Congress tries to recreate PL of environmental licensing with amendments

The National Congress presented 833 amendments to the Provisional Measure (MP) of Special Environmental Licensing, edited by the government in conjunction with vetoes to the Bill (PL) 2,159/2021, called by Devastation PL environmentalists.

Survey of the Climate Observatory (OC) released on Thursday (18) shows that 74% of these proposals resume provisions rejected by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and 80% represent environmental setbacks.

With the maneuver, parliamentarians would not even have to examine the vetoes in joint session. The strategy would allow you to use MP as a shortcut to fully rebuild the project and include new devices without public debate or social control.

The Climate Observatory highlights some of the environmental setback amendments: resumption of adhesion and commitment license (LAC), “self -decline”; Emptying of technical bodies and social participation; worsening special environmental license by shortening steps and deadlines; weakening of the Atlantic Forest Law; Exclusion of non -approved indigenous lands, unconnected quilombola territories and traditional licensing processes.

“Social participation needs to be reinforced, either through a hearing in the territory or hybrid. What is not confused with prior consultation, which must also be respected. We defend the suppression of the political list of strategic enterprises, which they are linked to transparent environmental technical criteria. The law must function by administrative act, with robust conditions and not as a shortcut, a way to accelerate the procedural rite, a way to accelerate the process. Strict. He exists for one reason, which is to mitigate environmental damage, ”said Adriana Pinheiro, a political advisor to the Climate Observatory.

The Liberal Party (PL) was the one that presented the most amendments: 25% of those resuming provisions rejected by the government and 30.4% of those classified as an environmental setback. Party parliamentarians claim that they want to modernize and rationalize environmental licensing processes.

For Suely Araújo, Public Policy Coordinator of the Observatory, the creation of the Special Environmental License represents a constitutional risk.

“It will hardly be improved. It should not exist. One can accept the prioritization of the processes considered by the government, which already occurs in practice. But speeding up enterprises with high potential impact is to reverse the logic established by the constitution itself, which in the principles of economic order provides differentiated treatment according to environmental impact,” he says.

“PL of devastation”

On August 8, President Lula sanctioned with 63 vetoes the bill, approved by the National Congress. The Planalto argued that the measures would guarantee “environmental protection and legal certainty” and were defined after listening to civil society.
Supported by agribusiness and business sectors, the PL had been denounced by environmental organizations and the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MMA) as a serious environmental setback.

On the same day, MP 1.308 was also signed, which allows simplified licensing for projects and works considered “strategic” by the government. According to the Climate Observatory, the sport creates shortcuts for enterprises such as oil exploration at the mouth of Amazonas, the paving of roads and the release of other projects that would be approved by merely political decision.

OC recommends full rejection of the MP or the approval of substitute with social and environmental safeguards. The entity understands that, by instituting the single phase licensing modality (replacing the current process, in three phases and proportional to the impact of the enterprise), the MP represents the largest recent environmental setback in the country. Something that, in addition to direct damage to ecosystems, puts in check the image Brazil wants to overcome climate conventions in the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP30), scheduled for November, in Belém.

“PL is the opposite of what is expected of a country that wants to lead the climate schedule and will host COP30. This weakens Brazil’s credibility before partners, markets and multilateralism itself. And it is misleading with the discourse of becoming an environmental power and leading this discussion,” criticizes Adriana Pinheiro.