TERRITORIAL HEALTH: BUILDING AN ECOSYSTEM APPROACH FOR THE RESILIENCE OF FAMILY FARMING IN THE AMAZON CONTEXT

Abstract

The Legal Amazon, covering 61% of the Brazilian territory, faces significant challenges due to economic, social and environmental inequalities, requiring specific regional strategies to face the uncertainties arising from the climate emergency. The great shock of the Covid-19 pandemic has introduced a new scenario for research in the region. In the Portal Territory of the Amazon, broadening the understanding of the resilience of family farming required the construction of new theoretical and methodological approaches. The Territorial Health approach proposed in this article is characterized as a strategy for broadening the understanding of vulnerability in the agricultural frontier of the Mato Grosso Amazon, based on the OneHealth and EcoHealth approaches. The data was categorized into environmental, economic, educational, land use, and public policy dimensions and analyzed using two multivariate statistical techniques: principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis. The results show the contradictions of an agricultural occupation model that has failed to consider human health and the environment as a development strategy. They also demonstrate the fragility of the data for constructing an ecosystem approach that explains the distinctions between municipalities in terms of more or less ecosystem health. Ultimately, the exercise of building the Territorial Health approach highlights essential aspects for the construction of public policies adapted to the context of the agricultural Amazon