Government signals with the Rural Environmental Registry data opening

In a meeting with Minister of Environment and director of SFB, organizations that integrate the Center’s Forest Code reinforced request for transparency in the CAR data

civil society organizations representatives who are part of the Center’s Forest Code (OCF) assessed as positive the meeting this morning with the Minister of Environment, Sarney Filho, and the director of the Brazilian Forest Service, Raimundo Deusdará Son.

At the meeting, the director of SFB assured that some of the information requested by the OCF will be available by the end of November, and proved to be open to enable the dissemination of data CAR without signing confidentiality clause by the applicant.

Adriana Ramos, coordinator of the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), participating entity of the OCF, stressed that civil society organizations must remain vigilant in the sense that the commitments leave the paper.

“We had the opportunity to put clear and objective proposals and obtained a clear manifestation of the Minister that it is necessary to arrive at full transparency,” he noted.

At the meeting, the director of SFB admitted limitations of infrastructure, human and financial resources to provide the SFB quickly all CAR data to the company.

“There is a problem of information technology and infrastructure. There are about 1,500 hits per day to the site of the Rural Environmental Registry, we are only five people in the Forest Service working in the CAR. In addition to developing and testing, we have to make available to the system, “he argued.

During the meeting, Andrea Azevedo, director of the Environmental Research Institute of Amazonia (IPAM, member of OCF), pointed out that the Center’s organizations understand the technical difficulties – the OCF has already offered to support any demands of the SFB that sense – but He said it is not feasible to discuss the implementation of the CAR without the issue of transparency is contemplated.

“The great legacy of the CAR will be transparency. It will only work when the market come asking supply chains compliance with the Forest Code, and this is not possible without the public availability of data, “said Andrea Azevedo.

During the meeting, the Center’s Forest Code submitted three claims:

Immediate availability of the information vector database bases (shapefiles) of the CAR System (Sychar);
Amendment of Articles 4 and 9 of Instruction 3/2014, of IBAMA, which restricts access to personal information and imposes signature requesting the confidentiality agreement, including by being contrary to legal principles of transparency and access to information of public interest and
online visual tool for implementation that allows access and download detailed information from Sychar data through vector database.

The Center’s Forest Code will, in the coming days to formalize the proposals and the meeting of the referrals to the Ministry of Environment and Forest Service, establishing deadlines for the measures to take effect and the Rural Environmental Registry data begin to be made available to the society.

Created in May 2013, the Center’s Forest Code aims to monitor the implementation of the new Forestry Law (Federal Law 12,651 / 12) throughout the country and monitor the performance of Environmental Adjustment Programs (PRAs) and its main instrument , the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), with the intention of mitigating the negative aspects of the new Code and avoid further setbacks.