Published 2012-11-01
“…(Kleinman et al. 1995).In the context of the announcement of the creation of the National Park of the South of French Guiana, an interdisciplinary program (ecology, pedobiology, ethnology; MNHN-
CNRS-IRD) Effects of the traditional cultural practices on soils and forest (French Environment Ministry) studied the effects of the itinerant agriculture on slash-and-burn field from an analysis of the conditions which allow Amerindian communities to satisfy their material and spiritual needs in a forest system.This program set up the following points:– the fine practices of this agriculture, constituting a real strategy, supply efficiently the mineral elements in the cultures, without purchase of fertilizers, and ensure a rapid forest recovery after at least 10 years; the cycles short culture - long fallow allow the self regeneration of an agroforestry system registered since millenniums in the forest dynamics of the river banks;– the adoption of the long fallow limits the spatial extent of every family to 10-15 hectares at most;– the transportation on foot of the harvest towards the village limits the extent of the agriculture to a 3-4 km band from the river; beyond, the forest is protected from an agricultural pressure;– the absence of the market does not lead to an increase of the cultivated surfaces and the pressure on the forest is not increasing thus at present;– the forest of the hinterland includes wide zones restricted by strong social taboos; the conservation of the social organization of the Amerindian ethnic groups is the first condition of the preservation of the forest domain.The real solution for the preservation of the forest heritage in the South of French Guiana, obviously social, was thus already political, before the creation of the “Amazonian Park of Guyana” (2007).…”
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