In the early hours of July 17, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies approved a bill to ease environmental licensing, which NGOs and environmentalists have dubbed the “devastation bill” and consider the nation’s most significant environmental setback in nearly 40 years. The final score was 267 in favor and 116 against it. The law changes several rules of the environmental licensing framework, which is mandatory for all enterprises that use natural resources and may cause damage to the environment or local communities. Marina Silva, Brazil’s minister of environment and climate change, wrote on Instagram that the bill “fatally wounds one of the country’s main instruments of environmental protection.” One of the bill’s most controversial points is the License by Adhesion and Commitment, under which projects would be approved by simply filling out an online form. WWF estimates around 80% of all ventures could benefit from the new rule, including major infrastructure projects such as mining dams. “That’s why we say it’s the end of environmental licensing,” Ana Carolina Crisostomo, WWF-Brasil’s conservation expert, told Mongabay. The law also creates a special environmental license for infrastructure projects deemed “strategic” by the federal administration, such as oil exploration on the Amazon coast and renewal of the BR-319 highway, a road connecting the capitals of Rondônia and Amazonas states that would affect 40 conservation areas and 50 Indigenous territories. “It is a project tailored to serve predatory sectors and dismantles decades of progress in Brazilian environmental legislation,” representative Nilto Tatto, the environmental caucus coordinator in…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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