Uma análise histórico-institucionalista da política ambiental brasileira : proposições rumo ao desenvolvimento

Abstract

Increasing pressure on the stock of natural resources (sparse sources of accessible energy and matter), provoked by the modern wave of "industrial production growth", as well as the problems of pollution and environmental degradation resulting from this production, have become more evident, and therefore more discussed, from the second half of the twentieth century. From this debate emerged the concept of ecodevelopment in the 1970s (later called sustainable development), expressing concern about the compatibility between economic growth and the availability of natural resources in the long term. At that time, the first institutions created to regulate the relationship between the environment and production appeared. In the end of the 1960s, US legislation established a mandatory Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) to support public policy decisions that could have negative implications for the quality of natural resources. In the early 1980s, the EIA was introduced into the institutional model of Brazilian environmental management. However, it was linked exclusively to environmental authorization procedures, used to support technical decisions on the environmental viability of projects. Thus, the environmental analysis occurs far from the most comprehensive decision-making levels, therefore, dissociated from long-term development strategies. The objective of this paper is to establish a distinction between the Brazilian institutional model of environmental regulation of production and the institutional model used in some developed countries, where an environmental analysis occurs first in the most strategic levels of planning systems.To achieve this goal, we seek support in economic theory about the divergences involving the use of natural resources for the development of productive activities, and the environmental impacts arising from this relationship. It will also examine the process of evolution of the environmental policies adopted by the Brazilian State and its implications in the institutional field. Finally, a critical analysis of the Brazilian environmental management model is presented, indicating appropriate institutional mechanisms to help integrate the environmental dimension into the suitable planning instances, with a view to positively influencing socioeconomic development.