After overturning Lula’s veto on environmental licensing, Environment Minister Marina Silva confirmed that the federal government plans to take the matter to court. Among the sections considered the most dangerous are the possibility of self-declaration of licenses for medium-impact projects and increasing the possibility of license exemption, as well as the transformation of bodies such as Funai, Ivan and the Ministry of Health into advisory entities only in the issuance process.
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All of these provisions had already been declared unconstitutional when the bill reached the Senate in May. On this occasion, a document highlighting the most important points of the project was prepared by the government leadership in the House of Representatives.
We are thinking strongly about (legislation). Because it is unconstitutional to ignore Article 225 of the Federal Constitution, which stipulates that all citizens have the right to a healthy environment – said the Environment Minister, highlighting that Brazilian environmental licenses “prevented hundreds of thousands of tragedies”.
Ibama President Rodrigo Agostino said that some topics had already been analyzed by the Federal Supreme Court (STF), such as the self-licensing hypothesis, and highlighted the risk of legal uncertainty:
— But Obama is undecided on these aspects of the judiciary. What I can say is that for some projects there may be a significant risk of legal uncertainty. If I’m an entrepreneur, if I’m investing, I don’t want a precarious license for my organization. I want a license where I can have legal certainty, where I can make investments, and which won’t be like challenging the license in court.
Federal MP Nilto Tatu (PT-SP), who heads the parliamentary environmental front in the chamber, also defends the government’s legal action:
-You cannot “comply” with a law that could be considered unconstitutional. He explained that he imagined launching a project that had a potential impact on an unspecified indigenous community and thus risking liability.
Furthermore, NGOs are considering taking the case to the special court. “In addition to being unconstitutional, it puts the health and safety of Brazilians at risk, leads to widespread destruction of our ecosystems and violates the climate goals of the country, which just hosted COP30,” a memo from the Climate Observatory said.