The space for social concerns in environmental licensing: an analysis of the anthropic component in environmental impact assessments

Abstract

The research intends to argue that the space devoted to the anthropic component, in environmental impact assessments of regional infrastructure projects, is still minimal, punctual and temporally limited. This finding, as we intend to prove, results from the particular historical development of the environmental field in Brazil, which was only beginning to render its first signs of structuring at the time of the National Environmental Policy's formulation. Socioenvironmentalism and its political alliances between social movements and environmentalists had not yet emerged in to the national scenario by the time the National Environmental Policy was formulated, in 1981, and only started to give some evidence of its emergence in 1986, when the Resolution n. 001 of the National Council on the Environment was being elaborated (two of the essential legal frameworks for environmental licensing). Thus, a relative political vacuum was established regarding the defense of the anthropic component in environmental impact assessments. Its recognition arised only gradually, around the mid-80s, with the emergence of socioenvironmentalism. Still, environmental impact assessments seem to give little importance to a more comprehensive and long-term analysis about the social interferences that arise from the installation and operation of regional infrastructure projects. Issues such as public security, demographic growth, increased demand on infrastructure and urban services, profound changes in landscape and in municipality's or region's social and economic configuration, as they harbor large infrastructure projects and new economic activities, for example, often receive a too reductionist treatment, when it exists. The research seeks to address and analyze the scope given to these aspects, in the anthropic component, by exploring the environmental impact assessment's reports that were produced as part of the legal requirements necessary for the project approval of the state highway Nova Tamoios, using them as a particular case study. (AU)