From Resilience To Existence: Climate Stressors and Territorial Adaptation in Quilombo Cafundá-Astrogilda in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Climate change is intensifying environmental stressors in marginalised territories, disproportionately affecting communities already burdened by systemic inequalities (Escobar, 2017; Rodríguez & Quiñones, 2021; West et al., 2024). In Rio de Janeiro, Quilombo Cafundá-Astrogilda - a long-standing Afro-Indigenous community within the conservation unit Pedra Branca State Park - navigates local climate extremes, including heat stress from deforestation, uneven access to water and increasing urban encroachment on the forest ecosystem, while facing urban-environmental injustices.

Through oral histories, geospatial analysis, and historiographical tools, this study foregrounds ancestral quilombola knowledge as integral to climate adaptation and unpacks how quilombola territorial practices challenge dominant climate governance frameworks and foster an adaptive socio-climatic model that reconciles urban and natural systems. By maintaining forest-based livelihoods, leveraging social networks, and enacting community-driven adaptation strategies, residents counter climate precarisation while resisting exclusionary conservation paradigms - such as the conservation unit, which fails to recognise the reciprocity between human and non-human interactions in the forest. At the same time, they contest conventional urban planning approaches that disregard the material-symbolic and socio-spatial values of their territory while enabling speculative urban expansion.

Recognising these territories as critical sites of climate knowledge and urban-environmental innovation is essential for inclusive and just adaptation planning in the face of escalating climate stressors.