REVISING ENVIRONMENTAL LAW THROUGH THE PARADIGM OF GOVERNANCE

This article analyzes the Brazilian environmental normative production and its lack of effectiveness and efficiency under the dominion of symbolic power. Besides being the environment a common good the ones who have the competence to rule about it are very few public offices. The result is a constrained rule of law unable to encompass the complexity of the environmental challenges, and a lack of indicators to assess the effectiveness of environmental law: its existence and implementation in quantitative and qualitative values. The argument of this paper is that environmental law should be measured, produced and applied in the light of the governance paradigm empowering multistakeholders throughmultiple channels of influence causing synergistic, overlapping, or even contradictory actions, but efficiently influencing actions to deal with the causes of the environmental problems. The present analysis was based on bibliographical references using the hypothetical deductive method.