Time and costs of impact assessment in environmental licensing
evidence of informal urban settlement in Brazil
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5380/dma.v66i.97218Keywords:
environmental licensing, impact assessment, transactive effectiveness, informal settlement, corrective environmental licensingAbstract
Environmental licensing is one of the most important instruments of Brazilian environmental policy, aiming to prevent, mitigate, compensate for, or rectify environmental damage caused by projects that have the potential to cause environmental degradation. However, business sectors and politicians have criticized the costs and the delay in approving environmental licenses by environmental agencies. The urban land subdivision is subject to licensing control. When the occupation of a subdivision occurs irregularly, before the authorization of the competent agencies, corrective environmental licensing is applied in the Federal District (FD). The objective of this study is to evaluate and discuss the factors that influence the costs and time of licensing informal settlements in the FD, the state where the capital of Brazil is located, for residential purposes. This is research with a mixed approach in which documentary analysis was carried out (applications, technical manifestations, and environmental licenses) in 47 environmental licensing processes for urban land subdivision regularization in the FD. The results allowed us to conclude that corrective environmental licensing can be costly (human and financial resources) and time-consuming (long time until the issuance of the license), depending on the peculiarities of the project, and this burden is not the exclusive responsibility of the environmental agency. The proponent, urban planning competencies, regulations, and the disarticulation with other instruments contribute to the inefficiency of licensing.
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