GENEVA - UN human rights experts* today expressed grave concern over Brazil's General Environmental Licensing Bill approved by the Chamber of Deputies on 17 July and by the Senate last May. The law is pending presidential enactment.
"The bill introduces significant regressions to Brazil's environmental licensing system and threatens the human rights to life, health, an adequate standard of living, and a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment," the experts said.
The approved licensing bill PL No. 2159/2021 includes measures such as simplified environmental licensing through developers' self-declarations and automatic renewal of permits. Several activities would also be exempt from licensing despite potentially severe environmental and human rights impacts, including industrial agriculture and energy-related infrastructure.
"These changes risk exacerbating the planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, toxic pollution, and worsening inequalities. They would also weaken the rights to access to information, public participation, and access to justice, particularly for marginalised peoples and groups," the experts said.
They stressed that the licensing amendments would disproportionately affect Indigenous Peoples, and Quilombola Afro-descendant communities, who are already severely impacted by environmental and climate harms, violating Brazil's obligations of non-discrimination.
"While procedural efficiency in environmental licensing is important, it must not be achieved at the expense of effective regulations, controls and monitoring, and accountability, and human rights and environmental protections," the experts said.
They noted that Brazil's obligations to prevent significant environmental harm by public and private actors, including to prevent transboundary environmental harm, encompasses conducting comprehensive and integral environmental, social and human rights impact assessments before authorising any activity that threatens human rights or the environment.
"This legislative rollback contradicts Brazil's international legal obligations," the experts said. "It is paradoxical that this law might be enacted shortly after historic Advisory Opinions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which clarified States' obligations to adopt all necessary measures to respond to the climate emergency and prevent harm by all actors, including effective regulation and supervision relating to fossil fuels, agriculture and deforestation."
The experts reaffirmed that the principle of non-regression is fundamental to international human rights and environmental law, requiring States to refrain from weakening existing legal protections. "As the ICJ and the IACtHR underscored, States have an enhanced due diligence obligation to protect the climate system and the environment on which all human rights depend, and must prevent irreversible harm to the climate and life-supporting systems," they said.
The experts warned that the bill would undermine Brazil's credibility as the host of the upcoming COP30, the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference in Belém. As a global climate leader, Brazil must ensure that its domestic legislation is aligned with its international commitments, including under the Paris Agreement.
"We call on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to veto parts of the licensing bill that contradict Brazil's constitutional and international obligations," the experts said. "Protecting the environment is essential to safeguarding the rights and dignity of present and future generations."
