Indigenous territorial governance and environmental justice:

the PNGATI as a procedural parameter for access to justice in the face of climate change

Abstract

This article analyzes the National Policy for Territorial and Environmental Management of Indigenous Lands (PNGATI), established by Decree No. 7,747/2012, arguing that it goes beyond a merely programmatic public policy guideline and operates as a legal-institutional parameter for assessing the validity of environmental decisions affecting Indigenous territories. The objective is to examine how the articulation between PNGATI, Indigenous territorial governance, and participatory democracy contributes to the realization of socio-environmental justice in the context of the intensification of climate change impacts on Indigenous peoples. The central thesis argues that non-compliance with the participatory mechanisms provided for in PNGATI undermines both the democratic legitimacy of such decisions and the achievement of environmental justice in its material and collective dimensions. The article discusses how the Indigenous worldview—grounded in a relational, ecocentric, and territorially embedded ontology—is structurally incompatible with state-centered and Eurocentric models of governance, generating deficits of recognition, participation, and legitimacy. In this regard, particular attention is given to Axis 2 of PNGATI, which ensures active Indigenous participation in decision-making processes, shifting the focus from a technical-bureaucratic rationale to procedural democratic validity. The article also examines significant normative tensions, including the enactment of Law No. 14,701/2023 (the Marco Temporal framework), declared unconstitutional by the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF) in 2025, as well as the disproportionate impacts of climate change on Indigenous peoples. It concludes that the effectiveness of PNGATI requires not only an analysis of its formal instruments but also an examination of the procedural conditions of legitimacy, the participating subjects, and the deliberative mechanisms adopted, thereby consolidating governance as a central category for democracy, environmental justice, and climate justice in Indigenous contexts.