Environmental quality and coastal zone: tertiary dynamics and environmental impacts in the coast of areia branca, rn

The city of Areia Branca-RN, city that tries minimally to explore, through tourism, its coast area composed by natural attractions, has been target of politics that view to transform it into a touristic destination of the Costa Branca region. Considering the current pretension of public and private power to make Areia Branca-RN one of the touristic destinations of the region, and the real environmental impacts that such activity tends to cause, it has emerged the problem which orientates this research: which environmental impacts, resulting from the hosting and food service offers, can be observed along the areiabranquense coast? Methodologically, the study was accomplished through bibliographical, documental and field research. The field research was accomplished through application of questionnaires with 32 entrepreneurs of the tertiary sector of Areia Branca's waterfront (hotels, inns, bars and restaurants). It was also carried out a lifting and description of touristic activities along the waterfront, through a check list of the environmental impacts observed in loco. Finally, it was performed an interview with the local public power. As results, it was noticed that, although touristic activity is still limited, amateur and incipient in this spatial cutting, it is possible to observe certain types of damage to the environment, mainly resulting from irregular constructions, sanitary exhaustion problems and bad management of solid residues. Such impacts are still smaller, in quantitative terms, if compared to the dynamics of consolidated touristic destination; however, it is possible to perceive the environmental inadequacy happening in the waterfront of Areia Branca, the low effectiveness of public power to supervise the area and most importantly, it reveals a perspective of space production minimally worried about the basic principles of a competitive tourism in terms of environmental quality.