About 90% of projects licensed by state and municipal bodies – responsible for the vast majority of environmental licenses in the country – are classified as having a medium impact, and therefore, all of their work can only be licensed with a self-declaration from the project owner, as stipulated in the new Environmental Licensing Law. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vetoed this section last August, but Congress returned this clause to the text after overturning his veto last Thursday.
- Holding companies, offshore companies and shell companies: Revit Wealth Hide Series
- Marina Silva criticizes the abolition of the veto by Congress: “The goal was to protect people’s lives.”
This statistic was cited by the head of the state of Obama, Rodrigo Agostino, who warned of the danger of the collapse of the national environmental licensing policy, which is considered one of the most protective pieces of legislation in the world and which has been praised at a time of the global climate crisis. Given the current dynamics in license applications and the new provisions of the law, the vast majority of operations will be self-declaring, Agostino emphasizes.
— For 90% of the licenses, what we will provide is self-licensing, which is a self-authorizing license. Almost all licenses implemented today are carried out by municipalities and states, and almost all are classified as moderate risk. So we notice, in general, a weakness in licensing, which is one of the main tools of national environmental policy – said Rodrigo Agostinho, who said that this statistic comes from data that states and municipalities routinely provide.
According to Rodrigo Agostinho, Ibama currently licenses 4,140 companies, while the state of São Paulo licenses 60,000 companies.
The General Law on Environmental Licensing (Law 15.190 of 2025) stipulates that enterprises classified as medium risk can benefit from the so-called Environmental License by Commitment and Commitment (LAC), which guarantees the immediate issuance of the license based on the self-declaration of the project owner. This clause was one of several clauses that Lula objected to last August, but it was returned to the text after the congressional session last Thursday.
In recent years, some states have already tried to enable LAC for medium-risk businesses, in state rules. But the STF decided that LAC is only constitutional for small, low-impact, low-risk projects. Therefore, this is one of the sections of the law that must be eliminated.
In addition to representing the largest licensed volume, medium-sized projects are diverse and broad in nature, including large enterprises and covering almost all industrial activities. Staff from the Rio State Environment Institute (Inea-RJ) explained to GLOBO that within large beverage, petrochemical, steel, power generation and pesticide plants, for example, there are activities that are usually classified as medium risk.
Large industrial facilities rely on different licenses to operate, from small to high-impact. Therefore, a portion of production, including essential activities such as oil refining, can be licensed as medium risk. These impact level standards may vary according to the rules of each state, which has the autonomy to determine the licensing standard.
— Medium impact projects represent a decent size within a wide range of activities. This makes this control more difficult, as there are many variables, explained one Inea employee, who warned of the danger of excessive self-statements. – When there are too many data and variables, control ends up suffering.
The most famous examples of projects licensed as medium-impact projects are the Mariana and Brumadinho dams in the state of Minas, which are the heroes of the largest environmental tragedies in the country’s history.
– It represents almost all of the industrial activity in the country, which could be a fine chemical company, a mining company or a steel company. Almost all of these activities are subject to a medium risk licence. Much of mining in Brazil is classified as medium risk, almost all agricultural activities as well, we have 5 million rural landowners in Brazil and in theory they would all need to obtain their environmental licence. – Augustine stated.
In the case of Ibama licenses, the minority refers to projects with medium impact, as the Institute mainly analyzes projects with very high impact, such as large hydropower plants, such as Xingu, or oil exploration in the tropical margin. For example, power plants may obtain a state or federal license depending on their generating capacity. Such as thermal gas stations. The location of the intervention is also one of the aspects taken into consideration.
Smaller works end up getting a decent size as well, as any small intervention, such as building a gate inside Tijuca Park, requires a license from Ibama, who is responsible for the conservation units.
Thus, activities with medium impact, almost all industrial, represent 16% of Ibama’s licenses, according to statistics provided by the institute to Globo. However, there are still relevant cases. In the operations analyzed this year only, there are mining projects to extract sand; Small hydroelectric power station. marine waterway station; It is a project on the Autopista Fernão Dias, which connects the cities of Belo Horizonte and São Paulo. All of these were rated as having a moderate impact.
When she participated in the public hearings that discussed the new licensing bill, at the beginning of its processing, Solly Araújo, public policy coordinator at the Climate Observatory, was able to analyze how the majority of state industrial licenses were classified as moderate risk.
– The National Congress has just buried environmental licenses. In addition to the criminal setbacks in environmental legislation, with oversimplification and priority for self-licensing, the provisions that returned with the abolition of the veto contradict the rights of indigenous people and quilombola, give a blank check to subnational entities to do whatever they want with licensing, restrict the field of application of environmental licensing and reduce the liability of financial institutions, among other absurdities – said the expert.