Efeitos e desafios da pandemia da Covid-19 para a economia de praia: o caso do negócio de barracas no Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Abstract

In 2020, the rapid spread of Covid-19, a disease caused by a highly contagious virus, led many governments to adopt measures of social distancing, including the suspension of activities considered non-essential and the closure of public spaces. In Brazil, a country that is distinguished by sun, sea and sand tourism (3s), the effects were immediate in the months of March, April, May and June: closed beaches and the suspension of all economic activities linked to it. This article seeks to understand the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on a traditional sector of the beach economy in Rio de Janeiro, the “tent business”. For that, we analyzed: 1) the organization of this sector in the pre-pandemic period; 2) the legal measures adopted to contain the spread of the new coronavirus and which affected the uses of beaches; 3) the effects of the pandemic on the daily lives of beach workers 4) the challenges for the resumption of activities in the post-pandemic period. The data used in this research are the result of surveys and fieldwork carried out in the period before the pandemic and the application, during quarantine, of semi-structured interviews, via social networks, with owners and employees of tents on the beaches of the city's waterfront. For this study, the normative measures that affected the beaches of the city of Rio de Janeiro during the pandemic were also analyzed. As main results, we highlight, first, the importance of the “tent business” in the economic circuits associated with Rio beaches, as well as the role that tents play as poles of concentration of bathers in the sand strip. Regarding governmental measures of social distance, we noticed that the beaches were one of the areas affected for the longest time by the suspension of activities and that, until the total reopening occurred in October, the activities associated with the solarium, such as the “tent business”, were those that presented a more uncertain horizon of recovery. The impacts on the daily lives of the owners of the tents and their employees were enormous, with the vertiginous decrease of their incomes and the difficulties of finding alternative occupations. These effects were partially offset by the adoption of assistance measures by governments and the creation of support networks involving beachgoers, both Brazilian and foreigner, as a result of a relationship built over the years with stallholders and other beach workers. Finally, from a comparative exercise with other situations in the world, we highlight the challenges that are already being faced for the adoption of new ways of ordering the uses of beaches in the post-pandemic world.