October 14, 2021

16:10

Iury Lima – from Cenarium

VILHENA (RO) – The declaration of unconstitutionality of a law approved three years ago by the Legislative Assembly of Rondônia (ALE-RO), extinguishing 11 Conservation Units (UCs) in the State, gives a glimpse of how the procedural slowness is used by parliamentarians as an advantage to increase the pile of environmental setbacks in the third largest Federative Unit in the North of the country. There are reductions in protected territories, new extinctions of UCs and State Parks (PES), besides the controversy of the moment: the changes in the Socio-Economic and Ecological Zoning of the State of Rondônia (ZSEE-RO).

It was only in September of this year that the Rondônia Court of Justice (TJ-RO) considered Law 999/2018 unconstitutional, three years after the enactment of the project and the filing of a Direct Unconstitutionality Action (ADI) by the state Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP-RO). The achievement occurred by a decision of the majority of the judges and justices of the body.

On the other hand, the victory was late: 11 Conservation Units were extinguished in six municipalities a few weeks after the publication of the law. Five of them ended up being recreated in 2021, through another project that removed almost 220 thousand hectares from the Extractive Reserve (Resex) Jaci-Paraná and the State Park of Guajará-Mirim. Later, two of these five were no longer recognized on the state map, again, as areas of environmental preservation.

The Beginning

The efforts of the ALE-RO are generally to approve new projects harmful to the environment, idealized by Governor Marcos Rocha, previously without a party for leaving the PSL, and now a member of the legend in the process of formation União Brasil. However, the soap opera has been dragging on for years, since the terms of Confúcio Moura in the management of the Executive, former governor elected in 2010 and reelected in 2014.

“This whole imbroglio began when the then governor Confúcio Moura created and regulated a total of 11 Conservation Units. Dissatisfied, the lawmakers at the time issued 11 legislative decrees in order to halt the creation of the Conservation Units in the State of Rondônia”, Ramires Andrade, a lawyer specialized in Environmental and Indigenous Law, told CENARIUM in an interview.

Ramires says that the lawmakers alleged the existence of “usurpation of the attributions of the Legislative power”, since state Conservation Units could only be created by means of an ordinary law, as determined by Law No. 4.228/2017, “that is, passing through the sieve of the state lawmakers”, detailed the lawyer, who also represents the Kanindé Association for Ethnoenvironmental Defense, as well as the Indigenous Parliament of Brazil.

According to the specialist, at the time, the then governor Confúcio Moura filed a Direct Unconstitutionality Action with the TJ-RO with the support of Kanindé. From then on, all legislative decrees to bar the creation of the UCs, as well as Law 4.228, lost their effects. Still, the lawmakers approved, “in record time”, as Ramires Andrade states, Law No. 999/2018 – now considered unconstitutional -, extinguishing, likewise, the 11 Conservation Units.

“Although the extinction is possible through Ordinary Law, Law No. 999/2018 was not regularly instructed and discussed. There were not brought, for example, technical studies capable of supporting the extinction of these units”, pointed out the lawyer and expert in Environmental Law. This is what motivated the MP to file a new ADI, seeking to justify the illegality, also, of the 2018 law.

The result was that in June this year the courts ruled that all the legislative decrees and the law prior to them, from 2017, which prevented the creation of protected areas without going through the deliberation of the state lawmakers, were unconstitutional.

New chapters

The Rondônia Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed to CENARIUM that a Direct Action of Unconstitutionality (ADI) is being processed against the changes in the territories of the Resex Jaci Paraná and the PES of Guajará-Mirim, through Law No. 1,089/2021, authored by Marcos Rocha.

In addition, the MP also opened other ADIs against Complementary Laws No. 1,094 and No. 1,095, which deal with the extinction of the Ilha das Flores State Park and the reduction of areas of the Limoeiro Sustainable Development Reserve, created precisely to mitigate the impacts generated by the reduction of the units mentioned in Law 1,089.

“The parliamentarians insist in an incessant attempt to extinguish UCs and further increase the degraded areas in the State of Rondônia. In the interval in which the judiciary judges the actions of unconstitutionality, the lawmakers approve other legislative proposals with the purpose of extinguishing Conservation Units”, said Ramires.

Ecological zoning

Another scheduled clash is related to the bill approved in the ALE-RO, on September 28th, that defined changes in the Socioeconomic-Ecological Zoning of the State of Rondônia, which, in the vision of specialists, threatens protected areas, benefiting land grabbers, since it destines illegally deforested areas for agricultural production, for example.

“If the law is sanctioned, as proposed by the lawmakers, it will certainly also be the object of a new ADI”, evaluated the lawyer. “All these actions taken to the Court of Justice of Rondônia show how important the role of the Judiciary is in the control of constitutionality, especially in environmental matters”, he added.

To CENARIUM, the Public Ministry informed that it is waiting for the promulgation of the law to file an ADI. The Government of Rondônia said in a statement that despite being another project proposed by the Chief Executive, the text was approved with amendments authored by the lawmakers and that “will go to the analysis of sanction or veto in the coming days.