The environmental structure in Brazil had its implementation started in the '70s, significantly influenced by the Stockholm Conference and thus especially concerned with pollution control, when priority problems of the country are primarily vinculated to the management of the use of natural resources. When was established the Special Secretary for Environment (Secretaria Especial do Meio Ambiente - Sema), the complete lack of administrative structures and prevailing political difficulties hindering the Secretary's action have, paradoxically, defined the course for decentralization, through the delegation of functions to the member-States. As executive and of the State level, the environmental problem has more vigorously reached society as from the direct elections for governors, in 1982, just when influences of the neo-liberalism were making an impossibility of any innovation in the public framework. The institutionalization process had two important moments: in 1975, with the issuing of the national development plan and, in 1982, with the national elections, where new demands from society urged a more efficient response from the State. Such structures concentrate their action, to start with, in systematizing processes for environmental preservation and in establishing a system for licensing of potentially polluting activities.Implementação da estrutura ambiental brasileira. Criação da Secretaria Especial de Meio Ambiente (Sema). Dois momentos importantes do processo de institucionalização: edição do plano nacional de desenvolvimento (1975) e novas demandas sociais exigidas do Estado (eleições de 1982). Sistematização de processos de preservação ambiental e de licenciamento das atividades potencialmente poluidoras.