Rio, June 23, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - The inclusion of the environmental dimension in all public policies, through proposals for the Pluriannual Investment Plan (PPA) 2004/2007, is one of the priorities of Lula's Administration in the environmental preservation area. This information was imparted to the electronic news agency of the Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analyses (Ibase) by the Secretary of Sustainable Development Policies, Gilney Viana. The goal, he said, is to favor a progressively more sustainable standard of national development.

Other priorities, according to Viana, are policies directed towards the reduction of environmental liabilities and protection of biodiversity, as well as an active role for Brazil in global environmental policy negotiations.

The Brazilian government, Viana said, does not intend to impose an environmental policy centered on instruments of command and control; rather, it desires to combine policies that set norms with policies that induce changes in the behavior of economic and social actors, both collective and individual.

In the country's oldest industrial areas, where environmental liabilities are great, often in the form of stockpiles of toxic wastes or contaminated terrains and water sources, as a result of inefficient inspection, the secretary told Ibase that a survey will be made of all areas of risk.

The goal, according to him, is to establish a more rigorous inspection effort, with the eventual consolidation of behavioral adjustments to accompany the domination of these areas of risk. (DAS)