STRATEGIES TO SURPASS THE VULNERABILITY OF THE SMALL ISLAND STATES WITH FEW RESOURCES: THE CASE OF CAPE VERDE

The problem of small Island Developing States (SIDS) is quite recent, end of the 80s and 90s, still looking for a theoretical consolidation. SIDS, as small states in development, formed by one or several islands geographically dispersed, present reduced population, market, territory, natural resources, including drinkable water, and, in great number of the cases, low level of economic activity, factors that together, hinder the gathering of scale economies. To these diseconomies they come to join the more elevated costs in transports and communications which, allies to lower productivities, to a smaller quality and diversification of its productions, which difficult its integration in the world economy. In some SIDS these factors are not dissociating of the few investments in infrastructures, in the formation of human resources and in productive investments, just as it happens in most of the developing countries. In ecological terms, many of them with shortage of natural resources, but integrating important ecosystems in national and world terms, but with great fragility relatively to the pollution action, of excessive fishing, of uncontrolled development of tourism, factors that, conjugated and associated to the stove effect, condition the climate and the slope of the medium level of the sea water and therefore could put in cause the own survival of some of them. The drive to the awareness of the international community towards its problems summed up with the accomplishment by the United Nations in the Barbados’s Conference, 1994 where the right to the development was emphasized, through the going up the appropriate strategies and the Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of the SIDS. The orientation of the regional and international cooperation in that sense, sharing technology (namely clean technology and control and administration environmental technology), information and creation of capacity-building, supplying means, including financial resources, creating non discriminatory and just trade rules, it would drive to the establishment of a world system economically more equal, in which the production, the consumption, the pollution levels, the demographic politics were guided towards the sustainability. It constituted an important step for the recognition for the international community on the specificities of those states and it allowed the definition of a group of norms and politics to implement at the national, regional and international level and it was important that they continued in the sense of the sustainable development. But this Conference had in its origin previous summits: the Summit of Rio de Janeiro about Environment and Development, accomplished in 1992, which left an important document - the Agenda 21, in the Conference of Stockholm at 1972 and even in the Conference of Ramsar, 1971 about “Wetlands.” CENTRO DE ESTUDOS AFRICANOS Occasional Papers © CEA - Centro de Estudos Africanos 4 Later, the Valletta Declaration, Malta, 1998, the Forum of Small States, 2002, get the international community's attention for the problems of SIDS again, in the sense that they act to increase its resilience. If the definition of “vulnerability” was the inability of the countries to resist economical, ecological and socially to the external shocks and “resilience” as the potential for them to absorb and minimize the impact of those shocks, presenting a structure that allows them to be little affected by them, a part of the available studies, dated of the 90s, indicate that the SIDS are more vulnerable than the other developing countries. The vulnerability of SIDS results from the fact the they present an assemblage of characteristics that turns them less capable of resisting or they advance strategies that allow a larger resilience to the external shocks, either anthropogenic (economical, financial, environmental) or even natural, connected with the vicissitudes of the nature. If these vulnerability factors were grouped with the expansion of the economic capitalist system at world level, the economic and financial globalisation, the incessant search of growing profits on the part of the multinational enterprises, the technological accelerated evolution drives to a situation of disfavour of the more poor. The creation of the resilience to the external shocks, to the process of globalisation, demands from SIDS and of many other developing countries the endogen definition of strategies and solid but flexible programs of integrated development. These must be assumed by the instituted power, but also by the other stakeholders, including companies and organizations of the civil society and for the population in general. But that demands strong investment in the formation of human resources, in infrastructures, in investigation centres; it demands the creation capacity not only to produce, but also to produce differently and do international marketing. It demands institutional capacity. Cape Verde is on its way to this stage.

Extracção de areia na praia de Calhetona (Ilha de Santiago, Cabo Verde): causas, processos e consequências

A extracção clandestina de areia, nas faixas costeiras e nos leitos das ribeiras, tem sido prática de muitos agregados familiares cabo-verdianos. Nas últimas décadas, a praia de Calhetona (Ilha de Santiago) foi um dos muitos locais que sofreram degradação ambiental significativa, devido à realização desta actividade sem quaisquer planos de extracção e de posterior recuperação das áreas degradadas. Este trabalho, através da conjugação de recolha de dados por inquérito, observação directa e pesquisa documental e bibliográfica, teve como objectivos a caracterização da comunidade (que habita no bairro de Ponta Calhetona) que se dedica à extracção de areia na praia de Calhetona, a descrição da dinâmica da actividade extractiva, a avaliação da percepção que a comunidade tem relativamente às consequências da sua actividade e a descrição do impacte ambiental resultante da extracção de areia. Da análise dos inquéritos, efectuados em Fevereiro de 2012, a 25 chefes de agregados familiares que efectuam a extracção de areia na praia de Calhetona, constata-se que estes são maioritariamente mulheres, predominantemente com idade compreendida entre os 40 e os 59 anos, domésticas, com baixa escolaridade, com famílias numerosas e/ou alargadas a seu cargo e dedicando-se à extração de areia à mais de 10 anos. Os inquiridos, face à situação de vulnerabilidade económica, à falta de emprego e à grande procura de areia para a construção civil, vêem nesta actividade uma fonte de rendimento. Contudo, o proveito obtido desta actividade difícil e potencialmente perigosa é reduzido. Quem efectivamente beneficia são os camionistas que compram a areia a quem procede à extracção e a vendem ao consumidor final pelo dobro do preço. Os inquiridos demonstram uma consciência generalizada dos diversos impactes ambientais negativos resultantes da sua actividade, mas alegam que a extracção de areia é uma das poucas alternativas existentes para providenciar o sustento dos seus agregados familiares. Com base na comparação do estado actual da praia de Calhetona com relatos de habitantes locais, relativos às características da mesma no passado, verifica-se que nos últimos 40-50 anos, desde que se iniciou a intensa extracção de areia nesta praia, o seu aspecto físico se degradou claramente. Essa degradação caracteriza-se principalmente pelo recuo da linha de costa, pela quase ausência de areia e pela salinização dos solos localizados nas proximidades da praia, para além dos consequentes impactes negativos sobre a desova das tartarugas e o turismo balnear.