GEO Brasil - UNEP

5. Challenges
The government’s programmemes and projects
implemented over the past 40 years aimed at the
transformation of the production structure and at national
integration have produced radical changes in the socioeconomic
scenario of some regions and substantially
accelerated the occupation of their territory. Some of the
results of this process have been particularly important.
This is specially true for those that resulted in better transport
and communications networks, thanks to the opening of
inter- and intra-regional roads that led to a significant change
in the existing land articulating patterns.
The growing cumulative concentration of all sorts of
environmental uses and abuses in a certain area inevitably
leads to the gradual loss of its resilience capacity and
generate a number of previously non-existing
vulnerabilities.
The growth of certain sectors of the economy directly
related to agriculture and mining followed the model
described above. The production and consumption
methods adopted then and their interrelations with that
area’s specific environmental, economic, social, cultural
and ecological dimensions resulted, in the end, in the
progressive deterioration of living conditions.
Consequently, quality of life of both the traditional
population and immigrant groups is detrimentally affected
as well. Some corrections became necessary and
determined the introduction of significant changes in
land occupation patterns, affecting agroforestry activities
and urban occupation as well as their present forms. Even
though this process of change has already started in
various areas of action, it is far from over.
policies feedback
The Brazilian Government is aware of these contradictions
and is committed to a comprehensive long-term
approach to development. It understands that it is vital
to apply some corrections in the current occupation/
exploitation process, and that these corrections will
determine the creation of a new regional development
model that incorporates adequate environmentally
sustainable principles and processes.
On the other hand, the same process has simultaneously
generated serious social and economic contradictions
characterised by conflicts involving the regions’ traditional
populations. These conflicts were aggravated by the fast
and improper exploitation of natural resources, causing
severe damages to the regional flora and fauna, and reached
alarming levels due to the ever more frequent deforestation
actions and clearing and burning forest clearing.
The realisation that it is necessary to modify the
traditional approach to land management, with the
consequent shift of focus regarding the supremacy of
economic goals at any cost is a reflex, on the national
level, of deeper changes that are affecting our social and
economic structures and the trade relations that
characterise their dynamics. These changes were followed
to a certain degree by international pressure in order to
guarantee that the corresponding adjustments were
made. Although incipient at the beginning if compared
to First World countries, the role played by Brazilian
society has grown significantly over the past few years,
and is now able to exercise sufficient pressure on
governmental institutions, forcing the implementation
of the above-mentioned corrections.
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