Recent Environmental Legislation in Brazil and the Impact on Cerrado Deforestation Rates

Abstract

This study aims to relate the recent trajectory of Brazilian environmental policies with the last 20 years deforestation rates observed in the Cerrado through the PRODES-Cerrado monitoring initiative. The main hypothesis is that the improvement of environmental legislation in Brazil, mainly during the period between 2005 and 2012, influenced the decrease in deforestation rates. In addition, policies to control environmental compliance, such as the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) also influenced the reduction of deforestation. In the early 2000s, there was a significant increase in public environmental policies and implementation of an environmental management structure with the creation of conservation, protection, and management agency for conservation units (ICMBio), the Brazilian Forest Service for the management of public forests and Rural Environment Registry (CAR). Comparing the annual deforestation rate, it was observed that between 2000 and 2005, when 12.60% of the Cerrado was deforested, the annual deforestation average rate was 2.52%. Between 2006 and 2012, the period that precedes the revision of the Forest Code, the total deforestation is equivalent to 7.98%, which results in an annual average rate of 1.33%. After the enactment of the new Forest Code, between 2013 and 2020, there was a deforestation of 7.03% of the Cerrado area, which is equivalent to a deforestation annual average rate of 1.00%. One of the positive aspects of the new legislation was the creation of CAR, which obliges rural landowners to make an environmental attributes declaration of their property, this program being the main environmental management tool created in Brazil recently. After CAR regulation in 2014, there was a decrease in deforestation from 10,904 km2 to 7905 km2 in 2020. On the other hand, since 2016, changes occurred in the political scenario that increased agribusiness influence and the rise of a more conservative agenda, which jeopardizes the future of environmental quality in Brazil (illustrated, for example, by the increased release of pesticides from 104 in 2010 to 493 in 2020). As the main conclusion of this research, we showed that the state’s commitment to environmental management can contribute to deforestation reduction. The regulation of programs such as CAR can also contribute to the reduction of deforestation since it is one more tool for monitoring and ensure compliance of environmental regularization and recovery vegetation programs. At the same time, is necessary to keep on monitoring deforestation once the influence of the agricultural lobby has gained strength.

Unjust Winds of Change: The Politics and Narratives of Wind Farms in the Brazilian Northeast

“…The regions are by default prone to droughts and inconsistent rainfalls due to them being located in a semiarid region, leading to water scarcity impacting hydropower production. Additionally, there is few national legislations for the protection of these biomes, accelerating the land use change and deforestation rates (Teixeira et al 2021;Luiz and Steinke 2022). This have led to wind energy taking over the role as the main energy source over hydropower, making the North-East a key producer of energy from wind in the nation (Souza Júnior et al 2019).…”