O meio ambiente na constituição federal e na legislação infraconstitucional: avanços ou retrocesso (1988 a 2014)?

Abstract

One of the achievements of the 1988 Brazil Constitution was granting constitutional status to the protection of the environment. More than a third of countries worldwide have amended their constitutions to protect the environment. Each country has modified its laws in light of its own peculiarities, thereby revealing its particular views on environment protection and conservation. The usage and protection of the environment is inconsistent throughout the world due to the diversity of human societies. This inconsistent treatment of the environment raises grave concerns about the sustainability of the environment as a whole. Twenty-five years later, it is imperative to identify whether there has been significant progress in the implementation of effective laws for the protection of these environmental goods and whether the Constitu-tion has, effectively, brought real changes to Brazilian environmental law. This article will present both historical details and commentary on the implementation of the 1988 Constitutional Provisions. In particular, we will be focusing on the impacts of worldwide backlash against infra-constitutional environmental legislation.