GEO Brasil - UNEP

This new environmental division of the territory
does not require political-administrative
representation However, it has acquired
legitimacy through the political strength reached
by the environmental movement worldwide
Currently, the areas for the conservation of nature
and indigenous culture represent, on the
national level, around 20 percent of the Brazilian
territory In the Legal Amazon region, however,
they reach 30 percent of the territory Taking up
more than half of the national territory, the states
that make up the Legal Amazon (AM, PA, MT,
TO, RO, RR, AP, AC and part of MA) transfer the
weight of their physical and strategic dimension
to political legitimacy in the Brazilian federation
Map 4 - Municipal Division 1940 - 2000
the state of environment in Brazil
It should also be noted that the Legal Amazon
concentrates about 94 percent of the territory
comprised by Indigenous Lands and
Conservation Units in the country In January,
2002 they reached, respectively, 101,822,449 ha
and 76,544,735 ha in all of Brazil 99 percent of
Indigenous Lands and 87 percent of
Conservation Units were located in that region,
where they gained concrete political expression
This happened because a great part of the States
of Roraima and Amazonas, for example, are
subject to legal segmentation due to the need to
preserve either nature or indigenous culture This
makes the management of the political sphere
at local/regional level more complex
Source: IBGE
Environmentalism thus strengthens the
contemporary trend to deepen differences in the
use of territory This happens through local action
according to logic and interests that are mostly
connected on a global level
The effort for the analysis of the state of the environment in Brazil, the
focus of this chapter, follows the same trend It tries to highlight the
pressures whose impact on the territory is greater These are caused by
use and abuse of natural resources The following sections will report
on the state, the pressures and the impacts related to themes chosen
by the Brazilian Institute for the Environment (IBAMA – Instituto
Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente) and the United Nations Environment
Programme
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