Avaliação do modelo de monitoramento ambiental no Estado do Pará: estudo de caso da SEMA/PA

Abstract

One of the approaches to prevent and control environmental crises must be originated in public environmental management, particularly in the integration of its instruments: licensing, monitoring and enforcement. Monitoring has a strategic role in this process, because it is essential to decision-making in licensing activity and in supporting enforcement. However, environmental monitoring is a complex issue. In Pará, the structure of the Secretariat of State for the Environment, qualified to perform this function and the demands arising from the decentralization of environmental management and Complementary Law 140/2011, require that the state agency enhances its monitoring mechanisms of environmental management. Although there is no universal solution to do environmental monitoring, this research intends to discuss a model of government monitoring beyond the requirement of formal and bureaucratic licensing agencies to monitor its projects approved. Thus, the objective of this research was to evaluate the model of environmental monitoring as a tool for environmental management in the state of Pará, through the description of the model adopted, as well as the analysis of the causes and consequences of this model, particularly for forest management plans licensed by SEMA/PA. It also aimed to propose a strategy for environmental monitoring in the state. For this reason, the object of study at was SEMA/PA and the case study method was used, following three steps: data collection, through the agency reports and interviews; data processing, based on route guidance to characterize both the monitoring model, as well as the institutional capacity of the state agency; and, generation of results, producing a descriptive matrix of the monitoring model, which allowed to identify the strengths and barriers to the purpose of environmental monitoring in Pará, thus guiding the adaptation and recasting of the model adopted. The results show that in general there is not an institutional strategy of SEMA/PA systematic environmental monitoring, both for licensing programs and projects, as for environmental quality standards. Specifically, there are several shortcomings in the monitoring model adopted by SEMA/PA and described in this study, related to the low transparency of information, lack of procedures and work routines, lack of resources and functions of systematic monitoring in systems SIMLAM and SISFLORA, as well as gaps in monitoring of forest management plans. To address this situation it is necessary to build participatory construction by SEMA/PA of an institutional model based on principles of administrative transparency and systematic monitoring, which subsidizes and gives feedback cyclically to the instances of (re-) planning of environmental licensing and enforcement, generating alerts for immediate action