[ad_1]
The Federal Justice of Rio de Janeiro today suspended the extinction of two resolutions of the Conama (National Council of the Environment) – chaired by the Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles – that defined the permanent protection areas (APP) of mangroves and sandbanks from the Brazilian coast.
“Given the obvious risk of irreparable damage to the environment, I would like to anticipate the effects of the protection of suspending the effects of the revocation considered at the 135th Ordinary Meeting of Conama,” wrote Judge María Amélia Almeida Senos de Carvalho, of the 23rd Court Federal of Rio de Janeiro, in the decision.
The precautionary measure responds to a popular lawsuit filed by lawyers Juliana Cruz Teixeira da Silva, Leonardo Nicolau Passos Marinho, Renata Miranda Porto and Rodrigo da Silva Roma against the Union and Salles.
They argued that the repeal of resolutions 302 and 303, both of 2002, “violates the constitutional right to an ecologically balanced environment”, guaranteed in article 225 of the Constitution, as well as the National Environmental Policy established in the law 6.938 / 81. and the Forest Code (law No. 12.651 / 12).
Yesterday, when explaining the extinction of the rules, the government stated that these resolutions were protected by laws that came later, such as the Forest Code. Environmental experts noted, however, that these rules still apply today, because they are the only legal instruments that effectively protect these areas.
Last month, for example, Cetesb (São Paulo State Environmental Company) lost a lawsuit and was forced, through a judgment, to respect the limits established in the resolutions, “to avoid irreparable damage to the community. and the environment “.
Ex-Ibama: “It is to pass the cattle”
Suely Vaz de Araújo, who chaired Ibama (Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) between June 2016 and January 2019, during the government of Michel Temer (MDB), followed the meeting of Conama in horror. According to her, those who work in environmental policy have never seen anything like what happened yesterday.
“What did the country gain from this?” Suely, who currently serves as a senior public policy specialist at the Climate Observatory, asked in an interview with DW Brazil. “You cannot understand why so much insistence on such a thing. Who is winning with it?”
He also criticized the new composition of Conama, now composed mainly of representatives of the federal government. Of the four chairs for NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations), Suely said, two entities that took over have already requested to withdraw.
“I think the last meeting showed how Conama is going to work. On almost every occasion, the minister has already passed the agenda directly to the vote, and someone always said that there had to be a discussion first. [Agora] The dynamics of the council is in the sense of passing the cattle, of voting the position that arises from the logic of the pact of the federal government with the business sector ”, he evaluated.
