GEO Brasil - UNEP

200 - 500 inhabitants – which in 1980 held 93
percent of the country’s total population in 37
urban centres reached the year 2000 with 137
percent of this population scattered around
76 cities Larger cities – 500 to 1,000,000
inhabitants – jumped from 8 to 18 urban
centres, during the same period of time,
holding, respectively, 34 percent and 74
percent of the country’s total population
The urbanisation process occurs clearly in
areas in the MidWest and in the Amazon where
demographic density is lower It occurs as a
dynamic force and results from the
redistribution of population and their activities
The growth of modernised farming and cattleraising
in the MidWest is the branch of the
ongoing agroindustrial reorganisation process
which has advanced the most This process
has resulted in businesses moving from the
São Paulo Metropolitan region to the interior
and also to the closer southern states
Therefore, there are currently risks and
opportunities for an organized use of the
Brazilian territory that is more adequate to
sustainable economic, political and
environmental development in terms of
allocating investment and activities toward the
great arch of penetration in the areas of the
Amazon Forest that are still preserved
Brazilian states and their internal subdivisions
are the result of a settlement process whose
basis for political domination was growth and
spontaneous ownership of territory The area
comprised by their territory is thus extremely
differentiated This includes states such as
Amazonas, with an area of 1,577,820 km 2 , which
corresponds to about 18 percent of the
national territory, and others such as Segipe,
with an area of 22,050 km 2
In general it should be noted that the current
territorial configuration of Brazilian states was
based, on transformations of the garly
Captaincies, whose sizes were limited only by
designations provided by the coastal line
Territorial expansion grew toward the interior of the country according
to the captaincy owners capacity for exploration In 1997, Rodrigo
stated: “the captaincies were a twisted territorial division After the
division process, some were vast desert lands; others, small were
gores of land”
During the Imperial era, Brazil was a Unitarian State whose
government and administration were held by the central power It
held all provincial authority Therefore, this territorial imbalance was
not harmful and did not cause great disturbance or inequality in
public administration since the Provinces were territorial divisions
of the central State and not parts of this state It was the Nation that
was made up of Provinces
However, in the republican federation, this difference in territory size
among the member states would somehow reinforce accentuated
inequality in economic and administrative conditions, first at state
and now also at municipal level
From the political point of view, in the 80s there was generalized
distension This somehow legitimised the process of
decentralisation of the economic sphere and of occupation of the
interior of the country This was revealed by the different levels of
demographic density (Map 3 Demographic Density chapter 4) that
converge toward the formation of new local realities, in contrast to
some general tendencies seen in economy and in post-war Brazil
The consolidation of democracy was the starting point that resulted
the state of environment in Brazil
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