Biodiversidade na avaliação ambiental estratégica no Brasil

Abstract

In the field of Impact Assessment (IA), the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), which incorporates the environmental variable within policies, plans and programs, has been considered an important instrument to ensure that biodiversity is adequately considered in planning processes. The SEA is not framed within the legal framework of IA in the country being used on a voluntary basis and with limited number of cases and procedural experiences. Biodiversity holds inexorable importance for the maintenance of life through the provision of ecosystem services, and its relevant functions are responsible for the well-being of humanity. However, the economic development in Brazil has been marked by deforestation and environmental degradation processes that have implied in reducing the country's biodiversity, considered the most important in the world. Faced with this evidence, measures to protect biodiversity have been established. The main international treaty on the subject, the Convention on Biological Diversity, was enacted in 1993, and Brazil has been a signatory since 1998. This framework is based on three main pillars: conservation of biological diversity, sustainable use of biodiversity and fairness and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources. In this context, it establishes itself as a research question: How does the practice of SEA in the country incorporate the precepts of the Biodiversity Convention? The research aims to analyze the biodiversity issue in the Brazilian practice of Strategic Environmental Assessment as recommended in the Convention on Biological Diversity. The research contemplated the analysis of 35 reports of SEA carried out in Brazil. The research method is exploratory and data processing is qualitative through content analysis. It was used as a research tool the framework proposed by the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA, 2005) that evaluates, through a road map, biodiversity at three levels, ecosystem, species and genetic, as recommended in the Convention on Biological Diversity. The results indicate that the indicators do not integrate the recommendations of the CBD in its entirety and biodiversity was much more evaluated at the ecosystem level than the others. The research also indicates that the consideration of biodiversity in Brazilian planning guided by the SEA is limited.