AVALIAÇÃO DA QUALIDADE DE ESTUDOS AMBIENTAIS EM PROCESSOS DE LICENCIAMENTO: the case of Environmental Control Reports in Minas Gerais

In Brazil, the Environmental Impact Assessment supports the issuance of environmental licenses. The central step of this process is the preparation of environmental studies and the quality assessing of them can be considered an indicator of the performance of the process as a whole. Checklists are the most common way to assess the quality of studies, and for the Environmental Impact Assessment there are several options, but when it comes to other studies there are no methods available. Thus, this work aimed to propose a methodology (checklist and concordance rates) to evaluate the quality of Environmental Control Reports (ECR) used in the licensing process in Minas Gerais. Still, from the proposed checklist, we evaluated the quality of some ECR approved by Supram Sul de Minas between 2005 and 2009. The studies analyzed showed up with low quality, and the synthesis of the environmental quality of the area affected by the project and the analysis of impact its major weaknesses. The proposed methodology was useful in analyzing the quality of the ECR, as allows adaptations, could be used to analyze other types of studies present in the licensing processes of other states.