ICMBio resumes functions suspended in the Bolsonaro government – 09/07/2023 – É Logo Ali
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Eight and a half months after the Lula government (PT) began and changed the entire environmental policy, destroyed and demoralized by the cattle herders from the previous team, Mauro Pires, president of ICMBio (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation) answered the blog to an interview.
He told of the surprise of the new team when they found a highly militarized environment at the institute, with Colonels from the Military Police theoretically taking care of what they did not know and sitting on top of the processes. “What were they put here for? To do nothing or to disturb or try to overthrow what was being done?”, he asks, whose mission is to administer the management of 335 UCs (conservation units) that correspond to around 9 % of the Brazilian territory —and the number, he guarantees, will increase.
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Why did it take so long to choose the name to preside over the institute? The committee formed for the selection brought together environmentalists, academics and specialists in the environmental agenda, all volunteers. It took 50 days, but I would say that they dealt with the issue very quickly, the schedule was met and the work was delivered on the agreed date for the Minister’s decision. [do Meio Ambiente] Marina Silva.
Whow was this process? The function was to identify people with potential for the position, and invite them to present their proposals. There were about 16 or 17 nominees, in addition to two or three who applied spontaneously. Each one presented their management proposal, curriculum and a cover letter. So, it was 50 days, but it was even a short period for these people to prepare their projects, to be interviewed, well, it seems that it took a long time, but I would say that it was fast.
Why do you think Mr. was chose? I have been a career server at ICMBio since 2009, when I entered through a public tender. But before that, I had been working on the environmental agenda, at the Ministry of the Environment, since 1999 and I think my path since then has made a difference.
AND how did you find the institute? It was a moment of great expectation that a new level would recover the role of the bodies (ICMBio, Ibama, Funai) and the ministry itself, which would once again be recognized. Those were years of setbacks, discredit and what I would say institutional harassment, with policy agents themselves demoralizing the institutions.
ICMBio is a body well spread throughout the country, takes care of 335 conservation units that correspond to something close to 9% of the Brazilian territory, almost 77 million hectares. In addition, it includes 26% of the Brazilian marine area. It’s a lot and they are territories with the most varied demands and types of units.
In the first months, there was an atmosphere of tension, people were tense, they went to work worried because the role of public servants in the last four years [do governo Jair Bolsonaro (PL)] was sidetracked and they were discouraged, many left. Hence, the first thing was to rescue and recover the self-esteem of the server, of those who do ICMBio on a day-to-day basis.
How to create new units of conservation. This was one of the first fronts, and another was precisely to resume paralyzed processes. ICMBio is responsible for presenting proposals for the creation of UCs to the federal government, carrying out the studies and passing them on to the government, indicating which areas should be transformed into UCs. We then went to check which processes were paralyzed.
And what did you find? In the last four years, no new conservation unit has been created. There were around 15 processes that were very close to creation, awaiting a government position by the end of 2018, but none had been forwarded since then. We resumed the analysis and, of them, five have already been forwarded and eight more are ready to go to the government for evaluation.
Like which ones? We expect, for example, to create three CUs in Roraima, close to the Yanomami indigenous land, which will form a kind of barrier to protect this space. They were ready to be implemented in 2018, but they were not created. Now we have redone the studies, called the state government and the agents to talk, we hope it will happen soon.
We also have two extractive reserves in Pará that were ready to be created in 2018 and were paralyzed. We resumed contact with the communities and the state government and discussions are progressing.
But there are other processes that ICMBio is working on, such as analysis of management plans, public use of the units, land title regularization, and for each one we have priorities. In addition to the environmental compensation processes, an instrument given by the legislation that allows UCs to benefit in the event that any undertaking foresees an environmental impact that cannot be avoided or mitigated, through the disbursement of resources for the maintenance of the institute’s other activities in the protection of the units.
How does this compensation work? Many units, such as a national park or an extractive reserve, require the government to compensate any expropriated private entities, and for that you need a lot of money. One of the sources of these resources is environmental compensation.
And how much environmental compensation has already been contracted in this management? We made adjustments with Caixa Econômica Federal and paid R$42 million. Once the development is required to carry out environmental compensation, the owner has two options: he can carry out the compensation actions himself, that is, buy the land or build a visitor center in a UC. Or deposit a negotiated amount in the compensation fund managed by Caixa.
Who decides where the money goes? We re-established the Compensation Chamber, presided over by the executive secretary of the Ministry of the Environment, together with the presidents of Ibama and ICMBio. And it is this chamber that allocates resources.
Let’s say that Petrobras is going to explore for oil but has to disburse compensation. The council then decides where the money it is going to collect goes. This year, we’ve already held two meetings in which we’ve already channeled R$4 million, new money that went into the fund.
What are the most urgent demands for the use of this fund? In the last two years, the rate of deforestation in the Amazon PAs has more than doubled. So, a priority work front was the reduction of deforestation, which was the merit of the institute’s interim president, Marcelo Marcelino, who touched on this as soon as he took office in January. Inspection and protection of traditional populations were intensified, working with security agencies and the Ministry of Justice, redirecting resources to empower these communities.
How many employees does the institute have today? Today, around 1,400 permanent servers, out of the more than 2,000 that we have. The number dropped due to lack of competitions, only one was held last year, which we are taking advantage of now, we just called a group of 150 new servers.
And what is the agency’s budget? Approximately R$ 400 million, which were allocated during the transition of the government, an increase of about 40% in relation to what had been allocated in recent years. This increase was very important, including for accelerating the formation of firefighting teams, the brigade members.
This is a point that I think is fundamental, notice that we are here, at the end of August, beginning of September, usually dry months and with a lot of burning, a lot of fire sometimes of catastrophic proportions, like the one in 2019 there in the Pantanal. But this year, with resources, prevention came sooner, the money was already available in January and Ibama and ICMBio started to do the planning, environmental education, firebreaks, when instead of waiting for the fire to happen, you do the controlled burning, and we have a much faster reaction capacity and mobilization of the teams.
The institute posted on the website that it will disclose the CPF of environmental offenders. How was this received? These data were previously published. But, with the General Data Protection Law, there was an understanding that they could not be disclosed, a thesis that ended up being legally defeated, the public interest prevailed. The disclosure, by ICMBio and Ibama, was well received, for example, by slaughterhouses and the soy industry. They asked us for this disclosure, because they are committed not to buy from embargoed areas. And where is this information? On the websites of Ibama and ICMBio.
And now we are going to centralize all the information in a single list and extend this to the states, so that they can disclose the embargoes made by their environmental departments. Anyone who wants to know about all the embargoed areas will only need to access a single database, which will be on the Ibama website. This just increases transparency and helps the producer. Even the recently released Crop Plan gives a bonus to the producer who has a legal reserve surplus of permanent protection. To find out who has this surplus, you have to consult the environmental register — and the database of the embargo areas.
Since the beginning of the Lula government, park managers have been changed. Was that guidance from above? What we saw here at ICMBio was the presence of many military personnel in strategic positions. And not only military, but military police. There was a board here formed only by colonels from the PM of São Paulo. What were they put here for? To do nothing or to disrupt or try to overthrow what was being done?
So, as soon as we took office, following the minister’s advice, we started looking at these cases. We took them all out, especially after January 8, as we saw that the change needed to be quick, since it is difficult to have a person who is against the rule of law at the head of a public body.
X-ray
Mauro Saucer, 53
Graduated in Social Sciences from the Federal University of Goiás (UFG), Master in Sociology with a dissertation on Agricultural Occupation Policies in the Cerrado and Environment. Since 2009, he has been a federal civil servant with a specialist career in the environment at ICMBio. At the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, he worked as director of the Department of Extractivism, of the Department of Policies to Combat Deforestation (DPCD), of the Executive Secretary and was chief of staff of the Secretariat for Biodiversity and Forests. Since the beginning of the year, he was deputy secretary of the Ministry.
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