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Within the context of risk society and its delocalized, incalculable and noncompensable global risks, environmental controversies have become increasingly complex. Within this scenario, the Brazil's High Court (STJ, acronym in Portuguese) stands out as it has been recurrently applying environmental hermeneutics' principles and strategies on its decision-making process and clarifying controversies regarding the interpretation of the environmental legislation. Through bibliographic and jurisprudential research, this article therefore seeks to outline the recent highlights of STJ's case-law, analyzing more in depth some of the court's leading environmental cases and its contributions to the evolution of environmental law in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Karst areas in densely populated and industrialized areas in Brazil are under severe environmental pressure due to urbanization, quarrying, groundwater pollution, groundwater overpumping and cave vandalism. Although karst terrains receive no specific protection according to Brazilian environmental law, caves, regardless of rock type, are classified as belonging to the society, and must be studied in detail to have their significance (and related level of protection) determined. Most caves (>90%) are of either maximum or high significance, which results in protection of not only the cave but also of an associated buffer zone. Given the very conservative definition of cave (a natural void large enough to allow a human being to enter), hundreds of caves will exist in any given outcrop and the amalgamation of buffer zones tends to yield an integrated area that covers most of the karst surface. In the Lagoa Santa Karst, Brazil's most urbanized and industrialized karst area, cave preservation is presently the most effective approach to protecting karst heritage. However, other karst features not connected to existing caves (e.g., covered karst, karst aquifers with no accessible caves, dolines with no associated caves) receive no specific protection. Although this heterogeneous level of protection may yield non-preserved karst areas, the remaining zones tend to be surrounded by protection belts, imposing severe restrictions on urban and mining development and associated sources of potential damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concern about the effectiveness of environmental protection is growing up in face of the growing awareness of society regarding the environment that surrounds them and the need for effective maintenance life on Earth. For that arise various instruments to be followed for installation of activities that may be degrading the environment, fitting into this article as a way to introduce a new regulatory instrument that is not yet regulated by a specific law in Brazil. The article has the purpose of analyzing the possible application of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in the Brazilian legal system. Aiming to EXAMINE the significance of the SEA and its need for inclusion in the Brazilian legal system, and specific goals CONCEPTUALIZE the Institute of Environmental Impact Assessment; DEMONSTRATE the concepts and requirements of the Environmental Impact Study (EIS) and IDENTIFY the concept, requirements and applicability of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). At the methodology was used the inductive method ate the research phase; at the data processing the Cartesian method and at the research report the inductive base. Were also triggered the techniques of referent, category, operational concepts, literature research and book report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study, holding as background the conflicts that involve the environment, analyzes the fraternity principle, from the perspective of the theory proposed by Baggio, concluding that the official pattern of environmental litigations composition that exist in Brazil --solidified by the obsolete monopoly of Judiciary-- consolidated on a Law's positivism and on a competitive point of view of the society, does not contemplates the fraternity as a legal value. In other hands, the paper starts to focus the mediation, making clear that this alternative way of contest's solution not only disposes with justness to the environmental conflicted issue but --remarkably by its communicative characteristic acting and shared true-- deeply excited by the fraternity idea. The subject has been researched in the specialized literature, making sure about the precarious systematization of the mediation as management way of environmental conflicts, as well as a lack on the approach of the fraternity as juridical category of potential incidence at the environmental field. In the end, the analysis concludes that the eco mediation may appease the insertion of the fraternity component on arguing related to environmental estates, generally ruled by the radicalization and a vision of world's representationalism, contributing perhaps to the co-operation construction of a new paradigmatical systemic epistemology for conflicts solutions, that insures the emphasized roll to fraternal as imperative of conduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As of the 1980s, 'urban problems' have come to be perceived and treated in new ways in Brazil. Innovations introduced into public administration and legislation, at both the national and local levels, accompanied a broader social process and created conditions in which urban regulations, planning and management not only were equipped with new mechanisms for intervention in the urban context, but were submitted to a new approach structured around respect for environmental concerns. The ideas developed in this article begin with an outline of environment-related litigation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil offered as a way to identify the actors that are able to ensure that their demands and arguments for environmental protection circulate publicly. The second section is designed to begin the task of identifying the available repertoire of versions of the environment as a social problem in Rio de Janeiro. Some remarks are called for here in order to mark out the terrain on which environmental conflicts occur in Rio de Janeiro? The first relates to the role played by public institutions, which goes far beyond their participation as parties to litigation.

The authors comment on research concerning the properties of fly ash and its environmental impact in its use in earthworks. They comment on the cohesion tests and small-strain shear response on Charqueadas, Brazil coal ash and state that they do not have similar data available for the Indiana ashes. They mention that Charqueadas and Indiana ashes have similar chemical constituents and mineral structures. They state that coal ash disposal sites in Indiana are tested to determine how contaminated the ash is, and that the Indiana study focused on environmentally safe coal ashes as refined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Conservation and Restoration Act. They mention that the ashes used as construction material for highway embankments were encased in low-permeability materials.