The area of concentration "Environmental Law and Society" comprises legal studies directed to the challenge of protecting human environment, as well as ecosystems and natural resources, in the contemporaneous social context. In the proposed thematic approach, the objective is to debate, to elucidate, and to problematize the contribution of Law to sustainability of society and nature. Articulation among Law, environment and society has as an assumption the emergence of a legal-environmental rationality and epistemology. In spite of its fluid contours, it calls into question (material and symbolic) limitations of traditional legal institutions, taking into account the task given to Law - to combat environmental degradation in the natural and human sense, as well as to promote, by mechanisms , which are inherent to it, the healthy quality of life and durability of the ecosystemic balance.

Thus, it is not possible to understand Environmental Law in a hermetic way, departing, for example, from its normative body. On the contrary, the study of the legal-environmental subject differs from the traditional legal study because of its aim and method. This means, it is a study developed in light of an ecologic thought, in the complex interaction with other fields of human knowledge, and in light of crises and antagonisms that explain their appearance. This is every legal subject committed with sustainability, in the dialectics between human environment and natural environment, facing the challenges to the present and future of human societies and to the planet. In the same direction as Brazilian legal system, an integral and wide conception of environmental legal goods is adopted. It covers natural environment , human or social environment; the latter considers cultural, aesthetic, historic, touristic and landscape patrimony, urban environment, and working environment, and any other legal manifestation associated to healthy quality of life.

Epistemological and teleological autonomy of Environmental Law ensures clarity and specificity to the thematic approach of the area of concentration of the Postgraduation Course in Law of UCS, and, at the same time, offers a strongly transdisciplinary character. This transdisciplinarity can be observed, from an internal point of view, in Law, once the problem of protection of environment is present in almost all legal subjects, as international, constitutional, administrative, civil, criminal, procedural, and tax law, labor law, consumer law, philosophy, sociology, and legal anthropology, among others. In the same way, transdisciplinarity can be understood from an external point of view, since, when coming back to safeguard a healthy and ecologically balanced environment, Law has close links: (i) with exact and earth sciences, particularly geosciences; (ii) with biological sciences, particularly ecology; (iii) with some engineering areas, particularly environmental and sanitary ones; (iv) with health sciences; (v) with agrarian sciences, such as agronomy, forest engineering, agricultural engineering, husbandry and food science; (vi) with human sciences, such as philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, geography, environmental education, arts, and political science; (vii) with interdisciplinary areas, such as the areas of environment and agrarian, health and biological sciences or biotechnology; (viii) finally, with the other social applied sciences, particularly administration, economy, tourism, architecture and urbanism, urban and regional planning, demography and social service.

In view of the unprecedented difficulties posed by this historic moment, the area of concentration "Environmental Law and Society" is defined by the study of contributions of Law to sustainability, understood as value and project of harmonic and long- lasting relationship: (i) between humanity and its natural environment; and (ii) between societies and their built environment. Thus, the delimitation of the area presupposes commitment with healthy quality of life, balance of ecosystems, durability of natural resources, reduction of poverty and inequalities, dignity of human beings, equity and social justice. This commitment can be faced simultaneously from the different points of view: dogmatic and aesthetic; ontological and deontological; scientific, philosophical and sociological and so on - provided the different theoretical and methodological options can be associated to the problem of the environmental juridiciality.

The are of concentration described here contemplates two lines of research with proposals , which are autonomous and complementary, at the same time: (i) the line "Environmental Law and New Laws", that studies affirmation of (new) laws in the area of environment; and (ii) the line of "Environmental Law, Public Policies and Socioeconomic Development", that studies the action of public power in the formulation, operationalization, monitoring and evaluation of environmental public policies. In the first case, the approach is based on the fight for effectuation of subjective rights to environment, problematizing legitimacy, juridical configuration and the conditions of possibility of these environmental rights. In the second case, the environment problems are faced from subjective rights of the State, previewed in law, discussing its implementation through public policies directed to sustainable development. Therefore, this scope allows to face varied contemporary problems associated to healthy quality of life, taking into account that some of these themes can be faced from different approaches.

The line of research "Environmental Law and New Laws" comprehends the study of juridical implications of contemporary threats to sustainability of society, external (ecological balance) and internal (genetic issue) nature, problematizing reflections of the crisis of Project in modern times, in continuous affirmation of new rights of whatever dimensions or generations. We depart from the assumption that any stage of social and civilizational change, as well as the most recent technical possibilities of human action on natural and human environment, reflect on the multiplication of ethic and epistemological dilemmas; on lacks and claims of social groups and movements; as well as of political, economic and cultural conflicts. Emergence of this kind of antagonisms corresponds to proliferation of new rights in the dual sense (i) of right(s) to environment instituted in the legal or constitutional plan or even by international treaties; and (ii) of demands of rights, which are socially, and politically legitimate, but not legally instituted.

Even if "new rights" are a category that is always under construction, mainly in issues referring to to environmental and socioenvironmental protection, once it is founded on permanent affirmation of values, this item comprises, not exhaustively: (i) the study of new themes and new juridical goods, which deserve concern, such as biodiversity, sociobiodiversity; biosafety; historic, aesthetic, landscape and cultural heritage; collective rights on common environmental goods of material or immaterial character; new technologies and ecologic, sanitary, ethic or economic risks arising from them; socio environmental rights in general (ii) study of new non-human juridical subjectivities, such as nature rights or animal rights; (iii) debate about new meanings of collective entitlement of rights, as well as new dimensions and justifications of right to environment as a human right (right to water, right to climate, right to biodiversity) and as a fundamental right; (iv) study of new environmental rights arising from specific ways of being in society, such as socioenvironmental and ethno cultural right; climatic refugees rights; right to sustainable consumption; in general, protection of environment from the perspective of vulnerable groups/social classes, of global Latin and South America; and (v) the study of new forms of instrumentalisation of rights, such as collective processual law, extra judiciary laws of resolution of conflicts and theoretical and practical innovations related to decision processes in the environmental field, taking into account the need of articulation between science and evaluating contents to protect environment, due to risks and uncertainties, which are inherent to complex societies.

In this way, undertaking the task of juridical protection of environmental goods in the broad sense, the line of research "Environmental Law and New Laws" contemplates the following specific goals: (i) from a juridical-sociological point of view, to critically debate the role of Law in equating new ethical and political demands in a democratic context, as well as new contemporary environmental demands; (ii) to contribute for renovation of postulates, institutes and regulatory frameworks, to overcome limitations of philosophy, theory and traditional juridical dogmatic faced to multiplication of rights (and social demands for rights) related to environmental quality; (iii) to look for innovative juridical solutions referring to instrumentalisation and concretization of rights and warranties directed to projection of natural and human environment, discussing technical-juridical and sociopolitical reasons of their efficacy and effectiveness deficit; (iv) taking into account that the line of research is founded on a category in permanent construction, to evaluate which ones, among rights and claims for rights associated to environmental quality, can be accounted as part of the phenomenon of new rights, under which conditions and which criteria.

The line of research "Environmental Law, Public Policies and Socioeconomic Development" comprehends the study of the action of State, directly or with the participation of civil society, in formulation, operationalisation, monitoring and evaluation of public policies results, of environmental protection in the broad sense, of safeguarding natural resources and of socioeconomic development. Therefore, it is the study of environmental and socioenvironmental rights in light of an objective right, subject incorporated to national law, which has to be concretized by action of public power.

Definition of environmental public policies comprehends regular institutional actions of public intentionality, associated to protection of human and natural environment, aiming at contributing with a Project of sustainability of society and nature. We adopt, by definition, the multicenter approach, by which decision taking has as main actors not only public agents, but also, within the limits of law, entities and organized or non-organized social actors. At the same time, the relationship between environmental policies and socioeconomic development is critically understood from the notion of sustainable development, embodied in Relatório Nosso Futuro Comum (Our Common Future Report), produced in the year of 1987 within the framework of the United Nations, as well as in global 21 Agenda. In this way, in the light of environmental public policies and their respective action spectrum, the discussion is about conditions of possibility of conciliation between social and economic development, durability of basic natural resources and ecosystems protection, meeting basic human needs, and control and order of urbanization processes, aiming at ensuring possibility of development to all of them, including in transnational and intergenerational sense.

In this way, undertaking the task of enabling sustainable development by means of efficient and democratic management, the line of research "Environmental Law, Public Policies and Socioeconomic Development" has as specific objectives: (i) to study the National Policy of Environment, from the point of view of organization of National System of Environment (Sistema Nacional do Meio Ambiente) (SISNAMA), its instruments (environmental license, environmental zoning, study of environmental impact), objectives and results, as well as environmental state and municipal policies; (ii) to study, from the stage of formulation to the stage of evaluation of results, sectorial environmental policies, as well as urban policy, solid waste policies, hydric resources policies, climatic changes policies, basic sanitation policies, environmental education policies, energetic policies, sustainable development policies of traditional peoples, among others; (iii) to study social control, in a descendant sense, this is, from control of society by State, and in the ascendant one of participation of society in general, as well as specific social actors (workers, women, representatives of traditional communities and ethnical groups) in the processes of planning, following, monitoring and evaluating environmental public policies; (iv) having socio economic development as a goal, to study ways of improving and implementing laws on environmental public policies, from the international to the local plan, as well as discussing forms of allocation of natural resources, through economic analysis of Law and other interdisciplinary approaches that pursue the same objectives; (v) to analyze influence of economy in environmental protection, with studies involving production, industrialization, trade of goods and services, related to the use of natural resources.