Tracking presidents and policies: environmental politics from Lula to Dilma

ABSTRACT

Does the Brazilian presidential system shape environmental policy there? The comparative literature on environmental policy offers few reasons to think that it might. Most explanations of variations in the quantity and quality of environmental regulation stress levels of economic development or move outside of the nation-state to examine international processes of diffusion and convergence. Other studies look at large macrostructural differences like the contrast between democratic and authoritarian systems and/or the role of non-state actors. This article examines environmental policies and outcomes in three successive presidential administrations in Brazil to develop hypotheses about whether institutional factors should gain a larger place in comparative studies of environmental policies and outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Brazil
• presidentialism
• environmental policy
• deforestation
• environmental impact assessment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Kathryn Hochstetler is Professor of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has published widely on environmental politics in Brazil, including the prize-winning Greening Brazil: Environmental Activism in State and Society (Duke University Press, with Margaret Keck).

Notes

1. Interview with Jair Sarmento, then Director of CONAMA and Executive Secretary, Ministry of the Environment, Brasília, 4 August 1999.

2. Interview with former technical staff member of the environmental licensing agency, IBAMA, Brasília, June 2009.

3. http://www.cntdespoluir.org.br/Lists/Contedos/DispForm.aspx?ID=1547, accessed 6 June 2009.

4. See, for example, Folha de São Paulo, 10 July 2009; Globo, 28 December 2009.

5. http://blogs.oglobo.globo.com/miriam-leitao/post/ministra-izabella-teixeira-em-um-barraco-ambiental-451836.html.

6. http://desmatamento.infoamazonia.org/analise/.

7. Law 7804/1989, further detailed by Complementary Law 140/2011.

8. While there has been surprising little study of this process, it evidently introduces additional pork dimensions – but generally following local rather than presidential calculations.

9. Discurso do Presidente da República, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, na cerimônia de lançamento do programa de Incentivo às Fontes Alternativas de Energia Elétrica (Proinfa) e do assinatura de Acordo de Cooperação Técnica entre os Ministérios de Minas e Energia e Meio Ambiente, no Palácio do Planalto, 30 March 2004, Brasília. Online at www.itamaraty.gov.br/portugues/politica_externa/discursos, accessed 8 April 2004, in possession of author.

10. Interview with Celso Knijnik, Diretor do Programa de Energia do PAC, Secretaria do PAC, Ministério de Planejamento, Brasilia 23 September 2014.

11. Discurso do Presidente da República … .

12. Interview with former technical staff member of IBAMA, Brasília, June 2009.

13. Interview with Alessandra Toledo, Former Coordinator de Energia Elétrica, Nuclear e Dutos – Coend, IBAMA, Brasilia, 28 September 2014.

14. http://www.ibama.gov.br/licenciamento/index.php.

15. Interview with former technical staff member of IBAMA, Brasília, June 2009.

16. For example, Valor Econômico, 17 January 2007; Estado de São Paulo, 20 and 21 April 2007.

17. Interview with former technical staff member of IBAMA.

18. Interview Toledo.

19. Interview Knijnik.

20. Interview with official in the Ministry of the Environment, Brasília, September, 2014.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under Standard Research Grant.