Governos locais para a boa governança ambiental

Abstract

Managing problems at the local level, especially those affecting the environment, which should be of the immediate interest of local communities and managers, lacks the principles of the efficient State, which are present in the concept of governance. Despite the evolution of the political autonomy of the Brazilian Municipalities as federated entities, observed from the Federal Constitution of 1988, contradictorily this sphere of government is not the most active public power in local environmental management. With a lagged National Environmental System, regulated by an even more outdated National Environmental Policy, local governments that should have a significant performance in environmental management do not receive proportional federative treatment in order to assume the leading role in local environmental management. In these almost 30 years in which the local sphere has received greater importance from the Federal Constitution in Brazil, the processes of decentralization of the environmental management implemented are characterized by the transfer of powers to the intermediate spheres of power, which in the Brazilian federative model are the States. These processes are incomplete and disconnected from the principle of subsidiarity, the primary value of the existence of citizenship and local autonomy, according to which the implementation of solutions by the entity closest to the origin of the problem reduces costs, bureaucracy and delay in the responses of local problems. The understanding that local impact is any and all potential or existing environmental impact that manifests itself as a result of the implementation and operation of an enterprise or activities, whose area of influence affects a single municipality, does not represent a strengthening of local power. SISNAMA, which should mitigate this problem and reduce local differences, still needs structuring and better political-institutional relationship among the various spheres of the Federation. In the Amazon, these inequalities have more serious consequences potentiated by the economic unsustainability of most municipalities. The data provided by MUNIC, and those collected by the state environmental agency from 2008 to 2016, were evaluated using multivariate analysis of variance techniques and evidenced the tendency of retrogression in the structuring of municipal environmental agencies. Among the factors that corroborate the lack of local environmental governance in Amazonas, it is undeniable the greater attention by the state licensing body to the municipalities closest to Manaus, as well as to the most populous ones. It contrasts with the lack of attention to medium and small municipalities, including those that have significant economic activities in the primary sector, such as Apuf and Boca do Acre. On the other hand, Manaus has been reducing its performance in licensing meanwhile the state licensing body has also been reducing attention to environmental licensing in the state capital. Therefore, at the local level, despite the proven responsibility of local governments for all the needs and impacts of human existence, there are no signs of good environmental governance in this sphere closest to the citizen. Nor in the short term can be seen landmarks of recognition of local power in this scenario, including the application of what the law determines as a local impact.