A procedural error “saved” an Amazonian park in Mato Grosso from extinction — at least, for now.
Recently, a decision by the State Court of Justice led to the annulment of the decree creating the Cristalino 2 state park, which has existed since 2001, which led to the extinction of the area. The court, however, forgot to summon the state Public Ministry, which resulted in the reopening of the case.
This is just one of the cases of protected areas being contested in the state of Mato Grosso.
Cristalino 2 is an integral protection park, close to the border of Mato Grosso and Pará. The conservation unit, which is located in a transition area between the savannah and the Amazon forest, was created with the aim of ensuring “biotic, abiotic and landscape resources in areas of primary forest, rapids, waterfalls and archaeological sites”, according to the decree that created the conservation unit.
The action for the annulment of the conservation unit was initiated in 2011 by Sociedade Comercial e Agropecuária Triângulo, which stated that the park would be on private areas owned by the company.
The decision, by the majority of the Second Chamber of Public and Collective Law, for the cancellation of the park was based on the lack of public consultation for the creation of the conservation unit. Rapporteur of the case, judge Luiz Carlos da Costa voted against the annulment of the park and was accompanied by judge Maria Erotides Kneip. Judges Alexandre Elias Filho, Mário Roberto Kono de Oliveira and Helena Maria Bezerra Ramos voted in favor of the annulment.
The annulment, by the Justice of Mato Grosso, of the existence of an area protected by a formality, such as public consultation, is worrying and can open a gap to put other conservation units at risk. This is what Edilene Amaral, a legal consultant for Observa-MT (Socio-environmental Observatory of Mato Grosso), fears, is an entity that monitors state legislative activity.
As an example, Amaral cites the latest attempt to cancel a conservation unit in MT: an action initiated this month targets the Serra de Santa Bárbara state park, created in 1997 and also part of the Brazilian Amazon. In the action, proposed by an association of rural producers in the region, there is mention of the lack of public consultation for the creation of the site.
“If the state of Mato Grosso gives up its conservation units alleging that there was no consultation or that the process of land regularization is very onerous, we will be left without a state conservation unit”, says the legal consultant.
THE Sheet contacted the Mato Grosso State Secretariat for the Environment. In a note, the secretariat stated that the State Attorney’s Office analyzed that the court’s decision on Cristalino 2, “aligned with the technical information that was passed on by the Secretary of State for the Environment, ruled out the feasibility of judicial appeal”.
The report sought clarification from the Prosecutor’s Office, which, in turn, sent a note similar to that of the secretariat.
According to the State Public Ministry, the assertion, in the cases in question, that public consultation would be essential is not supported, because there is a temporal conflict.
The law that established the National System of Conservation Units —and which, in its article 22, mentions consultations— dates from 2000. However, several articles of this norm, including the one that talks about public consultation, were only regulated in 2002. , in decree 4,340. In other words, the parks were created before there were defined mechanisms for carrying out consultations with the population.
In addition, the regulation indicates that the consultation will be carried out “when applicable”, which would make the action optional and only aimed at some aspects of the park, such as dimension, not the decision on the existence of the protected area.
Mato Grosso’s parks have been threatened not only in court. Cristalino 2, for example, is under pressure from landowners who register land within the conservation unit as private areas. Amaral points out that there are 44 registered private properties within the park’s boundaries, of which 11 still have active registrations.
There are also parks at risk due to actions by the state legislature. A 2017 bill that nullifies the creation of the Serra Ricardo Franco state park returned to the agenda of the Legislative Assembly in May this year.
The annulment attempt claims to consider it “reasonable and necessary” to extinguish the park due, among other factors, to the lack of a management plan for the area. The document also mentions that there are already deforested areas occupied by cattle and that landowners in the region have not been compensated.
According to a study commissioned by the Assembly itself and cited in a technical note from Observa-MT, however, more than 72% of the park is dominated by natural vegetation, with deforestation recorded in 24% of the area by 2017. deforestation”, points out the note.
