Appropriation of the Territory Management by Federal Public Power: The Formal and the Real Aspects of The Environmental Legislation in Rio de Janeiro

Brazilian people are proud to have an environmental law considered the most complete and modern in the planet. However, pride turns to disappointment when individuals and organizations subvert the legal mechanisms to achieve their goals without worrying about the environmental damage and social conflicts that their actions potentialize. This paper uses as methodological strategies a literature review of publications that discuss the construction of the two projects, a historical survey of the growth of the metropolitan region of the state of Rio de Janeiro and a guided critique based on the concept of territoriality and conflicts and environmental vulnerabilities of environmental sciences in order to observe the legal manipulations, flexibilities and arrangements in environmental legislation to allow the projects to be constructed. The results showed that public and private interests can overwhelm any legal provision that arises to prevent these actions, that the reductionist discourse minimizes the criticism and environmental conflicts are recurrent in these situations