Territorial approach to Marine Geography: preliminary reflections since the spatial planning and integrated governance

Abstract

This study aims to contribute with the conceptual elaboration for the field of marine geography. It recognizes that it is a complex and unusual front to this line of research, but it is justified by the need to improve the integration between science and management for coastal and oceanic spatialities: a central aspect in the premises of Marine Spatial Planning and Integrated Coastal Management. Geographical surveys in these spaces have predominated from dynamic approaches on physical phenomena - geological, climatic, geomorphological and / or oceanographic. These advances have resulted in unequivocal contributions in the scope of public policies in Brazil. With the intensification of urbanization and the flow of objects and actions, systemic interrelations and resulting environmental implications, the intensification of anthropic interference in the seas, oceans and coasts extends to a territorial condition to these spaces. Although distant, the diverse motives of human emphasis (economic, political and / or cultural) configure the complex framework of actions on the areas that are object of the Marine Geography and contribute to them to increase valuation, appropriation, uses, conflicts and activities on multiple scales. Whereas the focus on the allocation of responsibilities to the coastlines, contiguous zones and international waters increases under the concern of judicious forums, the governance ends up highlighting the challenge about consensus, norms, agendas and advances sustainable purposes. Some concepts such as scale, region, place, territory and frontier, in turn, are able to contribute to the complex approaches inherent in the emblematic issues of such spaces. Some proposals of contemporary Geography, in permanent (dis)construction, can help in the improvement of methods and techniques of approaches, researches and applications of geographic knowledge for oceans and coasts.  It is a challenge, however, to bring lines of thought and work closer together, which implies a necessary dialogue within the very constitution and consolidation of the Marine Geography, in its methodological scope for the integration of physical and human phenomena. To debate.