CNJ rule provides for the possibility of millionaire compensation for the impact of deforestation

The Antimary agroextractivist settlement, in Boca do Acre (AM), is an area destined for agrarian reform that houses preserved portions of the Amazon rainforest. It is occupied by traditional communities that survive from the extraction of chestnuts in the south of Amazonas, close to the border with Acre.

A constant target of land grabbing, irregular subdivisions, fires and conflicts over land, the region had almost 14 thousand hectares deforested by 2018, according to the Federal Public Ministry (MPF).

One of those responsible for the destruction of the area, according to the Court, is a resident of Monte Negro (RO). It would have deforested a total equivalent to 135 football fields in the settlement, which belongs to the Union.

On September 20, the Federal Court in Amazonas sentenced Nilma Félix to recover the destroyed area and pay millionaire compensation: R$2,000 per hectare deforested as compensation for collective moral damages and R$2.1 million for the damage caused by deforestation. caused to the planet’s climate.

The figure was obtained by a calculation that associates the felling of forests with the emission of carbon, one of the greenhouse gases that worsens climate change.

According to judge Mara Elisa Andrade, who signed the decision, deforestation “has a direct relationship with climate change, as its practice leads to the release of carbon stocks that were stored in vegetation and, at the same time, to the annulment of mechanisms that promoted the absorption of carbon dioxide”.

The area of ​​forest felled, of 135 hectares, corresponded to the release of more than 21 thousand tons of carbon, according to the process. Based on the amount of gas emitted, it was possible to price the damage to the climate to support the duty of compensation.

Summoned in the process, Félix did not respond to the accusation and was sentenced in absentia. The decision can still be appealed. THE CNN He tried to contact her, but got no response. The space remains open.

The price of climate change

Measuring the impact that environmental damage causes to climate change on the planet has been a duty of Brazilian magistrates since 2021, when the National Council of Justice (CNJ) established the National Policy of the Judiciary for the Environment.

The new thing is that judges can now calculate in a standardized way the amount to be imposed as compensation in legal actions.

A protocol with parameters for this quantification was approved by the CNJ on September 17 of this year.

The rule gives judges a safe method to measure the amount of carbon emitted from burning or clearing vegetation and sets a minimum threshold for converting emissions into money.

This is a recommendation to Brazilian magistrates. The standard adopted the Amazon Fund reference to price emissions: US$5 per ton of carbon emitted through deforestation or fire.

This value is the minimum to be used in decisions. There is also a standard methodology for assessing the amount of carbon relative to the degraded area.

The result of this account is the amount that the person responsible for deforestation must pay as reparation or compensation for climate damage in environmental actions.

The protocol will serve to guide the work of judges, with a scientific basis, as he told CNN judge Lívia Cristina Marques Peres, assistant to the presidency of the CNJ and judge at the Federal Court of Amapá.

“It will provide support for the judges, providing more quality and effectiveness in the decision,” he stated.

Statistical gap

Although Brazil has a decades-long history of so-called “environmental litigation” – when demands relating to the environment end up in court – the issue of compensation for climate damage is still recent in the Judiciary.

The CNJ itself does not have specific estimates for this specific aspect of environmental actions.

This is because compensation for climate damage is one of the dimensions of total environmental reparation that is fixed in condemnations.

The case of illegal deforestation, for example, also involves other cumulative responsibilities, such as fines, the obligation to recover the degraded area, and the possible payment for irreversible damages and collective moral damages.

In the Brazilian courts, around 20 thousand cases of collective moral damages for environmental damage and compensation for environmental damage are pending judgment.

This stock of cases grows annually: it was just over 13 thousand in 2020.

In the years 2023 and 2024 there was also an increase in new cases. More than 7 thousand entered the Judiciary last year. Until July this year, there were another 5 thousand.

Action map

Academic initiatives attempt to map the universe of processes that deal with civil liability for environmental-climatic damage.

According to the research group Law, Environment and Justice in the Anthropocene (Juma), at PUC-Rio, there are 90 environmental actions that discuss the climate issue in Brazil.

A survey with data from until March this year found 24 instances of liability for environmental-climatic damage. Of these, 11 directly mention in the requests the need for accountability for this impact on climate change.

The Amazon is the biome that appears most in the actions (14 cases, out of a total of 24).

According to the survey, Pará and Amazonas are the states with the most actions (5 and 4, respectively). The sum of the number of cases filed in the states of the Legal Amazon is more than half of the cases on civil liability for environmental-climatic damage (there are 16 out of 24 cases).

Public administration bodies, such as the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama), represented by the Attorney General’s Office (AGU), lead the filing of demands (14 actions).

According to the methodology adopted, the MPF and the Public Ministries in the states have seven actions.

The research group chose to register as a single action a set of 22 cases filed by the MPF against different defendants, but relating to the same police investigation and the same area: precisely the Antimary Agroextractive Settlement Project, whose conviction of one of the defendants opened this reporting.

More actors in Justice

General coordinator of Juma and the survey on climate litigation, Danielle Moreira told CNN that it is possible to observe a greater role of organized civil society in the filing of these actions.

“MPs have always played a leading role in traditional environmental litigation, because organized society did not have as much installed capacity and resources to file lawsuits,” he stated.

“Now, with the climate emergency, and with the third sector receiving resources and structure, there is this organization. NGOs have been entitled to file public civil action since 1985.”

According to the specialist, who has a doctorate and master’s degree in Law from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), the prominence of public administration bodies in the filing of actions is due to institutional movements such as that of the AGU itself, to take this discussion forward .

On September 16, for example, the .

The request for compensation for deforestation, burning, application of herbicides, introduction of exotic species and livestock farming within the Jamanxim National Forest, in Pará, was calculated by the AGU at R$635 million.

For Moreira, the Judiciary has an “absolutely fundamental” role in the issue, as the issues have not been resolved outside of Justice.

“The global environmental litigation movement is taking place because governments, institutions outside the Justice system, have not been able to resolve and provide effective responses to the climate issue. So the solution ends up being to go to court,” he declared.

Pedagogical effect

Attorneys and prosecutors have also sought more robust and secure data to present demands about the damage caused by climate change, also betting on a pedagogical effect of the convictions.

Technical note released at the beginning of September by the Brazilian Association of Members of the Public Ministry of the Environment (Abrampa) and the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) brings .

According to Alexandre Gaio, president of the association and prosecutor of Justice in Paraná (MP-PR), the standardization of criteria helps members of the Public Ministry to consider repairing damage to the climate system in extrajudicial actions and agreements, in addition to providing a “pedagogical” bias.

“It has an inhibitory effect on further environmental damage as offenders will be held accountable more effectively. It is necessary to prevent those who deforest illegally from having any economic advantage,” he told CNN.

For him, defining a minimum financial value to quantify carbon emissions is an “important first step”.

“However, this should not exempt the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change from developing a new official reference for carbon pricing, based on interdisciplinary studies, and which more broadly encompasses ecological, social and intergenerational causes caused by CO2 emissions”.