Environmental licensing in Brazil: rules and principles

With the enactment of Law No. 6,938/81, the country formally began to have a National Environmental Policy, a type of legal framework for all public environmental policies to be developed by the federative entities. Before that, each State or Municipality had the autonomy to elect its political guidelines regarding the environment independently, although in practice few really showed interest in the subject.

However, from that moment onwards, an integration and harmonization of these policies began to occur, guided by the objectives and guidelines established in the aforementioned law by the Union. An important aspect of this was the creation of the National Environmental System, an administrative system for coordinating public environmental policies involving the three levels of the federation, which aims to give concrete form to the National Environmental Policy.

Therefore, this work proposes to study the general aspects of the National Environmental Policy, which are the concept, the objective, the principles, the instruments, and the National Environmental System. This is eminently bibliographical research that aims to serve as an introduction to the subject for those with little familiarity with the subject.