Since 2012, Brazil has weakened forest protection laws and policies. Even though deforestation is rising due to agriculture and cattle ranching, land grabbing may be a more significant driver. While 33% of the Brazilian Amazon lacks clear property rights as government land, organized groups illegally occupy land, expel indigenous people (when in the way), plant grass, raise cattle, and request land titles while lobbying for amnesty. The process is profitable and perpetuates a cycle of crime. Solutions include increasing recognition of indigenous lands, protecting biodiversity hotspots, improving land-grabbing penalties, expanding criminal investigations, and advancing transparency of land tenure regularization processes, without which law enforcement and proper land management are impossible. As a researcher for Imazon (Institute of Man and Environment of the Amazon), Brenda Brito presents about these issues and supports the campaign “Be Legal With the Amazon” (or in Portuguese: Seja Legal com a Amazônia ). To learn more, visit: Be Legal with the Amazon / Seja Legal com a Amazônia and Imazon (Institute of Man and Environment of the Amazon)
Published October 16, 2020
Participants
- Brenda Brito of Imazon
Transcript
Brenda Brito:
Deforestation is rising in the Brazilian Amazon, even though Brazil successfully achieved an 80% reduction in forest loss between 2005 and 2012. And in fact, since 2012, the country has weakened environmental policies and laws such as the forest code. And last year, the forest destruction has reached a new level and exceeded 10,000 square kilometers for the first time since 2008. This year, 2020, the deforestation alert systems are already indicating an increase compared to last year, meaning that we expect to have an even higher rate of deforestation than we had a year ago.
About 80% of the deforested area in Brazil, in the Brazilian Amazon, is associated with agriculture and cattle ranching expansion. And in fact, cattle ranching in the Amazon is a very inefficient land use activity. For instance, there is on average one head of cattle per hectare in the Amazon, while the existing methods and technology already allow increasing farm production to at least four head of cattle per hectare. But what we are learning is that these inefficiencies in ranching are often hiding another driver of deforestation, which is land grabbing. We estimate that 33% of the Brazilian Amazon region lacks clarity in property rights.
And this land essentially belongs to the government, but different actors are occupying part of this area and claiming land rights. Some land occupations are legitimate and wait for governmental recognition, such as the Indigenous peoples’ land claims. However, other parts of these landholdings are illegal and we can identify a cycle of land grabbing in public forests in the Amazon that starts when groups of land grabbers occupy public land and in some cases they expel indigenous peoples previously inhabiting these areas. Then, they deforest the area and plant grass to raise cattle, which is a relatively cheap way to signal land use.
After that, they request a land title from the government as a formal recognition of their land occupation. And if the law doesn’t allow the legalization of such occupations, these groups then lobby to change the rules. For instance, in 2017, Congress revised the federal land law and granted amnesty to those who occupied public land between 2005 and 2011, which could be considered a crime before the law changed. With the new law, though, these landholders may apply now to receive a land title from the government. And this year, 2020, there was a new attempt to change the law again and extend such an amnesty to public land occupations that started up to 2018, only 2 years ago.
But there was a huge public outcry against the change, so Congress dismissed the bill. And going back to the inefficiency of cattle ranching in the Amazon, it is fair to say that land grabbing explains part of this problem. Because it’s cheaper to deforest a public land to raise cattle than to invest in intensification of ranching in areas already deforested. And cattle ranching is accepted by the governmental land agencies as a proof of land occupation to request a land title, even if these are cases of low productivity. The good news is that we know how to solve this problem because Brazil already used some past mechanisms to fight land grabbing.
The most fundamental step is to recognize priority land claims such as those from indigenous peoples and to create protected areas in biodiversity hotspots. These two measures combined were essential when Brazil reduced deforestation by 80% between 2005 and 2012. The second step is to punish land grabbers. The penalty for such a crime is too weak and there is not enough investigation to catch the head of the criminal organizations operating in the region. So Brazil needs to arrest the big guys behind land grabbing schemes. And finally, a third step is to increase the transparency of land tenure regularization policies.
On average, the state land agencies disclose only 22% of the mandatory data about their practices. So it isn’t easy to know who is receiving a land title from the state agencies and where these lands are located. Such a lack of transparency undermines social control over the management of public land and it also prevents monitoring institutions such as the prosecutor’s office from intervene when land agencies should not privatize a public land parcel because of other legal priorities. So my final message is that all of you who are interested in reducing the deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon should explicitly support measures to combat land grabbing and to speed up the recognition of priority land claims according to our Brazilian legislation.