Disclose Environmental Licensing Data (BR0120)

What is the public problem that the commitment will address? The main problem to be addressed is the difficulty in structuring and making available data and information on federal environmental licensing.

What is the commitment? The commitment is an effort to advance the implementation of an interface that improves the way in which data and information are structured and made available to the public, considering Open Government structuring guidelines. Furthermore, the commitment aims to improve communication/interaction with the user/citizen who accesses open databases.

How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem? The commitment aims to improve the way in which data is made available, establishing a procedure for reviewing and updating databases, in addition to improving data collection, analysis and management, while also improving the interface for making this information available. This is expected to enhance transparency and the effectiveness of the public data disclosure policy. First, a methodology will be established to enhance civil society engagement in the development of the open data interface, including the possibility of holding regular focus groups. This activity aims to strengthen and promote the disclosure of environmental information in a manner useful to the public/user and in accordance with open data general guidelines. A second activity aims to define the technical requirements, scope and data set to be made available in a first version of the interface, which is based on the road map to the licensing process combined with the information needed to access the systems, making it clearer not only to which licensing stage the information refers, but also to what the information/data refer. Furthermore, it aims to improve how data is exported from the systems in an open format and develop an interface to make this information available at the desired transparency level. Transparency will continue to be enhanced over time, through the development of features to allow citizens to question data omissions/errors and report them to the responsible oversight bodies. All these measures are expected to improve the data interface, enabling engagement with the public and providing greater clarity and transparency to the information/data on federal environmental licensing.

Why this commitment is relevant to OGP values? The commitment is relevant as its implementation is expected to improve the way in which data/information related to environmental licensing is made available, in addition to opening the possibility of receiving feedback from citizens/users with a view to the continuing improvement of information dissemination and accessibility. The commitment will offer the opportunity to improve institutional capacity, through the establishment of a communication channel with the user, as proposed in the project. Therefore, the project combines enhanced transparency with social participation, considering two important commitment milestones, which are the feedback received from the citizen/information user through the establishment of a direct channel to the area responsible for the data and the opportunity to enhance transparency and access to information, which will be achieved through this partnership between the public sector and the citizen.

Additional information Environmental governance is key to fulfilling the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations (UN). This commitment, which addresses themes related to SDGs 8, 9, 11 and 12, aims to contribute to the promotion of sustainable (and socially fair) development, considering the complexity and multifactorial nature of environmental problems and the need for coordinated actions between government and civil society to overcome the challenges to achieve these goals.

Milestones (with verifiable deliverable) Start Date: End Date: Milestone 1 - Establishment of a methodology for engaging civil society in the development of the interfacing, including regular focus groups December 2021 April 2022 Milestone 2 - Definition of the technical requirements, scope and data set to be made available in the first version of the interface, including data from states that have been made available to the MMA February 2022 December 2022 Milestone 3 - Creation of a road map to the environmental licensing process combined with information about how to access the systems, including a description of data themes and types, information on how to access them, update period and responsible body December 2021 April 2022 Milestone 4 - Development of features to allow citizens to question data omissions/errors and report them to the responsible oversight bodies April 2022 October 2022 Milestone 5 - Establishment of a way to export data in an open format from the various systems to the open data portal April 2022 October 2022 Milestone 6 - Establishment of a direct channel for citizens to access the technical area responsible for the data April 2022 October 2022 Milestone 7 - Launch of the interface November 2022 December 2022

Action Plan Review

Commitment 10. Disclose Environmental Licensing Data

Commitment cluster #5 and #10: Open Government and Environment (For #5: EMBRAPA, CONAB, MAPA, IPEA, SEMAS/PA, OCF, UFMG, RNP, and C4AI/USP. For #10: IBAMA, MMA, ABRAMPA, and Fiquem Sabendo) [23]

For a complete description of the commitment, see Commitments 5 and 10 in the action plan.

Context and objectives:

Brazil is a major player in the global agribusiness circuit. In 2021, this sector’s exports reached a record value of over 120 billion USD, mostly formed by soy-based products, meats, forest products, sugar and alcohol-based products, and coffee. ^[24] In fact, the country produces one-third of all coffee and sugar consumed worldwide, and it is the world’s largest producer of soybean and corn, as well as the second most important producer of beef. ^[25] The presence of this key agricultural sector makes this cluster of commitments especially relevant in terms of monitoring the environmental effects of this economic sector.

These commitments were drafted from policy topics prioritized by both civil society (Commitment 5) and the government (Commitment 10). Giving their synergies, the IRM has clustered the evaluation and impact analysis of these commitments. However, the implementation is set to happen independently. Both commitments were drafted in partnership with CSOs, in a process led by the CGU. [26] Nevertheless, the final version of the commitment, according to a civil society representative interviewed by the IRM, [27] was much less ambitious than needed to do bring a substantial change. A main constraint was the budgetary limits in place since before the co-creation process given existing budgetary realities. While these constraints were explicit at the co-creation phase, they still limited the potential of the commitments.. According to the civil society representative, there were concerns on the feasibility of effectively leading commitment 10, as the agencies involved did not have or had not assigned the necessary human capacity or financial resources to deliver milestones such as launching the agreed interface. [28]

In the 2018–2021 plan, 2 out of the 11 commitments were related to environmental issues (water resources and climate change). Commitment 5 seeks to open and integrate the agricultural and livestock data available, whereas Commitment 10 aims to improve data transparency regarding environmental licensing and address the issues of having multiple environmental databases scattered across different governmental agencies and lack of access to data. It aims to do this by centralizing data and opening it in one single online platform.

Commitment 5 is a crucial step in identifying unsustainable practices in the sector. For instance, it is crucial to be able to trace the livestock's origin and determine whether the cattle originates from a farm following labor and environmental regulations or if is associated with areas known for illegal deforestation for grazing, among other concerns.. To this day, it is not possible to verify this as the databases are not opened. This is particularly important in one of the largest exporters of meat products and one of the countries with the largest rainforests in the world.

Commitment 10 is also very important, as environmental licensing is a key regulation for large works, such as roads, hydroelectric plants, and mining dams. Although subnational environmental licensing is not included in this commitment, the centralization of data regarding federal oversight is a crucial transparency instrument for civil society to monitor human intervention on the environment.

Potential for results: Modest

Data on agricultural activities currently published through the national open-data portal is not relevant to monitoring economic activities, as it focuses on implementation indicators for governmental programs and is not updated. ^[29] Meanwhile, as indicated in the commitment, relevant institutional efforts such as the Ministry of Agriculture’s Data Observatory ^[30] do not comply with open-data principles and instead provide dashboards to access statistical data, which prevents its reuse and its interoperability with other data sources to obtain further insight.

Regarding the environmental licensing process, the Environmental Licensing National Portal (PNLA) currently publishes information through its website ^[31]; however, this information is not easily accessible, nor does it follow open-data guidelines.

Despite the limitations flagged by civil society organizations, these commitments could substantially advance open government regarding environmental regulation. Currently, data is scattered and, in many cases, unavailable for the public—which was pointed out by a civil society representative interviewed by the IRM researcher. ^[32] By opening data—with parsimony—and centralizing it in one single platform, this commitment could have the potential to modestly improve transparency regarding environmental issues at the federal level.

Opportunities, challenges, and recommendations during implementation

There are two key aspects of the commitments. The first one is to have sufficient IT capacity to allocate to Commitment 10. This task requires several hours of work to build systems and make data available. Governmental agencies should be able to yield human resources to implement this commitment. The second key aspect is realistic budgets. To build up this system, some investment is needed to set it up, in particular funds for hiring IT consultants.

These two aspects, in turn, present two challenges that might risk the implementation of the commitment. To mitigate these challenges, it is important to open up channels with CSOs that might be able to point to open-source IT solutions cheaper than the proprietary software initially considered for this commitment—including some IT solutions developed by the government itself, but not used across different agencies.

The last challenge regards the standardizing of understanding of governmental agencies regarding the new privacy data law ^[33] and the need to open data, in particular to Commitment 5. Many agencies are now denying access or closing access after this law was passed ^[34] in 2018, even though it clearly accepts the opening of data that is of public interest. ^[35]

Results Report

Commitment 10. Disclosure of environmental licensing data

Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Natural Resources (IBAMA), Ministry of the Environment (MMA), Associação Brasileira dos Membros do Ministério Público de Meio Ambiente (Abrampa), Fiquem Sabendo.

Context and objectives

Environmental issues are key in Brazil, given its status as a major player in the global agribusiness sector and holder of 60% of the Amazon rainforest. [144] Over previous action plan cycles, civil society and citizens have repeatedly brought environmental themes into the OGP process in Brazil. Two of Brazil’s three environmental-related commitments in the fourth action plan had limited completion and no notable early results. [145] For the fifth plan, the concerns were even more pressing, given the reported deterioration of environmental protection actions and the increase in deforestation activities. [146] This commitment aimed to improve transparency and accessibility to federal environmental licensing data and strengthen interactions with database users. The identified problems were the difficulty in structuring the available data, interacting with the existing interfaces, exporting in open data formats, and lacking user feedback channels. [147] In its Action Plan Review, the IRM highlighted the commitment as promising, given the potential to advance open government in a key environmental aspect. [148]

Early results: Moderate

Commitment 10 co-created an interface that allows better access and download of environmental licensing data in open formats, increasing civil society's ability to monitor human-driven environmental activities. It also had an active participation of civil society and government agencies throughout the commitment implementation. The commitment sought to engage civil society and users to inform several technical and system development-oriented activities. There is evidence of engagement mechanisms with civil society, including iterative dialogue, a forum, and a focal group (Milestone 1). [149] Users shared insights on their data uses, needs, familiarity with data location, ease of access, and more. [150] The more technical aspects, including defining the interface technical requirements (Milestone 2), mapping the current licensing process (Milestone 3), and establishing open data system protocols (Milestone 5), were achieved with civil society involvement and oversight. [151] The final deliverable was accomplished with the interface launch in early 2023 (Milestone 7). [152] The interface was integrated as a panel part of PAMGIA, a Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Natural Resources (IBAMA) platform that facilitates public analysis, visualizations, and monitoring of environmental themes. [153] Nevertheless, important milestones that aimed to allow users to report data omissions/errors (Milestone 4) and directly link them with the technical units responsible for the data (Milestone 6) remained pending. [154] These actions had little progress beyond internal discussions and a presentation of Fala.BR, [155] an existing federal tool that allows users to demand access to information or give suggestions. [156]

The activities carried out under Commitment 10 improved the availability and accessibility of federal environmental licensing data through the creation of a centralized access point. In milestone 1 consultations, a majority (57.9%) of respondents expressed the need to utilize the Access to Information Law to obtain information. [157] A member of the fifth plan’s Civil Society Working Group (CSWG) highlighted a significant rise in the availability of environmental licensing data as an outcome of the commitment, [158] reflecting the change from the commitment's initial stages. The interface also directly fulfilled the goal of allowing data extraction in open data formats. [159] Additionally, the commitment strengthened the relationship between data providers and users by engaging them in discussions on constructing an interface that meets their possibilities and demands. While the mechanisms for ongoing feedback were not developed, the commitment has been recognized by the Comptroller-General’s Office of the Union (CGU) and actors of the CSWG as advancing transparency and improving the quality of the dialogue between civil society and government. [160] The launch of the interface in early 2023 also reflects how the group continued collaborating despite the official end of the fifth plan. Given these early results, the commitment moderately advances the open government principles of transparency and civic participation in federal environmental licensing.

Commitment 10 presented common challenges shared across the plan, such as the electoral year and reduced implementation period. It also shared recurring challenges on commitments related to opening environmental data, as commercial and personal secrecy justifications were used to explain the inability to disclose certain requested information by civil society, such as details on the ownership of individuals and organizations involved in environmental activities. [161] An enabling factor was the IBAMA, the commitment lead, is responsible for environmental licensing data. This difference serves as a key observation on the need to have as commitment leads those organizations responsible for implementing the bulk of the actions. Additionally, IBAMA already counted with the PAMGIA platform, which facilitated the fulfillment of the commitment goals. Commitment 10 was also a government-defined priority with advanced planning and support, facilitating achieving its final deliverable. [162]

Looking ahead

For environmental data to be more accessible and guarantee proper monitoring by civil society, the federal bodies with jurisdiction to better evaluate whether opening datasets violates secrecy provisions need to be more actively involved.

Furthermore, the value of citizen monitoring has been evident in the environmental commitments of this plan (e.g., Commitments 1, 5, and 10). As users of the data, they have valuable insights to share with the producers of the information. A natural next step would be the implementation of the feedback mechanisms outlined in Commitment 10. One potential avenue is leveraging the Fala.BR platform, but it should be validated by civil society as a mechanism that provides more technically oriented feedback to report data omissions and errors.