Avaliação do licenciamento ambiental simplificado declaratório para atividades de baixo potencial poluidor no estado de Pernambuco

Abstract

The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Environmental Licensing (AL) are instruments of great importance for environmental management, even so, criticism is common due to the lack of clarity and uncertainty about their real benefits. In this context, the simplification and efficiency of these instruments have been recurrent concerns. Given the growing need for environmental agencies to seek improvements to optimize environmental licensing processes and establish simplified procedures for environmental licensing of projects and activities considered to have low polluting potential through the flexibility combined with advances in information and communication technologies, as well as the need to incorporate them into the environmental licensing procedure for greater speed and efficiency, this study sought to analyze the process of implementing the simplified electronic environmental licensing adopted by the State Agency for the Environment (CPRH) in 2012 for activities with low polluting potential, highlighting their possible difficulties and advantages. The analysis of the model adopted was based on the collection of primary data regarding the process of requesting and issuing (electronic) environmental licenses, procedures, quantitative and applied legislation and survey of secondary data related to the history of environmental licensing in Pernambuco, characterizing the implementation the declaratory simplified licensing in the state and in the other states of the Northeast, formulating proposals for improvements based on the results obtained. The difficulties and advantages in the licensing process were identified through the collection of primary data from the CPRH integrated environmental licensing system. It was found that after the implementation of the system there was an increase in demand and issuance of licenses, but there were also many licenses canceled due to non-compliance with document requirements. On the other hand, through simplification, the environmental regularization of many projects was made possible, in addition to the mapping and registration of several projects, which before the environmental agency was not aware of their existence, in addition to facilitating the streamlining of licensing processes issue of licenses but made communication between entrepreneurs and environmental analysts difficult. Among the proposals for improvements to the electronic simplified environmental licensing model to be presented later in a letter to the managers of CPRH and Recife City Hall (SEMAS), the presentation of basic documentation in the initial stage of the Simplified License application, review of the Conditions (Requirements and Requirements), creation of a permanent schedule of surveys by sampling for monitoring and monitoring of activities with low polluting potential, among others. It is concluded that the simplification has great benefits for the control of environmental licensing from the point of view of speed and agility, but it needs improvements and adaptations to make it more efficient to reduce the number of canceled licenses, enabling regularization of projects with low polluting potential