International audienceI n a world increasingly thought of as over-populated, sparsely populated spaces remain a dominant feature: ~57% of Asia, ~81% of North America, and ~94% of Australia have population densities below 1 person per square kilometer, equivalent to the population density of most of the Sahara desert (1). These vast, sparsely populated landscapes include rural settlements, towns, agricultural spaces, extractive economies , indigenous lands, and conservation areas. They are crucial for climate change adaptation and mitigation, from carbon se-questration to provisioning of water, food, and energy to cities. Yet governmental and nongovernmental initiatives tend to mostly pay lip service to the diverse views and needs of their populations. Without more inclusive governance, attempts to mitigate and adapt to climate change and conserve ecosystems will be compromised. To be politically legitimate and long-lasting, incentives and regulations for better conservation and climate change mitigation must engage with the claims, rights, and knowledge of local and indigenous populations (2), which may be spread over immense and distant territories. The importance of local and indigenous populations in governing ecosystems and biodiversity and in meeting global climate change mitigation goals has been firmly asserted in international conventions such as the Convention on Biological Diversity [CBD article 8(j)], the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (3), and in agreements and commitments made at the COP21 climate meeting in Paris in 2015. Ho

International audienceAfter almost four decades since its creation, the action os INCRA in the Amazon region shows a paradox: on the one hand the human occupation of that region was a strategy of the military regime, but on the other hand it is after the democratization that the agrarian reform policy intensifies the settlement of peasants in the Brazilian Amazon. The institutionalization of policies aiming at protecting the environment, which increased during the last two decades, is contradictory with the social protection, as in the Amazon it is very much based on a model of agrarian reform that provokes deforestation.Após quase quatro décadas de existência, a ação do INCRA na Amazônia revela um paradoxo: por mais que a ocupação humana daquela região fosse uma estratégia dos governos militares, é na fase democrática recente que a reforma agrária brasileira intensifica a instalação de agricultores em projetos de assentamento. Por outro lado, a institucionalização de políticas de proteção do meio ambiente, marcante nas duas últimas décadas, se revela contraditória com as práticas de proteção social que têm, na Amazônia, um foco de destaque num modelo de reforma agrária que provoca inevitáveis consequências ambientais

The Amazon region has been undergoing profound transformations since the late '70s through forest degradation, land use changes and effects of global climate change. The perception of such changes by local communities is important for risk analysis and for subsequent societal decision making. In this study, we compare and contrast observations and perceptions of climate change by selected Amazonian communities particularly vulnerable to alterations in precipitation regimes. Two main points were analysed: (i) the notion of changes in the annual climate cycle and (ii) the notion of changes in rainfall patterns. About 72% of the sampled population reports perceptions of climate changes, and there is a robust signal of increased perception with age. Other possible predictive parameters such as gender, fishing frequency and changes in/planning of economic activities do not appear overall as contributing to perceptions. The communities' perceptions of the changes in 2013-2014 were then compared to earlier results (2007-2008), providing an unprecedented cohort study of the same sites. Results show that climate change perceptions and measured rainfall variations differ across the basin. It was only in the southern part of the Amazon that both measured and perceived changes in rainfall patterns were consistent with decreased precipitation. However, the perception of a changing climate became more widespread and frequently mentioned, signalling an increase in awareness of climate risk.