Financial Mechanism and Resources

The traditional medicine practiced by the peoples of the Cerrado, in Brazil, encompasses a variety of different approaches, due mostly to how the medicinal practices of Brazilian indigenous peoples mixed with African peoples and Portuguese colonizers that came to Brazil. These practitioners use a variety of resources to prevent and treat diseases, such as home remedies made from medicinal plants, diets, baths, blessings, prayers, counseling, massages, and clay applications.

Home remedies made from medicinal plants, are one of the most commonly used resources, even though their production and sales have no specific legislation and this situation has a negative impact on the dynamics, transmission, and safeguarding of traditional medicine. Hence, the Biocultural Community Protocol for Healers in the Cerrado is intended to be a political instrument that can be used by organizations and social networks in public policy-making and to achieve legislation that guarantees customary rights to practitioners who use traditional and sustainable medicinal plants of local biodiversity.

Groups of women healers (“raizeiras”) and other traditional knowledge holders are organized as an environmental network called Pacari Network. This network acts on four states of Brazil, the Cerrado biome.

The Cerrado biome is made up of approximately 204 million hectares, which is equivalente to ¼ of the national territory. The Cerrado is considered “Brazil´s water mother” because it contains the souces of large rivers such as the São Francisco, Araguaia, Xingu and Tocantins, which feed six important Brazilian water basins like the Amazon basin and the Parana and Paraguay River basin.

Currently over 80 indigenous people live in the Cerrado, along with a great diversity of traditional peoples like riverine, healers, fishers, babaçu coconut breakers, “quilombolas”, among others.
However, the Cerrado is also the main area for extensive farming expansion. It is one of the most threatened environments in the world, with 50% of its native vegetation remaining, making it a biodiversity hotspot.

In this context, healers organize to influence the implementation of public policies at local level, for example, by serving on municipal health councils. They also connect through social network and participate at national levels, especially in the National Policy of Traditional Peoples and Communities and in the National Policy for Medicinal Plants.

The traditional medicine exercised by healers is a practice that is intrinsic to community well being and based on access to biodiversity and the traditional knowledge. It is directly related to the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Brazil, specifically articles 8 ”j” and 10 “c”, which advise signatory countries to “respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities,” and recognize  their fundamental role in preserving biodiversity with attention to gender equity.

In line with of the goals established by the government to stop the loss of biodiversity by 2020 through the National Strategic Plan for Brazilian Biodiversity, the healers created their own goals for Cerrado biodiversity. The Goals of the Healers lists their priorities for practicing traditional medicine according to how the government presents the main points of its National Strategic Plan.
Healers request primarily the freedom to use their traditional knowledge to prevent and treat diseases and to preserve the biodiversity of the Ccerrado biome. However, winning these customary rights is directly related to how healers understand public policies and to developing political instruments that can influence them.