GEO Brasil - UNEP

policies feedback
1. Inheritance and Conditioning of
Policies feedback
The free appropriation process nowadays does not only
threaten the natural mechanisms of environmental
resources renewal. It affects our own lives as well,
whether we live in the city or in the country. It also affects
the lives of species which, despite the systematic
destruction of wildlife and plants, insist on their survival
in spite of our immediate actions.
The growth of certain economic sectors in the last 40
years by means of agricultural and mineral exploration
has caused the consequent swelling of existing cities as
well as the appearance of new agglomerations even in
the Amazon, considered to be the last expansion frontier.
(IBGE 1990, 1996). In the 60s, 70s and 80s, the adopted
standards of production and consumption of goods and
services characterised a sectorial, spoliation and
economic-based development model. The relationship
these elements had with the economic, socio- cultural
and ecological environmental dimensions, which are
specific of territories where the economic growth of those
previously mentioned sectors occur, have caused (Veras,
1994) visible deterioration of these dimensions that
directly affected the quality of life of local population, as
well as of migrating contingents.
Awareness of the need to alter this progressive
degradation framework confronts the myth of a
hypothetical contradiction between development and
environment. It also raises questions as to the models,
policies and traditional instruments of action adopted
by the State in their ordinance of National Territory
occupation.
1.1 Context: Brief History of the Sectorial
Treatment of the Territorial Management
Territorial policies oriented towards the viability of objectives
which are predominantly characterised as an immediate
economic action run the risk of promoting non-sustainable
ecological interventions once more. From the old Rationalist
vs. Empirical dichotomy and geometrical forms of
gravitational models of regional development to the export
corridors and scientific and technological parks, apparently
substantial changes are, in fact, irrelevant and, in their
essence, do not alter the sectorial and isolated view which
they reflect. The spaces between urban concentration areas,
irrespective of whether they are occupied by formal or
informal economic activities, are seen as the distance
between economic poles. On the whole, these spaces are
seen as food producers and, in a linear fashion, as raw material
suppliers or, even in isolation, as nature to be preserved for
recreational or moral purposes. A strict view of territorial
occupation prevails.
The complexity of exchange relations between cities and the
environment, taking into consideration the territory under
its ecological influential area, remains obscured in what
persists as the analytical framework. This framework
apparently insists on the idea of endowing many with the
cost relationship and few with the resulting benefits. This
occurs on an immediate time span horizon. In an attempt to
avoid the social costs involving non-economic
agglomerations identified in the large urban concentrations,
some people have defended the elimination of these noneconomic
agglomerations (Gazeta Mercantil 1992), whereas
others have defended their existence as a means to recover
the remaining natural resources in these areas . However, in
view of the inevitable worsening of the already difficult social,
economic and environmental conditions (Yale 1999), others
have defended the densification of these areas.
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