Warnings came from all sides: environmentalists, scientists, environmental prosecutors, health experts, and even anti-corruption specialists. All of them said that the bill creating the General Environmental Licensing Law is a major setback that could lead to increased deforestation, pollution, disaster and health risks, as well as violations of the rights of traditional communities.
But in the early hours of Thursday (July 17), in a nearly empty chamber, Brazil’s House of Representatives — led by Speaker Hugo Motta — ignored the warnings and approved the infamous bill by 267 votes in favor and 116 against.
As Environment and Climate Change Minister Marina Silva put it — after fighting until the very end to postpone the vote and reach an agreement for a new draft — the bill “deals a fatal blow to one of the country’s main environmental protection tools.” Unsurprisingly, it has been dubbed by environmentalists the “Devastation Bill” or “mother of all land-grabs,” as it dismantles the licensing process and makes environmental approval in Brazil the exception rather than the rule.
After being initially approved by the House in 2021 and later in the Senate this past May with more relaxed provisions added — which push it back to the House — the bill was once again endorsed by representatives and now heads to President Lula, who can either sign it into law, veto it in full, or issue a partial veto.
On social media, a wave of demands is growing for Lula to veto the bill entirely. As the NGO Climate Observatory states, “There’s no salvaging the text with partial vetoes.” The pressure for a veto is likely to increase in the coming days.
On Monday (July 14), the NGO network published a technical opinion on the bill written by researchers Luís Sánchez, from the Polytechnic School at the University of São Paulo, and Alberto Fonseca, from the School of Mines at the Federal University of Ouro Preto. They are unequivocal in their conclusion: the bill is “the antithesis of a solution for environmental licensing.”
As the organization summarizes, that’s because the bill “does not address the excessive number of rules and procedures and, on the contrary, it opens the door for states and municipalities to create their own regulations without minimum national standards. It fails to establish general criteria for classifying types of activities and projects — and worse, it encourages exemptions from licensing. It provides no criteria for simplifying procedures and, rather than proposing a technical solution, legitimizes the widespread use of Licensing by Adhesion and Commitment (a so-called self-licensing process, in which developers simply submit an online declaration without any environmental studies), while also promoting the Special Environmental License, which would give political treatment to major projects.”
The Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC) also issued a statement on Monday (July 21) warning that the “bill represents the most serious rollback of Brazil’s environmental protection system.” The country’s largest scientific organization states that the bill “weakens the rules and mechanisms for assessment, control, and oversight. It also blatantly ignores the climate emergency facing humanity and the fact that four of Brazil’s biomes (the Amazon rainforest, Cerrado, Pantanal, and Caatinga) are nearing their so-called ‘points of no return.’”
There were many similar warnings. I’ll highlight two more: one from the Brazilian Association of Environmental Prosecutors (Abrampa) and another from Transparency International Brazil.
In previous articles, I’ve already pointed out the main problems with the bill and how misinformation was one of the strategies used by the agribusiness caucus to push it forward — including the repeated promotion of the “magic number” of 5,000 stalled construction projects in Brazil supposedly due to environmental licensing.
But I want to focus on two points. The first is that, once again, the Brazilian Congress is changing an environmental law entirely in disregard of what science says. And they should have already learned that denialism has a cost—it’s just that the country ends up paying the price for a change that only benefits a few.
That’s what we should have learned from the changes to the Forest Code in 2012. During the bill’s proceedings, there was a flood of warnings very similar to what we’re seeing now. Thirteen years later, we see that those changes had several flaws.
The amnesty for deforestation prior to 2008 created expectations of future amnesties, which led to an increase in forest clearing in the years following the law’s approval. The Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), introduced in the 2012 law as a tool to bring more transparency to what happens in the countryside and as a way to facilitate punishment for environmental crimes, has still not been fully validated. And this has opened loopholes that allowed the document—self-declared by the landowner—to be manipulated, as revealed by an analysis by the Center for Climate Crisis Analysis.
One of the important warnings being raised about the Environmental Licensing Bill, aka Devastation Bill, is precisely the possibility that it could open the door to further deforestation. “The bill limits the responsibility of developers for damage caused or worsened by their own projects, including in the case of large infrastructure works that put pressure on public services or encourage deforestation and land grabbing. This lack of accountability could further aggravate the advance of illegal deforestation and land grabbing, especially in the Amazon,” stated the SBPC in its statement.
In this regard, there is particular concern about the so-called Special Environmental License (LAE), introduced by Senate President Davi Alcolumbre during the vote. This provision allows works deemed “strategic” by the Government Council—an entity linked to the Presidency of Brazil—to undergo a faster, single-phase licensing process with minimal oversight.
“It is known, for example, that 70% of all deforestation in the Amazon is concentrated around infrastructure projects. The so-called LAE could therefore worsen this situation, especially in initiatives that aim to open and pave highways (e.g., BR-319) and railways (e.g., Ferrogrão), or to explore oil and gas in ecologically sensitive areas (e.g., the Equatorial Margin),” warns the SBPC.
This brings me to the second point I want to highlight. On Wednesday (July 16), while the House of Representatives was rushing to pass as many bills as possible before the legislative branch recess—a clear retaliation against President Lula’s decision to veto an increase in the number of representatives and against Supreme Court Justice’s partially favorable ruling on increasing the IOF (Tax on Financial Transactions)—the rest of the country was talking only about U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war against Brazil.
And the pro-agribusiness lawmakers, who were giving interviews pressuring Lula to move faster in negotiating with the Americans over the removal of the 50% tariff on Brazilian exports, should have paid attention to the fact that they were adding fuel to the fire.
The trade investigation the U.S. decided to open against Brazil includes, as one of its justifications, that “Brazil appears not to effectively enforce laws and regulations intended to prevent illegal deforestation, harming the competitiveness of U.S. producers of timber and agricultural products.”
Mind the hypocrisy, of course: Trump is rolling back environmental protections in the U.S. in favor of major construction projects and has abandoned the Paris Agreement, the main global tool to combat climate change.
But clearly, none of that concerns him. Trump is focused on trade, and he’s not entirely wrong in saying that cattle raised on deforested land or timber harvested illegally are cheaper.
It’s also unfair that this is being demanded now, under Brazil’s environmental leadership by Marina Silva, who has done everything in her power to curb deforestation, with significant results in the first two years of the current administration. Trump never demanded this from Bolsonaro, who in fact increased deforestation by 60% during his four years in office and turned a blind eye to illegal exports from Brazil—with the endorsement of Ricardo Salles, his Environment Minister, and Eduardo Bim, then head of Brazil’s Institute of Environment and Natural Renewable Resources (Ibama).
Regardless of all that, Congress didn’t need to hand Trump yet another excuse on a silver platter to retaliate against Brazil, right? After all, the new environmental licensing bill opens up countless loopholes to expand deforestation in the country. Let’s see if they take responsibility for the law when things start to go south.
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