Supporting Municipal Environmental Plans

The Atlantic Forest covers 15% of Brazilian territory through 17 states, where 72% of the Brazilian population lives and 70% of the Brazilian GDP is concentrated. Nowadays, only 12,4% of the native forest remains. 

Due to the threats against this important biome, since 2006, the Atlantic Forest is legally protected by the Atlantic Forest National Act.

This law demands that city halls draw Municipal Environmental Plans to get access to the Atlantic Forest’s Restoration Fund. However, according to the Observatory for Atlantic Forest’s Conservation and Restoration Municipal Plans, 90,45% of city halls have not drawn any environmental plan - generally because of lack of knowledge to do so.

Besides that, the city halls do not have much information about climate change risks, a very important information that must be included in the plans.

Meanwhile, due to biodiversity’s global decline, there is a huge necessity to make people and public institutions aware about these issues. According to the Global Biodiversity Outlook 5, not a single Aichi Biodiversity Target was achieved.

The project aims to support city halls to draw their Municipal Environmental Plans, especially to insert climate change concerns into them. The project has a focal point: the Guandu River, because IDC is a Guandu River Committee member. This river is responsible for water supplying for over 9 million people in 14 cities in the state of Rio de Janeiro. As a member of the committee, the organization has access to environmental zoned data about the cities and has an easier path to get in touch with city halls.

With that data and privileged access being a member of Guandu River Committee, it will be possible to open dialogue with city halls and society to talk about the necessity to draw Municipal Environmental Plans and include climate change concerns into them. Many city halls do not have much information about how to do it. That is why there will be a pedagogical approach: webinars, videos, classes and conferences to give them an opportunity to get in touch with the necessary environmental knowledge.

Local mobilization will be important too, because civil society must be brought into this discussion. Therefore, this pedagogical approach must be translated into advocacy action to inform as many people as possible about the importance of the Municipal Environmental Plans and the inclusion of climate change risks concerns into those plans.

The project has a focal point: the cities supplied by Guandu River. Thus the solution will attend the population of these cities, with over 9 million people. The cities are Seropédica, Itaguaí, Paracambi, Japeri, Queimados, Miguel Pereira, Vassouras, Piraí, Rio Claro, Engenheiro Paulo de Frontin, Nova Iguaçu, Mendes, Mangaratiba e Barra do Piraí.

Instituto de Direito Coletivo (IDC) is a non-governmental organization whose mission is to act to establish and uphold rights and collective interests, through counseling and defense, so as to develop a more conscientious and just society. To do so, the organization works on four segments: environmental rights, consumers rights, social assistance legal support and citizenship legal support. 

Therefore the organization has experience in the defense of environmental rights, implementing projects and participating in public forums. One example of an important environmental project that has been implemented is the work with real estate funds to adopt climate change concerns in their investments. 

In this context, it shall be highlighted that IDC participates in the Guandu Committee, a public forum in which environmental concerns involving the Guandu River are debated. This membership is a path that will facilitate contact with city halls.

That is why IDC has the necessary expertise and network to develop the solution.

Solve is an opportunity for IDC to get in touch with other organizations that provide solutions for challenges faced by humanity - especially environmental challenges and climate change challenges. Brazilian biodiversity is important to all humanity, thus partnerships with players from other countries and cultures are essential to develop the action in Brazil. 

IDC works with legal support and strategic litigation to defend environmental collective interests, and has the objective to learn, grow and develop those actions.  Therefore, Solve is a way to get in touch with partners that may provide that learning, growth and development. 

90,45% of the Brazilian city halls have not drawn their Municipal Environmental Plan because they do not have the necessary expertise to do so. The solution to enable this drawing is giving them support. 

Once a city hall draws its plan, it will be legally compulsory, so city halls will be compromised to implement it. Thus the plans will be the basis for the development of municipal environmental public services. It is an important step for governments to take action to save the environment.

This is an innovation for the defense of Brazilian biodiversity and carbon emission mitigation, because the federal law, as it is written, does not provide the knowledge and information necessary for city halls to draw their plans, develop public services and save the environment. There is a necessary intermediary stage that the project will fulfill by working with the city halls.

The main goal of the project is to enable city halls to make their Municipal Environmental Plans, which will be translated into defense of biodiversity and carbon emission mitigation. 

The goal for the next year is that, at least, 5 cities with water supplu by Guandu River have their Municipal Environmental Plans. To do so, there will be close work with city hall’s staff to support them for the drawing of their Municipal Environmental Plans. It includes webinars, videos, classes and conferences to give the opportunity to environmental staff to get in touch with the imperative knowledge. 

After the first year, the project will be enlarged to the other cities to achieve all of them in five years. There are political issues that may be an obstacle to achieve this goal, but, in five years, we will have time to deal with it and help city halls draw their Municipal Environmental Plans.

The main measure indicator is the number of city halls that will draw their Municipal Environmental Plan. The objective is that at least 5 cities with water supply by the Guandu River have their plans in one year. After the first year, the project will be enlarged to the other 9 cities. If all 14 cities draw their Municipal Environmental Plan, it is because the project has achieved its best.

Brazil faces a challenge to uphold environmental rights. The law protects all Brazilian biomes, and especially the Atlantic Forests, but the government does not apply that law. The core of the action is to take the written law and make it real.

The lack of Municipal Environmental Plans is a part of that non-appliance of the law by the government. It happens mainly because their staff do not have the necessary knowledge to do so.

From the diagnosis that city halls have a difficulty to draw those plans, it is necessary to give them support to draw it. As an organization that acts to establish and uphold rights and collective interests, IDC will give this support by a pedagogical approach and, then, by providing more detailed laws that give support.

There are two important technologies that will be used during the project.

The first one is an audiovisual media that will be used to teach city hall’s staff about the environmental concerns that should be included in their Municipal Environmental Plans. Webinars, videos, classes and conferences will be recorded to build this pedagogical approach.

The second is big data, which will be used with the data collected by Guandu River Committee and the data collected when getting in touch with city halls.

IDC is a diverse organization. The majority of the team staff is composed of women, including its CEO and its CFO. People from different colors, sexual orientations, ages and religions are gathered to make our work happen. Diversity is a value since day 1 of the organization and will continue to be implemented.

Talking about environmental projects, the organization has in mind that environmental challenges do not have the same impact for everyone. The inequality has an environmental face when poor people suffer more from their problems. In a country with the estructural racism like Brazil, this becomes a racial issue too. Therefore the organization designs its projects having in mind that environmental challenges must concern inequality, racism and other forms of discrimination.