Conhecimento técnico e a regulação ambiental na amazônia: a utilização da bacia hidrográfica nos EIA/RIMA das UHE do Rio Madeira e de Belo Monte

Abstract

This study examined the Environmental Impact Assessment reports - EIAs/ RIMAs - of hydroelectric projects seeking to verify if those who drafted these studies used the watershed as an analytical category in the hydrological analysis of the social and the environmental impacts, according to their technical and scientific specifications. It was analyzed the use of watershed as a spatial analytical category in the EIAs/RIMAs of the hydroelectric power plants of the Rio Madeira (Jirau e Santo Antonio) and Belo Monte in the sections of the above mentioned EIA/RIMA reports, relating to the environmental and socioeconomic analysis. Methodologically, the research was based on the deductive method, beginning from a generalization of the scientific validation of the watershed as an analytical category that incorporates the interdependence of physical, biological and socio-economic means of the social and environmental studies for the analysis of their use in the EIAs/RIMAs of Belo Monte and the Madeira industrial complex. The study admitted the assumption that the main regulatory instruments of the EIA/RIMA of these hydroelectric power plants are inaccurate in their requirements in relation to a detailed prescription of the areas of influence (CONAMA 001/86 and Terms of Reference), of these instruments, for this study identified a clear requirement in using the watershed in their studies. The research revealed that the EIAs/ RIMAs of these hydroelectric power plants, by performing various fragmentations in the areas of watershed, manipulated the systemic view of the concept, violating the requirement of CONAMA 001/86 that prescribes the study of all the technological and locational alternatives of this kind of project, even its non-execution. In the EIAs/RIMAs of the analyzed projects there were not carried out the studies to met such requirements through the use of the systemic pattern of a watershed. Finally, the analysis made clear the fragility of the environmental regulations and of the system of environmental licensing, once is the entrepreneur who pays for the prospective studies, indicating that the omissions in the social and environmental impacts studies that are present in the EIAs/RIMAs are intentional, using manipulation as a device to handling the areas of influence, not contemplating adequately the natural physical boundaries of the watershed in their respective scales.