Banca de DEFESA: WELSON AIALON ALCANIZ DOS SANTOS

Uma banca de DEFESA de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : WELSON AIALON ALCANIZ DOS SANTOS
DATE: 09/03/2020
TIME: 14:30
LOCAL: Sala de Reunião, Centro de Biociências, UFRN
TITLE:

WIND ENERGY AND SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS: A APPROACH THROUGH HUMAN ECOLOGY AND CULTURAL

KEY WORDS:

Wind energy; Environment; Socio-environmental impacts; Human Ecology; Culture.

PAGES: 115
BIG AREA: Outra
AREA: Ciências Ambientais
SUMMARY:

After the oil crisis in the 1970s, the growth demand for renewable energy sources around the world was configured as an opportunity to mitigate the harmful effects of using fossil fuels. Currently, international policies to stimulate renewable sources enable European countries to expand the main technologies in this sector, thus directing their actions to expand the productive market to other continents by selling technologies associated with this segment. Following the international trend, Brazil starts to lead a scenario of incentives to the renewable industry, especially the wind industry, based on sectoral policies that allowed the insertion of promotion mechanisms such as the Incentive Program to Alternative Sources - PROINFA. The Brazilian Northeast is today the main target of wind-electric projects. According to the open data from the national Energy Research Company (EPE, 2019), this portion of the Brazilian territory includes 424 projects in commercial operation, 141 wind projects under construction and 122 in the process of being granted and environmental licensing. This huge volume of projects corroborates our assessment of the industrial profile of the wind sector in an environment whose human activities in relation to their environment are, in fact, under-studied and deserve total attention. In view of this brief preamble, we raised the following hypotheses: do the activities of the wind energy sector, based on a European industrial model, take place in positive and / or negative socio-environmental impacts? If so, what changes have been triggered in the natural and human environment? What implications can such an activity bring to traditional local communities with different social, cultural, economic and environmental characteristics? The aim of the dissertation is to carry out a comparative analysis of the likely socioenvironmental impacts of the wind energy sector among producing municipalities, using two methods: Human Ecology (MORÁN, 1990) and Cultural Ecology (STEWARD, 1955). The comparative analysis between these methods was applied in two countries whose wind activity has been promoted, Portugal and Brazil. The Portuguese municipality chosen as a model area for this study was the Municipality of Torres Vedras, since the wind sector is already consolidated and in full operation since 2000; and the municipality of Jandaíra, in Brazil, where energy activity is still in full commercial and territorial expansion. The research methodology has an exploratory and descriptive character, and was developed from documentary and field information. The first chapter of the dissertation entitled “Wind energy and Human Ecology at Torres Vedras, Portugal”, represents the first stage of this investigation, while the second chapter “Cultural Ecology in Jandaíra, Rio Grande do Norte: an approach starting from Etno-history” presents an investigation of the social organization of the municipality of Jandaíra using the method of Cultural Ecology, from the reading of the narratives and history of this municipality. The results of the Human Ecology method applied in Torres Vedras determined that the forms of use, exploration and adaptation to the natural and human environment in this location, as well as the model of social organization, were determined by its historical, cultural and economic formation that enabled the settlement and permanence of this population over time and the socioenvironmental impacts linked to the wind sector come from two factors: the energy need of Portugal as a way to meet human and economic demands and the subjective perception of changes in the local landscape from introduction of wind turbines. The method allowed us to verify, also, that this productive sector is configured as an economic practice that attenuates the energy scarcity of this territory, however, it is not an activity that is superimposed on the other existing ones. Wind energy is actually a complement to basic local needs. Regarding the Cultural Ecology method, from the documents and interviews it was possible to verify that the formation of the city of Jandaíra had as main agents the work of the tropeiros from the neighboring cities (Lajes and Angicos, mainly) who used this village as a resting area and which, due to the availability and abundance of honey, started to sell it to other municipalities in the region. The oral reports given by the older residents also attested to this information and added the importance of drilling wells at DENOCS, in the early 20th century, as another element that allowed human settlement in what would become Jandaíra. The Cultural Ecology method also made it possible to discover in this location a strong ecological relationship in the social organization through the activities of “meleiros” and “meliponicultors”, who played a role in protecting the ecosystem and preserving the stingless bee. Observation of characteristics pertaining to culture Jandairense, whose elements of the ecosystem have a close relationship with traditional human activities, allowed us to develop a critique of what we call new ecological and cultural processes in the activity of the wind energy sector. In our consideration of this area, we reinforce the perspective that the socio-environmental impacts of this energy activity may overlap with the other elements existing material and immaterial culture, as these are being lost and undervalued, especially the oral culture of older residents, since this source of income generates in the new residents a possibility of formal employment in the energy production chain. In the end, we evaluated that the application of the Human Ecology method had positive points that allowed the analysis of the natural environment to the detriment of human activities for the spatial profile that was used. However, to analyze the specific impacts, it is necessary to use other variables to the method, such as, for example, a greater detail of the physical aspects that make up the landscape, of the physiography and of quantitative data that added to an ethnographic reading, would increase the perceptions of the studied impacts . The Cultural Ecology method was also shown to be satisfactory in the study of ecological relations with local culture, making it possible to verify how the local population understands their culture from the elements of nature, made possible by the methodology of Ethno-history.

BANKING MEMBERS:
Presidente - 1219932 - FRANCISCA DE SOUZA MILLER
Externa à Instituição - MARISTELA OLIVEIRA DE ANDRADE - UFPB
Externa ao Programa - 2374871 - ZORAIDE SOUZA PESSOA