Environmental Permitting Challenges and Opportunities - Repost

This is an article I wrote in 2020 to promote a course I was teaching. I am reposting it, 4 years after, as I understand the challenges still persist and also thought it could be a refreshing moment to think about the permitting process and all aspects related.

Environmental permitting is a fundamental and mandatory stage for the assessment and approval of the location, construction, expansion, and operation of ventures and activities using natural resources or capable of causing environmental degradation. Among the professionals engaged in the permitting process, some many often describe it as a Pandora's Box. While created to protect and preserve the environment, it can sometimes become a lengthy and cumbersome process with unknown deadlines, highly variable procedures, and effects and obligations often perceived as punitive, lacking hope for obtaining the desired license within ideal conditions and time frame. However, it shouldn't be this way.

On the contrary, the environmental permitting process should be considered a natural and participatory step among the involved parties. This process should begin long before the environmental agency's analysis and even before the preparation of environmental studies for license applications. It should be considered in the engineering project's conception, where the environmental characteristics of the area are already being assessed to identify potential restrictions on the installation and operation of the project. Identifying restrictions, vulnerabilities, and potentialities before the environmental studies allows the investor not only to understand the social and environmental risks associated with different project phases but also to determine key points to be addressed in the necessary permitting studies. Once the guidelines for study development are defined, a multidisciplinary technical team should be assembled and execute them, guided not only by complying with current legislation and reference terms issued by environmental agencies but also in line with the reality of the project's location, initiating a relationship with the surrounding communities that will persist throughout the environmental licensing process and the venture's operation. In some cases, this relationship is essential to obtaining legally required environmental permits and the social license for the project.

The social license is not a mandatory stage or an authorization document issued by the environmental agency. It can be defined as social approval of the business practices developed through consistent and reliable interaction with stakeholders, discussing social and environmental impacts, with the fundamental principle that the project is environmentally sustainable. Thus, constant and trustful discussions with communities and related institutions about short, medium, and long-term impacts allow stakeholders to propose and develop actions for establishing measures to mitigate negative impacts and enhance positive impacts, resulting in a broad participatory process.

Environmental permitting involves a large number of specialized professionals and a large variety of stakeholders, including the permitting agency itself, the so-called intervening bodies (archaeological authorizations, traditional communities institutions), as well as NGOs, associations, and professional entities. All these stakeholders enable a comprehensive and sound discussion of the entire process, aiming to meet the expectations of all involved parties. This broad and democratic involvement is a direct and natural consequence of current knowledge development and social engagement with the environment issues, bringing opinions from different knowledge areas and expressing diverse ideologies into the environmental permitting process. However, as broad and democratic as it is, in many cases, this process has proven to be slow, complex, and bureaucratic, leading investors, consulting firms, environmental agencies, and other involved stakeholders into an endless exchange of information, requests, and additional requirements.

Obtaining an environmental permit should not be seen as an almost impossible achievement, involving several years of analyses and conflicts, with all the evils of Pandora's Box unleashed by the involved stakeholders. Instead, it should be considered a natural process of social involvement and technical foundation to promote the necessary environmental and legal security for the project to install and operate sustainably. To achieve this, the environmental permitting process should be conducted not only by the investor but also by the environmental agency and other involved institutions, in a clear, transparent, and collaborative manner. In this scenario, proper planning is essential for a successful development of the entire process, anticipating risks, identifying red flags, and potential social and environmental significant aspects. Proper planning allows the investor and every other stakeholder to navigate a process without surprises, already focused on providing the quality, content, and necessary engagements for the correct development of the environmental permitting process. Thus, it is expected that environmental permitting becomes a natural and intrinsic process to project development, adhering to the deadlines and commitments agreed upon the investor and sectoral agencies, as well as the expectations of related communities, allowing a sustainable and long lasting operation.