The Atlas of Sustainability Indicators for Coastal Municipalities of the State of Rio de Janeiro has been developed in order to publish the results of the analysis of 40 sustainability indicators, within the six ecodevelopment dimensions proposed by Ignacy Sachs (spatial, cultural, economical, ecological, social and political), as to the 34 coastal municipalities of the State of Rio de Janeiro. The calculated indexes refer to the negative impact of activities and dynamics developed by Human throughout his occupation of the coastal zone of the state of Rio de Janeiro.
{sidebar id=236 align=right} The principal motivation to this research is to contribute to the understand of socio-economics and physics characteristics of the complex coastal zone in question and thus support the public policies and the scientific activities developed by the academic community at the local level. The model presented is being replicated by other Brazilian coastal States with also great importance at national economics scenario like Santa Catarina and São Paulo.
The research is a product of the Monography on Oceanography presented by Raquel Dezidério Souto at the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), oriented by Ph.D. Marcus Polette, Professor at the Center for Technological Earth and Sea Sciences – CTTMar/ Univali, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil and Dr. Milton Kampel, Researcher of the Division of Remote Sensing at National Institute of Spatial Researches – DSR/INPE, State of Sao Paulo, Brazil).
The Monography evaluated the anthropogenic impacts for municipalities belong to the coastal zone of the State of Rio de Janeiro.
The sources of official data that supported the indexes were:
1) Database of Unique System of Health – Ministry of Health
2) Data and Information Center of Rio de Janeiro Foundation
3) Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics
4) State Institute of Cultural Patrimony
5) National Institute on Educational Research
6) Institute of Applied Economic Research – IPEADATA
7) SOS Atlantic Forest Foundation
Most of the indicators proposed are related to the Millennium Development Goals. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight goals to be achieved by 2015 that respond to the world’s main development challenges. The MDGs are drawn from the actions and targets contained in the Millennium Declaration that was adopted by 189 nations-and signed by 147 heads of state and governments during the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000.
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The eight MDGs break down into 21 quantifiable targets that are measured by 60 indicators. The goals are:
1) Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger;
2) Achieve universal primary education;
3) Promote gender equality and empower woman;
4) Reduce child mortality;
5) Improve maternal Health;
6) Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases;
7) Ensure environmental sustainability;
8) Develop a global partnership for Development.
With an increasing concern about the healthy development of societies in harmony with environment, man started organizing and making efforts at creating mechanisms to monitor and control processes induced by anthropic activities in the coastal zone (CZ). Knowledge of coastal ecology and dynamics became reference information for taking public decisions aiming at sustainable growth and expansion of societies.
In this context appears the Integrated Coastal Zone Management, as a Science with the objective of recognizing the coast and its characteristics, understanding its evolution and elaborating mechanisms of quality control of the CZ, guaranteeing quality of life to the population living in these zones.
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One of the instruments used to raise the CZ condition is the Parametric Statistics, where the CZ characteristics and forces acting on it are represented by parameters. Having the parameters, the indicators are conceived and used to supply information about the complex organizations.
The parameters’ degree of importance is distinguished through the attribution of weights to the obtained measures, resulting in the values of each indicator’s index. The studies on sustainability indicators have demonstrated that their choice is due to the recognition of the main forces acting as a pressure on the ecosystem and, thus, sets of indicators vary from region to region. However, indicators share characteristics in common, being the clarity in transmission of information the most notorious of them.
Thematic maps were developed with PHP/MySQL, offering a facility to the spatial visualization of results of the classification of the coastal municipalities. The maps are dynamically generated, a plus possible by the GD Library of the PHP programming language. The section bellow show the results of indexes calculated at the sustainability dimension level.
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Anthropic impact polygons have been calculated to each municipality, where the influence of each analyzed dimension is represented. The maps related to dimensions and indicators supply, yet, a space representation of the inequalities found in the State of Rio de Janeiro. The following exemplify the anthropogenic impact polygon, showing what was generated for the municipality of Rio de Janeiro.
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The research focus is to collaborate with a better understanding of the State’s socio-environmental dynamics, constituting necessary report to informative support for the formulation of public policies that are adequate to the natural resources’ management and to the guarantee of quality of life of the State’s population.
Now, the perspective is to increase the set of indicators, including more variables primarily at physical dimensions – spatial and ecological and still serving as a model to the atlas to be applied to another Brazilian coastal states.
To keep contact to the authors, send email to: [email protected]. To support this initiative, send email to: [email protected].
Raquel Dezidério Souto is an oceanographer at IVIDES.org
