Proposição de um modelo conceitual de participação social na gestão ambiental municipal à luz dos sistemas socioecológicos.

Abstract

The social participation deals with the inclusion of society in the construction and implementation of public policies, seeking to meet the desire of the population itself and representative sectors to integrate decision-making processes, taking directly to the government their demands in the most diverse areas that concern and are related to the common good, such as the environmental issue. As a balanced environment is everyone's right established by the current federal constitution, the importance of environmental management and its relationship with social participation has received increasing recognition. However, despite being considered so important, the little social participation appears among the gaps and challenges that exist for the execution, effectiveness and advancement of environmental management at the municipal level. Within this context, socio-ecological systems are approached as an integrating platform between ecology, economics and the management of complex social networks, providing a new perspective on the comprehensive management of ecological resources and socioeconomic processes. In this sense, considering the contributions of the socio-ecological systems approach and the importance of social participation in municipal environmental management, this research aimed to propose a conceptual model of social participation in the context of municipal environmental management from the perspective of socioecological systems. As for the methodological procedures, it is an exploratory and descriptive research, in which the approach is qualitative, the data collection procedures took place through primary and secondary sources, whose collection instruments were the questionnaires and the bibliographical research, analyzed. through the data triangulation methodology. As for the results, the proposed model contemplates the natural subsystem, the social subsystem, the economic subsystem, with social participation being a central element of mediation and interrelation of these interactions and their results. Social participation was focused on its spaces and instruments, actors, and challenges / gaps in the existence of municipal environmental management. As contributions to the approach of socio-cecological systems to overcome existing challenges and gaps to strengthen social participation in municipal environmental management, the following attributes were considered: a systemic vision, stakeholder involvement and training for environmental citizenship. The model was empirically applied in the city of Cajazeiras/PB considering the environmental management of the municipality, where it was possible to identify that social participation is presented as a process under construction, which occurs individually, collectively and institutionally, with complaints being the most important instruments. used individually and the institutional form the most present form in the developed actions. The systemic vision, the involvement of stakeholders and training for environmental citizenship as attributes of socio-ecological systems occur in the process of social participation in the municipality's environmental management, but they need to be developed more deeply, and thus contribute to overcoming challenges and existing gaps for the advancement and effectiveness of this process in the municipality, such as the lack of: citizen and government interest, training, information, environmental education and economic incentives. The empirical application showed the contribution of the proposed model to advance the literature on the subject, which can be applied in any municipality and thus contribute to the development and strengthening of a more participatory municipal environmental anagement.