Resumo

VECOZZI, Thaís Antolini  e  CARVALHO, Alexandre Caldeirão. Environmental licensing in port operations: a case study applied to operators of Porto Novo terminal in organized port of Rio Grande, RS, Brazil. RGCI [online]. 2013, vol.13, n.3, pp.343-352. ISSN 1646-8872.  https://doi.org/10.5894/rgci384.

The environmental performance, which may prove very important in the competitiveness of enterprises is the result, among other factors, of the legal requirements and environmental licensing. As a management tool, the license is legally required for users of natural resources endeavors considered or potentially polluting and, for this reason, it is clear a need for an environmental permit for port operators. However, even being a legal obligation, in the case of Porto Novo Terminal of Organized Port of Rio Grande, the process of environmental licensing of its port operators is still unclear. The set of discussions presented in this study demonstrates the factors that contribute to the current reality of Terminal Porto Novo regarding the environmental licensing of its operators, reflecting in part the state of the art port environmental management and highlighting the issue with different points of view as that constitutes. Thus, exposes the discussion about the various contributors of this reality, including the fact that the operators conclude that their activities are covered by the operating license of the Organized Port, the divergences in relation to the competencies of the bodies environmental and deficiency in the oversight by the Port Authority. The methodology used was the case study, applied to Terminal Porto Novo Organized Port of Rio Grande. For such, primarily some concepts were clarified regarding environmental management of activities undertaken by port operators, how is organized and who is responsible for port management and environmental licensing. After this, questionnaires were administered to port operators Terminal Porto Novo and an interview was conducted with the director of the Division of Environmental Health and Safety of the Organized Port of Rio Grande Organized. Through the systematization of information collected, port operators, their activities and the environmental management of the Terminal were characterized. Thus, it was concluded that there is clear need for environmental permit for port operators. Due to the high degree of polluting activities and natural features of the hydrodynamics of the Patos Lagoon estuary, the environmental impacts generated by port operators Terminal Porto Novo can reach two cities, Rio Grande and São José do Norte. Thus, according to Brazilian law, the competence of the environmental licensing of these developments should not be delegated to the municipal environmental agency. Moreover, the municipal government needs major mobilization in relation to the training of professionals responsible for the process of issuing environmental permits and inspection of licensed activities. In addition, jurisdiction over the licensing of operations developed in the federal area with high pollution potential should be minimally assigned to the state environmental agency. The activities of the port operators, far from what is understood by these actors are not covered by the Operating License Organized Port. In its period of validity, which is eight years, companies that operate in Terminal can be changed because their contracts are independent of this environmental permit. Furthermore, the constraints of this LO make no mention to the activities of the operators of any port terminals. According to the Brazilian environmental legislation, environmental licensing of activities exercised in the Organized Port of Rio Grande should be left to the federal environmental agency, because of its domain area is the Union However, IBAMA delegates the licensing of port operations private terminals to the state agency. Based on this premise, the licensing of operators installed within Terminal Porto Novo should keep this line, the most appropriate to delegate this responsibility to the state environmental agency. The issue is that knowledge of environmental agencies, whether federal, state or municipal are unclear about the boundary separating the responsibilities between the port authorities and port operators. This situation prevents the full attendance of the issues assigned to them by the environmental conditions on the basis of the licenses. An indication paring address this problem is unique licensing Organized Port and configuration of the Port Authority as the licensing authority of the activities performed within their area. However, delegate this task to the Port of Rio Grande could be considered a mistake, due to the fact of SUPRG owning interest in moving goods made by operators. Another proposal would be “self-licensing”, idea widely discussed and supported by the federal, mainly in the Special Secretariat of Ports, regarding the environmental licensing in Brazil port.

Palavras-chave : Environmental Permit; Port Activities; Institutional Competence.

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