Environment increases by 1.5% in the 2024 Budget – 09/07/2023 – Environment

Next year, the Ministry of the Environment should see an expansion of 1.5% in its discretionary expenses, which include the cost of daily actions and investments, according to the 2024 Budget proposal sent last Thursday (31).

Despite the nominal increase in the volume of resources, the variation is not enough to replace inflation, which should end 2023 at an increase of 4.85% according to the federal government’s most recent estimates.

Furthermore, some actions were cut, such as inspection, fighting forest fires and the Bolsa Verde program, whose total budget was reduced by R$45 million. The folder states, however, that the decrease in resources will not affect the progress of the program.

“There are no losses for the agency or losses for the execution of Bolsa Verde: the number of eligible families already served by the program was maintained, as well as the guarantee that the total number of beneficiaries will be increased to 100 thousand families in the coming years”, states the ministry in a note.

The data was gathered by Sheet based on public information made available on the Budget Panel. The report analyzed the appropriations of each of the more than 30 actions linked to the portfolio.

Comparing the values ​​for 2023 and 2024 is not trivial, for a number of reasons. The most usual thing is to compare the respective budget proposals, which bring the initial reserve foreseen by the Executive.

This avoids distortions caused by appropriations added later, such as parliamentary amendments and extraordinary credits (used to finance urgent and unpredictable expenses).

The 2023 Budget proposal, however, was still presented under the fiscal rule of the spending ceiling and before the increase in resources promoted by the constitutional amendment enacted during the government transition, in December 2022.

Furthermore, it was only after the publication of last year’s Budget Law that the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) promoted the reorganization of the Esplanada dos Ministérios, with the recreation of portfolios.

Because of these obstacles, the comparison made by Sheet takes into account the current allocation for 2023, minus parliamentary amendments and the R$86.5 million in extraordinary credits opened this year for protection activities on indigenous lands.

The criterion was adopted because congressmen will still be able to allocate parliamentary amendments to the Environment during the processing of the Budget. The Executive will also be free to open new extraordinary credits in 2024, if there is legal justification for doing so. The non-existence of these resources now does not mean a cut in funds.

The report also disregarded the money allocated to the management of the CAR (Rural Environmental Registry), which will increase by 18.9% in 2024, but will be administered by the Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services. The change was imposed by the National Congress during the vote on the MP (provisional measure) on the structure of ministries.

In the Environment, one of the actions with the greatest proportional increase in funding was the implementation and monitoring of the National Policy on Climate Change. The initiative has only BRL 800,000 this year, but the government plans to allocate BRL 4.06 million in 2024 – an increase of 407.8%.

Tackling the climate crisis is one of the priorities of the Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, and is one of the flags raised by Lula in an attempt to put Brazil back in the international showcase.

There was also an increase in resources for the management of the sustainable use of biodiversity and environmental recovery (with R$24 million, an increase of 60% compared to this year) and in the budget for the general administration of the ministry (which includes contracts for the provision of services, among other daily expenses).

In the opposite direction, the government reduced the amount allocated to Bolsa Verde from R$200 million this year to R$155 million in 2024.

The program provides for an extra transfer to Bolsa Família beneficiaries who live in forest areas at risk of deforestation. For now, the policy only reaches families located in the Legal Amazon area, but Marina Silva intends to expand the program to other areas of the country, as plans to combat deforestation are finalized for other biomes.

According to government interlocutors, the reduction in the Bolsa Verde budget will not mean a cut in transfers, on the contrary. The average value tends to rise next year.

What happens, these people said with reservation, is that in 2023 it was necessary to invest in infrastructure and technology to resume the program, expenses that will not be repeated in 2024. Therefore, the ministry chose to redistribute the R$45 million in other actions .

The Environment also suffered cuts in actions such as environmental control and inspection (drop of 6.4%, to R$ 317.9 million) and prevention and control of forest fires in priority areas (reduction of 20.1%, to R$ 65.7 million).

The budget for the creation, management and implementation of conservation units fell 2%, to R$219.6 million.

On the other hand, the MMA provided resources for unprecedented actions in the Budget, such as forest management (R$ 28.1 million), socio-environmental management of natural resources in territories of traditional communities (R$ 14.1 million), formulation and implementation of policies to control deforestation and forest fires (R$4.9 million) and implementation of policies for biodiversity in protected areas (R$6 million).

It is possible that the new items serve to complement the resources of actions that had a reduction in funding compared to 2023. Technicians from the department describe the final composition as a redistribution of funds within the ministry.

The Environmental values ​​do not consider the discretionary expenses of ANA (National Water and Basic Sanitation Agency), since regulatory agencies have their own limits for executing their budgets.

Furthermore, there is a peculiarity regarding the ANA in the 2024 Budget proposal. Congress had transferred the agency’s structure to the Ministry of Integration and Regional Development, a change that was vetoed by Lula when sanctioning the law in question.

However, the veto can still be overridden by parliamentarians. For this reason, the government understood that ANA’s resources should be sheltered under the umbrella of Integration. If the veto is maintained, they will be reassigned to the MMA.

Regardless of the agency’s “address”, its resources were practically maintained from one year to the next, with a slight reduction of 0.04% in nominal terms. The Budget proposal foresees BRL 248.7 million for ANA in 2024.