METHODS AND TOOLS OF REVITALISATION
OF DETERIORATED AREAS
Ingrid
Belcáková
In
Slovakia, the issue of revitalisation of deteriorated areas belongs to
the nowaday history of environmental protection and enhancement.
Methods of landscape - ecological planning represents the already
elaborated revitalisation methods. The contribution brings more details
on the application of these methods in the area of water bodies
revitalisation.
Apart from methodology, there is need for the appropriate
revitalisation instruments. The planning instruments are the ones that
can assist in planning, and consequently, in the realisation of
landscape revitalisation programmes and projects. The National Rural
Development Plan of Slovakia is one of them.
The main goal of revitalisation is the identification, specification
and mitigation of the present environmental problems and limitation
of human activites having deteriorating impact on both landscape and
landscape elements. The revitalisation process is mostly focused on
(Izakovicová,Z., Moyzeová,M., 2000):
- determination of problem areas, i.e. areas where the actual way of
land use does not meet ecological principles,
- proposal for the elimination of problem areas, i.e. the proposal of
the approporiate land use for each identified area or the proposal of
mitigation measures
Methods
of landscape revitalisation
Procedures
and methods of landscape revitalisation are based on the methods of
ecological landscape planning (Ružicka, Miklós, 1982), methods
of landscape carrying capacity (Hrnciarová a kol., 1997) and
methods of revitalisation of water bodies (Izakovicová a kol.,
1998, Izakovicová, Moyzeová, 1998) that are modified for
revitalisation needs of the given territory. The methodology consists
of the following steps:
1. Analysis - selection, specification and characteristics of abiotic,
biotic and socio-economic landscape complex. The output of this step
is the set of analytical maps showing the landcsape-ecological conditions
of the territory - geology, hydrology, climate, soil, biodiversity,
positive and negative socio-economic features, etc...
2. Interpretations - the creation of so called "purposal landscape characteristics
(e.g. landscape sensitivity, the landscape- ecological importance, carrying
capacity, etc..) that represent the baseline for the evaluation of environmental
problems as well as for the elimination proposals
3. Evaluations - they are focused on the evaluation of the present land
use based on the landscape - ecological limits coming from the interpreted
landscape characteristics. The main result of that step is the evaluation
of the present land use and its adverse impact from the point of view
of landscape ecology and the determination of ecological problem areas,
i.e. areas in which the present land use does not correspond with the
landscape-ecological principles.
4. Propositions - the generation of set of measures for environmental
problems elimination of given area and the consequent optimisation of
spatial and functional landscape land use.
Propositions can be divided into the following categories:
- propositions for the increase of landscape stability and biodiversity
- propositions for environmental protection and conservation
- propositions for natural resources protection
Water
bodies and revitalisation
The
pressing issue of water bodies revitalisation resulted from their long
term pollution by the waste water releases, by unlimited development of
human activities within water bodies areas, etc....
Revitalisation of water bodies needs the individual approach since each
water body and its catchment represents the unique typical water
ecosystem with different landscape structure elements and with
different degree of human impact (Izakovicová,Z.)
The theoretical and methodological baseline of water bodies revitalisation
are as follows:
- the revitalisation comprises the revitalisation of both water stream
and its catchment area
- the basic revitalisation criteria are nature protection, protection
of biodiversity and landscape stability, natural resources protection
- eater resources, soil, genofond, forests, air, cultural and historical
resources, etc...
- it represents the interdisciplinary issue with the need of having
broad range of team members (landscape ecologist, hydrologist, geographer,
etc...)
The methodological procedure is based on the landscape - ecological
planning methods that are modified for the purposes of water bodies
revitalisation. They consist of the following steps:
1. Analysis
2. Synthesis
3. Interpretations
4. Evaluations
5. Propositions
Agroenviromental
schemes and revitalisation of rural landscape
The need to implement
the above measure arises from the first part of Slovakia´s Agri-environmental
Programme entitled "Analysis of the Environemental Situation of Slovakia´s
Agriculture". This section makes a balance of the negative impacts on
agricultural production on biodiversity, soil, water and air.
Negative impacts on biodiversity: The areas most affected by the
reduction of biodviversity of the agricultural landscape in Slovakia
have been lowlands and uplands, in particular due to an intensive use
and management of the landscape, ploughing of grassland, draining of
wetlands and degradation of xerothermic locations. A majority of the
original semi-natural biotopes in these areas have been totally
destroyed or substantially altered. Mountane and submountane areas are
in a better position, with several valuable biotopes as well as entire
areas with highly diverse flora, fauna and landscape structures having
been preserved. Compared to lowlands, processes of devastation and
afforestation of agricultural land act more intensively in mountane
areas.
Negative impacts on soil: Due to incorrect management (in particular on
slopes, lighter soils and open lowlands), water and wind errosion
affects a substantial portion of Slovakia´s territory.
Negative impacts on water: Concentration and chemization of
agricultural production caused water pollution by nitrites and
pesticides, and eutrophization of waters.
The task of the agri-environmental programs is to harmonize the
relationships between the production of food and environmental
protection, and to make a contribution towards the preservation of
rural communities. This is expected to be achieved by extending the
role of agriculture and including care of the landscape it manages.
The major objective of the measure is to acquire sufficient experience
to be able to prepare agri-environmental programs (implementation of
Regulation No. 1257/99), and to deliver management training through
five pilot projects.
General objectives of the measure for the pilot areas:
- to achieve an overall reduction of the anthropic pressure on the environment
in these areas,
- to preserve and increase biodiversity of the agricultural landscape,
in particular to protect important ecosystems that increase ecological
stability and biodiversity, endangered plant and animal species, genetic
diversity of crops and seeds,
- to improve landscape (land) protection from degradation processes,
in particular from erosion,
- to preserve the cultural status of the landscape, to gradually revitalize
the traditional rural landscape, to preserve, recover and improve its
ecological stability through implementing stabilization elements in
the landscape,
- to support considerate methods of farming in territories of high natural
value,
- to reduce the negative environmental impacts of chemical protection
of plants,
- to improve the social and economic development of rural areas through
compensatory payments for environmentally friendly management.
Sets of agri-environmental
measures were developed in the framework of the Agri-environmental Programme
of Slovakia, making up so-called agri-environmental schemes (AES) that
represent the principal building blocks of the agri-environmental program
to be selected by the corresponding agricultural entity.
The principal structure of the agri-environmental schemes is as
follows:
- Basic schemes (so-called zero package providing no eligibility for
compensatory payments - agri-environmental measures concerning Good
Agricultural Practice, nowadays also required by the applicable legal
regulations concerning landscape and natural protection, water and soil
protection. Any agricultural entity has to comply with the measure of
the basic scheme without being eligible to receive any compensatory
payments).
- General agri-environmental schemes (compensatory payments for the
prescribed method of landscape management); general AES continue the
basic AES concerning landscape and natural protection, differentiated
according to the type of landscape uses (AES for arable land, AES for
grassland, AES for permanent crops).
- Specific agri-environmental schemes (compensatory payments for the
protection of important ecosystems) - e.g. AES for arable land with
biotopes of non-forest tree species, AES for moorland and wet meadows,
AES for semi-dry and dry grassland...).
- Supplementary schems (compensatory payments for especially considerate
management in the landscape) - they represent agricultural systems that
follow special rules for brand production (integrated production, organic
farming) or limits for low-input systems (limits for nitrogen application,
limit of stocking density, etc.).
The development of the agri-environmental programmes for a specific
agricultural entity is based on the appropriate selection of some of
the combinations suggested by the AES.
Suggested
agri-environmental schemes are (AES):
AES for arable land with various biotope types
- special AES for arable land with grassland and permanent crops biotopes,
- AES for arable land with aquatic and wetland biotopes
- AES for various types of grassland biotopes
- special AES for moorland and wet grasslands
- special AES for grassland with aquatic and wetland biotopes
- AES for arable land with non-forest tree species
- AES for arable land on slopes (prevention of erosion)
- low-input systems AES
- special AES for arable land as a mosaic of grassland biotopes
References
Hrnciarová,
T., a kol. 1997: Ekologická únosnost krajiny. I.cast:
Metodický postup, ÚKE SAV Bratislava, 81
Izakovicová,Z. a kol., 1998: Stratégia
revitalizácie vodných tokov Slovenska. Ekologická
štúdia. ÚKE SAV, Bratislava, p. 153
Izakovicová,Z., Moyzeová,M.,1998: Metodický postup
revitalizácie vodných tokov a jeho aplikácia na
modelovom území Drietomice. In: Príspevky z
odborného seminára: Teria a prax tvorby
polnohospodárskej krajiny. Nitra, 1998, 10 strán
Izakovicová,Z., Moyzeová,M., 2000:
Krajinno-ekologické aspekty revitalizácie krajiny. In:
Zborník z konferencie: Aktuálne problémy
záhradnej a krajinnej tvorby, SPU Nitra, sept. 2000, pp. 74-78
Klementová, E., Skalová,J., 1997: Malé
vodné nádrže Slovenska. In: Izakovicová,Z.:
Diskusia ku koncepciám trvalo udržatelného rozvoja.
Bratislava, 59-65.
Lisický,M., 1993: In: Šteffek: Terminologický
slovník ekológie a environmentalistiky. KEAKE SAV,
Banská Štiavnica, 78
Racko,J., a kol., 1997: Zhodnotenie ekologickej únosnosti
regiónu Žiarskej kotliny. Krajinná ekológia
-ekologická únosnost Žiarskej kotliny, (správa za
II. etapu), ÚKE SAV, PrírF UK, MZP SR Bratislava, 136
Ružicka, M., Miklós, L., 1982: Landscape -ecological planning
(LANDEP) in the process of territorial planning. Ekológia
(CSSR),1,3, p.297-312
Ingrid Belcáková
Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava
A QUICK LOOK OVER A LUDA IN RIO DE JANEIRO
Prof. Mário Canova Moutinho
Last
summer I went to visit a group of residents at the "favela Maré"
in Rio de Janeiro. Currently they are constructing a Centre of Memory
and a museum inside the favela. These projects have been included in
CEASM (Centre of Studies and Solitary Actions of Maré)
activities, a local organization of residents to improve the quality of
life in the favela.
http://www.ceasm.org.br/
The
Maré is a favela of Rio de Janeiro crossed by two of the main
thoroughfares of the city, the Av. do Brasil and the Red Line that
connect the centre of Rio de Janeiro to the International Airport.
This favela is the biggest concentration of lower incomes of Rio de
Janeiro, and concentrates 16 communities with a population of 132.176
people living in 38.273 houses, which equals 2,26% of the population of
Rio de Janeiro (according to the studies made in 2000 by Censo
Maré).
This real
LUDA started taking shapes in the beginning of the 1940's. The main
causes were the poor conditions for living and the industrialisation in
the state of Rio de Janeiro. As in so many other cities, these
occupations took place in areas of lower material value at the mounts
and in places where the land did not have the capacity to drain the
water from rain. Not so long ago we could still find in Maré
some areas with houses on stilts.
The activities of CEASM are concentrated in 6 main areas: Education,
Culture, Communication, Memory, Social Observatory and Work &
Education also divided in:
1-Education
Area
Maré (Cpv-Maré), Preparatory Studies for access to
university studies, Language Studies of Maré, Children programs
/ Petrobras, Popular Library of Maré
2-Culture Area
Projects "Gentil Mother, Angola Capoeira, Maculelê"
3-Comunication Areas
Newspaper "The Citizen", "Maré is News"
4-Memory Area
Documentation and Reference Centre; Oral History of Maré,
Conference Room.
5-Observatory Area
Social Observatory of Maré, "Censo Maré 2000: Who Are We?"
6-Work and Education at Maré Area
Informatics courses, Museum Monitor Training, Video Workshop,
Photography Workshop, Literary Production Workshop, Graphic Production
Workshop.
This
group of activities testifies the higher capacity of the residents to
organize themselves. Some of these activities have a remarkable place
among all others, for example the school preparation for university,
now with 400 students, which shows the importance of education as a
strategy to fight the ludanatic character of the favela in a medium and
long term.
The Memory Centre and Culture Centre have created an important
photographic database dedicated to Maré, searching for people's
origins in a way to give them strength to live or at least survive at
present hardest times, but also to value each one through an enormous
quantity of cultural activities.
Meanwhile the main problem persists: the image that this favela, as so
many others has in society. As they say nowadays, the residents of
favelas are looked in two separated ways:
The conservatory way, in which residents are criminals.
In the progressive way, that identifies them, as the good salvage
symbols of a rational and individual city, passive victims of an unfair
social structure.
Both attitudes "ignore the multiplicity and diversity of objective
actions followed by several actors of popular spaces in the process of
confronting the social and personal limits of their existence. As a
matter of fact, the favela residents did not only analyze their lives
through notions of missing and/or negation (…), they also tell the
positive aspects, belonging to there".
But, as the CEASM says, it is necessary to recognize and have in
consideration forms of identification, classifying and interpretation
of social practices confirmed in the spaces of the favelas as a
possibility of creating new urban sociabilities. They give for one-side
instruments to go forward stereotyped representations, which
characterise the hegemonic speeches about their popular spaces. They
fundament the recognition of these territories' heterogeneity, which
generates constructions of specifically territorial identities, but not
less important recognises that the favelas do not only surround the
city. They are institutional elements of the city (A Maré em
dados: Censo 2000, Ceasm, Maré, 2003 p. 29)
Here, things are a little more complicated, because now four
generations of residents lived in the same favela, but a 5th
generation, has its own roots in the northeast of Brasil, in cacao and
rubber, in a country side full of European emigrants from a then also
very poor Europe.
We must not stop thinking about the importance of origins of social
segmentation in any study about a LUDA. The time factor is important if
we think about LUDA as a place of living, or a place of passing through.
In addition, the local capacity of starting changing processes should
be taken in consideration, and those processes cannot be known only as
bases for partnerships, but must be respected by their autonomy.
One other aspect that calls our attention, reveals it self when we
would propose to go to another part of the favela.
The Maré seen from long distance is a big agglomeration of houses,
but it hides an enormous social geography depending on lots of different
factors: the origin, the history, the dependency on administration,
and also, what prevented our drive to the area, the control by drugs
organizations which provide drugs to medium and high bourgeois of the
asphalt city, the beauty neighbourhoods, the Atlântica avenue
of the international jet set.
So for questions of security of the drug dealers, it was impossible to
pass the border that separates the areas of the Red Command and the
areas of the Third Command, unless we start negotiations with both
groups; the results being totally unpredictable (!!!).
This social border shows us another problem: the understanding that a
LUDA keeps known as an area with profound differences for the
residents, but and totally unknown for the non-residents in which we
include the "social researchers"!
To understand this difference of geography, itself can become an
essential factor for the global comprehension of a LUDA.
As much as the exterior limits of a LUDA it is important to find the
indicators of the interior borders (groups, generations, races, and
social status).
Brasil
has exterior debts of 285 billion US-dollars paying every year 50
billions USD of interests. The USA have a debt of 6.700 billion USD
(6,7 trillions) and they pay 70 billions of incomes. For each 100 USD
of debts, Brasil pays 17,55 USD, while the USA pays 1,05 USD! (In Veja
13.08.03 nº 1815)
Is it possible to forget the global nature of the LUDAs
without relating its genesis and development to the growing inequality
inside and outside of countries and even in some bigger regions of the
planet?
Briefly, I would say that it is really needed to be more attentive to
the following questions:
The comprehension of the internal borders of a social LUDA, the
emerging time of LUDAs, the local capacity of thinking and
understanding their own future, the vision that a LUDA is not an
accident for (?) the city but it is part of the city itself, and
finally, the planetary character of this phenomena that can clarify
some significant aspects of our problems and help finding better
answers to our multiple and generally awkward questions.
Prof. Mário Canova Moutinho
Universidade Lusofona de Humadidades e Tecnologias, Lisboa