Área de preservação permanente de um rio e análise do Código Florestal Brasileiro

Abstract

The Brazilian environmental legislation, in what it refers to natural resource preservation, has its central point in the Forestry Code. This is a set of definitions and rules to be obeyed in both rural and urban environments, in view of the fact that one of its main tools happens by APP s (Permanent Preservation Areas). The new Forest Code (NCF) which repeals Law No. 4,771, Old Forestry Code (ACF), regulates the definition of APP s of waterway marginal ranges, considering that currently their delimitation must be done from the edge of the regular bed rail (LR), differently from the ACF, which indicated the APP range beginning from the larger hydrological river bed (LMH). The objective was to compare the application of the new APP delimitation law in river ciliary range, opposite to the Old Code, as well as the difference between themselves, in a typically rural basin. The Arroio Grande was used as a case study, the extent of the LR was defined, as well as of LMH and its respective APP range, thus, forming the Permanent Protection Range (FPP) for the stretch of defined river. Within each protection strip, it was utilized the land use analysis and also its commonest conflicts that define the boundaries of the APP defining bed. Through the maps which were obtained, the APP of this stretch of the Arroio Grande currently must be 50m from the LR rail, which is bounded through this river, and includes river shores and islands. About the change in the legislation, it is highlighted that the alteration of the beginning of APP range from LMH to LR brought loss of the protected area. The NCF brings as a contribution to permit the owners the adequacy of degraded areas using a minor range of preservation and facilitating the definition of LR by satellite images. According to the NCF, 22.3%of the APP areas of the Arroio Grande are not protected, which compromises the basin balance when we see the importance of these sites for the ecosystem maintenance. Thus, one can compare the laws through the maps and conclude that the NCF has brought some progress such as the ease in the demarcation of APP, but it is milder compared to the size of the protected area. This way one indicates that the Forestry Code is applied to a larger possible number of properties for both proposed purposes in its text: environmental preservation and recovery, with owners awareness about the importance of protecting riparian bands for maintenance of system stability, or its recovery.