Pagamento por serviços ecológicos: uma estratégia para a restauração e preservação da mata ciliar no Brasil?

Abstract

This work is about a new concept of environmental law, overcoming the idea of a law strictly focused on standards for command-and-control to a law whose function is to promote, encourage, stimulate the ecologically correct conducts. In Brazil, the environmental law is composed almost exclusively of instruments of command-andcontrol and, even with all this legal and institutional apparatus, environmental degradation reaches alarming levels. This finding leads various sectors of society questioning about the possibility of adoption of instruments of positive incentive towards the preservation of nature. The approach chosen to address the issue of positive incentives is about one of the biggest challenges for nature conservation in Brazil today: the gallery forests. For the environmental law that approach is paradigmatic because, in spite of finding themselves legally protected since 1934, the gallery forests are still being systematically degraded. This is a scathing example of what happens with other environmental issues in the country. The degradation of gallery forests is one of the most urgent problems to be solved by Brazilian society, which depends on the ecological services they provide, whether in cities or in the field. The concept of ecological services enables the design of new mechanisms for the conservation of the environment, especially in private areas and regarding the value of indirect use of ecosystems, major barriers to the effectiveness of environmental law today. This concept has emerged an instrument able to operationalize the positive incentives for conservation: Payment for Ecological Services (PES). The PSE aims internalization of positive externalities and compensate the opportunity costs of those who contribute to the conservation of nature. The question that this study seeks answer refers to the possibility and conditions for the adoption of the PSE in Brazil as a positive incentive to those who preserve and recover the gallery forests. To that end, was carried out extensive literature search, particularly in foreign literature, because in Brazil the subject is new and lacks theoretical basis, particularly concerning legal aspects.