Desenvolvimento, resiliência e conexões transescalares em regiões rurais : estudo do Vale do Ribeira

Abstract

Ensure development and social equity together with the continuity of ecosystem services is part of the global challenge. Especially if the population grows, the expansion of the intensive agriculture and the diminished the capacity of global ecosystems to sustain regulatory and provision services was considered. More than ever, changes and relations between local and global scale, and their consequences on the social ecological systems have to be analyzed. Therefore, understanding dynamics of land use has been the focus of much research. Smallholders and regional development have gained attention in this context. This study was made in the theory of resilience and territorial development to understand the Ribeira Valley territory. Ribeira Valley is a rural region, hot spot to conservation with cultural diversity. However, it still has a low HDI and difficulties of implementing public policies for it development. For this research, we used open interviews, interviews, interviews with stakeholders, future scenarios workshops between the years 2007 and 2010. Initially, we mapped the main productivity activities in the region. These were studied in detail to assess resilience of these activities and how they relate to territorial development. Diagrams were used to facilitate understanding of the relationship between society and natural resources. The results show the importance of across scale connections and drivers interference in the region. Those interferences resulted in different adaptive strategies all based on natural capital. When evaluated resiliency with multiple criteria, it is clear that the lack of social capital is responsible for the difficulty of building resilience in region. This difficulty can be compounded by loss of regulatory and support ecosystem services. Thus, even region is characterized as a multifunctional landscape, and therefore prone to sustainability, is need building resilience. Some of their productive activities are not resilient, pointing to need to manage them. However, policies are not focused on these missing points. We conclude that the strengthening of social capital for collective action and governance is essential, beyond the conservation of natural capital. This will not only be at risk in some activities, but as the basis for all productive activities. So is need building institutions capable of dealing with social and ecological issues at different scales. Territorial development has to contribute to increasing the social and natural capital.