Políticas públicas de concessão e manejo florestal: um estudo de caso comparativo entre o estado do Pará (Brasil) e New Brunswick (Canadá)

Abstract

The objective of this study was to describe the concession and management public policies of Brazil and Canada, to identify similarities and differences between them that may help in identifying problems in the concession management of Brazilian public forests. Descriptions of the forest policy of the province of New Brunswick and Pará were made through bibliographic and documentary research, consulting laws, rules, regulations and official websites, in order to identify those responsible for forest management, the instruments and criteria adopted in the management of natural forests, in order to establish comparisons with the procedures in force in Brazil for public forests. New Brunswick was chosen for comparison because it is the province with the highest percentage of forest area in Canada and because the forest sector is the province's largest industry and the state of Pará was chosen because it is the Brazilian state with the largest number of concessions in Brazil. The Canadian concession system is realized through contracts between companies and the provincial government, which is responsible for managing the province's concessional public forests, but companies are chosen through agreements without fair and competitive selection. In Brazil, the concession contracts are made through bidding where there is a contractual direction, different from the Canadian contract, which allows greater private autonomy. However, the elaboration of the New Brunswick management plan has greater complexity, which involves a larger structuring of planning and includes more specific faunal and ecological aspects. In the sustainable forest management plans of the Brazilian concessions, even considering the reduced impact method, there is no definition of management-related ecosystem principles and values as there is in New Brunswick. Concerning the sustainability of forest management in public lands under concession in Brazil, there is an imminent need for further investment in research directed at forest management and restructuring of public policies based on such research. Furthermore, even with a difficulty linked to the determination of future objectives in tropical forests, there is a need to define these objectives, in an attempt to guarantee the minimum of social, environmental and economic sustainability, in addition to updating the objectives in defined periods, resembling the adaptive management.