ENVIRONMENTAL RETROGRESSION PANORAMA ON BRAZILIAN CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES

Abstract

There are several clues on legislative actions that give support to the hypothesis that Brazilian environmental law might be under attack against several of its foundations, due mostly to the lobbying action of economic interest groups on the legislative chambers. Then comes the question that if the Legislative Power has chosen between different values, and from them, created fundamental rights written in the Constitution, could it revoke laws that affect specifically these same values and rights? One of the doctrine’s hypotheses that deny this possibility is found in the nonretrogression principle formulation, which imposes limits to change on rules that may cause the decrease of the current protective status without pointing to compensatory or higher and exceptional public interest reasons. This study analyzes federal law projects on environmental issues that were proposed or deliberated during a five-year term (2010 to 04-15-2015) on the Chamber of Deputies or sanctioned by the President. According to the deductive method, this research is based on the Federal Chamber of Deputies database available for public access online. Despite its methodological approach and the necessary selection of samples, the main objective of this study is achieved within its scope, which is to present a general and descriptive panorama of the proposals that change the environmental federal law. As a conclusion, this study presents a pattern found on the cases selected that are capable of demonstrating the hypothesis that over the last few years one may find an increase in the environmental retrogressions on the federal legislative procedures.