Análise dos conflitos da conservação em áreas protegidas no Brasil

Abstract

The creation and management of Protected Areas (PA) are the most widely used tools for the conservation of biodiversity worldwide. Currently, its objectives are more comprehensive and include maintaining ecosystem services and analyzing the culture and lifestyle of local or traditional populations. However, this strategy generates conflicts, which arise due, among other factors, to the diversity of actors involved and their different demands. The PAs have different management objectives and levels of restriction, therefore, we consider fundamental to the management of these areas, the understanding of the dynamics of conflicts in each group. Given this context, the objective of this thesis was to analyze the Conservation Conflicts (CC) in PA through three surveys. The first consists of a case study involving a PA established by the public authorities of the state of Minas Gerais, where it was sought to analyze whether the level of restrictiveness influences in the occurrence and the importance of the CC, and how their causes are related to them. In addition, we analyzed which strategies are used in the management of the CC. To this purpose, semi-structured questionnaires were sent to managers of 76 PAs in the state, which were used in the construction of a Conservation Conflict Hierarchization Matrix (CCHM). Our results showed that the restrictiveness established in the objectives of the PA categories was not a factor that influenced the occurrence of the CC in the PAs for Sustainable Use and Integral Protection, but it did influence in the importance of the CC. In addition, we found that the causes of the main conflicts vary according to the restrictiveness, and that the main strategy pointed out by the managers for confronting the conflicts was the environmental education. The second research focused on evaluating whether the redefinition of a PA, carried out with the participation of the social actors involved in the conflicts, can contribute to the management of the CC in an efficient manner. In this research, a case study was carried out in a State Park of Minas Gerais, in which the MHCC was also used, but built with the participation of the social actors involved in the CCs. The results showed that the redefinition constitutes an efficient strategy, because in addition to mitigating the CC, it increases the limits of the PA, a factor that reduces the costs for land tenure regularization, and besides that, links the residents of the PA closer together, bringing greater confidence to the relationship among the park and the locals. The third survey examined whether the market instrument called Payment for Environmental Services (PES) could alleviate Parks vs. People conflicts. For this, five case studies, in which PSA was used to promote the development of communities inserted in or around some AP in the world were examined. The results showed that PSA can contribute to soften the CC, although it is not its main objective. However, experiences differed between cases due to local attributes such as: environmental conditions, socioeconomic activities and the capacity for involvement of the population and the local government.