Law No. 19.240 establishing criteria for State local authorities to carry out their duties relating to environmental licensing.

This Law establishes clear criteria and requirements for municipalities in the State of Ceará to exercise their environmental licensing powers with respect to activities and interventions of local environmental impact. Its main objective is to ensure legal certainty, institutional capacity, and technical consistency in the decentralization of environmental licensing, in accordance with federal and state legislation. To this end, the law defines what constitutes local environmental impact, excludes activities with intermunicipal or broader effects from municipal competence, and requires municipalities to maintain an adequate environmental management system, including qualified personnel, regulatory frameworks, transparency mechanisms, and oversight structures. By doing so, the law seeks to strengthen environmental governance, prevent conflicts of competence, and promote more effective, transparent, and territorially appropriate environmental licensing practices in Ceará.