Código Florestal e as alterações no sistema de proteção do patrimônio genético da biodiversidade brasileira: retrocesso constitucional ambiental?

Abstract

The Industrial Revolution led to unrestrained economic expansion, favoring processes of capital accumulation and rising in consumption, causing, among others, environmental degradation, gradual increase in social inequalities and in the disparity of access to natural resources (such as potable water and food) . These situations foster debates in favor of solutions that combine economic development, without compromising the ability of recovering of ecosystems. In the same way that the consumer society developed and expanded itself, discussions related to sustainability issues also advanced and became the object of government organizations or not. International treaties and conventions were created, aiming at promoting of environmental protection and reducing of the damage from the environmental crisis that was forming, influencing several constitutional texts. In Brazil, the great biological and cultural diversity, combined with the vast extensions of land and its water potential, attract the attention of great corporations, causing greater human intervention in ecosystems, which increases environmental degradation and the risk of extinction of natural resources and biological species. This context justifies the history of the gradual evolution of environmental protection legislation and the positive influence of several principles in the national legal system, which had as a landmark the advent of the 1988 Federal Constitution with provisions such as Article 225. It regulated the fundamental right to the ecologically balanced environment, showing concern for the conservation of ecosystems, sustainable use of the environment and fair access to natural resources. Among the principles that govern environmental matters, the principle of prohibition against environmental setback shows that the protection of the environment does not allow the reduction of the protection already consolidated, making it imperative to analyze the changes brought by Law No. 12,651 / 2012 and its consequences in the legal and environmental field. As a Theory of Approach, the deductive method was used, considering that it started from the analysis of principles, laws and main treaties and conventions related to the environment, with the purpose to analyze if the alterations of the 2012 Forest Code can be considered as an environmental constitutional setback. Likewise, bibliographic research was used whereas that the work was based on an analysis of the current doctrine and legislation related to the object of research, as well as on works already published in the form of books, magazines, separate publications, printed and / or digital, in order to present solutions to the research problem. Thus, it was concluded that the 2012 Forest Code did not advance the levels of environmental protection that previously existed.