Environmental governance of the coastal management and the use of territory: the ecological-economic zoning of the north coast and the master plan of São Sebastião/SP

• Grant number: 20/09533-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: March 01, 2021
• End date: February 28, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Maria Tereza Duarte Paes
• Grantee: Fabio Luís de Campos
• Host Institution: Instituto de Geociências (IG). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Coastal zones are characterized as areas of complex and major ecological dynamic systems, yet they are also areas under pressure from social and economic uses of interest to various actors. Surrounded by numerous socioenvironmental issues, these zones require territorial use-specific public policies. However, such norms and regulations may enable land occupation for determined interests. As a result, there is an opening to various contradictions and conflicts over the coastal territory's use, allowing power dissymmetry and an unbalance between the forces that compose the environmental governance. In the city of São Sebastião, located on the North Coast of São Paulo, the logic of sectors such as tourism, real estate and the port operates through public policies as a sphere of operation on the territory's use and on the social groups of the population, affecting the coexistence of diverse territorialities that effective governance and environmental conservation. The policies of interest in this research are the Ecological-Economic Zoning (EEZ) North Coast and the Master Plan of São Sebastião. With the revision of the region's EEZ, in 2017, changes occurred in power relations, making governance more dissymmetric. Therefore, this research seeks to identify and analyze the conflicts and contradictions, mainly associated with socioenvironmental risks in the territorial use from such changes in the EEZ, the effects of this process for the development of the Master Plan and, in general, for the maintenance of the coastal environment that protects its ecological particularities both terrestrial and marine, indispensable for the conservation of nature and territorialities.