Agricultura sintrópica como medida mitigadora dos impactos da emergência climática

Abstract

The Climate Emergency is one of humanity's greatest challenges; in 2021, the United Nations (UN) declared the “Decade of Ecosystem Restoration”; setting a deadline of 2030 for the human species to take concrete actions to restore its ecosystems or deal with the disastrous consequences that are predicted by climate scientists. Among the sectors that emit greenhouse gases, the food industry is the second sector that most emits these gases, behind only fossil fuels. In this context, syntropic agriculture appears as an alternative to the production model currently adopted, enabling the production of food and forest products while providing ecosystem services. It is a productive model of consortium between agricultural, forest and/or animal species that reproduces the dynamics of a natural forest, maintaining the balance of the system through ecological interactions between its components, decreasing and, as it evolves over time, no longer needing farm inputs, becoming a closed-loop system. The present work is a bibliographic review in which databases, scientific articles, tests, dissertations and technical books in the area were used for inquiry. The objectives are to analyze the feasibility of syntropic agriculture in contributing to the mitigation of the impacts of the climate emergency. The specific objectives are: (i) to describe the conditioning factors of the climate emergency, contextualizing and emphasizing the participation of the food sector; (ii) conceptualize agroecology and syntropic agriculture, (iii) analyze the feasibility of syntropic agriculture as an alternative to the current model of food production and (iv) describe forest ecosystem services and analyze their functioning in agroecosystems. The results of this literature review indicates that syntropic agriculture has the potential to be profitable and eco-efficient and perform its ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, recovery of degraded areas and improvement of water fertility and environmental humidity.