Parques eólicos no interior potiguar: uma análise das similaridades nos impactos e das equipes técnicas de EIA/RIMA

Abstract

This study investigated, through an exploratory quali-quantitative approach, the standardization patterns found in five Environmental Impact Studies and Reports (EIA/RIMA) related to wind farms located in Cerro Corá, Bodó, Santana do Matos, Caicó, and Serra Caiada, in the interior of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. A comparative document analysis was conducted, in which over 70 predicted impacts were converted into binary variables (presence or absence), followed by the application of the Jaccard similarity coefficient and visualization through heatmaps. The results revealed high similarity (J ≥ 0.84) among projects up to 96 km apart, and, conversely, low similarity (J ≤ 0.43) among geographically adjacent developments. These findings indicate that the repetition of technical teams significantly contributes to the homogenization of impact reports. The results provide evidence that the similarity between technical teams has a greater influence on the similarity of the identified impacts than the geographical distance. This finding suggests the need to increase the diversity of specialists and methodological rigor in licensing processes, promoting assessments that are more sensitive to local specificities, as required by Brazilian environmental legislation.