MARGINS
People, rice and mangroves at the margins: A hybrid and contested interface in a changing world
The traditional dichotomy of nature and society commonly expressed in the Global North has narrowed the opportunities to knowledge production, coexistence and intersubjective collaboration. Due to the consequences of global warming, the division, classification and partitioning of places, things and subjects, as they were treated by modernity, are going through some questioning. Therefore, the plurality of worldviews, natures and subjects (including non-humans) have been developing and contributing to contest the hegemonic socioecological formulation.
Coastal Guinea-Bissau offers a unique standpoint from which to discuss the place of nature, technology and people in the context of global warming. Coastal areas produce the most important regional foodstuff – rice. Mangrove rice farming exists in co-association with mangrove forests, and the two components form a functional interactive socioecological complex. At this interface, the place that produces food cannot be dissociated from the mangrove forests – the place that nourishes is syncretic.
MARGINS offers an innovative approach through the study of the interrelation of rice farms
and mangrove forests as part of a singular whole challenged by climate change and development paradigms. The main goals of MARGINS are: (i) to examine international and state policies and programs for mangrove forest management and mangrove rice farming; (ii) to investigate the technological, social and ecological features that locally influence increased rice crop damage by salinization and dam breakages; and (iii) to compile local social memories and knowledge about socioecological and technological transformations in the mangrove-rice complexes.
We combine methodologies from different disciplinary fields to produce an interdisciplinary perspective of these spaces. Like this the results will serve to (i) identify ecological, social and technological drivers for resisting against climate change in mangrove-rice complexes; (ii) promote equality in north-south (post)development relations regarding coastal interventions in the context of climate justice; (iii) evaluate the international focus of funding and action to mangrove rice agriculture and mangrove forests; and (iv) involve farmers at the research-level and fully acknowledge their knowledge in dissemination activities.
FCiências.ID - Associação para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento de Ciências (Fciências.ID)
Ana Paula Rosa
Bucar Indjai
Cristina Cruz
Dionísio Tavares
Gonçalo Casimiro Salvaterra
Joana Sousa (coord)
Juelson Samanango Lourenço
Luís Catarino
Orlando Mendes
Paula Duarte Lopes
Raul Mendes Fernandes
Rita Campos
Andrew Ainslie
Cláudia Santos
Joana Roque de Pinho
Jorge de Nascimento Nonato Otinta
Nerico Armando Mendes
Sofia da Palma Rodrigues
