Análise dos riscos e da vulnerabilidade socioambiental urbana, face ao desenvolvimento desordenado e a pressão aos recursos hídricos em Belém-PA

Abstract

Studies have been demonstrated how the disorderly process of urbanization can be harmful to a city, bringing in a lot of cases incalculable damages to environment and for the society in a largest context. The pressure above the water resources is able to change even the water cycle (Garcia & Sanches, 2009), damaging the natural water process of renewal and the availability of water to the same society that generates the impacts. Belém and its metropolitan area has been growing exponentially bringing several problems to the population and environment. Carvalho (2015) understands the environmental risks as a result of “the association between the natural risks and the risks arising from natural processes aggravated by human activity and land occupation”. Therefore, risks and vulnerability caused by natural phenomenons and/or by human activity, historically, are considered impacts, that revealed in different areas or places, establish as places without previous planning, mainly affecting low-income populations. It can be observed that Belém, despite being in a region predominantly abundant in fresh water, due to the urbanization process that has been facing, may suffer from compromised water resources, needing urgent measures to raise awareness and direct management actions for the solution of conflicting situations of qualitative availability of compromised waters in the urban basins, minimizing possible risk situations and environmental vulnerability for he populations around these areas (Macedo,2003). Thus, it becomes necessary the urgent definition of strategies to promote a better interaction between the environmental and urban politics and minimize possible institutional, political and conceptual barriers, also establishing a broad debate on how to direct such policies and encouraging society's participation in dealing with the public authorities to have a more harmonious relationship with the surrounding water resources.