This research identified and evaluated the processes of change in Family agroecosystems located in the Baixo Tocantins territory’s township of Cameta, PA, from the influence of external interventions (local development initiatives and rural credit), emphasizing the system diversity as a point that promotes the multidimensional sustainability of these agroecosystems. The methodology used was based on the Indicator-based Framework for Evaluation of Natural Resource Management Systems (MESMIS). The research was carried out in várzea areas of
Cametá Township, on the first semester of 2012. The geographic and empiric locus was the Caripi community. Using a table containing 11 indicators of sustainability (1 simple and 10 composed) adjusted to the local reality including the environmental, social and technical-economical dimensions, 11 agroecosystems were evaluated.
The data gathering tools used were questionnaire(s), semi-structured guide(s), field notebooks and participant observation. The field research involved the participation of the local actors in the data gathering steps. The field results showed, among the list of indicators proposed, some of them that were most important to the reality of Baixo Tocantins were: environmental, maintenance of natural diversity (ADN) and conservation of fish resource (ARP); social, quality of life (SQV) and social organization (SORG); and technical-economical, performance of family economy (TECON), possibility of diversification (TEDIVERS) and efficiency of management (TEFIC). The sustainability of the agroecosystems evaluated was considered satisfactory, in the way that just one agroecosystems showed result(s) lower than the critical level (5,0). Differences were observed between the performances of the agroecosystems with a higher level of external intervention to the ones with lower level of external intervention. However, those results were not totally assigned to this kind of intervention, but also to others variables. These interventions can incline either the valorization and maintenance of natural diversity, or the productive specialization. Among the considered dimensions, the best results were attributed to the environmental and technical-economical dimensions rather than the major variability between the agroecosystems. The social dimension received the lower results, showing major uniformity between the agroecosystems. The MESMIS framework, despite showing some inconsistencies, has proved capable to be used in the region.
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