Mato Grosso approves environmental laws contrary to federal legislation
Proposal to reclassify the Amazon area as Cerrado
FABÍOLA SINIMBÚ - BRAZIL NEWS AGENCY REPORTER- Agência Brazil
Published on 17/01/2025 - 11:39
Brasilia
Awaiting sanction by the governor of Mato Grosso, Mauro Mendes, the complementary bill (PLC) 18/2024, authored by the state executive itself, is a threat to around 5,500 hectares of Amazon rainforest. The extent of the impact was calculated by the Centro de Vida Institute, a Civil Society Organization of Public Interest (Oscip) that works in the areas of environmental governance and public policies in the state.
“We're talking about a deforestation project that would be legally implemented within 10% of Mato Grosso's territory, according to the model developed by our territorial intelligence laboratory,” says Alice Thuault, the institution's executive director.
The proposal allows for the reclassification of biomes based on criteria that could lead to the understanding that the entire area of the Amazon is now considered Cerrado. “These are criteria that are not adopted by federal legislation, so, for example, if the average height of the vegetation in the area is greater than 20 meters, it would be considered Amazonian. If it's less than 20 meters, it would be Cerrado. This is not the correct criterion for delimiting biomes, and types of vegetation. And then they put it in a way that has the effect of reducing the legal reserve,” explains Suely Araújo, public policy coordinator for the Observatório do Clima (OC) network of environmental organizations.
The Brazilian Forest Code (Law 12.651/2012) determines the mandatory preservation of 80% of the Amazon, even on private properties, while the Cerrado's legal reserve is only 35%. With the proposal's sanction, what would change is the definition of biomes on rural properties, which could be evaluated and reclassified, including by samples collected outside the property, as provided for in Paragraph 2 of Article 2 of the approved text. “When it is not possible to carry out sampling on the property, areas located within a radius of up to 10 km (ten kilometers) from the perimeter of the rural property will be considered.”
According to Suely, the Brazilian environmental framework uses the biome classification of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), which takes into account many other factors besides the height of the vegetation. In addition, the measure disregards the fact that federal legislation covers the environment in the field of concurrent legislation, so although the three levels of the federation can legislate, states and municipalities must be more protective than the national standard, not more permissive. “The approved text, despite referring to the IBGE, in practice puts the possibility of imploding what you have in terms of delimitation by the federal government in the hands of sub-national governments [states and municipalities],” says the researcher.
History
Throughout 2024, the Mato Grosso Legislative Assembly approved a series of measures that confront federal legislation, such as Constitutional Amendment Proposal 12/2022, which limits the creation of new Conservation Units in the state, and bills 561/2022, which altered the State Policy for the Management and Protection of the Upper Paraguay River Basin; and 2256/23, which suspended tax incentives for those who adhered to the so-called Soy Moratorium, which prohibits the purchase of grain produced in deforested areas.
The judicialization of the proposals, by the Public Prosecutor's Office of the State of Mato Grosso or by opposition political parties, has already resulted in preliminary rulings by the Federal Supreme Court (STF), which deemed the rules unconstitutional. In Suely's assessment, the same should happen with PLC 18/2024, if it is sanctioned by the state government. “This will be judicialized immediately, as was the issue of the soy moratorium. Because it violates federal legislation, it violates the national understanding of the general rules on the subject, it violates how the delimitations of each biome are read,” she says.
Climate change
For Alice Thuault, the approval of a state law that goes against federal norms could even affect the international agreements that Brazil has made to reduce deforestation, such as the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) that Brazil has made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 59% to 67% by 2035. “Today, by implementing the Forest Code the way it is, the possibility of legally deforesting in Mato Grosso would be more or less six million hectares. Here we are doubling the possibility of opening up areas,” he says.
Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), also warns that the measure could also harm the state's rural producers in terms of international trade. “The Forest Code ends up bringing value, legal certainty to those producers who want to have differentiated production, to have their environmental regularization resolved. When we start to indirectly attack the premises of the Forest Code, to reduce its conservation potential, we also end up impacting the reputation of production in this region.”
Alice also points out that a law under the terms of the approved text makes it impossible to implement a series of public policies to induce a drop in deforestation in the country, harming a section of the population that would benefit from it, such as the Carbon Market, recently approved by the National Congress."This legislation had 15 votes in favor and 8 against. So we even consider it a vote that didn't lose by a long shot. We hope that the governor of Mato Grosso can veto it, because this law will put an end to the possibility, for example, of having a carbon credit payment in a large part of the state,” she says.
The three researchers are unanimous in their assessment that the initiatives of the Mato Grosso Legislative Assembly, which they consider to be anti-environmentalist, reflect a reaction to the success of a national policy that is already bringing positive results in the fight against climate change. “It's also a negative view of the climate, because in Brazil 46% of our greenhouse gas emissions come from changes in land use, basically deforestation. So when they make a law with this content, like PLC18, and if it is implemented, they will be contributing to more greenhouse gas emissions,” concludes Suely.
In a statement, the Mato Grosso government said that the state deputies had approved an integral substitute, “proposed by state deputy Nininho, and not the proposal made by the government”. The note also adds that “the original proposal has nothing to do with the approved text”. According to the note, the approved text is not expected to be sanctioned, as it is still undergoing technical and legal analysis by the state executive's team.
*Article updated at 11:46 to include the position of the Mato Grosso government.
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