(São Paulo) – Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva should veto a bill that dismantles environmental licensing and poses serious threats to environment-related human rights across the country, Human Rights Watch said today.

The proposed General Environmental Licensing Law, known to opponents as “Devastation Bill,” was approved on July 17, 2025, in the Chamber of Deputies. If enacted, the bill could accelerate oil and gas extraction, mining, cattle ranching, and deforestation in the Amazon. 

“Allowing projects to go forward without environmental impact assessments is a recipe for disaster,” said Maria Laura Canineu, deputy environment and human rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The bill opens the door to very harmful effects not only on the environment, but on people’s health and livelihoods, particularly Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian communities.” 

The bill would allow those proposing small or medium sized projects, with alleged low or medium environmental impact potential, to obtain licenses simply by filling out an environmental adherence form, without any need for environmental impact assessments. Local, state, and federal environmental authorities would be responsible for defining which activities fall into these categories. 

More than 350 civil society organizations opposing the bill highlighted in a joint letter that the Brumadinho Dam, which collapsed in 2019 releasing 10 million cubic meters of mining waste and causing 270 deaths, would have been considered to have medium environmental impact potential under the bill’s provisions. As such, similar dams could be built without an environmental impact assessment, the organizations said.

The approval of the bill by congress comes in the run-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), which will be held in Belém, in Brazil’s Pará state, in November. Brazil should play a key role as climate leaders meet to discuss the global response to climate change. 

The bill would also create a “special environmental license” that allows speedy approval for projects the government deems strategic, such as oil exploration in the Amazon region, despite their potential environmental and human rights impacts. Among other problematic provisions, the bill would also reduce the protection of Indigenous and rural Afro-Brazilian communities whose territories have not been formally recognized by the authorities.

The bill does not take into account the effects that projects can have on aggravating the climate crisis, Human Rights Watch said. It would most likely worsen climate change by reducing oversight over key activities driving it, such as fossil fuel production and cattle ranching in the Amazon.

Under international human rights law, Brazil has an obligation to uphold human rights in its environmental policies.

On July 3, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights published an advisory opinion stating that governments have a duty to address the causes of climate change, in particular by mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, agriculture, and deforestation, and protecting carbon sinks, such as the Amazon rainforest.

“Approval of the bill to weaken environmental protection in Brazil would be the biggest setback for the country’s environmental protection in decades,” Canineu said. “It would send a terrible message to Brazilians whose right to a healthy environment will be impacted, and to the world, as Brazil prepares to host COP30. President Lula should veto it.”