Contribution from external control to the improvement of public policy: the case of environmental compensation and the performance of the Federal Court of Accounts

Abstract

Law 9,985/2000 instituted the National System of Nature Conservation Units (SNUC). In art. 36, established for the entrepreneur of a project with a significant environmental impact the obligation to “support the implementation and maintenance of a conservation unit of the Integral Protection Group”. The legal nature of this obligation, the way it is fulfilled and the management of resources have always been controversial. The subject has been debated in the doctrine and was discussed in ADI 3378 and in inspections conducted by the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU). This article aims to demonstrate the contribution that external control provided to the normative improvement and functionality, with legal certainty, of the model defined in the mentioned art. 36. TCU audits constituted a broad and eclectic forum, in which the complex dynamics of this legal obligation was debated at length, in light of the healthiness of the Brazilian budgetary system, and solutions to the various problems were proposed, resulting in Law 13,668/2018, which disciplined a new model for the allocation and application of resources arising from environmental compensation. The foreseen next steps in the performance of the external control go towards evaluating the performance of the new systematic, continuing the process of inducing the legal and operational improvement of this institute, still raising theoretical strangeness, which has become an essential source of financing for the strengthening of the SNUC.