GEO Brasil - UNEP

introduction
1. IDENTITY AND TERRITORY,
APPROACH AND PERSPECTIVES
1.1. Territory and Identity
The Brazilian territory is one of the country’s foundations
and symbols of national identity, and its grand scale and
natural diversity are key distinctive features. To a great extent,
these factors embody both real and potential opportunities
of development and relatively autonomous insertion in
today’s globalised world.
The Brazilian territorial configuration is subject to two
different dynamics. On one side, there is continuous
pressure exerted by economic interests on the
environmental heridage as a driving force for the everincreasing
generation of wealth. This threatens many areas
in the country as its natural resources are exhausted. As a
result, local populations are impoverished, with apparent
impacts on the present and especially on the future. At the
same time, the configuration is characterised by fragile,
always incomplete links among the various levels and
spheres of our reality. These are in a constant state of
reconstruction and are therefore fragmented and uneven.
Their components are extremely unequal. These
components include historical backgrounds and
interactions among social groups and, to a greater or lesser
degree of inequality, impacts on both the domestic and
international communities.
Hence, our multiple and transitory conceptions of territory
and identity are “ongoing”, and are subject to the whim of
diversely paced interactions between social groups from
different backgrounds and cultures, between ourselves and
the environment we live in, the resulting achievements and
conflicts, and impacts on the domestic and international
communities (Almeida and Cruvinel, 2001).
Therefore, the country’s territory can be perceived as a
converging point of natural and social developments that
both cluster together and act as links in a single chain with
multiple meanings. This ensemble is composed of various
past and present sector-specific public policies. Other
elements include their creators and managers. They also
include us, the users and the recipients of the economic,
social, environmental and geopolitical consequences
discussed here (Carvalho, 2001).
In this sense, the territory is viewed as an element of the
social structure where natural, human, technological and
financial resources interact. This concept derives from a
system of regulations and flows. The increasing territoryglobalisation
interrelations can be observed through the
transformations undergone by participants and the roles
they perform. It can also be seen in the need to interconnect
spaces, in the growing expansion of the flow of people,
information and goods. The country’s perspective for
territorial development as described in the Avança Brasil
(“Move Forward Brazil”) Programme illustrates the point: it
both provides for mechanisms to foster progress in the
country’s backlands and stresses the need to gear efforts
towards areas and segments that can generate more
substantial effects on the rest of the economy. This is done
a view towards integrating the country into the international
economy.
This political guideline tends, however, to favour those areas
with comparative advantages. this widens inter- and intraregional
gaps as investments, activities and overexploitation
of resources occur in the most developed and, consequently,
more densely populated regions. In this sense, urbanisation
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