Comptroller General’s Office formally acknowledges the sanctions regulation under the SBAP Law

The Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic has formally approved (with specific observations) the Regulation for the Public Registry of Sanctions, governed by Article 140 of Law No. 21.600, which establishes the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Service and the National System of Protected Areas (SBAP Law).

This is a narrowly defined regulation aimed at governing the creation and updating of the registry, as well as aspects related to access and the public disclosure of imposed sanctions.

As stipulated by law, the registry is public and available on the Service’s website. The information includes the offender’s identity; the violations committed; the dates of the violation, the sanctioning resolution, and when the resolution became final; the sanction applied and its compliance status; and a copy of the sanctioning resolution with the identification of the corresponding electronic file, which is also public. The registry’s content will be updated monthly within the first five days of each month. The information must be removed five years after the authority included it.

In contrast to the preliminary draft, the final version opted to include only final sanctions and to eliminate additional publicity measures. While the former aligns with the public registry of sanctions maintained by the Superintendency of the Environment (SMA)—and incorporates public feedback received—the latter adheres to the statutory minimum but departs from the additional publicity practices employed by the SMA pursuant to Article 20 of Supreme Decree No. 31/2012 (MMA).

Although this regulation will enter into force in the coming days upon its publication in the Official Gazette, its application is expected to be limited in the short term because the Service’s enforcement and sanctioning powers are not yet fully operational. Regarding infractions within protected areas (Article 115), most do not yet fall under the administration or supervision of the SBAP. This is either because they have not been harmonized according to the Fifth Transitional Article or because their administration has not yet been transferred, an event scheduled for March 2027. Outside protected areas, some infractions require pending regulatory implementation, such as those related to priority sites, ecological restoration plans, plans for the prevention, control, and eradication of invasive alien species, or the misuse of certifications. Others require the prior exercise of specific powers, such as the infraction under Article 41 concerning the physical alteration of inventoried wetlands.