Mapping properties to monitor forests: Landholder response to a large environmental registration program in the Brazilian Amazon

L’Roe, Jessica; Rausch, Lisa; Munger, Jacob; Gibbs, Holly K.

doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2016.05.029

Cited by 51 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 46 publications

(54 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Despite the great potential of public land registries, few studies have quantified their effects on deforestation in the Amazon (but see 17,25,26) or their role in ensuring compliance on private properties. Studies of other deforestation-control measuresincluding payments for environmental services (27,28) and protected areas (29,30)-suggest that these programs do not always yield the expected conservation outcomes.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Limits of Brazil’s Forest Code as a means to end illegal deforestation

Azevedo

Rajão

Costa

et al. 2017

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

170

107

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The 2012 Brazilian Forest Code governs the fate of forests and savannas on Brazil's 394 Mha of privately owned lands. The government claims that a new national land registry (SICAR), introduced under the revised law, could end illegal deforestation by greatly reducing the cost of monitoring, enforcement, and compliance. This study evaluates that potential, using data from state-level land registries (CAR) in Pará and Mato Grosso that were precursors of SICAR. Using geospatial analyses and stakeholder interviews, we quantify the impact of CAR on deforestation and forest restoration, investigating how landowners adjust their behaviors over time. Our results indicate rapid adoption of CAR, with registered properties covering a total of 57 Mha by 2013. This suggests that the financial incentives to join CAR currently exceed the costs. Registered properties initially showed lower deforestation rates than unregistered ones, but these differences varied by property size and diminished over time. Moreover, only 6% of registered producers reported taking steps to restore illegally cleared areas on their properties. Our results suggest that, from the landowner's perspective, full compliance with the Forest Code offers few economic benefits. Achieving zero illegal deforestation in this context would require the private sector to include full compliance as a market criterion, while state and federal governments develop SICAR as a de facto enforcement mechanism. These results are relevant to other tropical countries and underscore the importance of developing a policy mix that creates lasting incentives for sustainable land-use practices.deforestation | Forest Code | tropical forests | governance | Amazon

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Limits of Brazil’s Forest Code as a means to end illegal deforestation

Azevedo

Rajão

Costa

et al. 2017

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

170

107

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These areas are often subject to conflicts over land possession, and high rates of illegal deforestation due to the lack of governance (Damasceno, 2016;Lapola et al, 2014;Mueller, 2016;Reydon, Fernandes, & Telles, 2015;Zarin et al, 2016). To accelerate this process, the Brazilian government has institutionalized the Terra Legal Programme (Brasil, 2009), an initiative aimed at providing tenure security in the Amazon region by titling undesignated land legally appropriated by farmers, especially small ones, in order to prevent illegal land appropriation and deforestation, ensuring the preservation of natural ecosystems (L'roe, Rausch, Munger, & Gibbs, 2016). To accelerate this process, the Brazilian government has institutionalized the Terra Legal Programme (Brasil, 2009), an initiative aimed at providing tenure security in the Amazon region by titling undesignated land legally appropriated by farmers, especially small ones, in order to prevent illegal land appropriation and deforestation, ensuring the preservation of natural ecosystems (L'roe, Rausch, Munger, & Gibbs, 2016).…”

Section: Despite the Intense Scientific Debate About The 2012 Brazilianmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The scientific community and civil society have been pushing for tenure regularization as a mean to stop deforestation (Damasceno, 2016;Lapola et al, 2014;MMA, 2017, Sparovek et al, 2015. To accelerate this process, the Brazilian government has institutionalized the Terra Legal Programme (Brasil, 2009), an initiative aimed at providing tenure security in the Amazon region by titling undesignated land legally appropriated by farmers, especially small ones, in order to prevent illegal land appropriation and deforestation, ensuring the preservation of natural ecosystems (L'roe, Rausch, Munger, & Gibbs, 2016). More recently, the Brazilian government has enacted act 13.465/2017, which facilitates the tenure regularization of large untitled properties (Brasil, 2017).…”

Section: Despite the Intense Scientific Debate About The 2012 Brazilianmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, there are uncertainties associated with the use of a dataset based on farmers' self-declarations. In addition to what has already been mentioned, there are concerns that the CAR registry may have been used for illegal appropriation of public land or other lands under dispute among farmers and indigenous or traditional communities (Ciro L'roe et al, 2016). Therefore, there could be cases of forged, or otherwise incorrect, CAR registries that have been used to determine land tenure for previously undesignated territory.…”

Section: Tenure Simulation and Undesignated Landmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Who owns the Brazilian carbon?

Freitas

Englund

Sparovek

et al. 2017

Global Change Biology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Brazil is one of the major contributors to land-use change emissions, mostly driven by agricultural expansion for food, feed, and bioenergy feedstock. Policies to avoid deforestation related to private commitments, economic incentives, and other support schemes are expected to improve the effectiveness of current command and control mechanisms increasingly. However, until recently, land tenure was unknown for much of the Brazilian territory, which has undermined the governance of native vegetation and challenged support and incentive mechanisms for avoiding deforestation. We assess the total extent of public governance mechanisms protecting aboveground carbon (AGC) stocks. We constructed a land tenure dataset for the entire nation and modeled the effects and uncertainties of major land-use acts on protecting AGC stocks. Roughly 70% of the AGC stock in Brazil is estimated to be under legal protection, and an additional 20% is expected to be protected after areas in the Amazon with currently undesignated land undergo a tenure regularization. About 30% of the AGC stock is on private land, of which roughly two-thirds are protected. The Cerrado, Amazon, and Caatinga biomes hold about 40%, 30%, and 20% of the unprotected AGC, respectively. Effective conservation of protected and unprotected carbon will depend on successful implementation of the Forest Act, and regularization of land tenure in the Amazon. Policy development that prioritizes unprotected AGC stocks is warranted to promote conservation of native vegetation beyond the legal requirements. However, different biomes and land tenure structures may require different policy settings considering local and regional specifics. Finally, the fate of current AGC stocks relies upon effective implementation of command and control mechanisms, considering that unprotected AGC in native vegetation on private land only accounts for 6.5% of the total AGC stock.

show abstract

“…Policies that target reductions in deforestation have to account for the shifting dynamics and actors of land use change. Previous studies have evaluated the effectiveness of such policies in South America by examining agricultural actor dynamics and the scale of forest clearance at the levels of municipality [21], census tract [22], individual property ownership [23][24][25], and forest patch size [26][27][28]. These studies shed important light on the nature of deforestation and the effectiveness of the aforementioned policies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing expansion of large-scale crop production onto deforested land in sub-Andean South America

Graesser

Ramankutty

Coomes

2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A combination of high commodity crop prices, rising global food demand, and technological advances has transformed the scale of global crop production. Farming in South America is a prime example, where large-scale cash crops, such as soy, have transformed the land use dynamics at the forest frontier. We evaluate this transformation in sub-Andean South America by estimating crop and forest cover and detecting individual cropland field parcels using Landsat imagery in 5 year intervals over a 24 year period. From 1990 to 2014, cropland expansion onto deforested land was increasingly driven by large fields (>50 ha), whose contribution increased from 32% to 48% (+16% increase), while the contribution of smaller fields (<20 ha) declined from 36% to 26% (−10% decrease). This shift toward large-scale farming replacing cleared land across the region has important implications for food security and biodiversity conservation. Policy efforts will need to target different actors and transcend national borders in order to tackle the changing nature of South American deforestation.

show abstract

Mapping properties to monitor forests: Landholder response to a large environmental registration program in the Brazilian Amazon

Cited by 51 publications

References 46 publications

Limits of Brazil’s Forest Code as a means to end illegal deforestation

Limits of Brazil’s Forest Code as a means to end illegal deforestation

Who owns the Brazilian carbon?

Increasing expansion of large-scale crop production onto deforested land in sub-Andean South America

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About