“All That’s Left is Bare Land and Sky”: Palm Oil Culture and Socioenvironmental Impacts on a Tembé Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon

“Solo nos Quedó la Tierra Desnuda y el Cielo”: Cultivo de Palma de Aceite e Impactos Socioambientales en el Territorio Tembé en la Amazonia Brasileña

Abstract

The expansion of large-scale oil palm cultivation in the Amazon has exposed indigenous populations to changes around their lands and in their daily activities. Given the lack of studies on the impacts of oil palm on these populations, this study analyzed the socio-environmental impacts perceived by the Tembé, in Tomé-Açu, Pará State. With an interdisciplinary approach, between 2016 and 2017, semi-structured interviews and participant observation were conducted in five villages, inside and adjacent to the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Land and complemented by remote sensing analyzes. This article describes the pressure vectors and the main socio-environmental impacts through the analysis of the indigenous narrative, and then these are discussed based on the scientific literature and remote sensing data. The findings indicate that the conversion of the surrounding territory to oil palm monoculture generated social and environmental changes that negatively affected the Tembé’s way of life and their capacity of socio-cultural reproduction.

Keywords:
Socio-environmental impacts; oil palm; indigenous land; Tembé people; Brazilian Amazon