Side Event
Good practices, conflicts and necessities to the integrated management of one of the most important remaining areas of Atlantic Rainforest – EPA of Guaraqueçaba, Brazil
Organizer
Society for Wildlife Research and Environemtal Education
Date and Time
28 March 2006 18:30 - 20:15
This event has as objective to present and to debate the interrelated efforts carried out during 20 years to protect an area of great interest to conservation of biological diversity. Despite of of many positive results reached by these efforts, this area is still deficient of a model that approach the area management with local communities for its effective protection. Created in 1985, the Environmental Protection Area (EPA) of Guaraqueçaba, in the state of Paraná, Southern Brazil, is a Conservation Unit under Brazilian law. This area is part of the biggest preserved remaining area of the Atlantic Rainforest, biome considered as a world priority for the conservation of nature. The EPA of Guaraqueçaba shelters the third most important complex system of estuaries and lagoons of the world, a richness cradle for countless endemic and threatened fauna and flora species. Since its creation, governmental and non-governmental environmentalist institutions have carried out measures seeking to offer management tools for the area. These tools consider the precept for the environmental conservation and mitigate the aspects that represent threats to the environmental integrity of the region, such as improper productive activities, low human development index, among others. It is outstanding that the EPA of Guaraqueçaba in 1999 was declared as Reserve of Biosphere by UNESCO – the highest international recognition for the protection of a natural area.