Doing it for Themselves: Direct Action Land Reform in the Brazilian Amazon

Simmons, Cynthia; Walker, Robert; Perz, Stephen G.; Aldrich, Stephen; Caldas, Marcellus M.; Pereira, Ritaumaria; Leite, Flavia; Fernandes, Luíz Cláudio; Arima, Eugênio

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2009.06.003

Cited by 52 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…This work shows how two distinct social groups, large-landholders and landless people, acting according to two long-established and contradictory principles of land tenure, ensure a continuous cycle of conflict: large-landholders, often with privileged access and control over the bureaucracy that produces official documentation of land ownership, have a right to hold what is private property; landless people, though, have a right to land that is considered to be unproductive or that is not fulfilling its "social function". Increasingly, dozens of social movements through Brazil have relied on this right to occupy thousands of properties across the country in hopes the land will be expropriated by the Brazilian Federal Land Reform Agency and redistributed for the purposes of land reform, also known as "direct-action land reform" (Simmons and Arima 2010).…”

Section: Regional Background and Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Land occupations and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

Brown

Brown³

2016

Land Use Policy

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Researchers are increasingly interested in understanding the impact of contentious social processes on land change. In the Brazilian Amazon, there are often contentious interactions between landholders defending private property rights and squatters who have the right to occupy land that is deemed unproductive. Previous studies suggest that the contentious social processes inherent in the Brazilian land tenure and land reform system cause a significant amount of deforestation. An environment of insecure land title, and policies that value deforested land over forested land, among other factors, encourage both landholders and squatters to deforest more land than is necessary for pasture or crop production. This paper examines the impact that land occupations have on deforestation at the municipal scale across the Brazilian Legal Amazon, from 2000-2009. We show that land occupations have a direct influence on deforestation. We use spatial analysis as well to show that land occupations have a spatial component in the effect on deforestation: occupations in one municipality affect deforestation in adjacent areas.

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Section: Regional Background and Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Land occupations and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

Brown

Brown³

2016

Land Use Policy

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“…As noted above, in many countries and regions the situation has improved due to significant land tenure reforms aimed at clarifying property rights and recognizing the rights of indigenous peoples, particularly since the 1980s [26]. However, we also recognize that these reforms have sometimes proved insufficient, leading to the emergence of grassroots movements that occupy land and claim for land re-distribution [27].…”

Section: Implications Of Tenure Systems and Tenure Reform For Redd+mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) was only created in the 1970s as a means to delimit lands for directed colonization or expropriation to satisfy the -social function of property‖, which is constitutionally defined. Since re-democratization in the late 1970s and early 1980s, INCRA along with state land authorities have sought to resolve land conflicts spurred by occupations by landless peoples' movements (e.g., Movimento dos Sem Terra-MST) [27]. Often such occupations occurred in areas defined as -unproductive‖ that served as a reserve of value for the wealthy but in other cases they occurred on lands with forest cover.…”

Section: Brazil's Competing Land Claimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rights to Land, Forests and Carbon in REDD+: Insights from Mexico, Brazil and Costa Rica

Corbera

Estrada

May

et al. 2011

Forests

102

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Land tenure and carbon rights constitute critical issues to take into account in achieving emission reductions, ensuring transparent benefit sharing and determining non-permanence (or non-compliance) liabilities in the context of REDD+ strategies and projects. This is so because tenure systems influence who becomes involved in efforts to avoid deforestation and improve forest management, and that land tenure, carbon rights and liabilities may be linked or divorced with implications for rural development. This paper explores these issues by looking at tenure regimes and carbon rights issues in Mexico, Brazil and Costa Rica. It is effectively shown that complex bundles of rights over forest resources have distinct implications for REDD+ design and implementation, and that REDD+ strategies in selected countries have to date failed in procedurally addressing land-use conflicts and carbon rights entitlements and liabilities. OPEN ACCESSForests 2011, 2 302

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“…Displaced farmers forced to urban areas exacerbate already high rates of unemployment and poverty [19]. In turn, growing cadres of the poor in cities are easily mobilized to participate in direct action land reform, or DALR, which is characterized by the militant occupations, carried out by hundreds of landless farmers on large ranches deemed illegal or unproductive by movement leaders [4]. This has enflamed land conflict in the region, as the landless and their advocates engage in DALR to confront large landowners and pressure the government to follow through on agrarian reform promises.…”

Section: Cattle and Agrarian Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It does so by first charting the path of cattle expansion in the Brazilian Amazon, and linking this to skewed patterns of land ownership that have arisen in its wake. The paper then explores how agrarian reform movements have arisen as a consequence, with a particular emphasis on the formation of SPs through political mobilization that has been referred to as direct action land reform, or DALR [4]. Next, research results are presented that document the circumstances that have encouraged smallholders in Southeastern Pará to adopt livelihood systems focused on cattle, which is in contradiction to the environmental requirements for SP formation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Smallholders, Agrarian Reform, and Globalization in the Brazilian Amazon: Cattle versus the Environment

Pereira

Simmons

Walker

2016

Land

Self Cite

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Smallholder farming in the Brazilian Amazon has changed markedly over the last few decades, following a pervasive swing to cattle production observed across the basin. These changes have brought opportunities for accumulating a modicum of wealth that were not available in the early stages of colonization. At the same time, they have reconfigured livelihood systems away from diversified agriculture to a strong engagement with the cattle economy. They are also exposing smallholders to new forms of exploitation by transnational corporations, seeking to pass risk upstream to less powerful economic agents who provide inputs to production, such as calves. The case of Southeastern Pará provides a natural laboratory for investigating such phenomena, which the article considers through the presentation of data from field research conducted in the region over the past decade. Here, agrarian reform efforts have been particularly intense, and social movements have often espoused a green rhetoric in favor of diversified agriculture, even though smallholders show little interest in anything but cattle. Household level incentives promote Amazonia's emergent cattle economy, demonstrating how global production networks have reached into the basin, where production relations between smallholders provisioning calves to large ranching operations often resemble what has been referred to in the literature as "contract farming" land grabs, given the exploitive terms of trade.

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Doing it for Themselves: Direct Action Land Reform in the Brazilian Amazon

Cited by 52 publications

References 25 publications

Land occupations and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

Land occupations and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

Rights to Land, Forests and Carbon in REDD+: Insights from Mexico, Brazil and Costa Rica

Smallholders, Agrarian Reform, and Globalization in the Brazilian Amazon: Cattle versus the Environment

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