November 11, 2020

Territory, Risk and Public Policies

Margarida Queirós do Vale e Neli Aparecida de Mello-Théry

Based on the assumptions that management and spatial planning tools, in different scales, do not adequately deal with risks, and more in-depth risk assessment should be incorporated into the management plans of protected areas, this work analyzes the inclusion of risk and its approaches within the planning and management instruments of two protected areas: the Ipanema National Forest (Brazil) and the Alvão Natural Park (Portugal).

Despite being part of territorial planning policies, protected area management plans are directly and indirectly related to other policies (regional development, environmental, agricultural etc.). These plans operate in defined and managed geographic spaces, which are inserted in a complex socio-political network, and must consider the policies and territorial and sectoral programs and plans of the different government levels (national, regional and local), checking whether these plans affect the management of these areas in a positive or negative way and seeking ways to make them compatible with its objectives (Esteves, 2015). At the same time, land management plans must observe the presence of protected areas and consider their management plans (Phillips, 2002). The first half of this thesis is dedicated to analyzing whether plans and policies are integrated and if they consider the risks at protected areas.

In the next stage, after defining support methodologies, this work proposes a model for risk analysis and risk mapping of forest fires for the Ipanema National Forest and the Alvão Natural Park, using as main base the management plans of these areas. Forest fires in protected areas interfere with the conservation of these territories and rises other threats, such as forest fragmentation and loss of biodiversity. The relationships between the threats to these two protected areas were identified and analyzed in an integrated manner to delimit a network of threats that act in the composition of the analyzed risks. Based on management plans, scientific publications, reports from workshops and interviews with managers and employees, it was possible to make a first approach on the origins of threats and the factors that influence them. After that, the location of internal and external threats and their degrees of influence were plotted in criticality maps, which could be crossed with the support capacity, hazard and value maps, to create forest fire risk maps and, based on them, forest fragmentation maps, revealing the priority sectors for protection and conservation interventions.
The possibility of applying the risk assessment methodology proposed in this study to other protected areas in Brazil and Portugal characterizes this work as a support tool on the implementation of public policies related to the protected areas management.

Keywords: risk; protected areas; risk assessment; public policy