Challenges to Co-Management: the Impacts of the Southern Expressway on Resources Use in the Marine RESEX of Pirajubaé

Abstract

This article focuses on the case of the environmental impacts generated by the installation of the Southern Expressway, an enterprise of the State Government of Santa Catarina, on the extraction of berbigão (cockles; Anomalocardia brasiliana) in the Marine Extractive Reserve (RESEX, in the Portuguese acronym) Pirajubaé, in Florianópolis (SC). The project caused significant impacts on the marine environment of this RESEX, including the loss of about half of the cockle bank, and hence on extractive practices and their management. The socio-environmental changes resulting from the construction of the Southern Expressway led to a situation of deregulation in the use of fisheries resources, resulting in use conflicts and establishing a situation of open access to resources in the area. In the case of Pirajubaé, when interests of dominant social groups in conflict with the goals of the RESEX were imposed, its institutional arrangement proved unable to secure the rights of the local users or gatherers on the use of natural resources in its territory, which should be the main objective of this kind of Conservation Unit. This leads us to question the effectiveness of the RESEX as an institutional arrangement to ensure shared management and conservation of natural resources in a given territory.