Tatiana, Walter

The socio-environmental impacts and conflicts resulting from the implementation of offshore oil and gas industry in Brazilian coastal zone (Walter et al, 2019) are often responsible for creating numerous challenges to the territorial security of artisanal fishery communities (Melo, Tometich, Walter and Umpierre, 2024) and for greater accuracy require a critical lens of socio-environmental impact assessment (Walter, Caldasso and Verly, 2023). Although Brazilian environmental licensing is able to support a certain level of self governance in the context of traditional artisanal fishery communities by setting license conditions such as the implementation of regional environmental programs (24º article of MMA, nº 422, 2011), the public private institutional arrangement is a complex matter in relation to commons management by artisanal fishery communities. Therefore the posed research question is in what measure territorial security instruments can support the maintenance of commons (waters and fish stock) management done by artisanal fishery communities in the past century that have been impacted by offshore oil and gas industry on Brazilian Coastal zone? The methodology used is the case study that according to Yin (2001) allows research into a contemporary phenomenon within its real context, in a situation based on various sources of evidence in an investigation that can benefit from previous theoretical propositions to conduct data collection and analysis. The preliminary results show that strengthening territorial security can address commons management challenges such as water management, but it is not possible to observe the impacts on fish stocks. The final paper intends to consider Ostrom principles of long enduring commons organizations and the territorial securities dimensions in order to provide a better framework analysis for Brazilian environmental licensing public policy.