Federal, state and municipal licences at the same time

The scene below is an illustration, not a real case. On a Friday in March, the city approves the plan for a high-end residential subdivision. The team celebrates and moves on. In September, legal asks for the filing receipt from the property registry. There is none. The approval, won over months of meetings, lapsed in August.

Nobody acted in bad faith. The deadline simply lived nowhere. Brazil's Urban Land Subdivision Law of 1979 gives the developer 180 days from approval to file the project with the property registry, or the approval expires (Article 18). Approval proves the project fits the city. Only registration proves it exists.

That deadline is one among dozens. The 1988 Constitution makes environmental protection a shared duty of the federal government, the states and the municipalities. It splits lawmaking on urban planning and the environment between the Union and the states. And it leaves the control of urban land use, subdivision and occupation to the municipality. A large development answers to all three at once, before agencies that were never designed to talk to each other.

That is why we treat multi-jurisdictional compliance as process engineering rather than legal scholarship. The useful question is not which laws exist. It is who decides each act, in what order and on what evidence.

One authority licenses, but other voices join the process

The good news comes from Complementary Law 140 of 2011. Its Article 13 provides that each project is environmentally licensed by a single level of government. The others may weigh in, but their opinion does not bind the decision. For whoever runs the project, that means one environmental license, not three.

The split is objective. The federal government licenses, among others, projects spanning two or more states, on indigenous land or in federal conservation units. Municipalities license local-impact projects, as typified by the state environmental council. The state takes the rest. Any level may inspect, but the citation issued by the licensing authority prevails.

One licensing authority does not mean one counterpart. The General Environmental Licensing Law of 2025 created the role of the "involved authority": agencies that comment when a project affects indigenous or quilombola land, protected cultural heritage or conservation units. The first task on any new site, therefore, is to settle in writing, with legal grounds, which authority licenses it. A wrong call contaminates the whole schedule, because studies and conditions get built under the wrong agency's procedure.

A license with an expiry date needs a calendar, not a memory

The General Environmental Licensing Law, signed in August 2025 and in force 180 days later, ended open-ended licenses. The Preliminary License and the Installation License last three to six years. The Operating License lasts five to ten. A defined term brings predictability and a date someone has to watch.

The provision that matters most for management is Article 7. If renewal is requested at least 120 days before expiry, the license is automatically extended until the agency decides. Missing that window does not kill the project, but it strips away the protection of the extension. Waiting has an exit too. Ruling on ADI 4757 in 2022, the Federal Supreme Court held that an agency's unjustified and disproportionate delay on a renewal request triggers backup action by another level of government.

Operating without a license now costs more. The same law raised the penalty for that crime, defined in the Environmental Crimes Law, to six months to two years of detention, a fine, or both. It can double when licensing requires a full Environmental Impact Study. On the administrative side, the federal environmental infractions decree sets fines from R$ 500 to R$ 10 million for the same conduct.

Compliance across three spheres is not about knowing every law. It is about knowing, for each act, who decides, how long it lasts and what proves it was met.

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A subdivision goes through the city, the state and the registry

The Land Subdivision Law is the clearest picture of layered obligations. The city approves the plan, which must be carried out within its schedule or the approval lapses. The state comes in through Article 13. It sets the rules for municipal approval when the subdivision sits in a watershed protection or cultural heritage area. Also when it borders, or spreads across, more than one municipality in a metropolitan region or urban cluster. And when the tract exceeds 1,000,000 m². In metropolitan regions, prior consent belongs to the metropolitan authority.

The closing step is registration, with the 180 days from the opening scene. All three spheres meet there: the law requires clearance certificates for federal, state and municipal taxes on the property. Starting a subdivision without authorization, or against its terms, is a crime against public administration, punishable by one to four years of imprisonment and a fine. Selling lots in an unregistered subdivision aggravates the offense.

The city also legislates on its own risk

The City Statute leaves it to municipal law to list which projects need a Neighborhood Impact Study before obtaining building or operating permits. The study, which looks at density, traffic and landscape, does not replace the environmental impact study. Two studies, two spheres and two procedures on the same land.

Permanent Preservation Areas follow the same logic. The Forest Code sets minimum buffers along rivers, starting at 30 meters for watercourses under 10 meters wide. Since 2021, however, in consolidated urban areas and after hearing the environmental councils, municipal law may set different buffers. The width that constrains your project may depend on a local statute that someone has to find, read and file.

There is also a useful limit when negotiating offsets. The Economic Freedom Law bars abusive compensatory measures in urban impact studies, such as offsetting impacts that would exist without the project. It is not a tool to refuse legitimate obligations. It is a tool to keep offsets documented and proportional to the real impact.

An agency's silence means different things under each regime

The Economic Freedom Law sets, as a rule, that an authority's silence after the review period counts as tacit approval. The same law, however, excludes states and municipalities, unless the act derives from federal legislation or the local government chooses to adopt the rule.

Environmental licensing works the opposite way. Article 14 of Complementary Law 140 is explicit: a lapsed deadline without a license is not a license, and it does not authorize the works. It only opens backup action by another level of government. Every act in your matrix therefore needs a field stating what silence produces. Without it, field teams tend to read silence as permission, and that is where construction without a valid license begins.

Integrity is part of the process, not an appendix

More agencies mean more interactions and more exposure. Brazil's Anti-Corruption Law of 2013 sets fines of 0.1% to 20% of gross revenue for companies responsible for wrongful acts against public administration. It also requires that sanctions weigh the existence of internal integrity mechanisms. The 2022 implementing decree, in Article 57, calls for procedures to prevent wrongdoing in any interaction with the public sector, including through third parties. The text expressly mentions obtaining authorizations, licenses, permits and certificates.

A licensing process run across three spheres is precisely the scenario the decree describes. What separates a real program from a document in a drawer is evidence. Every filing, technical meeting and fee paid should leave a traceable record on the Platform, with date and owner.

A numerical example: the cost of missing a window

The figures below are InnovaSphere hypotheses, not market data or a real project. Picture a high-end subdivision outside a metropolitan region, with statutory deadlines applied to fictional dates.

In this hypothesis, one missed deadline costs 9.7 times the annual routine that would have prevented it, before any fine. The stress test confirms the direction. If the new approval came in two months instead of five, the delay would cost R$ 700 thousand, still 3.9 times the routine. Breakeven sits near 15 days of carrying cost: R$ 180 thousand divided by R$ 350 thousand a month gives 0.51 month. Avoiding a two-week delay once a year pays for the routine.

This article's simulator starts from the same variables, licenses and jurisdictions, and returns orders of magnitude. Use it to size the routine, not as a budget.

When it does not pay off to build a dedicated structure

The structure has a cost and demands discipline. In three situations, it does not pay for itself.

A small project, in one municipality, with local impact. If the licensing authority is the city itself, permits are few and there is no state consent or involved authority, a well-documented internal routine is enough.

Classification still open. Before the licensing authority and the site's feasibility are settled, building the full dashboard is premature. Resources go further on the classification opinion and on reading local laws. The calendar comes once there are real acts to track.

Governance that cannot sustain the discipline. A dashboard with no owner and no authority to halt a work front breeds false security. If nobody can say "it does not start without the license", the empowered owner comes first. The tool comes later.

Checklist for organizing compliance across three spheres

1. Confirm in writing which authority licenses the project, with environmental counsel and the agency itself.
2. Build the source matrix: for each obligation, the sphere, the statute, the provision and the date it was last checked.
3. Calculate each license's renewal deadline, 120 days before expiry, and assign it a named owner.
4. Check whether the tract triggers state rules or metropolitan consent, by size, watershed, heritage or municipal boundary.
5. Find the municipal neighborhood impact law and any local urban buffer law.
6. Record the effect of agency silence for each act, and bar any work front from starting without an express act where tacit approval does not apply.
7. Submit the trail of dealings with agencies and intermediaries to an independent audit.

Two of the group's companies work close to this subject. Independent verification of trails like this one is the field of Valida Auditoria. The tax standing behind the registry's clearance certificates is the agenda of InnConta.

Frequently asked questions

If all three levels share environmental authority, do I need three environmental licenses?

No. Under Complementary Law 140, a single level licenses, and the others comment without binding the decision. That does not remove municipal zoning approval or the neighborhood impact study.

Does the General Licensing Law override state rules?

It sets general rules. Under Article 24 of the Constitution, states keep supplementary authority, and a state rule loses effect only where it conflicts with federal law. That is why the source matrix must be reviewed whenever federal law changes.

If the agency misses its deadline, can I treat the request as approved?

It depends on the regime. The Economic Freedom Law allows tacit approval for federal acts but excludes states and municipalities, with exceptions. In environmental licensing, a lapsed deadline is never a license: it only opens backup action by another level of government.

What happens if the subdivision is not registered within 180 days?

The approval lapses and the process goes back to the city. Selling, promising or reserving lots before registration aggravates the crime of irregular subdivision.

Does an integrity program matter for a company that only deals with permits?

It does. The Anti-Corruption Law weighs integrity when setting sanctions, and the 2022 decree lists obtaining licenses and certificates among the covered interactions. For a project that depends on dozens of public acts, that is the core of the risk.

Legal basis

• Federal Constitution, Arts. 23, 24 and 30.
• Complementary Law 140/2011, Arts. 7 to 9 and 13 to 17.
• Law 15,190/2025, Arts. 3, 6, 7 and 67.
• Law 9,605/1998, Art. 60, and Decree 6,514/2008, Art. 66.
• Law 6,766/1979, Arts. 12, 13, 18 and 50.
• Law 10,257/2001, Arts. 36 to 38.
• Law 12,651/2012, Art. 4, I, a, and paragraph 10.
• Law 13,874/2019, Art. 1, paragraph 5, and Art. 3, IX and XI.
• Law 12,846/2013, Arts. 6 and 7, and Decree 11,129/2022, Art. 57.
• Federal Supreme Court, ADI 4757, December 2022.