Nature conservation and/or industrial development

Industrial development has been, in many parts of the world, a sentence to condemn nature to a ravaging rhythm of destruction and disgrace. The lack of knowledge of the delicate relationships that sustain the equilibrium of local ecosystems leads to a series of aggressions against nature that causes damages hardly recoverable. Industries' chimneys and trees will not coexist if the industrial planners do not take into account, in their projects, the principles of sustainable development. In principle, two opposite attitudes can be assumed to face this unwanted conflict: either the industrial development process is conceived and planned to coexist with nature, conserving it, or the industrialization has to be aborted to maintain nature unchanged, preserving it like it is. That is the real divergence: to conserve or to preserve nature. This text intends to show that, when correct measures and precautions are taken before and during the process of industrialization of a given region (or a country), nature can be conserved, and we will be in the presence of a «win-win» situation. The examples given good and bad - have been selected from the process of industrialization that took place in Brazil in the last two hundred years. During this period several challenges had to be faced and new solutions have been conceived in order to take advantage of peculiar conditions prevailing in the country.