Ethno-Conservation of Natural Resources in the Coastal Zone of Santa Catarina State: a Case Study of Landscape Change in the Rio da Madre Watershed Using the Eco-Development Approach

Abstract

This paper deals with the challenges of understanding landscape changes in the Rio da Madre’s watershed, located in the coastal zone of Santa Catarina State (Brazil), from 1950 to 2010. In this sense, the authors mobilize the concepts of ethno-conservation of common-property resources and eco-development in assessing the perceptions of the main socio-ecological impacts of the development process at the community level. They argue that, between 1950 and 1970, the natural resources endowment of the local communities were managed in the context of a subsistence-based economy. During the second phase, from 1970 to 1990, the first evidences of ecosystems and local livelihoods degradation emerged, as a direct consequence of the regional development strategies put into action by the governmental sector. Lastly, from 1990 to 2010, this trend became hegemonic in a setting that nowadays concentrates an impressive mosaic of environmental protected areas. The paper attempts to clarify the following aspects of this dysfunctional gap between the quality of rural livelihoods and the search for new development strategies: i) the shortcomings of the natural resource management system, attached to a conventional, top down and ecologically predatory local development conception; ii) the increasing levels of contamination of water resources due to irrigated rice production and inefficient waste management in urban centers; iii) the structural crisis that affects the artisanal fisheries sector and the traditional farming system; and, finally, v) the lack of governmental incentives to increase environmental citizenship at the local level. Facing these challenges from a prospective point of view, the authors acknowledge that further effort needs to be made to generate a core academic content for eco-development studies in this area in the near future.