/ Research Projects

Public Prosecutor's Office and the promotion of participatory mechanisms

Project funded by FAPESP - Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (Grant number:22/14235-9)

Duration: March 01, 2024 - February 28, 2026.

Principal Investigator: Celso Maran de Oliveira

Research Team: Carolina de Albuquerque ; Dulce Margarida de Jesus Lopes ; Elen Pessoa de Queiroz Ribeiro ; Giulia Parola ; Heitor Menezes Gomes ; Luís Gustavo Santos Lazzarini ; Marcel Britto ; Maria Alexandra de Sousa Aragão ; Maria Carolina Chaves de Sousa ; Maria João da Silva Baila Madeira Antunes ; Paola Camargo Sartori ; Tatiana vieira de Moraes.

Key-Words: ambiente | deliberação | Democracia | Ministério Público | Participação | Direito Ambiental

Resumo

The performance of the Public Prosecutor's Office in Brazil and Portugal addresses different models of judicial and extrajudicial public participation, due to the statutory and legal structure established in the countries, which fosters or delays the performance of the respective Public Prosecutor's Office. The general objective to be achieved in this project is to analyze, from the examination of the literature and empirical study to be carried out in Brazil and Portugal, the characteristics of the mechanisms of social participation - such as meetings, public hearings or public consultations - that allow us to answer the question: how is the citizen environmental participation through the Public Prosecutor's Office in Brazil and Portugal? To this end, the research will identify indicators of the effectiveness of participation in the ways described below and, thus, point out how to invest in more and better forms of citizen environmental participation. The empirical studies will be carried out, in the Brazilian territory, in the counties of Araraquara, São Bernardo do Campo (performance of the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office in the state of São Paulo), São Carlos and São José do Rio Pardo (performance of the Public Prosecutor's Office of the State of São Paulo); in Portugal, in the district of Coimbra (acting of the District Attorney's Office) in order to assess the similarities and differences between models of participation and agents involved and, consequently, from a more theoretical point of view, to assess the possibility that, especially in environmental matters, there is some legal circulation between models and experiences, in order to reinforce the dimensions -of public participation, essential to both legal systems. The specific objectives are: to verify the legitimacy of the Brazilian Public Prosecutor's Office and Portuguese for environmental participatory democracy through participatory instruments; promote a comparative process on the performance of the Public Prosecutor's Office in Brazil and Portugal in the use of participatory instruments in the search for environmental sustainability; evaluation of effectiveness according to legal indicators; widely disseminate the results of the research on institutional and partner websites; holding scientific meetings between researchers (in São Carlos-SP and Coimbra), open to the general public, for dissemination and discussion of research results; and preparation for paper submission. And through an unpublished, cross-sectional, exploratory, descriptive, documentary and comparative research oriented to the application, based on the assumptions of the quantitative- qualitative method of investigation, it is expected to contribute to an improvement in qualified participation.