Understanding women's stewardship in the Amazon : A decolonial-process-relational perspective

Abstract: The widespread and increasing forest degradation in the Amazon contrasts with a range of individual or collective practices developed by local agents, which have the potential to reconcile conservation and local understanding of the quality of life and economic development. The role of women among these initiatives has been overlooked or not well understood.  Therefore, methods are needed that allow their voices and understandings to be centralized. In this thesis, I make use of decolonial and process-relational approaches to do justice to women, as an invitation to a folk science, when addressing questions about their role in landscape stewardship practices in the Amazon. How can these practices contribute in an innovative way to food diversity and biodiversity conservation in the region? What are the processes that can facilitate or restrict women's individual or collective agency?    Women play a crucial role in landscape stewardship. Still, their agency is severely restricted by the ongoing neo-colonial processes, which affects socioecological spaces. However, they have been organizing themselves to overcome obstacles through their local networks. By understanding womenature and their stewardship practices of caring for the land as an indissoluble part of the forest means to understand in depth the tipping points of the Amazon, which are interconnected to the tipping points of its populations. This is a key factor to broaden our understanding of togetherness that can lead to a more equitable and fairer path towards sustainability in and for the Amazon.