Governo, interesse público e práticas burocráticas: tessituras políticas no processo decisório do licenciamento ambiental do Projeto Volta Grande no Xingu - Pará

Abstract

The environmental licensing is the political instrument founded under the juridic positivity that applies the environmental control function of economic activities. This process, which has been brought up by the knowledge of the techno sciences stablishes a rule with principles that support the idea that all the damage, impact and negative effects can be rationalized by tools and technical methods (evaluation of environmental impacts, impact mitigation, compensation, constraints and the end of conflicts through negotiation). These methods and tools would produce technical resolutions to the territorial conflicts. This thesis questions the neutral, technical and operational natures of the rational ways of licensing intervention. Therefore, an analysis has been made about the decision-making process of a big project of gold mining and its macro and micro political relations. The bureaucracy behind the project will be investigated considering two main theoretical aspects: the concept of governmentality supported by studies originated in Foucault (2008a, 2008b) and the anthropology of bureaucracy according to the explanatory table “Studying up” (NADER, 1972). The historic processes of governmentalization of the State grounded on the domain of power and knowledge of the political economy allow us to analyze that the public interest mobilizes the procedure aligned with the economic order, the practice of the State financial activities and the business strategies. This way, the environmental control interferes in the governmental planning and its tactics, where the environmental licensing is the main instrument to attract big mining projects. The licensing is planned within the public policies for regional development. The political interests get into the internal practices of the licensing organizations and they can get attached to the subjective interests of the employees depending on the contingency. The result of the macro and micro political relations will produce a composite reality where the environmental licensing is a complex and uncertain political process that is driven by the environmental institution. It represents the different interests of the government which orientations are materialized by arguments that derived from the technical knowledge of the discretionary practices. These practices are strategically selected in order to bring harmony between the sides in conflict as well as changing criteria, documents and appointments for the following stages of the whole process.