Socio-economic data for 79 households across four villages in Catimbau National Park, Pernambuco Brazil

The research was funded by the British Council’s Newton Fund Institutional Links Program, project 275896277 ‘Advancing equity in Brazilian protected area management’. The data was used in the publication of the article 'Protected areas and the neglected contribution of Indigenous Peoples and local communities: Struggles for environmental justice in the Caatinga dry forest' published in the journal 'People and Nature' in November 2021. This social research was funded specifically to contribute complementary understanding to the Long-Term Ecological Project (LTEP-Catimbau) in Catimbau National Park (https://www.peldcatimbau.org), led by the Federal University of Pernambuco, which explores land-use and climate change. Ethical approval to conduct interviews was obtained from the Ethics Committee in Research from the Federal University of Amapá (CAAE 82787718.3.0000.0003, Permit number 2.497.655) and the Ethics Committee of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom. Carrying out this research within Catimbau National Park was also authorized by ICMBIO (SISBIO – Authorization number 60074-1). We selected two Indigenous villages and two non-indigenous villages (determined through self-identification by people within those villages), located within the park from which to randomly select households, and from which to interview an individual over 18 years of age. Using satellite imagery and through discussion with village leaders we identified and numbered all occupied households in the four selected villages within the park and randomly selected 40 households across the two Indigenous communities and 40 across the two non-indigenous communities for semi-structured interviews, the second phase of the research. In total, seventy-nine household-level semi-structured interviews were conducted (one of the 80 selected was inadvertently missed) between April and August 2018, in Portuguese, with two members of the research team present (one male and one female), so that answers could be noted as fully as possible (see Supporting Information to the publication in the journal 'People and Nature' for the interview template). Before each interview we explained the research funding, partners, motivations, timeline, processes, ethical approach and potential outputs in detail. We provided the option to decline or to rearrange the time, and obtained verbal consent before starting each interview. Verbal consent was deemed most appropriate due to both the high rate of illiteracy and the degree of land tenure insecurity faced by respondents, which could have caused them unease about signing a written document. Interviews lasted between one and four hours, though the vast majority took between 1.5 and 2.5 hours. Anonymised, quantitative socio-economic data are presented in the adjacent worksheet.