Avaliação da efetividade da proteção ambiental do baixo curso do rio Cocó

Abstract

Due to environmental degradation, there has been an increasing lack of green spaces in the urban setting, where humans can have contact with nature. In the capital of the state of Ceará / Brazil, Fortaleza, there is a natural remnant, an ecological wealth of great importance, located in the low course of the Cocó River, containing the fourth largest urban park in Latin America, the State Park of Coconuts. The study area corresponds to the Cocó estuarine system, in an area located between the BR-116 highway and its mouth, encompassing the surrounding ecosystems and geosystems, their potentialities and vulnerabilities. The history described in this research demonstrates a trajectory of about 40 years in which this park did exist in the imagination of the population, but not in law, integrated into a formal system of Conservation Units. To better understand this historical conjuncture, the present paper approaches the main obstacles and challenges for the creation of a Comprehensive Protection Conservation Unit in a large urban area, the unfulfilled government promises, with a comparative analysis of the various proposals of polygons and categories that were launched in order to support the decision making of the Chief Executive of State to fulfill this social and environmental demand to regularize Cocó Park. In addition, a diagnosis was made of the situation of the low river course, the main threats and impacts, the potentialities of each territory, demonstrating the importance of traditional communities in the protection and sustainable use, which can act as eco-guardians and co-managers of the UC. Given its ecosystem services, it is suggested that even territories not contemplated in the newly created official polygonal park should be fully protected because they are Permanent Preservation Areas - PPA and with the possibility of future incorporation into the UC and a more restrictive zoning by the municipal authority. Mapping products of the Geoenvironmental Units and Permanent Preservation Areas from the river base, the mangrove swamp and the dune environment georeference areas that cannot be forgotten. Public policies should advance the protection and restoration of environmentally relevant areas in order to leverage what has already been achieved and never allow setbacks to occur so as to undermine the collective and unavailable interest in the ecologically balanced environment. The richness of biodiversity, geodiversity and sociodiversity in the studied territory was approached through the geoenvironmental compartmentalization of the Cocó river low course, containing the dominant natural characteristics, potentialities, relevant ecosystem services, limitations and risks, as well as the impacts of occupations and anthropic interventions. . Thus, the research is applied with subsidies to public management for effective protection work, with indication of public policies beyond the low course of the Cocó River.