5.1 – Legislation
Figure 4 – Average score of the policies selected for the Legislation axis. It is foreseen for the implementation of the PNMSA actions the design of a legal framework within the state, municipal and micro watershed levels. Therefore, it is important to survey laws and rules already in place in order to avoid overlapping. Both PNMA and PNCDMES received high scores on Legislation axis (Figure 4) since these policies establish legal tools to provide environmental and socioeconomic adequacy at the regional level. The PNMA includes mechanisms such as Ecological Economic Zoning (ZEE) (Brasil, 2002) and the assessment of environmental impacts of potentially polluting activities. In the PNCDMS, in addition to the ZEE mechanism, there is a set of state-level survey of plans, programs and projects aimed at the recovery of degraded lands. Also important, the elaboration of State Action Plans to Combat Desertification and Mitigate the Effects of Drought undergoes legal enforcement (Annex 1). It is worth mentioning that the PNRH also received a high score within this axis (Figure 4). The PNRH is a decentralized policy with high territorial capillarity, which adopts regulation tools undertaken by participatory consulting bodies at lower levels, the watershed committees (IPEA, 2012). This governance model although increasing government authority on policy drivers at higher levels, reduces government authority on decision making for concrete actions at the local level (Ollaik and Medeiros, 2011). In the PNMSA, in addition to the integration of existing public policy mechanisms with a focus on surveying regional environmental and socioeconomic characteristics for soil and water conservation purposes, it seems to be essential to the PNMSA to include inspection system to ensure the sustainable use, management and conservation of soil and water in different regions of the country. The future policy must seek for mechanisms to integrate technical assistance and rural extension services, in order to correct inadequacies detected at the local level. In addition, it is showed on Table 1 the ideal proposition of a fund to receive financial contributions in order to invest in priority areas for soil and water conservation actions (Table 1). ´5.2 - Prevention Figure 5 - Average score for policies selected for the Prevention axis. An important line of actions for the future PNMSA is related to the prevention of soil and water degradation. Preventive mechanisms were found in the PNMA and Forest Code policies, which revealed the highest scores in this topic (Figure 5). Through the implementation of ZEE, the PNMA advances on territorial management improvements. This policy articulated, the production of relevant information for decision making, expanded, institutional bases for zoning projects and promoted open dialogues with sectoral policies. Concerns with environmental conservation units and indigenous lands should also be taken into account in the process of prioritization of prevention zones, as well as strengthening and expanding the connections between the role of ZEE in territorial and environmental management instruments at different levels (TCU, 2008). The Forest Code includes the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) as a mechanism allowing voluntary public electronic registration of land use and forest coverage of rural properties. This governmental system is applied to control, monitoring, environmental and economic planning and for fighting deforestation (IPEA, 2016). This mechanism also allows the availability of strategic information about environmental vulnerability and adequate preventive measures for decision making. However, the task remains challenging when bridging projects´ execution to real life situations focused on the implementation of the agreed guidelines. To overcome this gap the new PNMSA must foreseen mechanisms to reduce the time between zoning products generation and its integration into policy cycles, governmental planning and decision-making processes. The stock of soil and water preventive measures shall be ready when the technical stream of Kingdom´s multiple stream models is moving to open the window of opportunity and influence the agenda setting of territorial policies (Capella, 2018).