QUEIMADAS NA CHAPADA DOS VEADEIROS: RESPOSTAS DO PODER PÚBLICO E DO SISTEMA DE JUSTIÇA

This study seeks to understand the wildfires in the Chapada dos Veadeiros, in Goiás, not as mere climatic inevitabilities or isolated environmental offenses, but as a territorial conflict and a matter of structural socio-environmental injustice. Adopting a qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive approach, the research combines a literature review with empirical-documentary analysis to demonstrate how the criminal use of fire is politically instrumentalized by neoliberal rationality as a low-cost technology for the suppression of native vegetation, land grabbing (grilagem), and the expansion of the agricultural frontier into the Cerrado. MapBiomas Fogo data confirm the historical persistence of this phenomenon, revealing burning levels in the millions of hectares within the biome. Through the lenses of Climate Justice and Environmental Racism, it becomes evident that the ecological, water, and atmospheric damages fall asymmetrically upon vulnerabilized populations, such as traditional quilombola communities, family farmers, and the local ecotourism economy. On the institutional level, the study maps the ineffectiveness of legislative responses based on symbolic penal populism. This is exemplified by State Ordinary Law No. 22,978/2024, which was suspended by the Supreme Federal Court (STF) in ADI 7712 for usurping the Union's exclusive competence to legislate on criminal law—a matter already codified nationally in the Environmental Crimes Law (Law No. 9,605/1998). Furthermore, the research highlights the lack of expediency by the Court of Justice of Goiás (TJGO) in processing environmental public civil actions, contrasted with its rigor on the merits when applying strict civil liability based on integral risk associated with the offenses under Law No. 9,605/1998. Finally, it evaluates the parameters established in ADPF 743 by the STF, alongside new network-based extrajudicial strategies proposed by the CNMP and GAEMA/MPGO to repress infractions of Law No. 9,605/1998. The study concludes that confronting these macro-fires requires overcoming institutional inertia, coordinating land regularization, and valuing the political agency of local communities in preserving the standing Cerrado.