President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) made it clear that some of his government focuses will be the Amazon and the climate issue. One of the possibilities for the beginning of the term could be to look at and even revoke norms with environmental impact made by the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) administration. The PT and his team should, more specifically, look into 401 acts of the current president.
These acts that urgently need to be regulated or even revoked were identified by an extensive analysis carried out by the Politica por Integer team. The document called “Reconstruction” should be delivered, later this week, to Lula.
Politics by Integer monitored, during the Bolsonaro government, all normative acts that, in some way, impacted the environmental area. THE Sheet is a partner of the Politica por Intero in carrying out and making this monitoring available through the Environmental Policy Monitor.
Up to July 31, more than 140,000 acts were identified that had some interface with the environmental area. Of this total, 2,189 were considered relevant for climate and socio-environmental policies. In this universe, 855 contributed to the process of environmental deconstruction, and need to be revised.
More urgently, the new government needs to look at 401 infralegal acts (they are below laws and, in general terms, depend on “pensions”) by the Bolsonaro government.
Among the most urgent, 107 should be revoked immediately to, according to the document, curb harmful effects and demonstrate commitment to the climate/socio-environmental agenda. Another 18 acts need revocation, but only after legal and regulatory discussion. Finally, completing the 401, another 276 acts need analysis for adjustments or new regulations.
According to Natalie Unterstell, president of the Talanoa Institute, there was a careful analysis of all acts to avoid legal uncertainty.
“It’s not just a repeal, as Bolsonaro did,” adds Ana Paula Prates, director of public policy at Talanoa. “We have to be careful, there can’t be legislative voids.”
For example, for the acts to be revoked, the team observed the possibility of repristination, that is, the restoration of the norm that occupied that place before.
The thematic analysis carried out by the Politica por Integer shows that the largest number of acts to be reworked has biodiversity as its central theme (there are 81). Institutional acts, on the other hand, lead the list of topics that need to be repealed (21).
According to the document, the deconstruction actions carried out by the Bolsonaro government “have become public policies in themselves”.
According to Liuca Yonaha, vice president of Talanoa, over time, it was possible to understand the Bolsonarist method of action. The Bolsonaro government, initially, through infralegal acts, carried out institutional reforms in bodies responsible for certain areas – such acts had a greater concentration, proportionally, in the first year of the current administration.
“In general, the reforms were to eliminate civil society”, says Unterstell, who points out that, in certain cases, arms of science and academia were left out of the bodies.
In the following years, regulatory and response acts predominated (that is, government reactivity to external events, such as the use of the National Security Force to combat deforestation, for example).
One of the clearest examples of this was the reformulation of Conama (National Council for the Environment). With a decree, in May 2019, Bolsonaro and then Minister Ricardo Salles (Environment) cut the number of council members from 96 to 23 and increased the proportional weight that the federal sphere had there, reducing the presence of society.
With the asphyxiation of social control, the space opens up for the herd, points out Unterstell, recalling an already classic speech by Salles. During a ministerial meeting in 2020 (which became public), Salles argued that the government should take advantage of the press’s “distraction” with the Covid pandemic to pass infralegal reforms. “Go passing the herd and changing all the rules and simplifying rules”, said the former minister.
Some “cattle” are remembered by representatives of Talanoa and Politics for Integer. One of them was a “simple” order, on April 6, 2020, which implemented an opinion from the AGU (Advocacy-General of the Union) that made the Forest Code apply to the Atlantic Forest – a biome that has its own law. , more restrictive in some terms. With the pen, in general, deforesters would be granted amnesty, without the need to recover areas.
“It was an office. It was underground”, says the president of Talanoa.
With the challenges of entities and judicial questions, Salles revoked the order.
For that reason, despite the importance of this act, it is not among the 401 cited in the analysis.
“Many herds did not go through judicialization”, adds Yonaha.
Many other acts were innocuous, says Prates. “Much more to say you are doing something”, says the director.
Other infralegal acts, however, had broad effects that are still felt today. One of them is from April 2019, in which all the collegiate bodies of the direct federal, autarchic and foundational public administration were extinguished. This act was one of those responsible for the stoppage, which lasts until today, of the billionaire Amazon Fund. It also led to the extinction of two committees that were part of the National Contingency Plan for Oil Pollution Incidents in Water (PNC) — in 2019, Brazil faced a historic oil spill, especially in the Brazilian Northeast.
In this way, the document serves as a guide to where to look among all the actions taken by the current Bolsonaro government and what to do. The “Reconstruction” roadmap, as the name of the document preaches, has 28 points, among which are: restoration of social participation, increased transparency and strengthening of command and control actions.
Talanoa representatives point out that the work of monitoring acts will continue under Lula’s government.
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