Tenure Security and Land Appropriation under Changing Environmental Governance in Lowland Bolivia and Pará

Abstract

Appropriation of public lands associated with agricultural frontier expansion is a longstanding occurrence in the Amazon that has resulted in a highly skewed land-tenure structure in spite of recent state efforts to recognize tenure rights of indigenous people and smallholders living in or nearby forests. Growing concerns to reduce environmental impacts from agricultural development have motivated state governments to place greater attention on sustainable land management and forest conservation. This paper assesses the political and institutional conditions shaping tenure security and land appropriation in lowland Bolivia and the State of Pará in Brazil, and their links with environmental governance. The two cases show that clarifying and securing tenure rights is considered as the cornerstone for improving environmental governance. Thus, much attention has been given to the recognition of indigenous people and smallholder rights and to legalization of large-scale estates in agricultural frontiers, which have in turn influenced emerging conservation and environmental governance approaches. While policy frameworks share similar goals in the two cases, contrasting implementation approaches have been adopted: more agrarian in lowland Bolivia and more conservationist in the State of Pará.

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

“…As such, we also investigate whether incentives lead registrants to declare their property boundaries strategically, in order to fall in a size class with more advantageous policies. For example, in federal and state land regularization laws, the process for obtaining title is easier for smallholders 3 -on site inspection may not be required for small properties while approval from congress is required for large properties (Pacheco and Benatti, 2015). Apart from its intended role in facilitating deforestation reduction by enhancing monitoring and enforcement, the registry is also meant to aid policy design by clarifying debates about the extent to which smallholders vs. largeholders bear responsibility for current deforestation (Godar et al, 2012(Godar et al, , 2014Michalski et al, 2010;Richards and Vanwey, 2015).…”

“…For small properties (<∼100 ha), land is donated by the government to the claimant, medium-sized properties can be purchased directly from the government at a discounted rate, and large properties (>∼1500 ha) must be purchased at public auction(Pacheco and Benatti, 2015).…”

The state of oil palm development in the Brazilian Amazon: Trends, value chain dynamics, and business models

“…Through the Program of National Integration, road corridors such as the Santarém-Cuiabá and the Trans-Amazonian Highway were constructed in the 1970s and direct colonization programs were initiated at the road margins to absorb smallholders displaced by modernization programs in other regions. Increased accessibility, in combination with SUDAM incentives, however, attracted many medium-and large-scale cattle ranchers (Pacheco and Benatti 2015). In many areas, such as in southern Pará, this became a source of violence and social conflict, as many SUDAM-supported livestock projects contributed to the eviction of smallholders, thereby contributing to extensive land concentration in frontier areas (MacMillan 1995).…”

“…In Pará, these areas comprise approximately 61.4 million ha, of which 27.3 million ha are classified as settlement areas or smallholdings (Pacheco and Benatti 2015). Considering the prevalence of fraud, illegal land occupation and conflicting claims, establishing legitimate ownership of land continues to frustrate land titling (Brito and Cardoso 2015).…”

“…4 Institutional, policy and regulatory framework quilombola lands (Pacheco and Benatti 2015) 2 . Redistribution took place largely through the expropriation of private lands that failed to fulfill social and economic functions -for example, from SUDAM-supported cattle ranchers that failed to productively use their land.…”