Protection of the Environmental and Cultural Heritage in the Lagoa Santa Karst: History and Challenges

The anthropic pressure over the use of Lagoa Santa Karst’s natural resources increased exponentially in recent decades. Simultaneously, a great effort to protect this complex and vulnerable environment sought to counter the surge in human presence and the impacts of economic activities in the area. The Lagoa Santa Karst located in the Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Region houses archaeological and paleontological sites of international interest as well as caves that are relevant for their multifaceted role, i.e., in the history of South American Anthropology and in the complex account of local conservation and sustainability efforts. The Lagoa Santa Karst, among all other Brazilian karst sets, is the most often researched and the best-documented example. However, this is the Brazilian karst region currently under the heaviest impact of anthropic activities, i.e., mining, industrial processing, and urban occupation. In recent decades, several attempts at regulation and sustainable development were partially successful. Other analogous efforts were never totally implemented despite legal planning. This article recounts and contextualizes the escalation of threats to heritage sites in the target area to the overall historical development of Brazilian Environmental Legislation. It underscores the existence of gaps and challenges for karst protection and recommends actions that may contribute to enhance the region’s environmental quality. The political and economic crisis since the late 2010’s may jeopardize the future of conservation in the Lagoa Santa Karst and in the rest of the country, as it poses yet another complication to an already defective set of legal practices that subsists despite the very advanced—in spirit—nature of the Brazilian environmental legal corpus.