BR-163/ Amazon channel sub-region: the role of agents and subjects in the ordinance of the territory and in the implementation of public policies

• Grant number: 17/20224-1
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: April 01, 2018
• End date: March 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Geosciences - Physical Geography
• Principal Investigator: Messias Modesto dos Passos
• Grantee: Messias Modesto dos Passos
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia (FCT). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Presidente Prudente. Presidente Prudente , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Taíssa Caroline Silva Rodrigues

Abstract

Government has been ordering the occupation of the Amazon region through different measures of Land and Territorial Planning, including the creation of Conservation Units, Indigenous Units and different types of Agrarian Reform Settlements. Taking into account the production process of the regional area of the Amazon Basin, the following questions must be answered: (a) what is the relevance of grain cultivation to increase deforestation in the Amazon River? Do territorial planning and/or land ownership influence the dynamics of land use in the Amazon Rainforest? From the sustainable BR-163 Plan, whose primary objective was the asphalting of the highway, the BR-163 ZEE emerged, extensive in territorial coverage and dense in information generated (thematic diagnostics, maps, usage indications, scenarios and management proposal). The territory subject to the zoning of BR-163 is composed of 5 subregions. The subregion known as the Amazon channel subregion covers the municipalities of Santarém, Belterra and Mojuí dos Campos. As the work is based on the BR-163 EEZ, a region was sought, which, in meeting the proposed objectives, was contiguous from the BR-163 margin. With the purpose of promoting the exploration of natural resources in a sustainable way, collective land use concessions were granted to families of small farmers through the Settlement Projects (AP) aimed at family agriculture and exploration of the natural resources derived from extractivism, as well as areas focused on the expansion of productive activities such as cattle raising, mechanized agriculture and family farming. We will work with some hypotheses, among which: (a) the Amazon Channel, in the last decade, presented an increase in the area of grain agriculture, especially rice, corn and soybean. On the basis of the land structure of the region, this dynamics has contributed to land concentration due to the replacement of small property by large capitalized property, (b) land use in the Amazon Channel is not based on ZEE BR-163 indications, that is, the zoning does not have a significant influence, either for Enterprise Agriculture or for Family Production. These hypotheses lead the Project to the general objective of "verifying whether the land use indications in Productive Management Areas of the ZEE BR-163/Amazon Channel are being applied by the players directly involved with the primary sector." The theoretical-methodological5approach is based on the GTP (Geosystem-Territory-Landscape) paradigm, a system-based construction designed to demonstrate the complexity of the geographic environment, respecting its diversity and interactivity as much as possible. The application of this systemic paradigm is recurrent in our projects, however, it is still a scientific challenge to overcome the sectorized analysis, strongly sedimented in Geography, replacing it with a global systemic analysis that is capable of addressing - diagnose/prognosticate - the Territory Environment; an environment that is complex and filled with diversities (natural, social, cultural, economic, institutional etc. ones). Among the expected results, the following stand out: (a) diagnose-prognosticate the relevance of grain cultivation to increase deforestation in the Amazon Channel, (b) diagnose-prognosticate how land and/or territorial planning measures influence the dynamics of land use in the Amazon Channel. (AU)