Where are we going to? An Evaluation of Florianópolis City Master Plan for the Surroundings of Carijós Protected Area

Abstract

Coastal areas and their associated ecosystems are under pressure by human uses and activities, leading to major changes in these environments. Those changes have led to loss of ecosystem services and benefits affecting populations that depend directly or indirectly on these services. Thus, the integrated coastal management should work towards maintenance and improvement of human well-being, preventing coastal environment impacts with operating and strategic instruments. One of these instruments might be the Municipal Urban Plan, which should absorb the principles of urban planning conservation or, in some cases, recover environmental functions of the systems supporting services and benefits. According to the management plan for Carijós Protected Area, the surrounding areas of salt marsh, mangroves and coastal vegetation play an important role as a buffer zone to the impacts of urbanization. Therefore, it is important to compare the current proposal of occupation for this area according to the Florianópolis’ urban plan, to the use restrictions provided by the environmental legislation. It is also important to quantify potential ecosystem and its associated service losses resulting from the zoning proposed by the urban plan. This work was based on a survey of vegetation, waterways and occupation, and the legal restrictions applied. The results were compared to the Florianópolis’ urban plan. Ecosystems and its ecosystem services were analyzed regarding the possibly of impacts due to the implementation of the plan, using map and image overlap. Based on the results it is concluded that the urban plan is at odds with the environmental legislation, as well as the laws involving prevention of natural disasters. From the analysis of ecosystem services related to the various environments potentially affected by the urban plan a catastrophic scenario can be predicted, not only to the biodiversity, but also to the social welfare.