Urban environment: challenges for the implementation of public policies aimed at environmental sustainability

Abstract

The Environmental Rule of Law is based on the so-called rights of access to information, public participation and justice. The object of this study was the fundamental right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and the premises for the construction and implementation of public policies that promote environmental sustainability, reflecting on environmentally smart cities. The general objective was to analyze the structuring principles of Environmental Law provided for in the Rio Declaration of 1992, in the 2030 Agenda, in the Brazilian Constitution and in Law No. 10,257 of 2001 (Statute of the City), seeking to understand and point out the bases for the elaboration of public policies concerning environmentally sustainable cities in the contemporary Democratic State of Law, and had as its specific objective to examine the duty of the Government to promote urban planning in accordance with the principle of the social function of cities and environmental sustainability to promote smart cities. The article adopted a hypothetical-deductive methodology analyses of bibliographic and analytical research. As result, it was found that the diffuse and fundamental right to a healthy environment finds support in International Environmental Law through soft law, with emphasis on the Stockholm Declaration of 1972 and UN General Assembly Resolution No. 76 of July 28, 2022, as well as in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, thus, Environmental safety will have to be taken into account in the formulation of urban public policies in order to achieve the sustainability of cities.