According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), ecosystem services (ES) encompass the benefits that people obtain from nature, including ecological functions, material goods, and non-material values essential for human existence and well-being (IPBES, 2019). These benefits include regulatory functions such as climate regulation, water purification, erosion control, and pollination, as well as provisioning services such as food, fresh water, fiber, timber, and medicinal resources (Fig. 1). They also include cultural values linked to well-being, spirituality and recreation identity. Neglecting ES in natural resource governance undermines the ability to identify critical socio-environmental risks, as emphasized by IPBES (2019).

Fig. 1.

Ecosystem services, drivers of impact, and the risks of omission in environmental licensing. Examples of impact drivers and associated risks when ES are omitted from licensing processes. Adapted from IPBES Global Assessment (IPBES, 2019).

Accelerated natural resource exploitation and habitat loss are pushing many ecosystems toward ecological tipping points. Degradation reduces vegetation cover, disrupts hydrological cycles, and threatens species interactions essential to provisioning and regulating services (Flores et al., 2024; IPBES, 2019). Forest conversion can lead to semiarid transitions and cascading impacts that weaken carbon storage, water cycling, and pollination networks, generating both ecological and economic losses. These risks are especially acute in sectors that rely on water availability, climate regulation, and pollinator services, where declines can undermine agricultural productivity, energy security and public supply, intensifying socio-environmental vulnerabilities (IPBES, 2019; MEA, 2005; Joly et al., 2019).

In the case of pollination, studies demonstrate that pollinators are essential to sustaining native vegetation and agricultural productivity, with significant contributions to the trade balance of megadiverse countries (IPBES, 2019; Silva et al., 2021; Moreira et al., 2024). When agricultural demand exceeds pollinator availability, substantial productivity losses occur, particularly for crops that depend on pollination (Bergamo et al., 2025). Strong evidence shows that agricultural intensification, landscape homogenization, and pesticide use reduce ES availability, undermining long-term agricultural resilience and food security (IPBES, 2019; Bergamo et al., 2025). The absence of legal support further amplifies Brazil’s production model's vulnerability, heightening the risks of ecological degradation and severe economic consequences.

The lack of explicit ES criteria in EIA frameworks contributes to the underestimation of critical risks, particularly in sectors such as hydropower, mining, and infrastructure, where biodiversity and ecosystem services play a central role (Joly et al., 2019). Some isolated initiatives have emerged, such as the incorporation of ES into dam emergency plans in the state of Minas Gerais through Joint Resolution No. 3.181, but Brazil still lacks a consistent legal framework to guide the assessment or compensation of ecosystem services. Institutionalizing ES in national licensing procedures is therefore essential to ensure effective mitigation aligned with international best practices and to protect socioecological and economic resilience.

The adoption of self-declaratory models, such as the LAC, and the reduced requirement for EIA weaken technical scrutiny and erode mechanisms designed to safeguard critical ecological functions (Fernandes et al., 2025). These instruments reduce the capacity of licensing procedures to prevent impacts on ecosystem services essential to biodiversity and human well-being, whose protection is widely recognized as necessary by scientific literature and international assessments (Joly et al., 2019; IPBES, 2019). By relaxing analytical and preventive requirements, the new law increases the risks of habitat fragmentation, pollinator decline, and disruptions to ecological interactions that are fundamental to agricultural productivity and ecosystem resilience (IPBES, 2019). In addition, weakened continuous monitoring compromises the detection of cumulative long-term impacts, a process broadly associated with the erosion of natural capital and reduced state capacity to anticipate and mitigate socio-environmental risks (Guerry et al., 2015).

The explicit integration of ES into EIA enables decision-makers to account for regulatory functions (e.g., climate regulation, water purification, soil protection, pollination), provisioning services (e.g., food, freshwater, timber), and cultural values (e.g., spiritual enrichment, recreational opportunities), while highlighting the full societal costs and benefits of development projects beyond short-term economic gains. This approach is widely recognized in the scientific literature as a necessary improvement to impact assessment practice (Honrado et al., 2013) and is consistent with international assessment frameworks such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005), the Brazilian Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Joly et al., 2019), and the IPBES Global Assessment (IPBES, 2019).

It is also aligned with recent Brazilian legislation, such as the National Policy for Environmental Services Payment (Law 14.119/21). These initiatives reinforce that explicitly considering ecosystem services in Environmental Impact Assessments can improve the capacity of decision-making processes to address indirect, cumulative, and long-term implications of development projects (Honrado et al., 2013). The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the International Finance Corporation Performance Standards, and IPBES all call for the systematic integration of ecosystem services into environmental planning and regulation to ensure policy effectiveness and sustainability (CBD, 2006; IFC, 2012; IPBES, 2019).

This shift toward incorporating ES, either through their explicit inclusion in legal and policy instruments or their implicit incorporation through ecosystem-based approaches in environmental assessment and planning, is already underway in several countries (Fig. 2). In the European Union, Directive 2014/52/EU mandates consideration of biodiversity, water, and human health in EIA, closely linked to ES. The EU has also advanced complementary instruments, such as Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/2188, which standardizes pollinator monitoring across Member States. By generating comparable data on pollinator diversity and abundance, this regulation indirectly supports the incorporation of ES into environmental assessments, even though it does not formally modify the EIA Directive itself.

Fig. 2.

Examples from national frameworks illustrating how ecosystem services are either explicitly referenced or implicitly incorporated through ecosystem-based approaches in environmental assessment and planning instruments.

In European contexts, ecosystem services have been incorporated into environmental protocols to varying degrees, either explicitly or through ecosystem-based approaches. This is reflected in practical applications within environmental assessment processes. The use of ecosystem services has been implemented in sectors that require environmental licensing, particularly in industrial and infrastructure projects. For example, in Belgium, ecosystem services have been incorporated into environmental and social impact assessments (ESIA) for large-scale industrial developments, where they are systematically used to identify priority services, establish baseline conditions, assess project impacts and dependencies, and define mitigation and compensation measures linked to changes in land use and ecosystem functioning (Arcadis, 2022).

In addition, ecosystem services have been applied in environmental assessment at the planning level, as demonstrated in peri-urban development plans in Italy, where they guide the selection of priority services, the evaluation of alternative land-use scenarios, and the design of mitigation strategies based on green infrastructure (Semeraro et al., 2021). These examples illustrate how ecosystem services can be operationalized to explicitly link ecological changes to socio-economic outcomes, improving decision-making in sectors highly dependent on natural capital.

Beyond Europe, similar progress is evident in South Africa, China, Colombia, and Canada. These models demonstrate that the legal and procedural integration of ES is not only possible but also necessary to ensure resilient environmental governance. In comparative perspective, Brazil’s new licensing framework contrasts sharply with this trend by weakening instruments that other nations are reinforcing to improve risk anticipation and mitigation.

Although Article 225 of Brazil’s 1988 Constitution requires impact assessments for potentially harmful activities and defines ecosystems holistically, the legal framework does not address ES. The law approved by Congress aims to facilitate environmental licensing by reducing requirements and the level of analytical scrutiny. Beyond weakening safeguards established in existing legislation, it fails to advance environmental governance in the context of escalating climate change, biodiversity loss, and degradation of ecological functions (Reis-Filho et al., 2026; Fernandes et al., 2025).

Structuring instruments such as Law No. 6,938/1981 and CONAMA Resolutions No. 01/1986 and No. 237/1997 establish the foundations of environmental licensing in Brazil but omit ecosystem services from impact assessment. Despite growing federal recognition of their importance, there is no legal obligation to incorporate ecosystem services into licensing procedures. In practice, Congress is moving in the opposite direction. The new licensing framework not only fails to address this gap but also reinforces a regulatory system that is misaligned with scientific knowledge and international best practices (Reis-Filho et al., 2026; Fernandes et al., 2025).

Some recent policy initiatives in Brazil already point toward the incorporation of ecosystem services into legal and procedural frameworks. These include the National Policy for Payment for Environmental Services (Law No. 14.119/2021), which formally defines ecosystem services, establishes them as a central objective of environmental policy, and creates institutional mechanisms for their valuation, monitoring, and integration into decision-making processes. By embedding ecosystem services within national policy frameworks and linking them to climate regulation, water security, and biodiversity conservation, this law demonstrates that ecosystem services are already recognized as a foundational element of environmental governance in Brazil.

At the same time, regulatory instruments, including subnational initiatives such as the Joint Resolution SEMAD/FEAM/IEF/IGAM No. 3.181, which explicitly incorporates ecosystem services into environmental assessment and risk management procedures associated with environmental licensing, requiring their consideration in baseline diagnostics, impact assessment, and emergency planning. These initiatives demonstrate that incorporating ecosystem services into environmental governance is both feasible and already underway in the Brazilian context. However, the new Environmental Licensing Law (Law No. 15.190/2025) moves in the opposite direction by failing to incorporate ecosystem services into licensing procedures and by weakening analytical and preventive requirements. This divergence highlights a growing mismatch between emerging policy advances and recent regulatory changes.

Nationally, approval of the new licensing law exposes a clear case of normative incoherence: while instruments such as the National Native Vegetation Recovery Policy aim to strengthen conservation and ecological restoration, the new framework relaxes controls and reduces analytical requirements, generating contradictory incentives and weakening the achievement of climate and biodiversity targets (Reis-Filho et al., 2026; Tchinda and Talbot, 2023). Internationally, such flexibilization diverges from the direction taken in multilateral climate and biodiversity agreements, which emphasize coherent governance and alignment between regulatory instruments and environmental commitments, as articulated under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, 2006). These international frameworks also underscore the need for transparency and an integrated climate policy consistent with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Under these commitments, safeguarding ecological functions is foundational, since climate regulation, water provision, public health, and food security depend on ecosystem services, as demonstrated by the IPBES Global Assessment (IPBES, 2019) and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005).

The weakening of environmental licensing increases the likelihood of inconsistencies emerging between international commitments and domestic regulation, with potential implications for the country’s credibility in global negotiations (Reis-Filho et al., 2026; Fearnside and Leal Filho, 2025). In this context, Brazil must adopt concrete measures to align its regulatory frameworks with scientific consensus (IPBES, 2019; Joly et al., 2019) and the political direction reinforced in multilateral negotiations (CBD, 2006). This alignment requires bringing national legislation closer to international commitments, promoting coherence between environmental licensing, climate policy, and conservation instruments (MEA, 2005; IFC, 2012). Such convergence can generate substantive environmental benefits, reduce conflicting incentives across productive sectors, and strengthen institutional accountability for achieving climate and biodiversity targets beyond voluntary and fragmented commitments (Joly et al., 2019; Fearnside and Leal Filho, 2025).

Addressing this challenge also requires attention to the international dimension, as persistent gaps between global environmental commitments and national regulatory frameworks highlight the need for stronger, more specific guidance in multilateral agreements. Although conventions such as the CBD and UNFCCC promote ecosystem-based approaches, they stop short of requiring concrete legal instruments such as licensing standards that incorporate ES. Concerns over national sovereignty and perceived technical barriers often limit the adoption of more prescriptive obligations. However, the worsening environmental crisis demands progress toward binding and enforceable guidance capable of supporting more consistent implementation across jurisdictions.

Given these limitations, moving in this direction requires explicitly incorporating ES into environmental legislation and establishing mandatory transparency and data disclosure requirements. By sustaining ecological integrity and supporting mitigation and adaptation efforts, ecosystem services are central to commitments under both the CBD and the UNFCCC. Ignoring these interdependencies limits Brazil’s capacity to anticipate, prevent, and mitigate socio-environmental impacts in the short, medium, and long term (Guerry et al., 2015). Explicitly embedding ES in binding environmental licensing and land-use planning frameworks is therefore a necessary step to align national regulation with converging climate and biodiversity agendas, ensuring that nature-based solutions are effectively integrated into mitigation, adaptation, and sustainable development strategies (Seddon et al., 2020).

Integrating ecosystem services into environmental licensing should be understood not as a bureaucratic burden, but as a strategy to support inclusive and sustainable development models grounded in the best available scientific knowledge (Joly et al., 2019). By improving the identification of risks, trade-offs, and long-term impacts, the incorporation of ES enhances decision-making quality rather than delaying it. Guaranteeing transparency and open access to EIA data further strengthens this approach by improving environmental governance and long-term social resilience (GBIF, 2020).

Brazil’s vast natural capital represents an invaluable opportunity to align socio-environmental integrity with long-term economic resilience. Aligning international expectations with national legal frameworks through the incorporation of ES is both strategic and necessary. National biodiversity assessments emphasize that public policies need to integrate ES as a foundational element in environmental and land-use planning, recognizing them as critical natural capital sustaining economic prosperity and social well-being (Joly et al., 2019). Ensuring regulatory coherence between domestic policies and international commitments is essential for restoring credibility and strengthening resilient development pathways (Fearnside and Leal Filho, 2025). Achieving this coherence requires transforming scientific evidence into binding regulatory standards rather than relying on voluntary or discretionary instruments. As Hipólito and colleagues (2021) warn, policy-making detached from science amounts to management in the dark. Breaking this barrier is therefore central to enabling transparent, accountable, and evidence-informed environmental governance.