heart as one of the leaders of the Amazon Transdisciplinary Network which connects community groups, grassroots social movements, and public sector actors in the region.
What is your area of focus and research?
I am an articulator and facilitator of the Amazon Transdisciplinary Network (RETA), an organic social network that I joined when I worked as a manager at a conservation area in the State of Amazonas. During the nine years I was in that position, I coordinated locally the investments of the Amazon Region Protected Areas program for many years – the GEF has provided funds to the ARPA program since its inception.
The RETA was created in the context of the construction of the highway BR-319. It is a network that brings together all our local communities and grassroots institutions. There are legally constituted and also informal grassroots organizations, associations, secretariats of the municipalities along this territory, and representatives of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Labor, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office, the federal universities of Amazonas and Rondônia, and the University of the State of Amazonas.
Its main objective is to bring a more socio-environmental balance to the highway region with our action, and the ultimate goal is the conservation of our lands and ways of life in that context. You need to bear in mind that the highway is located between two giant rivers, Purus and Madeira, covering nine municipalities with around 450,000 people. We work directly on different fronts and initiatives, but all focus on the conservation of our places, biodiversity, with all its richness, and the way of life of local populations and our people.
How will you use the support from the Fonseca Fellowship, and how will it help you?
The scholarship will allow me to expand my data collection area. Without the scholarship I would have to concentrate only in the southern part of this territory. But now I will be able to have a more significant data collection and expand this debate to other parts of the territory.
This support is very important because research work is still very distant from our people, from the “base.” This scholarship enables more people from the local communities to access resources and make the research process viable.
In general, it is very difficult for local community members to reach graduate school. And in fact, the research process is essential for us. There is a lot in our territory, for example, and in the Amazon as a whole, that is still invisible. Science and research have a great role to play in taking a lot of things out of invisibility. They bring a new vision, a new way of building and seeing things.
The Fonseca Fellowship has this characteristic of focusing on people who already work directly on this agenda of biodiversity conservation and of conservation as a whole. And this is very important. This is essential for us.
