Comapi Cooperative
COMPAI is located in Simplicio Mendes, a small town in the southern part of the state of Piaui, Northeast Brazil, in the middle of the CAATINGA ecoregion.
Caatinga is a type of vegetation, and an ecoregion characterized by this vegetation in the northeastern part of Brazil. The name "Caatinga" is a Tupi word meaning "white forest" or "white vegetation" (kaa = forest, vegetation, tínga = white), consisting primarily of small, thorny trees that shed their leaves seasonally. It covers an area of approximately 380,000 square miles, over 10% of the Brazil's territory. Caatinga covers the northeast portion of Brazil, extending across eight states: Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe, Bahia, and parts of Minas Gerais.
The Caatinga has only two distinguishable seasons: the summer when it is very hot and dry, and the winter when it is hot and rainy. During the dry summer periods there is no foliage or undergrowth.
Despite its semi-arid climate, around 15 million people live in the Caatinga region and are regarded as the poorest inhabitants of Brazil. A very large part of the population depends on agricultural or forest industries for over half of their income. There are little drinkable water sources and harvesting gets difficult because of the irregular pluviosity. Unsustainable timber extraction for fuel, extensive and uncontrolled fires have played a critical role in the nearly complete destruction of important regional ecosystems. A large area of that ecoregion is ranked today as highly threatened by desertification . In that context, it becomes even more critical to search for social and environmental sustainable alternatives for the subsistence of those populations.
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