Participação social e conflitos socioambientais nos planos de manejo das Unidades de Conservação marinho-costeiras do litoral paulista: uma análise lexical

Abstract

Management plans are central technical and political instruments in the governance of marine and coastal Protected Areas, and are expected to incorporate social participation as a structuring principle under Brazil's National System of Conservation Units (SNUC). This study aimed to analyze how the management plans of three Marine Environmental Protection Areas (APAs) along the São Paulo coast — Litoral Norte, Centro, and Sul — address social participation and socio-environmental conflicts, through a category-based lexical analysis. Key terms associated with four dimensions were quantified: social subjects, traditionality, socio-environmental conflicts, and social participation, followed by statistical treatment of the data (logarithmic transformation and min–max normalization). Results showed higher lexical density in the Litoral Norte APA, followed by Centro, with lower values in Litoral Sul. Social subjects were strongly associated with fishing activity, particularly the term “fisherman”, while references to traditionality and traditional knowledge were scarce across all three APAs. Socio-environmental conflicts were widely recognized but predominantly framed in technical-environmental terms, such as “impact” and “degradation”. Social participation appeared formally incorporated, mainly through references to consultations and management councils, though lexical analysis alone could not assess its practical effectiveness. The study concludes that management plans represent these dimensions unevenly across territories, with a predominantly technical-institutional language that tends to depoliticize conflicts and offer limited visibility to traditional communities, reinforcing the need for management approaches that more effectively integrate the cultural, territorial, and political dimensions of coastal communities.