GEO Brasil - UNEP

In Brazil, there is a plurality of agencies with specific
attributes that are often similar, and with performance fields
that frequently overlap. These agencies generally perform
without links or alliances. This results first in significant
waste, and finally, in regional development program
discontinuity. This institutional characteristic of the Brazilian
government action has as a consequence, the overvaluing
of hierarchical and sectorial analyses of what happens in
the national territory. This consequently results in
interventions with equal content and limitations.
The consequences of the aimed at integrated approach may
be better understood in contrast to a picture of what would
happen in its absence. Examples of this are many, including
the recent history of the Amazon Region, where the
“transformation of a range of varied ecosystems is observed
in agriculture-ecosystems, without leading to human
development” (IBGE, 199O, p.3).
5 Purposes and Desirable Changes
recommendations
According to what has been previously described, economic
sector growth disregards its interrelationships with specific
geographical dimensions (territory) where it is located. This
space dimension, such as environmental, economic,
cultural and social nature are potential generators of other
development opportunities. These opportunities, when
appropriately exploited, could be taken advantage of by the
various social groups in which and from which they live.
When neglected, they become, sooner or later, generators
of conflict.
The promotion of development the territory’s
organisational tools is innately and insolubly linked to the
development of society. This development process foes
through the task of assuring access equity to natural,
economic and cultural resources. These resources, when
appropriately used, are an inherent part of sustainable
development opportunities. Sustainability lies in the
environmental adaptation (economic, social, cultural and
ecological) of the exploitation means adopted. It is
guaranteed and supervised when based on equity practice
of access to those resources and by collective and/or
individual participation from society. This participation
includes citizens who once organised, will defend their
rights, and their children’s and grandchildren’s, in regard to
the use of the territory assets.
The previously described context illustrates development
programs and limitations to the generation of wealth that
are based on sectorial growth programs that disrespect
environmental sustainability parameters. The definitions
of these parameters, however, demands homogeneous
information concerning a wide range of factors, whose
interrelationships need to be measured and comparatively
evaluated according to specific methodology.
a) Conditions:
The need to overcome these difficulties and
limitations in view of challenges, and to appropriately
develop economic, production (processes and
techniques), natural (physical-territorial) and human
(creativity and disposition) potential, determines
certain changes within the institutional background,
which currently supports governmental action.
b) Co-ordination:
Sectorial action co-ordination, on the three
government levels, federal, state and municipal
(local), is a condition of the achievement of a
common objective: “The ordering of regional spaces
signalled by the search of total development of the
Brazilian society” (IBGE, The Brazilian Institute of
Geography and Statistics, ibid. p. 3).
The global challenge determines the improvement of
consensus among nations on the need of a single effort in
order to guarantee the necessary conditions for the
preservation of the planet’s environment. Some countries
isolated positions point to the urgent need to inform the
public and spread the idea of the environment as a whole,
in thematic as well as economic, social, cultural, geopolitical
terms.
c) Production and consumption patterns:
Besides the institutional background, one may still
point out among the necessary changes, the need
to review the usage, exploitation (techniques and
processes), and natural resource transformation
ways, as basis to the development of productive
activities, considering their importance within the
country’s socio-economic context.
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