Aspectos ambientais no Plano Nacional de Logística e Transporte do Brasil

Abstract

The Brazilian government has been heavily investing in transportation infrastructure. According to environmental laws, this kind of enterprise must do an environmental impact assessment (EIA). However, the EIA is a regulatory measure applied post-project, which allows for limited project changes. For increasing environmental viability of the project, changes should be done from earlier steps of the project in a regional or national strategic planning context. For the transportation sector, a National Plan on Logistics and Transportation (NPLT) recommends aims, targets and plans for Brazil and neighboring countries for the future. We have evaluated the environmental aspects of the NPLT as showed in three reports from 2007, 2009 and 2012. The first report (2007) has summarized the trajectory of transportation planning in Brazil, since the military dictatorship period in the 1970s, showing the necessity of considering environmental impacts from transportation projects and from respecting environmental laws. The following reports indicated the need to expand the modal matrix of transportation, which until then is concentrated on highways, and mentioned the importance of a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). The SEA tool would allow to identify, previously, the cumulative and synergetic effects of the project as predicted in the PNLT; however it still remains as a proposition for improvement in the Brazilian environmental laws. We believe that using SEA oriented by Economic Ecological Zoning (EEZ) and some basic concepts of Landscape Ecology and Road Ecology, the protection of environmentally vulnerable regions and priority areas for biodiversity conservation in Brazil would effectively guide the PNLT aims, targets and plans.

Keywords

• Strategic Environmental Assessment
• planning
• politics
• sustainability
• transportation