Environmental sustainability of rural communities in environmental protection area

Abstract

It is common to see the Environmental Protection Areas (APAs) a conflicting relationship between the conservation of natural resources and communities inserted in them. Understanding that, in general, these communities should have a more mature environmental awareness due to the government's intervention to a balanced relationship with the natural resources and that they should result in improving the quality of life of these people, the question is: The rural communities inserted into APAs can be classified as sustainable communities? This question refers to the purpose of this article to discuss the sustainability of rural communities conditions inserted in the Environmental Protection Area, from the sustainable community design (EGAN, 2004). In order to validate the questions set, this article is directed to investigate the communities of Retiro and Tibina, assessed its environmental sustainability. The results indicate that social, environmental and economic realities of the communities included in the Environmental Protection Areas of context is a huge gap between what we propose or determine public policy related to protected areas and what is done in practice.