Caracterização do licenciamento ambiental em Minas Gerais e os reflexos da utilização dos critérios locacionais

Abstract

As of 2016, the system of environmental licensing carried out in the State of Minas Gerais underwent a wide-ranging regulatory restructuring that resulted in several procedural changes, including the inclusion of location criteria to the parameters used in the framework of the undertakings and activities licensable in the envisaged modalities (three-phase, concurrent and simplified environmental licensing), impacting the required environmental studies, in addition to other effects. The present work had as objective to verify if and how such modifications impacted the framework of the licensable enterprises and activities. Therefore, in the first article, the characterization of 13,860 environmental licenses granted by the state environmental agency between 2013 and 2019 was carried out, of which 10,235 were processed based on DN COPAM 217/2017. While the number of licenses granted through the three-phase and concomitant procedure was insignificant, the number of Simplified Environmental Licenses - LAS skyrocketed, representing 95% of the total environmental licenses granted under the new normative deliberation. In the second article, a survey of the spatial distribution of these enterprises regularized by LAS was carried out based on the geographical coordinates available on the IDE-SISEMA platform. Through this survey, it was found that approximately 23% of the projects are less than 500 meters from another project also regularized through the LAS. The average distance between them is 2.88 km, with the highest average distance calculated being that of the enterprises located at SUPRAM Jequitinhonha (6.5 km) and the lowest that of the enterprises of SUPRAM Sul de Minas (1.87 Km ). Areas with very high concentrations were identified, ranging from 401 to 910 developments. The objective of environmental licensing is to avoid environmental degradation, minimizing potential impacts and anticipating the development of productive activities through environmental studies. After the legislative changes, almost all the procedures for environmental regularization were submitted to the LAS procedure linked to the registration of information on the projects or the presentation of a simplified environmental report. According to the literature consulted, the simplification of procedures and environmental studies makes it impossible to assess the synergistic and cumulative environmental impacts caused by the set of projects installed in the same location, albeit small and potentially polluting. The observed results alert for the proximity of these enterprises and for the consequent demand for effective monitoring and control of the densification of enterprises submitted to the simplified process of environmental regularization. It also warns of the need for future studies and diagnostics to assess the concrete effects of simplifying environmental licensing on the social and environmental quality of the areas in which the projects are concentrated.