HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT FOR BRAZIL - 1996
 

The basic options for the new model and probable scenarios of economic growth having been noted, the Report examines the strategic options for the country and suggests that together with stabilisation and the return to economic growth, the strategic priorities will be:

. in the ambit of social policies, basic education, manpower training and the fight against poverty;

. in the ambit of economic policy, the expansion of jobs;

. in the ambit of environmental policy, the perfecting of the instrument of management.

Although the importance of education is unanimously acknowledged, the results of the educational efforts carried out in the last few years are still not very satisfactory, and this is evident from the high rates of repeats and the low levels of teaching quality. However, it is not just a question of giving more financial resources to education. The low efficiency of the educational system and quality of teaching should be dealt with through coordinated actions of the federal, state and municipal governments aimed at conferring priority on fundamental education, the lifting of the school level of the low income population, and improvement in teaching quality.

Given the relationship between poverty, illiteracy, repeats, and school dropouts, formulation of policies directed towards the poorer contingents of the population is needed.

To ensure the improvement in teaching quality, it is necessary to provide the schools with installations, equipment, textbooks, and a trained teaching staff, as well as a continuous process of pedagogic innovation, a permanent evaluation of results, and stimuli for a better performance by teachers and pupils. The creation of jobs depends on the return of a sustained growth. Nevertheless, the growth in itself will not be sufficient to guarantee the creation of jobs in the required quantity to absorb the offer of manpower.

What is needed is to combine the return of growth with specific policies for job generating, particularly the so-called active policies of the labour market, destined for the smooth functioning of this market.

These policies include: job placements through an efficient system of manpower allocation; training of the unemployed for relocation in posts of higher qualification; and the direct creation of jobs through support to intensive economic sectors in manpower, chiefly the small and micro firms, farming (which, besides absorbing low qualification workers, alleviate the pressure for jobs in the urban centres) and investments in infrastructure.

As for management of the environmental policy, the Report stresses the need for increasing the interaction between agencies of the same level and between distinct levels of government, incorporating the environmental dimension in the decision-making process in relation to national, sectorial and regional policies.

It is also necessary to enhance the mechanisms of environmental management, complementing the recourse to the legal restrictions of command and control with the adoption of economic instruments that promote the internalisation of the environmental costs in activities of production and consumption, in order to change the pattern for the use of the natural resources and services.

The last part of the Report is devoted to the struggle for access to the Courts, the participation of the public legal services in this process, and the advance in the organisation of civil society.

 

The map above illustrates the configuration of the country indicated by the Human Development Index (HDI), characterising the existence of three "Brazils": (i) the first, composed of eight States (Rio Grande do Sul, Federal District, São Paulo, Santa Catarina, Rio de Janeiro, Paraná, Mato Grosso do Sul and Espírio Santo), shows a high level of human development, in accordance with the parametres defined by UNDP for international comparisons; (ii) the second, a zone extending in the northeastern direction from Minas Gerais, embracing five other States (Goiás, Mato Grosso, Rondônia, Amazonas and Roraima), and also Amapá, situated in the higher layer of the strata of the average human development; (iii) the third, uniting ll States (Pará, Acre, Tocantins and the States of the Northeast region) show a more reduced level of human development.

The following graph indicates the portion of the Brazilian population inhabiting each of these "Brazils", revealing that about half are in the States with a high level of human development.

Brazil: Population and HDI (IDH) in 1991

 

 

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