Brazilian Amazon Deforestation and land governance

Bastiaan P. Reydon & Vitor B. Fernandes

This article?s aim is to show that the main cause of deforestation in the Amazon3 rain forest is the lack of land governance. The deforestation occurs mainly because property rights are not clearly established, and occurs on land directly or indirectly related to the state. After making a literature review on the Amazon deforestation causes, data from PRODES (published by IMAZON, IPAN and ISA) on deforestation for the Amazon region and for the states will show the main landowners types in which deforestation occurs more frequently. Based on this data, the article will show that most of the deforestation happens in land under different types of state control, making more evident that the need of land governance for the diminishing of the deforestation should start with state controlled land. New actions on land administration of the Brazilian government plays an important role: efforts to improve the cadaster (SIGEF) and Terra Legal that is solving problems with public land in a large area of the Amazon. The concluding section will synthesize the main findings and remark that the continuous effort to reduce deforestation will only be possible through a more efficient land governance for the country, particularly for the Amazon region. It will also show other important contributions that the participatory Land Governance will have on the better use of land, on the control of land ownership, manly trough the charging of land taxes.

Event: Symposium on Land Consolidation and Readjustment for Sustainable Development

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Document type:Brazilian Amazon Deforestation and land governance (535 kB - pdf)