GEO Brasil - UNEP

environmental
management
Overview
Construction of outlook settings is a major task in becoming
familiar with the dimensions involved in the environmental
matter and for the contribution to the search for positive
solutions. The SPIR (State, Pressure, Impact and Response)
methodology is adequate to describe the actions that
different social agents impose on environmental conditions,
as well as to guide managers in decision making. There is
pressure from the very beginning when critical situations
are identified in various stages and when responses are
expected from the government, society, and companies to
prevent and diminish the damages caused to the
environment and to recovery degraded areas. This is
demonstrated not only through public policy and actions
but also mainly through the implementation of
environmental management strategy searching for
commitment on the preservation of ecosystems and life
quality improvement of the population.
The main biomes were defined as spatial units for diagnosis
and prospective analysis. Main vectors and their impact
causing results were identified for this purpose, forming
intentional and desirable scenarios. The impacts - and level,
once identified begin to make sense when compared to
biomes, at local and regional scales. To permit the
integration of ecological and socio-economic conditions,
an option for the use of physiographic zones was made,
which are municipal groups with similar environmental
characteristics, as base territorial units for the biome
definition.
Such an option is justifiable for various reasons:
1) a clear environmental component of such spatial
classification;
2) its messo-regional dimensions, that provide a
establisment of inter-census comparisons, surpassing
the frequent problem of successive municipal
divisions, making the construction of historic series
on detailed levels of spatial deaggregation difficult. The
map on main biome and urban-industry areas of Brazil,
established from physical-graphic zone aggregation,
may be found in Figure 1. (Maps of Biomes).
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