Análise das lógicas de ação de atores sociais em torno do licenciamento ambiental de um terminal portuário no estuário de Santos (Brasil)

Abstract

The increasing of industrial and port activities in the estuary of Santos (São Paulo State - Brazil) is threatening marine-estuarine ecosystems, including their environmental goods and services. This article focuses on the analysis of the controversy of an environmental licensing of a modern port terminal in this estuary and in the analysis of the worldviews of eleven stakeholders. We investigated the dominant worldviews (logiques d’action) in the agreements that allowed the installation of the project. We selected the stakeholders to be interviewed from various environments participation about development and environment in this region. Thirteen stakeholders were selected for interviews, eleven accepted and two did not respond to the contact attempts. We formulated semi-structured interviews with closed questions directed to state the socioeconomic characteristics and open questions, common to all respondents, as: the purpose of the institution, the world view about the future of mangroves and fishing in the estuary and, their involvement in the controversy between the port expansion projects and the conservation of remaining mangroves over estuary of Santos. They were asked about the positive or negative impacts of the project, on the relationship of their institution with the fishing community of Diana Island, and about the possibility of compatibility with the port expansion with the maintaining of caiçara way of life in the estuary Santos. We also included questions specific to each respondent, seeking to understand the activity of each institution in the study area. Furthermore, based on our prior knowledge about contradictory attitudes of some respondents, in opposition to the institutional placement, we formulated questions to search conflicts among their speeches and their actions. We asked to the interviewed selected to represent the mission of their institutions, however, sometimes the individual opinion prevailed on the institutional mission. Eighteen hours of speeches were transcribed and classified according to the predominant characteristics of the six common principles of listed by the bibliographic referential. The phrases were chosen to represent the worldviews of the stakeholders interviewed and they show how was the emergence of the controversy and the decision to install the port terminal even contradicting the provisions of the legal instruments that assure the conservation of mangrove areas, legal instruments about coastal management and legal instruments that assure the provision of public areas for public purposes. We found that the commercial and industrial worldviews were the dominants in the study area. The civic, domestic, of opinion and inspiration worldview, have exercised the counterpoint to prevailing views, once the stakeholders negotiated adjustments to the project initially presented, which incorporated 32 environmental mitigation conditions to the installation of the project. There was not a real conciliation procedure of the environmental licensing process analyzed, but only a process of negotiation of conditions, which resulted in mistrusts and conflicts. The development projects in the Santos estuary should be discussed with broad popular participation, and should take into account the value of environmental goods and services offered by ecosystems in their analysis of economic viability.