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Meet Fernanda Monteiro, an agronomist, geographer and civil society activist based in Brazil who has been working in the dryland regions of Serra do Espinhaço for ten years.

The Serra do Espinhaço mountains run through Minas Gerais to Bahia for approximately 1200 km and are of enormous environmental importance. The region is incredibly biodiverse, home to various endemic amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles and within the rock iron, manganese and quartz are to be found. The region is in the Savannah biome that is a vital source of life, as water flows from the Plateau in the central part before gushing out into the Amazon and the semi-arid region of Brazil. The Serra do Espinhaço also divides the São Fransisco River and other smaller rivers which flow towards the Atlantic Ocean. The area is inhabited by quilombolas (African descendants), indigenous people and peasant communities. These communities living in this dryland area are flower-gatherers, who conserve both the environment around them and their own traditional lives. The flowers they gather are “sempre-vivas” and the gathering requires specific techniques from field management, manual collection, processing and conservation of the flowers through each of its stages. These sempre-vivas flowers and the whole associated system are part of the local identity that have ensured conservation as well as food and livelihood security of the communities.

It is in here in these dryland mountains where Fernanda does a large portion of her work. Fernanda works as a researcher in the Geography Department of São Paulo University and is also a member of the Biodiversity Work Group of National Agroecology Network which supports actions for the territorial rights of local communities, paying special attention to biodiversity and the women. In Serra do Espinhaço Fernanda works directly in the Dynamic Conservation Plan of the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System of the Espinhaço range (recognized by FAO in 2020), strengthening the resilience of these communities in the face of climate change. It is from this position that Fernanda is able to offer us insights into the gender and environmental situation currently in Brazil.

Firstly, Fernanda is pleased to have seen a great surge in women’s activism over the years. Women are stronger and stand up for their rights- they are more active than before. The regional commission in Espinhaço is made up of quilombolas and peasant communities, and now more than 50% are women. When asked why they are there, these women say, “we have children, we need to think of their future". In other rural parts of the country, indigenous communities also participate nowadays, and Fernanda sees a real change: more local groups of women are participating in the political arena and becoming a resistance voice, protecting biodiversity and their rights. Things are different now: twenty years ago, it was almost impossible for rural women to participate in political life. A change for the better.

However, whilst some things are changing for the better, some are unfortunately changing for the worse; including Brazil’s environmental condition. Minais Gerais alone has suffered from two massive mining disasters over the past decade (Mariana in 2015 and Brumadinho in 2019) and deforestation is occurring at an alarming rate in the country. Science in Brazil is without oxygen with only a small budget to work with and the serious question about how to balance food production with the protection of conservation is being ignored at the national level. The focus is agricultural development at all costs and thus the protection of immense swathes and quantities of biodiversity are continuously being swept aside.

But though the national level may have abandoned the environment, local levels have not. And nor have local women. However, Fernanda states that much depends upon the global context and external pressures as well. If economic pressures are strong and in place, this means that the national level will be forced to review its position and, in this case, reconstruct some of the many torn-down environmental regulations. With an election due to be held, it is just a matter of time to see what, if anything, changes.

Despite doom and gloom, let us not forget that from a women-environmental rights perspective, a lot has changed for the better in the last twenty years, though it has been a long, arduous slog with an upward slope still to climb: “We [women] are more than before in civil society, and it was hard work to arrive here”. Fernanda aims to keep climbing the slope and will continue to work on her research looking at the sustainable development of local communities in the dryland regions of her country, Brazil.

(c)Fernanda Monteiro