Minister Cármen Lúcia, of the STF (Supreme Federal Court), said this Thursday (31) that there is an “unconstitutional state of affairs” in the country’s environmental policy, an institute that would allow the Judiciary to stipulate and monitor measures to the other Powers in in relation to the theme.
She is the rapporteur for six of the seven actions of the so-called “environmental agenda” of the Supreme, seen as a reaction to what experts point out as a dismantling of public policies in the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) administration, especially those related to deforestation in the Amazon.
This Wednesday (30) and Thursday (31), the court began to judge two of these actions, together, but Cármen Lúcia did not finish her vote. The session will resume next Wednesday (6). As rapporteur, she is the first to speak out. The court has 11 ministers.
The unconstitutional state of affairs was already recognized by the Supreme Court in a 2015 lawsuit that dealt with the condition of the Brazilian prison system. It is an institute that recognizes, according to the STF itself, “a situation of massive and generalized violation of fundamental rights that affects a large number of people”.
In her statements in plenary during the two days of the trial sessions, Cármen Lúcia repeatedly criticized the administration of environmental policy by the government.
This Wednesday, at the beginning of his vote, he mentioned a speech by Minister Paulo Guedes (Economy) that Brazil is a “small environmental transgressor” and that “from time to time there is a forest that burns here and there.”
“The transgression is confessed. In my view, there is not much to discuss on this topic,” said the STF minister.
He also said that Brazil has suffered a situation of “institutional termiteization”, which would be a kind of internal and invisible corrosion of institutions, especially those that deal with the environment.
“What are these termites? The termites of authoritarianism, the termites of populism, the termites of personal interests, the termites of administrative inefficiency. of the constitutional matter duly ensured”, said the minister.
“The principle of the prohibition of setbacks that does not contain freezing or state mobility prohibits a reformulation in the sense of undoing what has already been conquered to guarantee the fundamental right to an ecologically balanced environment.”
According to Cármen Lúcia, the seven cases that are listed represent a total of 10% of the actions on the environment in the Supreme Court. They deal with actions and omissions by the federal government that, according to the authors, result in the destruction of Brazil’s environment.
Before the start of the trial, on Wednesday, the rapporteur made a speech with a series of messages for the Bolsonaro government and also for the Attorney General of the Republic, Augusto Aras.
as showed the sheet, the attorney general manifested himself in opposition to all the processes – including one of them presented by the Attorney General’s Office itself. The minister said she was surprised by this demonstration.
“Nobody in their right mind today, not even the most ferocious enslaver of people and land, will have the illusion that they can dominate nature. It cannot. From a very early age, President, I heard that God forgives everything, the human being forgives sometimes and nature does not forgive. Never”, said the minister.
“Not even in the most tyrannical times have they failed to prove that nature takes its toll when it is mistreated and mistreated, and not just for the living of a time, but of other times,” he added.
Carmen Lúcia said that the destruction of the Amazon due to lack of adequate supervision is comparable to that of democratic institutions.
One of the lawyers who spoke out in favor of the actions for the minister was Sandra Cureau, retired deputy attorney general and a reference in environmental law.
She defended that the protection of the Amazon is also climate protection and that the State’s duties in this regard must be recognized.
One of the two lawsuits judged by the Supreme Court asks the federal government to carry out environmental inspection and control “at sufficient levels to effectively combat deforestation in the Legal Amazon and the consequent achievement of the Brazilian climate goals assumed before the global community”.
The authors also ask that the Union “put into effect the specific plan for institutional strengthening of Ibama, ICMBio and Funai and others to be eventually appointed by the Federal Executive Branch”. This was presented by PDT, PT, PV, PSB, PC do B, Rede and PSOL.
A lawsuit filed by the Network asking for Bolsonaro’s omission to be declared unconstitutional was simultaneously put on trial.
It also calls for the full implementation of the budget of environmental agencies and the hiring of personnel for environmental inspection in the Amazon, in addition to the presentation of a contingency plan to reduce deforestation to levels found in 2011 or lower.
Aras, when speaking in plenary about the actions, defended that the choices of the Executive and Legislative branches regarding the topics dealt with should be respected. He said that they should not be understood as disrespecting the Constitution, issues that are up to the Supreme Court to judge.
“It is necessary to recover in Brazilian constitutional law an importance of the place of the vote and the consequent rights of political representation that result from the popular size”, said Aras.
“Political choices, that of general and abstract law and, then, that of administrative acts in the spaces opened by the law are part of the list of attributions proper to the Powers constituted by elected representatives.”
