A pesca artesanal e o fundo constitucional do Norte: um estudo sobre o financiamento concedido aos pescadores artesanais da região bragantina

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to analyse social, economical and environmental impacts of the financing granted to craft fishermen from municipal district of Bragança, Pará, with resources of North Constitutional Fund — FNO. In Bragança, the fishing activity is the principal source of the municipal district economy, represented by industrial and craft fishing, however, the craft capture is more significant. Taking into consideration the economical and social importance of this category, it’s necessary to guarantee its social reproduction, through actions that allow to it to face challenges of the sea, and provide necessary ways to a condign life. The area in study is located in the north Brazilian coast, in reentrances of Pará and Maranhão, characterized by hot climate (monthly average of 26ºC) and vegetation dominated by swamp area covered with mangroves, representing about 53% of the total area in the country. The field work was developed through survey of informations with the financier agent: BASA — Amazonian Bank. Then, it was interviewed 38 of the 192 financed fishermen. A semi-structured questionnaire was used, toward to gather informations about socioeconomic profile, fishing features, fishing production, time of activity, as well as theirs opinions in relation to the financing that they had accomplished. It was observed that: i) the financed fishermen visualized the credit with help her condition but that didn't correspond to their expectations; ii) several associations of fishermen were created more by the need of obtaining of the credit than for the organization of the category; iii) they increased his production capacity with the obtaining of the motorized embarkation, however such didn't mean an increase in the medium term family income; iv) the number of embarkations increased, but it didn't cart a maintainable increase in the fishing production. It follows that this financing had their limits, which took to the failure, in relation to the objectives of FNO, as fund of local and regional development. That limits were: the elaboration of projects without effective participation of fishermen; absence of technical and continuous support; low schooling and little organization and political participation of the fishermen.