Construção e incorporação do espaço marítimo brasileiro : a plataforma continental jurídica e sua integração territorial.

Abstract

The Brazilian Legal Continental Shelf constitutes the spatial unity of research of the present thesis, whose interest faces towards the ways of how this space is being territorialized and integrated to the terrestrial portion of the Brazilian territory. The role of the rules is analyzed in various dimensions – the technical, geopolitical and economical normalization – in the process of expansion of the Continental Shelf and of its territorial integration to the country along the historical process. It aims to answer the problem: How do the processes of the Continental Shelf expansion and institutionalization and of its integration to the national territory happen?. In the descriptive interpretative research is adopted, as the main reference, the categories and concepts approached in the theoretical references, which are led by the perspective of historical and social production of the geographic space, as proposed by Milton Santos and, what comes to the territorial integration it is adopted, in majority, the definitions from Gianfranco Pasquino. In order to operate methodologically the research problem, it is established a certain periodization to identify three periods: 1) Brazil Colony until 1929; 2) from 1930 until the year of 1979; and 3) 1980 up to current days. In the first period delimited until 1929, it is explicit the existence of territorial integration of the sea space only in a territorial portion occupied and colonized with the participation of Portuguese people. It is highlighted that the ultramarine Portuguese colonization of Brazil resulted from the marine migration, revealing the use of the sea to the migratory process. It is emphasized that the reported uses of the sea were made available by the techniques, which allowed objects, for example, the ships to realize seaway navigation in the ports of the Brazilian coast and became instrument of infrastructure and of territorial integration. In the second period, it is registered the preoccupation of integrating the Brazilian economical archipelago front the 1929 crisis, through innumerous policies and actions which aimed to guarantee the territorial occupation and integration mainly the terrestrial parcel of the Brazilian territory. Brazil has realized the extension of the Territorial Sea from 12 to 200 nautical miles in the year of 1970. Thus, when increasing this limit, automatically, it enlarged the extension of the maritime sovereignty, assuming a new geopolitical position in the international context. The State, by the means of technical and political rules, adopted actions to develop different sector of economy, especially for the petroleum exploration. For the third period, which englobes the moment of globalization up to the current days, to study how Brazil turns itself more effectively to the Sea. The preoccupation goes for the exploration and integration of a maritime space legally extended, aiming to guarantee the national hegemony over the natural resources base. The uses of the maritime space were implemented from the conjunct of rules and techniques, engendering a process of territorial integration with the sea. It is verified that the adoption of techniques aligned to idiosyncrasies of the globalizing scenery that permeated the State relations with the maritime space. Beyond the main techniques detected and the uses of the maritime space in the Continental Shelf, especially the exploration of oil and natural gas, it is highlighted the potentialities of the Sea use in case Brazil conquers, with UNO, the boundaries amplification of the Brazilian Continental Shelf. This thesis belongs to the line of research Territory, Planning and Sustainability, the Postgraduate Program in Regional Development at the UNISC.