maio, 22 2025

By WWF-Brazil 

In its article 225, our constitution establishes:

“Everyone has the right to an ecologically balanced environment, which is an asset of common use and essential to a healthy quality of life, and both the Government and the community shall have the duty to defend and preserve it for present and future generations”.

Paragraph 1 of this same article details the specific obligations of the Public Authorities to ensure the effectiveness of this right. In other words: the Constitution not only recognises the right to a balanced environment, but also imposes on the Brazilian State the constitutional duty to guarantee this right.
However, this obligation of the State becomes unfeasible with the text of Bill 2159/2021 that was approved. This is simply the biggest setback in Brazilian environmental legislation in the last 40 years. If it actually comes into force, the Bill of Devastation opens the door to environmental tragedies, increased corruption and increased environmental and climate risk in the country.

The expanded use of the Adhesion and Commitment Licence (LAC) for medium-impact projects, in practice, introduces a self-licensing system that bypasses proper technical assessments, directly contradicting a Supreme Federal Court ruling that limited this instrument to low-risk activities only.

Another serious setback in the Devastation Bill is that it opens the possibility of the Government Council – a body lacking any technical expertise in environmental matters – to elect activities and projects subject to a simplified process. Access to less rigorous procedures, irrespective of the activity’s environmental risk or complexity and severity of the environmental risk of the activity or project is provided for by amendment 198, inserted today (May 21) in the Bill by the President of the Senate, Davi Alcolumbre. By reducing the transparency of the processes and allowing them to be guided by political rather than technical decisions, it definitively removes the instrument from the technical strictness necessary for the analysis of projects with potential impacts for the environment and for Brazilian society.

The approved text also seriously compromises the protection of quilombola, indigenous and traditional peoples and communities territories. By restricting the participation of bodies such as Funai (National Indigenous Foundation) to only indigenous lands that have already been approved, it ignores communities that are awaiting the conclusion of demarcation processes. This measure creates profound legal insecurity and doubly penalises indigenous peoples: first, due to the State's historic failure to demarcate their territories, and now, due to the exclusion of their voice in processes that directly affect their ways of life. The bill also blatantly violates the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consultation, guaranteed by ILO Convention 169, of which Brazil is a signatory.

 In addition to the direct socio-environmental impacts, such as increased pollution, deforestation and the risk of tragedies like the one in Mariana city, Bill 2159/2021 seriously jeopardises Brazil's environmental credibility on the international stage. As the country prepares to host COP30 in Belém, the approval of this bill sends a contradictory message to the global community. The text does not even mention the word "climate" and, if implemented, will make it impossible to meet the emissions reduction targets assumed by Brazil in the Paris Agreement.

Given the gravity of this situation, the Chamber of Deputies must – to which the text will return – assume its role as defender of constitutionally established rights and legislate in favour of the best interests of Brazilians.

Environmental protection and respect for the rights of all Brazilians, including traditional peoples, cannot be sacrificed in the name of an archaic, predatory and exclusionary model of development, which benefits a few at the expense of the natural heritage of all Brazilians. WWF-Brazil will continue to mobilise, together with other civil society organisations, to denounce this serious setback and fight for the preservation of our biomes and for socio-environmental justice.

About WWF-Brazil

WWF-Brazil is a Brazilian NGO that has been working collectively with partners from civil society, universities, governments and companies throughout the country for 28 years to combat socio-environmental degradation and defend the lives of people and nature. We are connected in an interdependent network that seeks urgent solutions to the climate emergency.