Environmental Regulation in Law and Economics

Urban Growth, Tourism and in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

Danilo Igliori

Lent Term 2006 UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE Department of Land Economy

Growth and Deforestation in

• Like in most countries, deforestation in Brazil has occurred as an outcome of occupation, population growth, and economic development.

• The deforestation rate increased considerably in the 20th Century due to urbanisation, agriculture expansion, and development programmes.

• Conservation becomes part of the development agenda in the 1980s, partially due to international pressure. History • 1500 – 1800: Sugar , mainly in the Northeast.

• 1800 – 1930: Sugar plantations and coffee plantations, mainly in the Southeast.

• 1930 – 1960: Urbanisation and industrialisation in the Southeast and larger occupation of the South.

• 1960 onwards: Further urbanisation and industrialisation. Occupation of the Centre West and the North. The Atlantic Rainforest • The Atlantic rainforest in Brazil originally covered around 1 million km2 along the ‘entire’ coast side of the country

• The Atlantic forest is formed by a set of complex with high , combining a large network of rivers, wetlands and forests.

• Most of the Brazilian population lives within 500 kms from the coast and therefore within the Atlantic forest domain

• Until 1960 most of the agricultural development took place within the Atlantic forest domain

The Atlantic Rainforest

• From South to North, most of the main Brazilian cities are located close to the Atlantic coast (, , Sao Paulo, , , Salvador, )

• The Atlantic forest has been pressured by urban growth over the last century.

• There is currently only around 6% of the original cover of the Atlantic forest left. Sao Paulo Rio de Janeiro Belo Horizonte Where the remaining Atlantic forests are? • Along river banks • Conservation areas • Touristic resorts • Hills and mountains with difficult access and areas not suitable for agriculture Land Use Constraints

• Forest code: Legal forest reserve • Zoning plans • Parks • Indian reserves • Biological reserves Tourism Expansion and Deforestation: the case of Ubatuba

• Ubatuba is a seaside town of approximately 85,000 people, with an area of 682 km2. It is located in the southeast of Brazil, in the state of .

• It takes about 3 hours by car to get there from São Paulo (whith approximately 20 million people in its metropolitan zone).

• São Paulo and other medium-sized cities in the river valley (Vale do Paraíba), constitute the main sorce of tourists for the central and north coastal zone of the state (which includes Ubatuba). The Region

• The region has other towns such as: Caraguatatuba, the closest one (40 Km away) and São Sebastião, which has a port for oil shipments;

• In the Southern part of São Paulo´s coast there are larger cities such as Guarujá, the largest touristic city, with 300,000 local population (SEADE, 2001) and more than 500,000 tourists during the high season (over a million during carnival or new year´s eve), and Santos, the only city in the region that is not mainly “touristic”, and has a population of 430,000 people. The Region • All these towns and cities have the sea at one side and a mountain chain (‘Serra do Mar’) on the other, with average heights between 800 and 1000 meters.

• This kind of mountainous landscape has the property of generating high levels, what is fundamental to the forest coverage.

• On the other side of the mountains there is the most important highway of the country, linking the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (along the Vale do Paraíba region). The Region

Serra da Mantiqueira

Vale do Paraiba

Serra do mar 1000 mt Coast Shall we go there?

Tourism Expansion • Up to the beginning of the 60’s, the north coast of the state had little economic importance and it has had only some short wealthy periods in the end of the 19th century with the “coffee era” (Ports).

• The local population used to live from handcraft, fishing and subsistence agriculture.

• It was only after the construction of roads connectting São Paulo and the cities in the Paraiba river valley to coastal towns, during the 60’s and 70’s, that tourism started to grow. Tourism Expansion

• The main features that attracted the tourists were the landscapes and the natural heritage, since the roads were very bad and there was limited local infrastructure and tourist facilities. Exogenous x Endogenous Roads

• During the 80s and 90s there has been a substantial road expansion/improvement connecting the main cities in the state of Sao Paulo to the coastal towns.

• At the same time touristic activities have boomed in the region which trigger massive real estate dynamics Exogenous x Endogenous Roads

• During the 80s and 90s there has been a dramatic road expansion connecting the main cities in the state of Sao Paulo to the coastal towns.

• At the same time touristic activities have boomed in the region which trigger massive real estate dynamics

• Question: Can we establish a causal relationship between roads and tourism expansion? Exogenous x Endogenous Roads

• During the 80s and 90s there has been a dramatic road expansion connecting the main cities in the state of Sao Paulo to the coastal towns.

• At the same time touristic activities have boomed in the region which trigger massive real estate dynamics

• Question: Can we establish a causal relationship between roads and tourism expansion?

• Possible answer: a dynamic two-way relationship Impacts • As a result, during the 80s and 90s there have been a lot of cultural economic and environmental changes to the region.

• There was a raise in land prices and the local population started to move to the countryside.

• Many summer and weekend houses were built.

• This growing process attracted many migrants from other regions of the country to work mainly on the building and tourism sectors.

Suburbs

• As there was no systematic policies to settle these migrants, and because the prices of housing and rents in the city were high, these people ended up settling in the suburbs.

• The problem is that these suburb areas are usually protected areas and do not have availability of public or urban services like water, sewage, infrastructure, etc.

• Nowadays, one of the main regional environmental problems is the water quality, because the public sewage system is very limited and people throw residuals of all kinds into the rivers and watercourses. Building Houses

• Another problem related to the building sector is that they need considerable amounts of raw material.

• Sand and stones are taken from the mountains around the town and villages.

• This produces strong impacts on landscape, on the . processes also increases the risk of natural disasters.

• Every summer, during the rainy season, land sliding from the mountains block the roads, and many people lose their houses and sometimes their lives. Economic Activities • The main, and almost the only ones, economic activities are services and commerce related to tourism.

• There are insignificant agricultural or industrial activities.

• Fisheries, although not well accounted for in official statistics, are still one of the important activities in terms of employment and economic product, and also supply food to the tourism sector. Other Development Alternatives? • There is little scope to think about another regional economic profile than what has been developed along the last decades.

• The region has grown based on high season and weekend tourism.

• So far accommodation is based on houses or small buildings and condominiums, with little participation of hotels.

• Most local problems that have been emerging on the last two decades are due to the lack of land use planning. Conservation Areas

• Ubatuba has almost all of its areas under some kind of protection.

• The most important ones are the Serra do Mar State Park (more or less 70% of the district) and the areas ‘tombadas’ (9.672 ha or more or less 15% of the district).

• It means that around 85% of the whole district’s areas are under some kind of legal protection and land use restrictions.

• However there is still a lot of forest without legal or actual protection. Potential Conflicts • In the Atlantic forest many conflicts emerge because of a disparity between traditional resource use, urban expansion and a set of general constraints that are sometimes not well designed.

• In the case of Ubatuba, these issues are partially solved by the conservation areas’ design, where there are no strong conflicts and threats (however there are some cases of legal disputes).

• But there is open discussion about the forest areas outside these boundaries. Economic and Ecological Zoning • Recently new zoning plan has been approved for the North Coast of Sao Paulo State

• This plan sets up a whole range of different land use constraints, taking into account economic potential and ecological features of local areas (EEZ)

• It also includes standards for sewage and other public facilities such as water provision

• Question: implementation Conservation x Equity

• A successful implementation of the EEZ would increase environmental protection as it would promote additional land use constraints and tourism regulation

• In the short run the plan would have a negative impact on tourism activity and in job opportunities for local population

• In addition there is a bias in favour of richer tourists that can afford to go to (or build) holiday houses (second residences) that are less harmful to the environment (as opposed to flats in ‘tall’ buildings) What are the risks?

Acknowledgement

Sergio Talocchi

‘SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT OF REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT SCENARIOS: THE CASE OF UBATUBA, BRAZIL’

Doctoral Program on Environmental Sciences, Ecological Economics and Environmental Management. Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, 2002. Reading

• Dean, W (1995) With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

• Especially chapters 13, 14, and 15