Combater as secas e defender as florestas a natureza nos desafios da ciência e da técnica para modernizar o Brasil (1889 a 1934)

In the first decades of 20th century the just instituted Brazilian Republic faced the challenge to modernize the country. Considering that the progress was associated with the exhaustion of the forest reserves and with climatic changes, two big issues were seen as fundamental: To Fight the Droughts and To Defend the Forests; headed by professionals who were dedicated to these ideals. This research starts from the premise that these were the main challenges enforced by nature to the Brazilian development; the general objective was delimited in the search to understand the meaning and the conception of the natural world by this group of professionals who faced the shock between modernizing the country and conserving its natural resources. Aiming to contribute with the construction of the Brazilian environmental history and to bring historical elements to the debate about the environment in the country, the author concentrates his attention to the analyses, the discussions and the actions that preceded the regulation on the use of natural resources and the implementation of the environmental legislation in Brazil, occurred in 1934. The investigation uses as methodological basis the theoretical directions of environmental history, using sources of data still little explored and valued. In such way, it is taken as starting point some published papers about this subject during the period between 1889 and 1934 in two technical magazines the Revista Brazil Ferro-Carril and the Revista do Club de Engenharia. National engineering played a basic role in this process while arguing, projecting and constructing the development. The formulated proposals, after being divulged, had fomented the interchange with other professionals and had favored the advance of ambient questions in Brazil, in the sense to preserve natural resources, to construct more harmonic relations between the society and the nature and to equate the development with the environment preservation

Meio ambiente e planejamento: a relação cidade-natureza nos Planos Urbanísticos da cidade de Natal no século XX

This research studies the relation between city and nature in the urbanity s plans from Natal RN, Brazil, during the 20th century. Investigates and analyses the main documents that bring environmental s ideas inside from the urbanity s plans of Natal; gives the historical and economical situation from the city in each period studied; features the urbanity s plans, using categories of analyses to comprehension of this instruments. Try to contribute in the bigger process of historical rescue of Natal, and stimulates new studies. It was used documental s research, and bibliographic material. It was identified four (04) kinds of plans: the ones that focus in health and aesthetic (1901, 1929, 1935) technology and science (1968), zoning and control (1974, 1984) and environment. The hints founded shows that environmental ideas were put inside of the plans by government demands, especially in 1994 s plan, almost always without popular contribution and without this population get understands its meanings and implications