A participação popular no procedimento de licenciamento ambiental na Paraíba

Abstract

This study deals with environmental licensing, which is an instrument to control and protect the environment, being used for the establishment of enterprises that implicate environmental degradation or that require the use of natural resources, imposing measures able to mitigate the impacts generated by the degrading activity. For this purpose, the general objective of this study was to evaluate the population’s participation in environmental licensing processes in Paraíba State, Brazil, confronting it with the methodology adopted by the SUDEMA-PB (Superintendence of environment management of Paraíba). This is a qualitative research based on available bibliographical and documentary sources and aims at demonstrating how the audiences are conducted, measuring the effectiveness of the population’s participation in this process. Regarding the results, it is expected that the principles from participatory democracy inserted in the public audiences can influence this important democratic tool, avoiding that its adoption becomes just another formal and bureaucratic characteristic to reach the desired environmental license.