Brazil Passes Law To Reduce Gov't-Led Environmental Assessment

Brazil's Congress lower house passed on Thursday a bill to further reduce state-conducted environmental assessments and allow companies to carry out their impact study instead, a decision widely rejected by activists and human rights organizations.

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The bill lifts control over a series of economic ventures from the construction of roads to agriculture, which used to require a state-led environmental study to be approved. According to the previous mechanism, a federal government entity would carry out the analysis alongside the Brazilian environmental agency Ibama.

The new regulation leaves some of these projects completely exempt from environmental licensing, a major blow to conservationist groups who continue denouncing the devastation of the Amazon rainforest and the human rights violations of its Indigenous peoples.

According to the journal Biological Conservation, the government of Jair Bolsonaro has passed 57 legislation to weaken environmental conservation since the far-right president took office. In addition, in April, Bolsonaro cut the Environment Ministry budget by 24 percent, a day after promising that he would double it to fight deforestation.