A APIS, Ação Picinguaba Sustentável, criada em janeiro de 2008, é uma associação sem fins lucrativos que tem como objetivo desenvolver projetos de educação ambiental, arte-educação e preservação do meio ambiente. Somos movidos pela visão de que a sustentabilidade só é possível se buscar um equilíbrio harmônico entre meio-ambiente, comunidade/cultura e economia. Nosso objetivo é realizar ações concretas em Picinguaba, para preservar e ampliar o equilíbrio da comunidade residente com seu meio-ambiente.
C O N T A T O / C O N T A C T
ANNA MARIA ANDRADE, coordinator.
annamariandrade@hotmail.com
Tel> (12) 9602-6267
APIS - Action for a Sustainable Picinguaba.
The NGO is called the APIS, which stands for ACAO PICINGUABA SUSTENTAVEL. The NGO is structured as a non-profit organization and is being registered. Its main objective is to promote through concrete actions with the local community a balanced future for the community and the nature in the extraordinary site of Picinguaba, where man and nature still live in harmony.
annamariandrade@hotmail.com
The village of Picinguaba is situated on the "Litoral Verde" ("Green Coast") of the state of São Paulo, in south-eastern Brazil, in-between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and belongs to the municipality of Ubatuba. Inhabited by a community of Caiçaras who continue to live almost exclusively off fishing, the village has remained relatively isolated for several centuries.
The opening of a new road at the end of the 1970's gave Picinguaba a fresh economic dimension and other opportunities, but also led to the emergence of damaging effects upon the village"s environmental and cultural heritage.
The village was attached, in 1979, to the Serra do Mar National Park, which was itself founded in 1977 in order to protect the Mata Atlântica/Atlantic Coastal Rainforest ecosystem, considered to be one of the most biodiverse on the planet; a section of this rainforest is classified by UNESCO as world heritage. The village itself was in its own right declared as architectural heritage in 1983; as a consequence planning permission laws have been implemented so that their Caiçara architectural style is preserved.
Thanks to these measures, Picinguaba continues to be an exceptional place, owing to both its rich natural environment, and its preservation of a traditional way of life.
Around 500 people live in Picinguaba today. However, although it is small, the challenges that the village faces are very much global ones; this essentially revolves around man's struggle to maintain a balance between himself and nature, and avoiding destroying his own means of subsistence. The population increase experienced in the last 30 years, coupled with the possibility of tourism development, have posed a threat to its local ecology, and increased the risks of environmental damage and general deterioration.
APIS has been created with a view to using the system to ensure the long-term preservation of the region, in the hope that economic development can continue to take place without damaging the environment.
The small scale of Picinguaba allows for the vision of it maintaining its economic structure, based upon traditional fishing and high-level tourism, whilst also ensuring a satisfying quality of life for its inhabitants, and preserving its natural and cultural wealth.
APIS proposes to promote a balanced vision of the future upon Picinguaba and to help to try and create a strong conscious community. This in turn might hopefully inspire other sites, and with success come to serve as an example of Brazilian sustainability.
