December 9, 2021

15:12

Marcela Leiros – from Cenarium Magazine

MANAUS – The approval of the Bill of Law n. 2.510-A of 2019 in the House of Representatives, on Wednesday, 8, changes the Forest Code and attributes to the municipal management the competence to define new marginal strips for Permanent Preservation Areas (APPs). However, the proposal was approved without an amendment made by the Senate, which included in the text a protection limit of 15 meters for water courses in urban areas.

To CENARIUM, the doctor in Law, professor and researcher with studies in the field of Cultural, Environmental and Constitutional Rights, Allan Carlos Moreira Magalhães, explains that the normative guidelines of Law 12.651/2012 still remain, only, however, until a municipal law disposes otherwise, creating its own limits.

“Thus, strictly speaking, the municipality may by law extinguish the marginal strips or set them at minute limits that protect nothing”, he points out. “This legislative change brings enormous risks to environmental preservation, because it leaves the Permanent Preservation Areas without a minimum strip of protection, and with this it can make possible the regularization of enterprises that, by force of real estate speculation, advanced over the water courses [our igarapés] without any modesty or environmental concern.

In April this year, the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) determined that the APPs on riverbanks – which vary from 30 to 500 meters, according to the Forest Code – are valid for both rural and urban areas. The approved bill changes this understanding. Now, it will be sent for sanction by President Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

“Such fact directly impacts the city of Manaus that is intersected by igarapés, as the Amazon watercourses are known, and that are therefore affected by this legislative innovation, if sanctioned by the president of the Republic”, he adds.

Compensation

On Wednesday, 274 congressmen voted to overturn the changes made in the Senate, while 137 congressmen voted to include the changes in the text, which had been approved in August by the House of Representatives, ending the protection strip on the banks of urban rivers.

However, after criticism from environmentalists, the text was changed by the Senate and returned to the House. The rapporteur of the proposal, Darci de Matos (PSD-SC), defended that the Senate changes should be overturned.

“This legislative innovation opens a dangerous field for real estate speculation, benefiting the enterprises that caused environmental damage that will be able to regularize without promoting compensatory environmental measures, with serious risks to the protection of Manaus’ streams that already suffer too much with pollution”, concludes Allan Carlos Moreira Magalhães.