Compensating for past deforestation: Assessing the legal forest surplus and deficit of the state of Pará, eastern Amazonia

Abstract

Up to 80% of each private rural property in the Brazilian Amazon is protected by law through the Legal Reserve (LR) mechanism of the federal Forest Code, underlining the conservation importance of forests on private lands in one of the world´s most important biomes. However, our understanding of the discrepancies in levels of forest protection on private lands as obligated by the law versus what occurs in practice remains very poor. We assessed patterns of forest cover and legal compliance with the Forest Code in the 1.25 Mkm 2 Brazilian state of Pará, which has the highest deforestation rate in the Amazon. We evaluate the LR deficit and surplus patterns for different sized properties and across 144 municipalities, and found that the total LR surplus (12.6 Mha) was more than five times the total area of deficit (2.3 Mha). Yet, from the total surplus, only 11%can be legally deforested while the remaining 89% is already protected by law but can be used (sold or rented) to compensate for areas that are under deficit. Medium and large-scale properties make up most of the total LR deficit area, while agrarian reform settlements had comparatively large amounts of both compensation-only surplus and deforestable surplus. Most of the municipalities (77%) in the state could compensate their total deficit with surplus areas of LR in the same municipality, while the remainder can be compensate their deficit in one or more neighboring municipality, indicating compensation can always take place close to the source of the deficit. Maximising the environmental benefits of achieving Forest Code compliance requires measures that go beyond the existing legal framework, including interventions to avoid further deforestation in places where it is still legal, compensate in close proximity to areas with legal reserve deficit and promote local restoration on degraded lands.

Is environmental legislation conserving tropical stream faunas? A large‐scale assessment of local, riparian and catchment‐scale influences on Amazonian fish

“…By demonstrating the high turnover in species composition, our results provide strong empirical support for the recommendations of Nunes et al. () to encourage compliance efforts to take place locally, either by focusing on rehabilitation in landscapes that are heavily deforested or by undertaking off‐farm compensation within the same river basin.…”

“…The FC offers two alternative mechanisms for landowners to address previous illegal deforestation (the so‐called legal reserve deficit; Soares‐Filho et al., ; Nunes et al., ) and come into compliance with the law—landowners can either undertake on‐farm rehabilitation or invest in compensation by renting or purchasing forest in other regions. However, the FC does not specify which action should occur, and any compensation only needs to occur within the same biome, that is in the entire Brazilian Amazon (Nunes et al., ). By demonstrating the high turnover in species composition, our results provide strong empirical support for the recommendations of Nunes et al.…”

Valuable habitat and low deforestation can reduce biodiversity gains from development rights markets

“…In some areas, these additional requirements make up most of the over‐compliant native habitat Nunes et al. (). These additions will alter the connectivity of the landscape regardless of which of the two policy options we have considered is used.…”

“…To promote participation and compliance, new provisions will allow under‐compliant landholders to buy land‐clearing rights from over‐compliant landholders who have more native vegetation than required (Silva et al., ). Increased deforestation would be a perverse and undesirable outcome from this law, so no future illegal deforestation will be allowed within this market; trades will only be allowed for deforestation that occurred prior to implementing the law (Nunes et al., ). A TDR market in Brazil could erase over half of current legal reserve debt as well as prevent millions of future deforested hectares on over‐compliant properties (Soares‐Filho et al., ).…”

Potential trajectories of the upcoming forest trading mechanism in Pará State, Brazilian Amazon

“…In a study of the Amazonian State of Mato Grosso, the authors estimated that the forest surplus for CRA would exceed the forest debt [9]. Yet, another recent analysis, but focused on the state of Pará, estimated that forest supply would exceed the forest pre-2008 debt by more than a factor of five [10]. …”