Três décadas de atraso na gestão de resíduos sólidos : conflitos socioambientais e mediação de interesses na construção da política nacional de resíduos sólidos (1989-2024)

Abstract

This research seeks to analyze the construction of the National Solid Waste Policy (PNRS) based on the study of legitimization, processing, elaboration, approval and execution of law 12.305/10 and its decrees after 19 years of socio-environmental conflicts in the Brazilian National Congress. The objective is to identify the relationship between the characteristics that formed the PNRS based on the sociopolitical determinants and economic interests that have been present in two decades of legislative resolutions to date. For this purpose, we recomposed the history of the PNRS processing in the Federal Congress with the support of field research with the mapped actors. The aim was to understand how a law goes through a long period of time for approval without resulting in satisfactory regulations regarding better management of Brazilian solid waste. Next, we examine whether the sectors responsible for the legal determination known as shared responsibility are responding to legal determinations given the importance of a law that will soon complete 15 years of its approval. In view of this, the aim is to identify and characterize the socio environmental conflicts embedded in the legal obligation of the PNRS, in view of the economic interests of the industrial sector and, notably, how such conflicts streamline or hinder decision – making between the Public Power and business representation entities. Finally, we delve into the factors that the policy to be approved in 2010 would be immersed in and how the years of processing the law shaped these aspects, namely: the regional issue, planar issues, the organizational field of solid waste in the country and the on going dispute over incineration. The investigation is based on documentary and field research, through which it was possible to investigate the processes of legitimizing the waste problem as a socio-environmental problem, and the preparation and approval of the PNRS, understanding how some of the environmental conflicts surrounding waste management determined the final wording of the policy. Likewise, generators or representative sectors resist the responsibility of bearing the burden of Reverse Logistics without compensation from the public sector. The central role og the Ministry of the Environment can be seen in mediating between economic agents and institutions representing the segments involved with the effective implementation of the main guidelines of 12.305/10, decrees, related standards and their updates.