Greenway Network: A Participatory Planning Approach for Municipalities of the South Region of Brazil

Abstract Development of greenways represent a planning strategy that seeks to reconcile both nature conservation and human uses. It is crucial for maintaining landscape connectivity in an increasingly anthropized world. Such strategy encompasses complex socio-ecological variables and its success greatly depends on the integration of different types of knowledge and active support from the local communities and stakeholders. This demands participatory planning processes within multidisciplinary platforms that promote a close collaboration between experts and lay people. The goal of this paper is to describe and analyse a participatory planning approach for the early-stage design of a greenway network for municipalities in South Brazil. The majority of southern Brazilian municipalities contain a very high rate of small farms which are under intensive agricultural production, and consequently, harming the natural landscapes. Actions to effectively tackle this problem are scarcely observed. The procedures encompassed by the approach were determined by the context constraints and potentials that make it applicable in the reality at stake. The approach is focusing on the early-stage design of a greenway network plan and comprises two phases with each a multi-stakeholder workshop for the local landscape analysis and the plan co-design by experts and local actors. The application of the approach in a municipality in southern Brazil has enabled local actors to use key concepts of connectivity planning and foster a critical reflection on local issues, and allowed the incorporation of local knowledge into the solution developed by participants. This resulted in a plan tailored to the local reality.