Ação civil pública ambiental: a idealização de um rito processual próprio em busca da celeridade e efetividade na proteção jurisdicional do ambiente

Abstract

The need for a jurisdiction that effectively contemplates environmental asset protection via its own procedural rite stems from acknowledging that environmental resources are finite, and from perceiving environment has been degraded at fast rates, putting life on the planet at risk. Using the analysis of judgments entered and legal procedures employed in different branches of law, we looked into appropriate instruments available in the national legal system and into the experience of other countries. We found that current public civil action in respect to environmental protection is unsatisfactory, much more related to its form and regular proceeding than in the resolution of the dispute. This dimension is typical of procedural science, which has historically sufficed with enacting the rite. However, the hermeneutic phenomenon of understanding and interpreting norms as to the awareness of the role of ideology in the deployment of legal science call for a different view. Legal proceedings should more and more often serve to resolve disputes. Otherwise, they will lose their primary purpose. Given the impending need to protect environmental assets, it is necessary to break with the paradigm of legal proceedings ordinary and classic procedures. Thus, we propose to develop specific procedures for public environmental civil actions, accepting simplified procedural rites that allow for broad protection of environmental assets. Based on the status of environmental assets in contemporary society, on the acknowledgment of protection of collective rights in procedural science, and on the role of ideology in the process, a critical analysis was carried out regarding the effectiveness of public civil action, and we found it to lack providing the environment with sufficient and adequate protection. Thus, designing a specific rite for public environmental civil action can prove an excellent perspective, which may outline a new course for protecting the right to a healthy and balanced environment, which is intrinsic to life itself. [resumo fornecido pelo autor]