Recognition for Fight between Landless Peasants in Backlands of Brazil - Environmental Conflict as Land Policy Possession

Abstract

This article examines the environmental conflicts as a political category of land claims from the experiences of MST settlements on the high backcountry (Sertão) of Alagoas, in Delmiro Gouveia. We tried to relate this environmental interaction mode with the literature on environmental conflicts (BURSZTYN, 2001, 2008; Little, 2001 Zhouri, 2006, 2008), held perspective of land, conflicts of views and practice on the land as environment of subsistence, material production, culture and other senses. We interviewed some actors among rural workers and made a survey through questionnaires with a portion of the company not involved in the MST in order to draw a picture about what is the land as environmental means and the struggle for land as policy ecological (Little, 2006) in its aspects of social and environmental policy.

Keywords: socio-environmental conflicts; MST; environmental policy; Human Ecology.