Geoconservation under the legislative optical: A comparative analysis of national and international laws on the protection of geological heritage

Abstract

Geoconservation is a recent concept which refers to the protection of important exemplars of geodiversity. Protecting certain geological elements is important and necessary as they contain important information about the evolutionary past of our planet. This is a topic that is gaining more and more space in geology; in parallel, legal protection of the geological heritage has been contemplated in the legislation of many countries, mainly in Europe. This work presents a comparative analysis between Brazilian laws and the laws of Great Britain, Spain and Portugal, regarding the protection of geological heritage. For this purpose, an extensive bibliographical survey was carried out on the subject, as well as consultation of the national and international laws that refer to the protection of the abiotic nature. It was found that international laws have been addressing this issue, with the definition of essential concepts and predicting laws and projects that meet the geoconservation proposal. In these countries, a survey was conducted on each geological site, followed by a detailed characterization and subsequent proposition of appropriate protective measures. On the other hand, Brazilian laws are still far behind in relation to this subject, and geological protection is only indirectly addressed as a substrate of biodiversity.