4 Siting and licensing

The Environmental Licensing is a form of precontrolling activities involving the incidence of direct or indirect impacts on natural resources and for this reason is the environmental management tool in the pursuit of reconciliation of interests between economic development and preservation of the environmental balance. The conduction of this procedure is under responsibility of environmental agencies within the Executive, in regular exercise of its police powers, defined by law, in which the competent body aims to grant or not grant the environmental license. The environmental permit seeks to guarantee that these preventive measures in favour of the environment are compatible with sustainable development.

However, one of the difficulties encountered by Brazilian farmers is related to the regularization of their businesses, particularly in obtaining environmental licenses. The current procedure for obtaining environmental permits for aquaculture enterprises is complex and extremely difficult to be done by small farmers acting alone. The main aspect of this limitation is related to the time and costs associated with legalization.
The need to spend, in advance, time and money, also discourages the development of the sector.
The higher the cost of the regularization process is, the greater the chance that only large, diversified companies will have time and capital to go through the whole process.
It is also responsible for informing about legal doubts related to environmental permitting of aquaculture in the Federal Union seawaters, considering that the Complementary Law 140/2011 assigns to the Federal Union, according to clause b, section XIV of Art. 7: “Art. 7: The following administrative actions are under the Federal Union’s responsibility: XIV—promote environmental permitting of projects and activities: b) located or developed either in the territorial sea, the continental shelf or the exclusive economic zone.”

In order to implant Marine Aquaculture Parks in a regularized manner the consent of some relevant agencies will be needed, including environmental agencies, by issuing the environmental permit. In most cases, this permit can be issued by the State Environmental Agency—OEMA. Environmental permitting’s goal is to protect environmental quality, seeking to significantly reduce the impacts of that activity. One of the main ways to control the possible impact on the environment is through the environmental conditions, which are demands made by the competent agent for maintenance of licenses, having in mind its impact mitigating role.
The conditions are what the interested parties have to commit to, considering their project and the mitigation programs and measures established in environmental studies, both by law and in accordance with the objectives and goals sought to mitigate the predicted environmental impacts. In this sense, the environmental conditions are demands made throughout the licensing process by the relevant agent and they also have the role of mitigating impacts. In many cases the conditions become the main base of verification of environmental compliance of the project, either in terms of state supervision or in reviewing the environmental permits, via the verification compliance with the proposed plans and programs or even the various recommendations in the mitigation measures proposed the environmental study. In addition, they are taken as a basis for the formulation of environmental monitoring programs within the aquaculture parks.
The candidate’s noncompliance with these conditions can lead to various penalties, including the termination of the license, and the consequent disruption of the licensed activity, the nonextension to following phases, or nonrenewal of the agreement.