- In western Brazil’s Pantanal wetland, two socioenvironmental projects based on products from local biodiversity are encouraging women to take the lead in creating their own livelihoods.
- In Barão de Melgaço municipality, women collect water hyacinths, whose fibers they use to create a range of handicrafts, while in neighboring Poconé municipality, women gather and shell fruit from the cumbaru tree to sell as a popular snack.
- By generating an income for the participants, the projects give the women greater autonomy and financial independence in a region where patriarchal traditions are still strong.
- The work isn’t without its risks, however: for the fruit collectors, it’s the exhausting labor of working in the sun and hauling sacks, while for the hyacinth weavers, it’s jaguars and giant otters jumping into their canoes.
Deep in the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland, where nature fights the intensifying impacts of climate change, women are also battling to make a living on their own, exploring what they’ve learned from their sisters, mothers and neighbors.
To this end, the Aguapé and Cumbaru projects have been operating in the Brazilian Pantanal since March 2023. Both work with the online platform VBIO, which stands for “Showcase of Brazilian Biodiversity” and raises and allocates funds for socioenvironmental projects. That was what attracted cosmetics giant Avon to use the benefit-sharing provision under Brazil’s Biodiversity Law to fund projects that help the daily lives of communities in this part of the country.
“One of the causes advocated by Avon is the end of violence against women,” says VBIO project manager Mariana Giozza. “That’s why we presented proposals that cover both biodiversity and female leadership.” To make the right choices, VBIO relied on the assistance of Rede Pantaneira, a network representing local traditional communities since 2009.
Where public policies are out of reach, due to either government neglect or ineffectiveness, local people have come forward to make a difference. This was the case with 34-year-old Edinalda Pereira do Nascimento, executive secretary of Rede Pantaneira and a single mother of a 2-year-old “little Pantanal boy.” She says she chose to raise her child alone because of her dissatisfaction with local men: “Husband? I haven’t found one yet.”
Born in Barão de Melgaço municipality, Mato Gross state, in the northern Pantanal, Nascimento is well aware of the problems that disrupt everyday life in western Brazil, from lack of sanitation to drinking water. “Not to mention machismo, which treats women differently, as though they were incapable of leading and earning an income,” she says.
Focused on giving visibility to the communities she represents, Nascimento is in the final year of her environmental engineering studies, which she takes online at the University of Cuiabá. She inspires resilience in other women in the area, such as those in the community of Barra do Rio São Lourenço, a day and a half away by boat from the city of Cáceres, the gateway to the northern Pantanal in Mato Grosso. There is where the Aguapé project energizes everyday life in the Renascer women’s association.
Women from the community have memories of making crafts from water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes), an aquatic plant that thrives in the Pantanal. This is a cultural heritage from the Guató, the last canoeing Indigenous peoples of the area, from whom they’re descended. “Catarina had to convince us of the importance of maintaining tradition to improve our lives with the income from that production,” recalls Eliane, one of the project’s leaders.
Eliane is the name adopted by Leônida Aires, a 57-year-old mother of three daughters, when she was a child. “I still use it,” she says as a joke. As for Catarina, that’s her older sister, “who suffered a lot at the hands of her abusive partner until she found the courage, some time ago, to separate from him and make a living by working with hyacinth,” she says. The artisanal craft gradually aroused the interest of these women again, and gained momentum under the leadership of VBIO.
Working with water hyacinth involves numerous tasks — collecting, drying, cutting, weaving — before the final product can be sold in the form of baskets, hats and boxes, for example. Today, 10 of the 24 members of the Renascer Association work with the plant. “That number could be higher, but our sisters from the community are still submissive to housework,” Eliane says.
“And the project wants to free women from male control, so that men won’t be in charge of everything,” she adds. To those women whose longtime partners complain of being sidelined by the project, Eliane has advice: “I take the opportunity to talk to the younger women: ‘You need to know what you can handle and what you shouldn’t allow; otherwise, who will take care of your problems?’”
The cumbaru women
Eliane’s tenacious attitude resonates in the daily life of 37-year-old Luziete Gonçalina da Silva Moraes, a resident of Poconé in the northern Pantanal, 12 hours by boat from Barra do São Lourenço. For almost a decade, she’s been collecting and shelling baru fruit from the cumbaru tree (Dipteryx alata), a species threatened with extinction, in the transition area between the Pantanal wetland and Cerrado savanna.
However, from the moment the activity came under the benefit-sharing provision, her life changed. “The project empowered the women who live here,” Moraes says. “I’ve got two children and a husband who also work with kumaru. Well, comfort comes to everyone, isn’t it?”
Tereza Rodrigues Pereira, 50, listens and agrees. “Luziete was really lucky. Her husband supports her, and that’s not the regular attitude of men from the Pantanal.”
Pereira lives in Barão de Melgaço, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Poconé, and one of the eight communities included in the VBIO project in this region. She’s been collecting baru fruit for two years, since she separated from her husband after 26 years: “Life is much better without him!” Today, with everyone in the family contributing — she has five daughters and six grandchildren — they make a monthly income of 3,000 reais ($530).
Moraes elaborates on the financial importance of community work: “A kilo of the whole baru fruit used to sell for 60 centavos; now it’s worth 25 reais after they’re shelled.” That’s an increase from about 10 cents per kilogram (5 cents per pound) to $4.40/kg ($2/lb). The most valuable part of baru is the kernel inside the fruit. Toasted and salted, it’s in high demand throughout Brazil.
What was really difficult, however, was to find a way to make shelling the fruit easier on the women’s hands while not damaging the kernels inside. “We used to lose many [kernels] by working with machetes,” Moraes says. “But then Mr. Antônio, a member of the community, came and adapted the machete to a lever, and that was the solution.” Their goal is to allow people who previously only collected the fruit, like Pereira, develop the skills to also shell them. “So everyone will earn more,” Nascimento says.
For the water hyacinth weavers of Barra do São Lourenço, the income is less stable. “It depends on the boats that dock here,” Eliane says. This area of the Pantanal is popular with recreational fishers, and when they arrive, handicraft sales can generate about 1,500 reais ($265) per month for each woman, Eliane says.
To guarantee production, Eliane gets up before 4 a.m. (except on Saturdays, when she attends evangelical service). She prepares her tereré, a yerba maté infusion made with cold water, and heads to the river. Always with a partner, she goes looking for different types of water hyacinth to use in different pieces.
While cutting the plant, which helps oxygenate the water while also allowing sunlight to pass through, she remains alert. “Sometimes a jaguar will jump into the canoe, can you believe it? And then we have to make a lot of noise with the paddle to scare them away,” she says nonchalantly. “But giant otters are the worst because they’ll attack you mercilessly if they want something that is in the canoe.”
For those working with cumbaru, meanwhile, the main danger comes from physical exhaustion. “Under the strong sun, we have to carry 50-kilo [110-lb] bags to the area where the tractor will pick them up and take them to the community,” Moraes says. “Our arms have to be strong, otherwise they won’t hold up.” The trees are spread over large private properties, and the fruits are collected from the ground. As for the landowners, Moraes says, “When people realize that collecting kumaru fruit is profitable, some want part of our income.”
For now, however, the priority is to conclude the creation of extractivist women’s associations in both Poconé and Barão de Melgaço, with around 60 members, and bring in upgrades such as equipment to process the baru kernels into flour as a means of adding value and boosting income. The men of the community have a small role in the project, helping women to collect the fruit. Whether this is a sign of a changing mindset in the Pantanal remains to be seen.
Banner image: A woman collecting water hyacinths in Barra do Rio São Lourenço municipality, Mato Grosso state. Image courtesy of Mariana Giozza/VBIO.
This story was reported by Mongabay’s Brazil team and first published here on our Brazil site on July 29, 2024.
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