Autuações ambientais lavradas pela Polícia de Meio Ambiente no Sul de Minas Gerais

Abstract

This paper presents the research results on the environmental assessments issued by the Military Police between the years 2015 and 2018 in nineteen cities located in the south of the State of Minas Gerais aiming to know which classes of environmental violations are most recurrent in the region. The present study was carried out because the information on environment serves as an instrument for environmental management and also due to the availability of data and the absence of other works with the same focus in the region. The bibliographic research on environmental assessments was carried out with a general introduction and two different approaches that correlate, in the first approach through the recovery of national and international publications and data analysis related to the actions of the 2nd Platoon of the 6th Military Environmental Police Company of the State of Minas Gerais to give character to the assessments that took place in the region and comparing them with the results of studies carried out in other locations. On the second approach, the content analysis happened through a direct interview with the commander of the corporation to seek for information about the performance of the environmental police in this geographic region to raise hypotheses about the factors that may have caused the greatest occurrence of a certain class of environmental infractions. Thus, this research gathers complementary information and the combination of the two approaches made it possible to observe that environmental inspection is an important command and control tool used in order to identify compliance with the measures necessary for the preservation or correction of environmental degradation, to serve the assessments and materialize the record of environmental infractions to penalize the infringer or compel him to implement compensatory measures. It is concluded that the sanctions related to violations against flora are the most recurrent due to various causes with a strong influence over the predominant economic activity in the region. Fines are widely applied penalties, however, the warnings favor awareness and consequent environmental regularization. Environmental policemen are not restricted to issues in their area of expertise, because, as policemen, in the face of any threat to the social order they act in defense of society.