Location: Brazil, Para, Santarem, Aritapera community
Credit: Fabio de Castro
Initiative: Belmont Forum CRAs (T2S)
Project: AGENTS
Story: Aritapera is an Amazonian floodplain community where residents have managed their lakes to protect fish stocks for many years. Drawing on local knowledge, they establish a set of fishing rules through community meetings. Some fishers are trained to estimate fish stocks and calculate the annual allowable catch. Every year, they hold collective fishing events to celebrate their management system and raise funds for community activities. They also organize the Annual Arapaima Fish Market in Santarém, where urban consumers can buy fish from their managed lakes. Their management system has inspired other communities in the region, as well as restaurants and consumers in Santarém.
The floodplain is a dynamic ecological system, marked by strong seasonal variation in water levels, which requires accurate knowledge of the lakes to design fishing rules and estimate stocks. The AGENTS project addressed this activity as a seed of transformation, in which local fishing knowledge, collective work and sense of care have enabled transformation in the lake system, floodplain livelihood, and community life.
This photo depicts a participatory mapping exercise in which fishers draw the boundaries of multiple lakes and channels, indicate their names, and describe ecological characteristics such as extent, flooded vegetation, water conditions, and depth. They explain how they implement a rotation system, assigning different management levels to lakes (from no-take, to subsistence use, to commercial fishing), and how they monitor these lakes through a community-wide surveillance system that protects against outside fishers. This system has transformed both fishing practices and the floodplain environment: it has increased Arapaima stocks and the size of captured fish over time, while also protecting other fish species and surrounding vegetation. During this mapping exercise, the fishers demonstrate their highly elaborated local knowledge, spatial and temporal perception, and their care for their environment.