Geodesign in the Shared Decision to Create Full Protection Conservation Units, as a Mitigating and Compensatory Action for the Transformations of Iron Mining in the Landscape

The state of Minas Gerais, in Brazil, has iron mining as one of its main economic activities, a process whose nature is to transform the landscape. Due to serious environmental disasters, discussions about counterpart actions, environmental protection and recovery had increased interest. Among the environmental initiatives, the possibility of creating Full Protection Conservation Units stands out, which may result of hierarchizing other types of existing conservation units, requalification and expansion of existing areas, or even the proposition of new areas to receive the benefit. The discussion about the definition of these areas is not trivial and requires specific knowledge about the area, its main characteristics, vulnerabilities and potentialities. The process requires, above all, sharing decisions that may result from listening to different sectors of society, through a process of co-creation. In this sense, an experimental academic study was carried out in the Piranga River sub-basin, an area seriously impacted by an environmental disaster in 2015. Although academic, the study invited representatives of society, related to institutions of economic, environmental and social activities. The Geodesign framework was applied through the creation of analytical maps of the area, organized in an SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure) and the workshop took place on the Web-Based GISColab platform, through the steps of enrichment of reading about the area, proposition of ideas, discussions and criticisms, measurement of compliance using proposed metrics, voting and decision. The study is an example of how Geodesign can give broad support to the decision to choose suitable areas for Full Protection Conservation Units.