ENFORCEMENT IN THE EXERCISE OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLICE POWER: A CASE STUDY OF RIO GRANDE DO NORTE BETWEEN 2014 AND 2024
Environmental Police Power; Enforcement; Public Policy, Administrative Sanctions.
This research analyzes the execution of activities related to the Power of Administrative Police done by the State of Rio Grande do Norte, within the scope of the environment, by studying the inspection activity, based on the processing of the infraction notices issued between the years 2014 to 2024. Thus, the application of state administrative measures, which range from inspection to the imposition and enforceability of penalties, is essential for environmental protection as a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution, as an expression of the power-duty in public administration. In this sense, this research consists in analyzing the Enforcement carried out by the Institute for Sustainable Development and the Environment – IDEMA/RN for pursuiting potential environmental damages found. It will be supported by the adopted theoretical framework, following the methodology developed by Marcus (2003). This methodology is capable of constructing a diagnosis of the struggles faced in the power of administrative police’s effective exercise, currently carried out by this state environmental agency. The used methodology started from bibliographic and documentary research of primary sources, with a qualitative approach. For this purpose, 2,372 (two thousand three hundred and seventy-two) administrative proceedings were collected, all of those, characterized by the most frequent environmental infraction, recorded by the Agency, using the Nvivo software based on the content analysis technique, in order to establish concrete parameters in the legal-normative and management fields, capable of indicating possible failures consistent with the effectiveness of environmental fines applied due to the inspection activity and the regular exercise of environmental police power. Finally, based on the data obtained, this research intends to make possible to measure the effectiveness degree of Enforcement of the administrative proceedings that verify environmental infractions.