As legislações estaduais de pagamento por serviços ambientais (PSA): comparação com a Lei Federal n°. 14.119/2021

Abstract

Payment for Environmental Services (PES) is recognized worldwide as an important economic and legal instrument used to reward (financially or otherwise) individuals or organizations that carry out actions aimed at conserving ecosystems. In Brazil, Federal Law No. 14,119 of 2021, which established the National PES Policy and Program, defined concepts and guidelines at the national level. Similarly, some states have specific legislation that regulates state PES policies. Considering the complexity and relevance of implementing PES policies, it is important to investigate the characteristics of state regulations and to what extent they are aligned or not with the new Federal Law. For this reason, the general objective of the work is to carry out a comparative analysis between state PES laws and the new National PES Law. The methodology used was based on the survey and documentary analysis using the comparative method, as a way to identify similarities and specificities of the regulations. To this end, the following contents were investigated: what are the specific state standards for PSA, what are the definitions of (PSA) and Environmental Service (ES), who are the providers and payers of (ES), what are the modalities of PSA, what are the sources of financing for PSA, whether there are monitoring and evaluation mechanisms and whether the standards establish any prioritization and conditionality in terms of PSA. As a result, 41 laws from 20 states were identified, where 14 states already had specific standards before the National Law, with three of these states having updated them after the federal framework. The other six states implemented their standards only after the enactment of the National Law, and five of them made direct reference to the new federal framework. In addition, the analysis showed that there are significant divergences in the comparison of some characteristics, while others are quite aligned with the new National PSA Law.