O Plano Conservador da Mata Atlântica como instrumento indutor de políticas públicas municipais de restauração florestal e pagamento por serviços ambientais

Abstract

Environmental public management in Brazil has historically been guided by command-and-control measures implemented by the State, whose efficiency have been contested in view of the significant rates of environmental degradation. The “Plano Conservador da Mantiqueira” (in Portuguese) (PCMA) is an initiative that induces the environmental adequacy of rural properties through an arrangement that promotes the creation of municipal public policies for forest restoration based on the PES mechanism, having as a model the “Conservador das Águas” project, bythe municipality of Extrema/MG. The PCMA proposal has been radiated with the support of partner institutions and understanding how such arrangements are constituted and consolidated can allow such public policies to achieve more consistent results. In this scenario, this thesis has as its main objective to understand who are the actors involved and their motivations regarding the processes of implementation of the policies proposed by the PCMA in the municipalities of Inconfidentes and Pouso Alegre, in the south of Minas Gerais. Therefore, the work was organized into four articles. The first article (1) presented the origins of the PCMA (previously known as the “Plano Conservador da Mantiqueira”) and analyzed the process of implementing municipal public policy in the municipality of Inconfidentes/MG. The results indicated an institutional arrangement composed of multiple actors through an institutional design and interaction that induces local environmental governance. The second article (2), we sought to understand the networks of actors established within the scope of the formulation of the “Nossa Água, Nosso Futuro Project”, in the municipality of Pouso Alegre/MG. The results allowed inferring the existence of pre-existing personal relationships between agents belonging to the institutions participating in the project, an element that reinforces and dynamizes the interactions and bonding patterns between the actors involved in the elaboration of public policy. The third article (3), departed from the analysis linked to the PCMA and was directed towards a case study whose viability was materialized through a Deferred Prosecution Agreements (TAC, in Portuguese) determined by the State’s Prosecution Office of Minas Gerais (MPMG, in Portuguese) in the project Oasis Brumadinho/MG. This case study is justified by the need to understand the institutional arrangement whose protagonism belongs to the MPMG and, above all, by showing itself as an alternative financing of forest restoration and PES projects in other locations, and may even appear as an alternative financing of the proposed projects by PCMA. The results made it possible to verify the action of the MPMG as a catalyst for the proposal, including incentives for the creation of a municipal public policy for PES in the municipality of Brumadinho. Finally, the fourth article (4) analyzed local public policies supported by the model proposed by the PCMA and implemented in the municipalities of Extrema, Pouso Alegre and Inconfidentes, in the state of Minas Gerais. The institutional arrangements of such projects and the role of the mediating actors, who acted in strategies to support the project implementation actions in the municipalities in question, were analyzed. Based on the results obtained, it was possible to identify sustainable development as a global reference and municipal public policies as a sectorial reference, translated into the complementarity character between such actors, since each one of them acts and stimulates references within their fields of action and interest.