MODELAGEM ECONOMÉTRICA ESPACIAL DE UM ÍNDICE DE SUSTENTABILIDADE RURAL PARA OS MUNICÍPIOS DO ESTADO DE MATO GROSSO DO SUL

Abstract

Brazil is one of the biggest global players in Agribusiness. Its production of animal proteins, agriculture and agroindustry has been increasing its share in the country's exports and establishing itself as the main drivers of the economy. In this context, the State of Mato Grosso do Sul has established itself as one of the Federative Units with the highest growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), generating employment and income above national averages, with production from the countryside being the main responsible for these results. The challenge for the State and for its municipalities is to propose, implement and promote public policies that provide development in a responsible manner and in line with the best global sustainability practices. Monitoring these initiatives requires a set of procedures and tools made up of indicators and variables that reflect the performance of locations within the Dimensions of Sustainable Development: Economic, Environmental, Social and Institutional. However, the assessment system currently available in Brazil provides more robust data only in relation to urban centers, with application to rural areas only tangential. This finding led to the following guiding question: How to assess rural sustainability in Brazilian municipalities given the relative lack of specificity of available data? The answer to this question culminated in the Thesis: the assessment of the rural sustainability of Brazilian municipalities can be carried out from their spatial interactions reflected in a minimum set of representative data, officially published by the municipalities, or prospected by research entities. This being the general objective, the specific objectives were: 1) To present a literature review on rural sustainability indices and indicators; 2) Propose a Rural Sustainability Index (ISR) and apply it to the evaluation of Rural Territorial Development Poles (PETR) in France; 3) Incorporate a methodology to the ISR algorithm to reduce the size of the indicators that must be analyzed; 4) Propose a rural sustainability index based on spatial econometric analysis, and; 5) Validate the proposed index from municipalities for testing in the State of Mato Grosso do Sul. The achievement of the specific objectives culminated in the ISR, obtaining the following results on the analysis of the field studied: 1) There are formation of areas of rural sustainability associated with the largest economic centers of the State, especially in the center-south, characterized by the production of animal proteins and agriculture, and in the north and east coast regions, pulp and paper agroindustry, and eucalyptus; 2) Clusters of municipalities with lower rural sustainability indices can be seen on the western borders of the MS, associated with the exploitation of mineral resources and livestock; 3) Outliers with high rural sustainability are identified in regions with low ISR, as is the case of Bonito, and Jardim, Eldorado and Mundo Novo; 4) The spatial econometric analysis identified the overflow of rural sustainability with the epicenter in the productive poles, with effects beyond the neighboring regions, and; 5) There are, in general, better Scores in the Institutional and Environmental Dimensions, intermediate in the Social and lower in the Economic, evidencing greater economic inequalities in the rural sector between municipalities. At the end of the research, new studies are proposed that explore the sectorial indicators to identify opportunities for improvement in the municipalities, and the formal associations between them, to verify how joint action would contribute to the improvement of rural sustainability.