Vulnerabilidade das comunidades pesqueiras de São Tomé e Príncipe face às mudanças climáticas

Abstract

With the release of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, the certainty that critical events related to climate change directly and indirectly affect human activities has emerged. The report confirmed that the least developed countries (LDCs), particularly those located in Africa, are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. These vulnerabilities result from multiple factors that influence the manner in which people adapt to local biophysical and social impacts of climate variability. Therefore, this research aims to generally develop, describe and analyze, through qualitative procedures of sociological research, social representations that the traditional fishing communities on the island of Sao Tome and Principe, Africa have over critical events, which in design, refer to climate change and how such representations affect their organization and spatial distribution practices. To achieve the objective of this research, we adopted methodological procedures of qualitative basis such as: state of art review, and preliminary documentary to field research, the latter being accomplished through the use of focus group technique and interviews. The research problem is linked to some peculiarities of African context where the island goes through many socioenvironmental hardships and limitations, which demonstrate the relevance of this undertaken research.