Abstract

VIEGAS, Susana Matos. An anthropological perspetive on biodiverse forests: resurgences of ruined landscapes by eucalyptus monoculture. Etnográfica [online]. 2023, vol.27, n.3, pp.851-872.  Epub Jan 08, 2024. ISSN 0873-6561.  https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.14944.

Diversity has been addressed by several areas of knowledge. However, anthropology is responsible for offering decentered perspectives on its historical existence. In this article I mobilize ethnographic knowledge from contexts that I know through fieldwork experience - indigenous people in the Atlantic Forest of southern Bahia and the fataluku, integrating the Southeast Asia region (Timor-Leste) - to reinforce historicities of experience of the landscape that result in biodiverse landscapes. I show the relevance of relationalities for the emergence of this biodiversity, in line with studies on anthropogenic forests. This perspective feeds a critical reflection on the eucalyptus territory in Portugal, showing the unviability of monoculture trees - the reproduction of the similar in the soil - as synonymous with forest. I consequently address critically the public debates on forest (and wildfires) in Portugal that consider forest to be the intensive cultivation of trees in monoculture, arguing that resurgences of biodiversity will have to result from decompositions of diverse relationalities.

Keywords : diversity; forests; territorialities; fataluku; tupinambá; eucalyptus in Portugal.

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