Contribuições da teoria ecológica para o licenciamento ambiental de estradas

Abstract

Although expensive and complex, the process for granting environmental licenses for roads and highway building and operation in Brazil has proved itself inefficient, since it underestimates the impacts brought by those structures on ecological process. The licensing process is complex and slow, requiring expensive procedures and studies from both entrepreneurs and license agencies. Its effects, however, are unable to assure efficiency on environmental quality protection. As a result, road and highway building projects exempt themselves from planning or considering environmental friendly alternatives on their conception. This study analyses the licensing process of a Federal Highway reputed by its builder as a model for environmental management. My analysis is based on the assumption that Ecological Science should establish the essential fundaments for environmental planning. In this context, environmental licensing is an important tool. On this case we studied, we’ve first found an important omission in the licensing process. It failed in assessing or even spotting the core of the coming impacts brought by the roads: how roads interfere on the ecological process and what we can do to comprehend it and avoid or minimize this interference. After that, this study proposes a method to improve the environmental licensing process for future enterprises and also for regularization and licenses renewal processes, in order to close this gap. If adopted, the Ecological Theory will increase effectiveness and efficiency on identifying the actual environmental impacts brought by roads and therefore give proper support to the task of designing the necessary mitigation measures. It also improves the monitoring process, assuring gains for environmental conservation. On the other hand, the adoption of Ecological Theory does not increase the complexity of licensing. Rather, this practice can result in a more objective process, since their rules will be previously known by all role players.