Comparative Evaluation of Three Environmental Policies in Paraná State: the EEZ, the GERCO and Incentive Policies to Agroecology

Abstract

The effectiveness of the environmental policy is a recurrent theme in the debate on environment and development in Brazil. Each environmental policy constitutes an institutional arrangement that allows for legislation fulfillment and sets a new relation between humans and the environment. The aim of this paper is to comparatively evaluate the implementation of three environmental policies provided by State of Paraná in recent decades, by analyzing their institutional arrangements in order to identify particular fragilities. The policies in analysis are
the Ecological-Economic Zoning (ZEE), the Coastal Management (GERCO) and Incentive policies to agroecology. The hypothesis is that the difficulty of implementing these environmental policies in the state is due to the inherent weaknesses of their institutional arrangements. Among them, there are the diversity of interests and conflicts between actors and between local, state and federal institutions; the incapacity of the environment institutions to enforce its policies in the context of economic development; and the financial, material, technical and personnel deficiencies of environmental agencies. It concludes by pointing out the lack of long-term vision that transforms these policies into government actions instead of State policies.