In order to enhance knowledge in economic, demographic, political and environmental changes taken place in the Brazilian territory in the last decades, the IBGE puts out the book Brazil: a geographic and environmental view of the early 21st century. Organized by geographer Adma Hamam de Figueiredo, the volume gahters nine chapters written by IBGE researchers address relevant topics of the contemporary scenario, reinterpreted in the light of geographic analyses, while it also updates the previous edition, launched in 1995.

The approach focuses on the territorial and demographic formation of the country, on the relationship between geography and urbanization, on territory occupation by agriculture, on local development and cultural diversity.

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Book contextualizes territorial and demographic formation of Brazil

The first chapter, Territorial formation, addresses the processes of settlement and regional construction, pointing out the paths leading to the territorial unity of the country, through the ideals of modernization, development and national project. The settlement process keeps until nowadays the geographic division historically established between a densely occupied coast and the insides of the country, where the more populated areas are defined by axes, waterways and urban conglomerations.

Chapter 2, Brief overview of the demographic process, brings a reflection on the fertility transition of the country. The text makes a diagnosis of the changes seen since the 19th century, both in fertility (from 6.16 children per woman in 1940 to 1.57 in 2014) and in mortality (life expectancy at birth went from 33.7 years in 1900 to 75.4 in 2014). Those rates used to record high levels.

Such a critical change in the demographic patterns corresponds to one of the most important modifications seen in the Brazilian society, with reduction in the population growth rate (from 2.01% between 1872 and 1890 to 1.17% between 2000 and 2010) and changes in the age structure, with a lower growth in the number of children and teenagers (whose percentage was 42.6% in 1940, probably reaching 14.1% in 2050). Simultaneously, there was increase in the working-age population and in the elderly (4.1% in 1940, with a prospect of 29.4% for 2050).

Urbanization analysis tackles legislation and advanced services enterprises

The theme of chapter 3, Delimitation of urban spaces, shows that in Brazil the criteria for the definition of such spaces have been established on legal grounds, which makes them susceptible to political influence.

Another way of expanding those spaces is by emancipating municipalities, i. e., creating new cities. This issue alone sparks off intense debate, especially as far as financial aspects are concerned. There was an enormous expansion both in the number of cities (less than two thousand in 1940 and 5,565 in 2010) and in the number of urban population in the country between 1940 and 2010.

Territory is described from the point of view of agricultural occupation and environmental diversity

Chapter 5, Brazilian rural space evolution, encompasses the period from 1940 to 2006, in which the structure and configuration of the agricultural producing process are consolidated in the territory. Along this period there used to be a persistent land ownership structure of high concentration, in which monocrops prevailed, despite the several support initiatives in favor of small producers.

This chapter gives an overview of the geographic rout of the space occupation process in the Brazilian rural area and approaches the evolution of the number of rural establishments, land use, considering the areas of the main productive activities, the total of employed persons, the number of tractors and the herd inventories, mainly cattle.

Chapter 6, Natural resources and environmental issues, analyses the increasing environmental damage and the harm of natural resources, which have brought up awareness of the effects of the human action on the environment and a gradual change in the actions of planners and decision makers. Different elements from the environment are addressed, discussed in an integrated way, according with the Brazilian biomes.

Chapter 7, A contribution to the geography of water resources, concentrates on the analysis of demographic, economic and environmental characteristics concerning superficial waters (the river basin districts) and groundwaters (the hydrogeological provinces), providing a preliminary view of two fundamental and complementary trends involving the uneven distribution of the water resources along the huge Brazilian territory.

The topic of social and environmental vulnerability points out to issues related to the strategic importance that information on the access and quality of water resources have to the advance of statistical quantification and geographic analysis of the population's living quality at a historical time of fast climate changes. There are spatial differences in the GDP concentration (which goes from R$ 1.6 billion in the Paraná river basin to R$ 28.1 million in the Parnaíba river basin) and, as a consequence, in the distribution of the economic activities among the river basin districts.

Local development and cultural diversity renew contemporary political agenda and geography

Chapter 8, Local sustainable development and environmental governance, contributes to the understanding of the contemporary Geography of Brazil, since public action on the territory reflects the political pressure that several society segments exert on local, regional and national levels. Civil society organizations represent the active intervention capacity of communities within the realities they live in. In 2010, there were in Brazil a total of 2,242 private foundations and non-profit associations (FASFIL) which carried out environmental and animal protection actions, representing just 0.8% of the total of the FASFIL of the country.

In the process of local development, new types of institutionality are also created. They are governance bodies that support this process or part of it. Such inter institutional articulations are analyzed by association modalities in the field of environment, such as public and administrative consortia between the federation entities, covenants of partnership with the private sector, support of the private sector or communities, programs in the environmental field developed in partnership with the federal government, etc.

Chapter 9, Diversity and cultural heritage, shows that many peoples have contributed to the formation of the Brazilian cultural identity, being present at the most remote parts of the territory. This set of peoples, according to their varied cultures, interact in a territory with six major continental biomes (Amazon, AtlanticRain Forest, Cerrado, Caatinga, Pantanal and Pampa), and the coastal biomes as well.

Such a natural condition provides for the development of other types of diversity resulting from the interaction between inhabitants and the environment, with traditional populations defining themselves by the belonging to the biome itself, as it occurs to the pantanal peoples and the caatinga peoples.

Another aspect of the socio-cultural dimension in Brazil, discussed in the chapter, is revealed by its linguistic diversity. Although Portuguese is the predominant language, there are several minor languages which coexist.

Chapter 4, Spatial patterns of advanced services to enterprises in the Brazilian urban network, characterizes the presence of 323.5 thousand support companies to enterprises in the urban network at national level. This kind of enterprise deals with the so-called cityness, a set of long-distance relationships that a city has with its partners, evidencing the level of sophistication of the local economies and of connection with the most dynamic companies.

They are also innovative activities and of high value added, which concentrate massively in São Paulo, a city that also is defined as a great managing hub of the networks of such kind (83.1 thousand enterprises of advanced services).