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Brazil’s Environment is at Risk with Threat of Taking Away the Environmental Licensing Law

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The environmental licensing laws in Brazil play an extremely crucial role in the protection of the environment when any potential infrastructure project poses a possible threat. However, a new environmental licensing law proposed by the Brazilian government presents many risks to the existing framework. According to an article from Folha de S. Paulo that was collaboratively written by eight former Environment Ministers of Brazil, Congresswoman Kim Kataguiri publicly announced that she will be delivering her new proposal of the General Environmental Licensing Law to the Chamber within the next week.

The responsibility of being an Environment Minister is to “help build the existing framework on licensing, always trying to reconcile the necessity of agility for environmental protection.” Now, the solutions from the new proposal not only completely disregard the fundamentals of environmental licensing but may also jeopardize the new land in the Brumadinhos and Marianas.

The sudden urge to change, and maybe even repeal, the current environmental licensing law comes principally from the industry and a portion of the agribusiness. This proposal has the support of the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro, an administration that has shown very little interest in improving the environment. The sole focus of Kataguiri’s proposal is to loosen the licensing requirements as much as possible in order to attract more enterprises. The proposal also includes a kind of “self-licensing” that does not require an environmental study, which would eventually apply to the paving of highways in the Amazon, leading to deforestation and violence.

The siege on licensing does not end in the Chamber as there are similar proposals in the Federal Senate, whose president, Davi Alcolumbre, states that he will not accept any setbacks in environmental policies or “deal with matters that may threaten forests and the traditions of indigenous people.”

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