Environmental Policy in the Bolsonaro Government: The Response of Environmentalists in the Legislative Arena

This article analyzes the response of Brazil’s National Congress to the Bolsonaro government’s actions in respect of environmental policy, with an emphasis on the role of the active members of the Congressional Environmental Coalition and the civil society organizations that support it. Congress’s three spheres of activity encompass lawmaking, legislative oversight and the budget. The main decision-making processes related to these fields of activity are highlighted and analyzed using a qualitative approach. In general, there is evidence of an appropriate response by environmentalists, the results of which should not be underestimated, but which should have greater reach in view of the gravity of the destruction of environmental protection policy that has taken and continues to take place. The Bolsonaro government has presided over an attempted evisceration of environmental policies by changing nonstatutory rules and cutting budgets, but Congress has put the brakes on nationally applicable laws and strengthened Congressional oversight.

t has been clear since the electoral campaign of 2018 that a Bolsonaro government would seek to undo environmental protection policies, given Bolsonaro's intense criticisms of the environmental inspection system, what he described as 'the fines industry', as well as of the interactions between the government and environmental NGOs. It is unlikely that the Bolsonaro government's failure to follow through on its threat to abolish the Ministry of the Environment (hereinafter 'MMA', as per the Brazilian acronym for the Ministry) was a response to criticisms aired in social media or from important figures in the field, such as former environment ministers. Bolsonaro's proposal at the time was to merge the MMA with the Ministry of Agriculture.
After the Bolsonaro administration took office it became clear that the dismantling of environmental policies did not require the abolition of the MMA. In fact, it is likely that by keeping the Ministry in place, the government was able to make some of the government's actions appear more legitimate than they really were. Behind a smokescreen of 'reorienting priorities', the government set about taking apart Brazil's environmental protection policies, which had been built up progressively over the last four decades 1 .
Policy and procedural changes within the MMA have gradually altered the character of national environmental protection policies -even when taking into account the challenges in the consolidation of the National Environment System (hereinafter 'Sisnama') and the competing conceptions of environmental protection within the administration (SABATIER and JENKINS-SMITH, 1999;SABATIER and WEIBLE, 2007). Without a doubt, the period that started in January 2019 has represented much more than just a change -it has been a complete and total rupture.
The first move in this direction came with the reduction of MMA duties in some initial decisions. The National Water Agency ('ANA') was transferred to the Ministry of Regional Development (MDR), thus impeding interaction between Sisnama and the National Water Resources Management System (Singreh); the Brazilian Forest Service, a department with managerial autonomy that oversees ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 Law Nº 6,938/1981, which formalized the National Environmental Policy, created Sisnama and the National Environmental Council (Conama), as well as establishing environmental licensing as an implementation tool throughout the country. We need to take advantage of the quiet moment we're in as far as press coverage is concerned, while they only talk about Covid, and get the cattle herd in, change all the rules and simplify the regulations [...] We don't need Congress. Anything that needs Congress, that mare's nest, will never get approved. There are a lot of things that are just report, approval, report, approval. You can't change that without an approval because if there's a report without an approval you're in trouble (SALLES, 2020) 5 .
The rest of this paper will present the following in succession: the process of drafting new laws, the application of legislative oversight tools, budgeting procedures and final considerations.

The legislative process
The Bolsonaro government began its relationship with Congress in 2019 by seeking the support of thematic Congressional Coalitions rather than of political parties, with a particular focus on the 'Bulls, Bullets and Bible' supra-party caucus. Bolsonaro's failed attempt to free himself from the need for a coalition of support parties, the FPA has continued to play a prominent role in matters related to environmental policy, as it has for many years. In the analysis of the provisional measure that created the law of organization of the Presidency of the Republic and the ministries of the Bolsonaro government 8 , the Legislature did not react to the changes that reduced the MMA's powers. However, the most active members of the Congressional Environmental Coalition reacted before the provisional measure was issued. This occurred during the transitional administration, when it was announced that the government intended to delegate the powers related to environmental protection to the Mapa.
Near the end of 2018, the then coordinator of the Environmental Coalition, Deputy ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 6 The Chamber of Deputies requires 1/3 of support for registration of a Congressional Coalition. As a result, all coalitions have a high number of members in their original registration documents, even if these never take any concrete action. Cascione (2018)   What had seemed to be a victory -maintaining an autonomous MMA in the ministerial structure -ended up reducing the opportunities for environmentalists to push Congress to change the MMA powers provided for in the provisional measure. The ministry was saved but with a much-reduced purview. It should be noted that keeping the MMA was also supported by the FPA, as they were concerned with the negative repercussions for Brazilian agricultural commodities.

Bolsonaro fulfilled campaign promises and submitted proposals to the
Legislature that have had a negative impact on environmental protection. The two most relevant proposals took some time to be sent: a provisional measure that seeks to facilitate the legalization of irregular occupations of Federal land, dubbed by environmentalists the 'MP da Grilagem' 9 ; and a bill that would regulate mining as well as the use of water resources to generate electricity on indigenous land 10 .
The main objective of the 'MP da Grilagem' was to increase the size of occupations eligible for simplified registration rules from four 'fiscal modules' -the size of a small rural property -to 15 fiscal modules, which in the Amazon can represent 1,500 hectares. The simplified legalization system would be based on a declaration by the occupier of the land, cross-checked with public data, especially the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), which also has a declaratory character.
Legalizations are monitored remotely with inspection occurring only in exceptional ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 9 See MP Nº 910/2019. 'Grilagem' is an expression derived from the historical practice of aging forged documents to obtain possession of land, usually public lands. Counterfeit documents were placed in a box with a few grasshoppers ('grilos' in Portuguese), whose urine would age them. Fraud techniques are much more sophisticated today, but this unlawful act is still a common practice in Brazil, especially in the Amazon. See: https://www.wwf.org.br/natureza_brasileira/areas_prioritarias/amazonia1/ameacas_riscos_amazonia/desmat amento_na_amazonia/grilagem_na_amazonia/. Accessed on May, 10, 2020. 10 Bill of Law Nº 191/2020.  (2020) 14 (2) e0005 -8/20 The Federal Constitution 11 assures the indigenous people of Brazil exclusive access to the resources found in the land, rivers and lakes that they have traditionally occupied. According to the National Indigenous Foundation (Funai) and including the areas formally recognized and those in the process of recognition, Brazil has 567 indigenous territories covering 117 million hectares and six areas with interdiction ordinances totaling over 1 million hectares, in addition to 117 areas under review 12 . In total, 13.8% of the Brazilian national territory is to some extent recognized as indigenous land.
More than 115 million hectares of the areas recognized as indigenous lands are in the Amazon. For the most part, these areas have intact native forest cover, and thus serve as an important resource for indigenous communities but also for the protection of biodiversity and the climate.
This ecological importance attracts international attention to the issue and drives international environmental protection campaigns. Without question, this is the reason that the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies declared that he does not intend to allow a reading of the mining bill while he is in office.
Another relevant process that must be mentioned is that of the provisional measure 13 tabled in October 2019 that authorized the creation of a private fund, in a public bank, to bring together the funds for the conversion of fines into environmental services, and which failed to meet the deadline for being voted on.
The conversion of fines into environmental services has been provided for in law for more than twenty years 14 . It was applied for some time by Ibama but suspended in 2012 due to the difficulties that the agency had in monitoring so many projects spread across such a large area. In 2017, conversion of fines was resumed.

Congressional oversight
The intensification of conflicts between, on one side, the Members of  In terms of the federal government's response, the most prominent line of investigation has been the woefully insufficient action of the Ministry of the Environment in the initial phase, when the oil patches first began to appear. Ibama followed events from the beginning of the spill, but the MMA, the national authority responsible for the National Contingency Plan (PNC) 30 , only took concrete measures some forty days after the first oil patches had been found.
This delay seems to have been due to a lack of any coherent division of responsibilities among the three collegiate bodies that co-ordinate the PNC: the Executive Committee; the Monitoring and Evaluation Group; and the Support Committee. With the abolition of government collegiate bodies that had not been created by law and had not yet been confirmed by June 28, 2019 31 , the three collegiate bodies responsible for the governance of the PNC had ceased to exist in legal terms. The various explanations for this administrative limbo that were presented at meetings were confusing.
The impression given was that the government did not consider it relevant to retain the PNC collegiate bodies and had only been made aware of their relevance thanks to the oil spill crisis. Once again, governmental inaction was the order of ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 28 The search was restricted to the term 'environment'. There were other requests for information related to environmental policy in addition to those included in these results. 29 See CPI work plan available at: https://www2.camara.leg.br/atividade-legislativa/comissoes/comissoestemporarias/parlamentar-de-inquerito/56a-legislatura/cpi-derramamento-de-oleo-no-nordeste/documentos/ outros-documentos/plano-de-trabalho-do-relator. Accessed on May, 12, 2020. 30  This type of public policy evaluation effort is not usually included in the list of legislative oversight tools, but it is clearly within the purview of Congress.
The report also includes proposals for improving legislation, by bringing together the spheres of oversight and law enforcement.

The public budget and other resources
As mentioned in the introduction, environmental protection policies receive only 0.03% of the BRL 6.8 trillion to be disbursed under the 2020-23 Pluriannual Plan (PPA). Such a meager budget spells disaster for national environmental protection policies. While it is true that the MMA and other associated government agencies have historically worked with modest budgets and faced great challenges in executing their missions, the cuts made since 2020 have aggravated the situation and made it extremely difficult to meet major  (2) e0005 -18/20 the stripping of its powers. These very serious setbacks imply disastrous effects for national environmental protection policies but the picture could be worse.
For instance, the 2012 Forest Law has yet to be modified. There have been attempts to amend this law using provisional measures related to other issues but without success. Furthermore, the Environmental Crimes Law has not been altered. Its However, Congress has managed to curb setbacks at the national level. The success of environmentalists working in the legislative arena in removing certain proposals from the agenda and delaying votes on provisional measures until they have expired seems to have incentivized the Executive to act, whenever possible, at the regulatory rather than the legislative level. As a result, Congress's horizontal oversight has been fortified, especially by means of proposed legislative decrees. Environmentalists will certainly be even more attentive to this oversight after the recent statement by the Minister of the Environment to the effect that he wished to take advantage of the pandemic to approve non-statutory acts that weaken environmental regulations.

Suely Mara Vaz Guimarães de Araújo
(2020) 14 (2) e0005 -19/20 In general, it is clear from the picture presented above that it is necessary to support the current Members of Congress in the Congressional Environmental Coalition, who could leverage the coalition's ability to halt the death by a thousand cuts of environmental policy. It will not be easy to increase the number of Members of Congress that are willing to participate in this sense, but it is possible. My reading is that the excesses of the Bolsonaro government have contributed positively to this and to collective efforts undertaken by environmentalists.
Translated by Robinson Fraser Submitted on May 29,2020 Accepted on June 08, 2020