Flamengo’s Gabigol spent most of the year with his playing rights suspended for having flouted the rules of an anti-doping test. But he is not alone. On Friday, August 23, a lower court decision upheld the suspension of the Preliminary License (LP No. 672/2022) for the reconstruction and paving of the middle stretch of the BR-319 highway (Manaus-Porto Velho). The president of the Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region (TRF1) denied a request from the National Department of Transportation Infrastructure (Dnit/Ministry of Transportation) and the Federal Government. The request sought to overturn the preliminary injunction that suspended the project’s license in July. It’s the Amazon’s goal.

The LP for the reconstruction and paving of the middle stretch of the BR-319 highway was granted by the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) in the last year of the Bolsonaro administration, in a politically motivated decision that ignored the historic work of the environmental agency itself. The injunction suspending the license, issued by the 7th Environmental and Agrarian Court of the Judicial Section of Amazonas, granted a public civil action filed by the Climate Observatory.

Estrada tem poder de destruição maior até do que uma copa organizada pela Fifa

According to the lawsuit filed by the OC, the LP disregarded technical data and opinions made by Ibama itself during the BR-319 environmental licensing process. The decision recognized the need for environmental governance and deforestation control to be implemented before the highway is rehabilitated and pointed out that, otherwise, the environmental damage already predicted for the areas surrounding the project will not be avoided.

In their request for a stay of the injunction, Dnit and the Federal Government claimed that it would represent “serious damage to public order”. In the order denying the request, Federal Judge João Batista Moreira, president of the TRF1, pointed out that the danger to public order is actually represented by the advance of the work without the pre-existence of environmental governance.

“In the case of environmental matters, given the constitutional principle of prevention, the doubt about the impacts on the environment recommends that the manager refrain from acting, from being prudent, so that the danger to public order is not present by the precautionary suspension of the progress of the works, but rather by their progress without the structural measures that are already necessary today,” says the decision.

For Suely Araújo, the Climate Observatory’s public policy coordinator, the lower court decision is a very important procedural victory. “The president of the TRF1 has done justice and guaranteed due process of law. Suspending the injunction at this stage of the process would enable the licensing of the installation of the work to continue, in practice removing the examination of the merits of the illegalities of the prior license and prejudicing the necessary factual and legal analyses,” he says.