Land and Use and Occupation in the National Serra da Canastra Park: an Analysis Based on Land Regulation

Abstract

The aim of this work is to present an account of the Serra da Canastra National Park (SCNP), aligned with the territorial disputes and the current use and occupation of land in this area, mainly due to the land regularization of this Conservation Unit  since 2010. Methodology was based on bibliographical/documentary analysis, on Geotechnologies (Remote Sensing and Geoprocessing) and fieldwork for understanding land cover and land use in the SCNP (regulated and non-regulated area). This research showed how contradictory the current land scenario of Serra da Canastra National Park regulation is. In a spatio-temporal line, different territorial disputes are verified, as consequence of the historical "land contradiction", which reflects directly on peasants’ life territorialized in this not regularized area of the Park. In another moment of the research, it is possible to infer that the peasants, who are mainly in the South part of the Park, maintain a land use anchored in a singular model of life, supported by a management that allows the current levels of conservation of the natural resources, in similar conditions to the Park of 71 thousand hectares. However, among the contradictions detected between the ICMBio and the legal strategies for territorial consolidation of this CU, there is a clear alliance between conservation-mining-agribusiness to expropriate the peasants, aiming to legitimize a Park, whose historical origins already reveal the violence of environmental conservation without people.