Contribuições da cultura de matriz africana para a conservação da biodiversidade: A experiência do Ilê Omo Aiye, comunidade de Candomblé de São Luiz do Paraitinga/SP

Abstract

The exploitation of natural resources in Brazil occurred in a highly predatory manner, strongly impacting our ecosystems, reflecting how our society relates to the environment of which it is a part. Environmental awareness and social pressure promoted the creation of agreements and laws in order to guarantee the preservation of ecosystems and natural resources. However, some governments and corporations do not necessarily comply with the agreement, which reduces the effectiveness of such instruments. In the search for paths of profound changes in direction, the research places its gaze on traditional communities, groups that carry knowledge and practices based on a relationship of confluence with the environment, and historically suffer oppression in order to adapt the realities based on a capitalist developmentalism, are often unable to promote their cultural reproduction. The communities of Candomblé terreiros, for example, have a different relationship with their environment because their culture and way of life is based on the connection with natural elements that are considered sacred. To maintain their daily and religious habits, they depend on clean water, on various species of plants and foods. Thus, such a connection with nature has the potential to stimulate educational processes and social practices that tend to preserve and recover their territories and the spaces they occupy, thus promoting the planting of various species of plants that are venerated or consumed, whether they have land, in the use of public spaces or through the acquisition of other producers. For this purpose, this research is based on the experience of Ilê Omo Aiye, a candomblé community located in the rural area of São Luiz do Paraitinga, which over the last decades has promoted the reforestation of the site it occupies since its foundation in 1986, based on values and principles present in their tradition taught by their ancestors, in caring for their sacred elements. In this way, from interviews the history of the terreiro and its leaders was recorded, and it understands how its foundations permeate its relations with the natural elements and how such foundations promoted practices that resulted in the recovery of 6.9 hectares of Atlantic forest. 4 people were interviewed about the relationship between nature and the sacred, the uses of plants, tradition and territory. Therefore, it is noted that the preservation and recovery of natural environments generate an increase in the resilience of ecosystems and species, making them more resistant to environmental changes and impacts, in addition to contributing to the maintenance of biodiversity. Thus it is stated that if there is a real intention to change the course and stop negatively impacting the environment, it is necessary that we listen and learn from those who have been living in harmony with their territory for so long, as here we listen to the terreiro people.