Potencialidades do turismo fluvial sustentável em rios urbanos: um estudo do Rio Capibaribe, Recife, Pernambuco, Brasil

Abstract

River tourism is a specific kind of tourism developed in aquatic environments like rivers, seas, canals and lakes through use of boats. Many cities in the world use this kind of tourism to generate economic resources. To keep it going through times, it is mandatory to cities to preserve natural resources and the original landscape, as well as to adapt and restore degraded places. Given this context, this work is a study of river tourism activity potential in urban rivers. Our main object of study will be the Capibaribe River and its urban stretch in Recife. Capibaribe River has a great cultural and historical importance to Recife, but has been set aside by the government, suffering from pollution and lots of eutrophic areas, starting from its source, located in the city of Poção, until its estuary, located in Pernambuco’s capital, where the river ends. Thus, the aim of this work is to prospect the exploration of tourism in Capibaribe River as a form to preserve it and bring back all its importance, long-lost to the city. This study will raise positive experiences of river tourism in Europe as reference to demonstrates the social and environmental problems that Capibaribe faces in its surroundings. All of this to identify, in the view of a tourist, attraction points and a sustainable river tourism route. For this, at first, secondary data were collected from Pernambuco State Environmental Agency, the CPRH, in the urban stretch of the river in Recife. With this data, a spatiotemporal quality analysis was made. It was found that the river is quite eutrophic in its passage through Recife, due to untreated wastewater discharges directly into the river. However, this situation is still reversible and the river has a great tourism potential, what stimulates its preservation and to restore its original form. Historical river files were researched to demonstrate its former importance to Recife’s population and it was found that today the River has many environmental problems such illegal occupation and removal of vegetation. Primary and secondary geotagged data was also used in this work to map the social and environmental problems, through the use of GPS Map Cam Software and LandSat TerraColor satellite maps, provided by ARCGis Earth. A qualitative and quantitative research with Recife’s population was also made to measure the acceptance of implementing River tourism on Capibaribe River. It was found a high level of interest among the people to implement tourism activities on the River and also the belief that both the river and the environment will benefit from that. Finally, this work suggests public action plans the government could use to highlight the River potential and solve or mitigate problems that were identified in the research