Impacts of a large-scale titling initiative on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

Probst, Benedict; BenYishay, Ariel; Kontoleon, Andreas; Reis, Tiago N.P. dos

doi:10.1038/s41893-020-0537-2

Cited by 40 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Some, such as REDD+ interventions to conserve forests, or the establishment of payments for ecosystem services, are acutely hampered by contested claims, which blur the legitimacy of some actors to intervene on certain lands and complicate the identification of the land managers that can actually enact and ensure land use changes (132). Land formalization, or government programs to enhance land tenure security, can play an important role in interventions for environmental conservation (133) or agricultural productivity (134) but can also contribute to increased environmental degradation or social marginalization (135,136). 9.…”

Section: A Large Proportion Of Land Globally Has Multiple Overlappingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Land formalization, or enhancing land tenure security, can play an important role but should not be considered a panacea. Depending on the conditions, it can encourage sustainable land management (201) but also, if uncoordinated with other policies, induce land degradation, deforestation (136), or land concentration (202). Effective land tenure and registration policies can build on existing local institutions (203).…”

Section: Implications For Land System Governance For Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

Meyfroidt

Brémond

Ryan

et al. 2022

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

215

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Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits—"win–wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use.

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Section: A Large Proportion Of Land Globally Has Multiple Overlappingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications For Land System Governance For Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

Meyfroidt

Brémond

Ryan

et al. 2022

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

215

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Matupi is a representative example of how clearing patterns occur on new deforestation frontiers in Brazilian Amazonia. The Matupi case provides a good illustration of the lack of definition of legal instruments in the 2012 Forest Code (Sparovek et al 2012), the weak enforcement of environmental regulations in recent years (Hecht et al 2021), promotion land titling for land grabbers (Brito and Barreto 2010;Probst et al 2020), and how strategic occupation in remote areas by larger landholders contributes to promoting the more illegal occupation of forest land and expansion of deforestation in undesignated public land and in protected areas.…”

Section: Deforestation Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Granting land titles to those who illegally occupy public land, which creates the expectation of future "amnesties," is one of the reasons behind the current acceleration of deforestation. Probst et al (2020) found that medium landholders who received a land title through the Terra Legal program showed a substantial increase in their deforestation 2 years after the title was received. These authors also found that landholders with a land title clear more area with the increase of cattle prices, indicating they responded strongly to the market after land tenure was recognized.…”

Section: Undesignated Public Landmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brazil’s Amazonian deforestation: the role of landholdings in undesignated public lands

et al. 2022

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The impact of deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia is a global concern, and land occupation in public lands contributes to increased deforestation rates. Little is known about the spread of deforestation in landholdings in undesignated public lands located on cattle-ranching frontiers. We use a case of Matupi District, a hotspot of deforestation along the Transamazon Highway in the southern portion of Brazil’s state of Amazonas, where spontaneous squatters and land grabbers are the main actors occupying landholdings. We assessed the advance of deforestation and the spatial distribution of landholdings in relation to the main road and to land categories (e.g., protected areas and undesignated public land). Landholdings up to 400 ha were the majority in numbers (52%) and larger landholdings (> 400 ha) were located farther into the forest, contributing to expanding the deforestation frontier. By 2018, 80% of the remaining forest was in larger landholdings (> 400 ha), increasing the susceptibility of this forest to being cleared in the coming years. Thus, greater attention should be given to these larger landholdings to control the spread of deforestation. By analyzing the clearing pattern in the landholdings, deforestation monitoring can focus on specific sizes of landholdings that contribute most to the advance of the deforestation frontier. Brazil’s current trend to facilitating the legalization of illegal claims in undesignated public lands, such as the large and medium landholdings we studied, implies vast areas of future deforestation and should be reversed.

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“…Insecure land tenure, in turn, can be associated with forest maintenance, when the attitude, social norm and/or capital availability of landusers discourages forest conversion (Mastrangelo et al, 2014). Therefore, land privatization may not be associated with lower deforestation due to characteristics of the regional context and the agents involved (Probst et al, 2020). Empirical tests of this hypothesis are hard to undertake in countries where land-tenure data at relevant spatial and temporal scales is often absent or inaccessible.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land privatization and deforestation in a commodity production frontier

Faingerch

Vallejos

Texeira

et al. 2021

CONSERVATION LETTERS

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Conservation policies often promote land privatization to reduce incentives for deforestation. However, empirical evidence on the relationship between land‐tenure form and forest conservation outcomes is inconclusive. We combined key informant mapping and geospatial analyses to test the association between the area under tenure and the area deforested by extra‐local private and local nonprivate agents in the Argentine Dry Chaco over four decades (1976–2016). The study area is a typical commodity production frontier within a global deforestation hotspot. We found a strong spatial and temporal coupling between the area under tenure and the area deforested by extra‐local private agents from 1987 to 2006, when a 59% increase in the former was accompanied by a 508% increase in the latter. Local private agents maintained high levels of forest cover, similarly to local nonprivate agents. Our findings have implications for the adaptive design of the Forest Law in the Argentine Dry Chaco.

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Impacts of a large-scale titling initiative on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

Cited by 40 publications

References 28 publications

Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

Brazil’s Amazonian deforestation: the role of landholdings in undesignated public lands

Land privatization and deforestation in a commodity production frontier

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