On July 10, FGV’s Rio de Janeiro Law School (Direito Rio) launched the book titled “Direito Regulatório, Governança e Licenciamento Ambiental: Soluções para o Aperfeiçoamento do Licenciamento Ambiental Brasileiro” [Regulatory Law, Governance and Environmental Licensing: Solutions to Improve Brazilian Environmental Licensing]. Written by Romilson de Almeida Volotão, the book delves into U.S. environmental licensing and regulatory law issues, compared with current laws in effect in Brazil.

Romilson touches upon a subject that affects the daily routines of public agencies and corporations requesting environmental licensing for large ventures in Brazil. This issue is one of the biggest public administration bottlenecks, seeing as projects are commonly developed by a certain public agency or state-owned enterprise and, during their deployment by private enterprises, are often interrupted or even rejected by other agencies and entities.

In the book, the author proposes the adoption of the U.S. Lead Agency model to solve this issue, through which one of the agencies is appointed the leader of a group of agencies working in complex projects. In his research, Romilson considered environmental licensing for projects in the electricity sector. The author studied every aspect from the regulatory framework of the environment and energy sector to the economic rationale of adopting an institutional governance arrangement stemming from foreign law.

The author critiques the institutional arrangements that have already been adopted in Brazil, such as the Special Port Office and the Public Olympic Authority, among other agencies. According to him, a leading agency in Brazil could lay out the groundwork required to build the legal framework required to develop the environmental licensing process, positively affecting the country’s infrastructure itself.

Go to the website for more information on the book.