Injunction that halted potash extraction project in Amazonas is suspended

Environmental Protection

Decision suspended a decision that determined that Ipaam is not the competent body for licensing the Potássio Project

With the understanding that it is not up to the Judiciary to interfere in the administrative sphere to the point of preventing the legitimate action of another power, federal judge Marcos Augusto de Souza, from the Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region (TRF-1), suspended the decision that determined that the Amazonas Environmental Protection Institute (Ipaam) is not the competent body for licensing the Amazonas-Autazes Potássio Project.

The first instance decision was handed down in the records of a public civil action filed by the Federal Public Ministry.

The lower court’s ruling determined that the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) was responsible for licensing the project, with the aim of exploring the extraction of potassium from the subsoil of the Amazon River.

In its appeal to TRF-1, Ipaam maintained that the decision caused a risk of harm to the economic order, national food security and public order, due to the project being halted.

When analyzing the case, the judge argued that the MPF was unable to demonstrate that the area in which the project is located is located on indigenous lands, and highlighted that Ibama itself recognizes Ipaam’s competence.

“In this sense, if Ibama, acting within the limits of its legal attributions, concretely recognizes that it is a hypothesis that the state environmental agency is competent for licensing, the preliminary suspension of the respective licensing process characterizes interference both in the actions of the aforementioned federal authority and in the exercise the competence of the state body”,

registered the magistrate.

Therefore, he revoked the injunction until the merits of the action proposed by the MPF were judged.

*With information from Conjur

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