DECENTRALIZATION IN COASTAL MANAGEMENT: THE MUNICIPALIZATION OF BEACH MANAGEMENT IN CEARA STATE (NE BRAZIL)

The Brazilian public management model brings the perspective of distribution of competences, among the federation, states and municipalities. This administration structure aims to grant greater administrative autonomy to other scales, especially municipal management, with a view to democratizing citizen participation and promoting greater effectiveness of actions. Therefore, within the scope of coastal management, a series of strategies proposed in recent decades have adopted this perspective, the most recent of which is the proposal to transfer beach management, which aims to fill in the gaps that are still an obstacle to municipal autonomy. Thus, the objective of this research is to evaluate the municipal autonomy in the execution of coastal management strategies in the state of Ceara, focusing on the process of municipalization of beach management. To this end, the bibliographic review was used as a methodology, to contextualize the theme, the application of a questionnaire as a data collection instrument, aiming to obtain an overview of municipal autonomy in the performance of coastal management and documentary research in the digital archives of the SGCPU (formerly the Union's Heritage Department), aimed specifically at analysing the situation of the transfer of beach management in coastal municipalities in Ceara. It was found that, in the context of coastal management, there is a decentralization focused on the municipality, but not preceded by financial autonomy, which directly affects its administrative autonomy. In turn, the transfer of beach management, which works with a view to filling this gap, proves to be a promising strategy, although the real implications (positive or negative) are scarcely tangible, considering that these are the initial of implementation of the proposal.