Municipal environmental management and regional conservation in eastern Amazon: perceived performance by public agents in the Pará state, Brazil

Authors

  • Benedito Evandro Barros da Silva PhD in Socioenvironmental Development, Environmental Analyst, Secretaria Estadual de Meio Ambiente e Sustentabilidade do Pará (Semas/PA), Marabá, Brazil https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4172-2427
  • Professor Dra. Claudia Azevedo-Ramos PhD in Ecology, Professor, Núcleo de Altos Estudos Amazônicos (NAEA),Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, Brazil https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4137-7926
  • Professor Dr. Hilder André Bezerra Farias PhD in Economics, Adjunct Professor, Department of Economics, Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, Brazil https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3953-3042

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18472/SustDeb.v12n1.2021.39267

Keywords:

Amazon. Environmental performance. Perception. Public management. Sustainability.

Abstract

Public agents play a key role in municipal environmental management (MEM) under decentralised regimes. This study aimed to evaluate the MEM through the combined perception of municipal agents and the municipal performance previously calculated by secondary data in Pará, Brazil. A questionnaire with a 5-point Likert scale was applied to environmental agents. The respondents (n = 75) from 53 municipalities were divided into poorly performing and well-performing municipalities. The perception of agents from poorly performing municipalities was more optimistic than shown by empirical data. Agents from well-performing municipalities prioritised “economic issues” as significant threats to management over the “institutional capacity” chosen by the other group, indicating a broader view of the reality. As the perception over land-use practices was vital to differentiate the agents from different groups, we concluded for the use of mixed monitoring methods and feedback information for agents for a better MEM, focusing on five variables (Rural environmental register – CAR, in Portuguese acronym; degraded area; deforested area; rural credit; and abandoned pasture) that differentiated the municipalities.

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Author Biographies

Benedito Evandro Barros da Silva, PhD in Socioenvironmental Development, Environmental Analyst, Secretaria Estadual de Meio Ambiente e Sustentabilidade do Pará (Semas/PA), Marabá, Brazil

Graduated in Environmental Engineering from the State University of Pará (2006), Master in Environmental Sciences from the Federal University of Pará (2011) and Ph.D. in Socio-Environmental Development from the Federal University of Pará (2019). He is currently environmental analyst at the State Secretariat for the Environment and Sustainability of Pará and a substitute Professor at the Federal University of the South and Southeast of Pará (2019-2021). His main interests include public policies; environmental management; geotechnologies, environmental sciences; and land use and land tenure.

Professor Dra. Claudia Azevedo-Ramos, PhD in Ecology, Professor, Núcleo de Altos Estudos Amazônicos (NAEA),Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, Brazil

Biologist. Ph.D in Ecology (UNICAMP), Professor at the Federal University of Pará, Brazil. She was a researcher at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute - IPAM (2004-2006) and former Director of the Brazilian Forest Service (2006-2014). Her research interests are tropical forest ecology and management; land use changes; and conservation policies and governance.

Professor Dr. Hilder André Bezerra Farias, PhD in Economics, Adjunct Professor, Department of Economics, Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, Brazil

Adjunct Teacher at Universidade Federal do Pará, at the Department of Economics where he has been since 2015. Farias lectures Applied Mathematics-Economics, Advanced Microeconomics, Data Science and Simulation both for undergraduate and graduate students. His research interests span Computational Economics, Complexity and Ecological Economics. Much of his recent work has been on understanding sustainable development alternatives in Amazon as well as implementing tools to work with Big Data from Brazilian official databases.

 

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Published

2021-12-28 — Updated on 2022-01-11

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How to Cite

Silva, B. E. B. da, Azevedo-Ramos , . C. ., & Farias, H. A. B. (2022). Municipal environmental management and regional conservation in eastern Amazon: perceived performance by public agents in the Pará state, Brazil. Sustainability in Debate, 12(3), 254–268. https://doi.org/10.18472/SustDeb.v12n1.2021.39267 (Original work published December 28, 2021)

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 3 (2021): Sustainability in Debate / Sustentabilidade em Debate

Section

Articles - Varia

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