A ocupação das margens do Açude São Gonçalo por populações ribeirinhas e a criminalidade ambiental.

Abstract

In the 1910s, the Brazilian State took a political decision to combat the serious problems generated by the cyclical droughts that ravaged the semi-arid region of the Northeast. For this purpose, a state entity, now known as the National Department of Works Against Droughts - DNOCS - was created to command this arduous task. The strategy chosen was the construction of large dams – such as the one in São Gonçalo – and the fixation of farmers and fishermen on their banks. This formed, over the years, a riverside population, to occupy and exploit, through the practice of subsistence agriculture, the public lands located there, which would be future permanent protection areas - APP. The question raised is: in that anthropic occupation of the APP, environmental crimes were being committed? and was the performance of the Federal Public Ministry in the case the most appropriate? The general objective of this work was to research the criminal consequences arising from this anthropic occupation of the banks of the São Gonçalo public dam, located in the rural area of the municipality of Sousa - PB. The specific objectives were to study these consequences in environmental and environmental criminal law through the performance of the Federal Public Ministry - MPF - in Sousa, with the help of the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources - IBAMA, after complaints of alleged practices harmful to the environment. environment, made by people to IBAMA. The justification for the research is that the São Gonçalo reservoir is responsible for human water supply drinking water, for an estimated population of eighty thousand inhabitants, in a region polarized by Sousa, and this occupation, together with the agricultural activity in the APP around that spring could harm the health of this population, in addition to threatening the existing vegetation in that APP , which as such, has the prohibition of building and suppression of vegetation (native or not) existing there. The methodology used was the qualitative approach, by consulting the bibliography, including the governing legislation, and the analysis of seven criminal actions brought by the MPF in Sousa, against the riverside people. The main results found were that Brazil is avant-garde in the legal protection of the environment (Forest Code, Decree 23.373/1934); the occupation of the APP under study took place on a regular basis, in view of the environmental rules of the DNOCS, not an invasion, as the MPF dealt with; the action of the MPF, with the help of IBAMA, which did not detect the clash between constitutional rights (right to housing, to work, human dignity versus a balanced environment). As a positive legacy, there is the cessation of agricultural exploitation of the APP on the bank of the São Gonçalo weir, which provided its preservation, due to the great resilience of the typical species of the Caatinga biome, resulting from the ability of (self) regeneration of these plants.