Protected area mosaic (Brazil)

Last updated May 03, 2019

A protected area mosaic (Portuguese : mosaico de áreas protegidas) or conservation unit mosaic (Portuguese : mosaico de unidades de conservação)^{[lower-alpha 1]} in Brazil is a mosaic of nearby, adjoining or overlapping protected areas of Brazil that are managed as a whole.

Portuguese is a Western Romance language originating in the Iberian Peninsula. It is the sole official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Angola, and São Tomé and Príncipe. It also has co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea and Macau in China. As the result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese and Portuguese creole speakers are also found in Goa, Daman and Diu in India; in Batticaloa on the east coast of Sri Lanka; in the Indonesian island of Flores; in the Malacca state of Malaysia; and the ABC islands in the Caribbean where Papiamento is spoken, while Cape Verdean Creole is the most widely spoken Portuguese-based Creole. Reintegrationists maintain that Galician is not a separate language, but a dialect of Portuguese. A Portuguese-speaking person or nation is referred to as "Lusophone" (Lusófono).

Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At 8.5 million square kilometers and with over 208 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area and the fifth most populous. Its capital is Brasília, and its most populated city is São Paulo. The federation is composed of the union of the 26 states, the Federal District, and the 5,570 municipalities. It is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language and the only one in the Americas; it is also one of the most multicultural and ethnically diverse nations, due to over a century of mass immigration from around the world.

A protected area mosaic, or conservation mosaic is a collection of environmentally protected areas that are treated as a whole, either formally or informally. The protected areas may be of different types, including strictly protected areas and sustainable use areas, which may be administered at different public levels or privately. They may include areas assigned to indigenous people. A mosaic may be more flexible and effective than an attempt to combine all the areas into a single conservation unit under one agency. In practice, results with mosaics in different countries have been mixed.

Definition

The National System of Conservation Units (SNUC) law defines a mosaic as a collection of protected areas of the same or different categories that are near to each other, adjoin each other or overlap, and that should be managed as a whole. Given the different categories of conservation unit and other protected areas in a mosaic, including fully protected and sustainable use units, the different conservation goals must be considered.^[1] A mosaic may include private lands and indigenous territories.^[1]

Examples

The Jacupiranga Mosaic is in the Ribeira Valley and the south coast of the state of São Paulo, with 14 conservation units of various categories. It was created to reconcile the goals of conserving the Atlantic Forest and improving the living conditions of the traditional populations of the area. It originated with the Jacupiranga State Park, created on 8 August 1969, and includes the Rio Turvo and Caverna do Diabo state parks. It also includes four environmental protection areas, five sustainable development reserves and two extractive reserves.^[2]

São Paulo is one of the 26 states of the Federative Republic of Brazil and is named after Saint Paul of Tarsus. As the richest Brazilian state and a major industrial complex, often dubbed the "locomotive of Brazil", the state is responsible for 33.9% of the Brazilian GDP. São Paulo also has the second highest Human Development Index (HDI) and GDP per capita, the fourth lowest infant mortality rate, the third highest life expectancy, and the third lowest rate of illiteracy among the federative units of Brazil, being by far, the safest state in the country. The homicide rate is 3.8 per 100 thousand as of 2018, almost 1/4 of the Brazilian rate. São Paulo alone is richer than Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia combined. If São Paulo were an independent country, its nominal GDP would be ranked among the top 20 in the world. The economy of São Paulo State is the most developed in Brazil.

The Atlantic Forest is a South American forest that extends along the Atlantic coast of Brazil from Rio Grande do Norte state in the north to Rio Grande do Sul state in the south, and inland as far as Paraguay and the Misiones Province of Argentina, where the region is known as Selva Misionera.

The Jacupiranga State Park was a state park in São Paulo, Brazil. It covered a large, mountainous region that included untouched Atlantic Forest and land occupied by traditional communities. When the park was created in 1969 the residents could no longer legally practice sustainable farming and extraction of forest resources, leading to land use conflicts, which mounted as the BR-116 highway opened the park to squatters from elsewhere. Eventually, in 2008 the park was combined with surrounding territory and broken up into three smaller state parks and various other units in which sustainable development was allowed.

The Itatiaia National Park, created in 1937 as the first national park in Brazil, is part of the Mantiqueira Mosaic and the Mantiqueira Ecological Corridor, part of the larger Serra do Mar Ecological Corridor, which in turn is part of the UNESCO-recognised Atlantic Forest Biosphere Reserve. The park is a vulnerable "conservation island" due to its location between the major cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.^[3]

Itatiaia National Park, established in 1937, is the oldest national park in Brazil. It is located on the border between the states of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais.

National Parks are a legally-defined type of protected area of Brazil. The first parks were created in the 1930s, and other parks were gradually added, typically protecting a natural monument such as a waterfall or gorge near to a coastal population centre. At least two early parks were later submerged by hydroelectric reservoirs. The first park in the Amazon rainforest was inaugurated in 1974. Today the national parks cover a huge area, particularly in the Amazon. However, many of them suffer from outstanding claims for compensation from former owners or users of the land, and many lack the management plans, physical infrastructure and personnel needed to support public visits. The responsible government agency does not have the capacity to provide services such as food and drink, souvenir sales and guided tours, and bureaucracy has delayed letting the private sector bid on providing such services.

The Mantiqueira Mosaic is a protected area mosaic that contains conservation units in the states of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Minas Gerais, Brazil. The conservation units are of different types and are managed at the federal, state or municipal level. The mosaic provides a level of integrated and coordinated management.

Brazil has created a mosaic of federal and state conservation units along the BR-319 highway through the Amazon rainforest in an effort to better prevent deforestation when the highway is paved through more efficient management of a larger area. However, WWF-Brazil has pointed out that it is not enough to simply create the protected areas on paper. They must be staffed, delimited, legal owners compensated and so on.^[4]

BR-319 is an 870-kilometre (540 mi) federal highway that links Manaus, Amazonas to Porto Velho, Rondônia. The highway runs through a pristine part of the Amazon rainforest. It was opened by the military government in 1973 but soon deteriorated, and by 1988 was impassible. In 2008 work began to repair the highway, which will provide an alternative to boat travel along the Madeira River or flying between Manaus and Porto Velho. Protected areas have been created along the route in an effort to prevent deforestation when BR-319 is reopened, a serious concern given the devastation caused elsewhere by highways such as BR-364. As of mid-2016 paving of the middle section of the highway had yet to be approved. Construction permits will depend on measures to prevent future damage to the forest.

The Terra do Meio Mosaic is in Pará state between the Xingu and Tapajós rivers. It was created after the death of Sister Dorothy Stang, who was campaigning against illegal exploitation of the forests. It includes the Terra do Meio Ecological Station, a strictly protected conservation, created despite the presence of long-standing residents.^[5] The residents, who live along the Iriri River, have been placed under intense pressure to evacuate the area.^[5]

Pará is a state in northern Brazil traversed by the lower Amazon River. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and Roraima. To the northwest it borders Guyana and Suriname; to the northeast it borders the Atlantic Ocean. The capital and largest city is Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon at the Atlantic Ocean and the 11th most populous city in the country.

The Xingu River is a 1,640 km (1,019 mi) river in north Brazil. It is a southeast tributary of the Amazon River and one of the largest clearwater rivers in the Amazon basin, accounting for about 5% of its water.

The Tapajós is a river in Brazil. It runs through the Amazon Rainforest and is a major tributary of the Amazon River. When combined with the Juruena River, the Tapajós is approximately 1,200 mi (1,900 km) long. It is one of the largest clearwater rivers, accounting for about 6% of the water in the Amazon basin.

The Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park in the state of Goiás, Brazil, was expanded by Federal Decree in September 2001 and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in December 2001. In 2003 the expansion was successfully challenged and 72% of the national park lost its protection status. The park is part of the Cerrado Biosphere Reserve. Brazil has outlined plans for a mosaic of new conservation units with different management categories covering an equivalent area to the expanded National Park, but UNESCO has questioned whether the mosaic will be sufficient to ensure the statutory protection required for the World Heritage properties.^[6]

Partial list

Mosaic	Level	Area (ha)	Created	State(s)
Alto Jequitinhonha - Serra do Cabral Ridge Mosaic	Federal		2010
Apuí Mosaic	State	2,467,244	2010	Amazonas
BR-319 Provisional Administrative Limitation Area	Federal	15,393,453	2006	Amazonas
Bocaina Mosaic	Federal	221,754	2006	Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo
Carioca Mosaic	Federal		2011
Central Rio de Janeiro Atlantic Forest Mosaic	Federal	233,710	2006	Rio de Janeiro
Espinhaço Mosaic	Federal	910,000	2010	Minas Gerais
Extreme South of Bahia Mosaic	Federal		2010	Bahia
Golden Lion Tamarin Mosaic	Federal		2010
Jacupiranga Mosaic	State		2008	São Paulo
Juréia-Itatins Mosaic	State	97,213	2006	São Paulo
Lagamar Mosaic	Federal/State/Municipal	2,119,000	2006	São Paulo, Paraná
Lower Rio Negro Mosaic	Federal	7,329,220	2010	Amazonas
Mantiqueira Mosaic	Federal	445,615	2006	Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas Gerais
Paranapiacaba Conservation Units Mosaic	State	120,000	2012	São Paulo
Piauí Mosaic	Federal		2005
Rio Doce Estuary Mosaic	Federal		2010
Rio Gregório State Forest Mosaic	State	486,319	2008
Serras Capivara and Confusão Mosaic	Federal		2005
Sertão Veredas-Peruaçu Mosaic	Federal		2009
Southern Amazon Mosaic	Federal		2011	Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Rondônia
Terra do Meio Mosaic	Federal
Tucuruí Mosaic	State	568,667	2002
West Amapá and North Pará Mosaic	Federal	12,397,338	2013	Amapá, Pará

References

↑ The Instituto Socioambiental uses the term "protected area mosaic" in preference to "conservation unit mosaic" to reflect the fact that a mosaic may include private lands and indigenous territories as well as formally designated conservation units.^[1]

Sources

Carolina Motoki (3 September 2015), translated by Holly Holmes, "Brazilian Government Evicts Communities that Best Preserve the Rainforest", Upside Down World, retrieved 2016-07-14
Cerrado Protected Areas: Chapada dos Veadeiros and Emas National Parks, UNESCO, 2012, retrieved 2016-07-14
Edison Mariotti (29 February 2016), Mosaico de Unidades de Conservação do Jacupiranga, no Vale do Ribeira e no Litoral Sul, Mata Atlântica do Estado de São Paulo, Brasil. (in Portuguese), retrieved 2016-07-14
Mosaicos de áreas protegidas (in Portuguese), ISA: Instituto Socioambiental, retrieved 2016-07-13
Parque Nacional do Itatiaia: Who We Are, ICMBio , retrieved 2016-07-14
Six new protected areas created in Brazilian Amazonian state, IUCN, 27 March 2009, retrieved 2016-07-14

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[1] The Instituto Socioambiental uses the term "protected area mosaic" in preference to "conservation unit mosaic" to reflect the fact that a mosaic may include private lands and indigenous territories as well as formally designated conservation units.^[1]

[FOOTNOTEMosaicos_de_áreas_protegidas_–_ISA-2] 1 2 3 Mosaicos de áreas protegidas – ISA.

[FOOTNOTEEdison_Mariotti2016-3] Edison Mariotti 2016.

[FOOTNOTEParque_Nacional_do_Itatiaia:_Who_We_Are-4] Parque Nacional do Itatiaia: Who We Are.

[FOOTNOTESix_new_protected_areas_created_in_Brazilian_Amazonian_state-5] Six new protected areas created in Brazilian Amazonian state.

[FOOTNOTECarolina_Motoki2015-6] 1 2 Carolina Motoki 2015.

[FOOTNOTECerrado_Protected_Areas_..._UNESCO-7] Cerrado Protected Areas ... UNESCO.

v t e Protected areas of Brazil
Fully protected units	Ecological stations Biological reserves National parks State parks Natural monuments Wildlife refuges
Sustainable use units	Environment protection areas Areas of relevant ecological interest National forests State forests Extractive reserves Wildlife reserves Sustainable development reserves Private natural heritage reserves
Other	Protected area mosaics Ecological corridors Ecological reserves Indigenous territories (list)