Two equivalent droughts with different social impacts in the Brazilian Semiarid Region

Abstract

The drought period in the semi-arid region between 2010 and 2016 was quite different from those that occurred previously. Although this drought has already been considered the most intense ever seen, its social impacts were significantly less intense than they have been in the past, with no record of social disasters. Part of these different social impacts were related to a new way of mitigating the drought. This new response was gradually drawn up through two decades of political and social transformations in the region. This article is focused on three aspects of these transformations: (i) the characteristics of the local peasantry who make up the regional society; (ii) the agroecological relationship of the systems disseminated in recent years; and (iii) the process of civil society mobilization and building new policies for the semiarid region. Initially, a comparison was made between the intensity of droughts based on climate data from Center for Weather Forecasting and Climatic Studies/INPE. From this point on, the work was based on participatory appraisals of the agroecological systems and subsystems that refer to the increased ability to adapt to semi-arid region, demonstrating the importance of its role in the composition of stocks and in the conversion of natural capital into other assets for farming families. The multifunctionality and pluriactivity of the semiarid peasantry also played a crucial role in the stability of the systems and in the food security. The research recorded the path of the public policy development process in which the ideas related to living with the semi-arid conditions and the focus on family agriculture became actions in the combat of drought and promote development.