(Des) ocupação, agricultura urbana e outras nuances da governança territorial no Campos Sales, APA Tarumã-Ponta Negra, Manaus-AM

Abstract

Since the 19th century, Manaus in the State of Amazon, depends on outside sources of food products to feed its population. The continuous demands for food of the 2.130.264 inhabitants, of which 90% live in the urban area, must be met, without forgetting that Manaus has around 20% of its lands classified as protected areas by the State, being sustainability the core of this program. Local, sustainable agricultural practices, which can preserve the local ecosystems and promote socio-environmental quality, particularly when talking about offer and access to nutritional goods. Considering the above and the fact that the food has a huge logistic that involves urban and socio-environmental aspect, urban agriculture presents itself as a major player. The potential to contribute with the production in a local way, adds to the government protected areas and policies for the Environmental Protected Areas (EPA). In that context, the research sought to evaluate the viability of an urban agriculture project in unused land at Campos Sales neighborhood, which was formed inside the Tarumã – Ponta Negra EPA as instrument for governmental management and urban planning. The choice of this area was because the neighborhood evolved from illegally invaded areas inside the EPA and it does not have a management plan. In order to achieve the main objective of the paper, three specific steps were observed: survey of the unused land in the neighborhood, determine fiscal mechanisms involved and demand for the compulsory use of underutilized and / or unused land for food production and to map the attractiveness of social, economic and environmental variables to the practice of urban agriculture in the studied area. Methodology consisted of multiple procedures, highlighting a few of them: systematic observation, semi-structured interviews and the application of the Multicriteria Decision Aid, based on outranking and rating. It was shown that urban agriculture is part of the day-today activities of the interviewed subjects, although not referred as it. The use of the underused land for urban agriculture was not mentioned as an urgent need for the local population. When offered urban agriculture spaces as a possible solution for socio-environmental problems brought by empty spaces, the population has shown interest, although the idea of a government controlled and financed activity is always the mainstream, weakening the effort for territorial governance. On the other hand, the performance of the City Hall constitutes a challenge to the access to the idle lands by legal means, and the decisions on the creation, structuring and attribution of the organs of the direct, indirect and founding Administration of the Municipality, concentrate themselves on Mayor, which goes against the precepts of governance and makes it impossible to legitimize bills that deal with the use of vacant lots related to the cultivation of plant species.