IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/lauspo/v87y2019ics0264837719304077.html

Who owns Brazilian lands?

Author

Listed:
  • Sparovek, Gerd
  • Reydon, Bastiaan Philip
  • Guedes Pinto, Luís Fernando
  • Faria, Vinicius
  • de Freitas, Flavio Luiz Mazzaro
  • Azevedo-Ramos, Claudia
  • Gardner, Toby
  • Hamamura, Caio
  • Rajão, Raoni
  • Cerignoni, Felipe
  • Siqueira, Gabriel Pansani
  • Carvalho, Tomás
  • Alencar, Ane
  • Ribeiro, Vivian

Abstract

Land tenure in many parts of Brazil remains uncertain and controversial. These problems have recently been exacerbated by changes in the legal framework regulating protected areas and the land market. A particular challenge facing attempts to improve land tenure security and governance in Brazil is the lack of a single, integrated assessment of all types of lands. Here we address this problem and present a first, integrated map of Brazilian land tenure encompassing all official data sources pertaining to both public and private lands. Of the total (8.5 million km2) 36.1% of all lands are public (with 6.4% officially undesignated), 44.2% are private, and 16.6% are unregistered or with unknown tenure. Strikingly, overlaps among land tenure categories sum to 50% of the registered territory of Brazil. A clearer understanding of uncertainties in land tenure, and the spatial distribution of those uncertainties can help guide research and public policies focused on minimizing land conflicts and strengthening governance and territorial planning to improve economic, environmental and social outcomes from land use in Brazil.

Suggested Citation

  • Sparovek, Gerd & Reydon, Bastiaan Philip & Guedes Pinto, Luís Fernando & Faria, Vinicius & de Freitas, Flavio Luiz Mazzaro & Azevedo-Ramos, Claudia & Gardner, Toby & Hamamura, Caio & Rajão, Raoni & Ce, 2019. "Who owns Brazilian lands?," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:87:y:2019:i:c:s0264837719304077
    DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.104062
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837719304077
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.104062?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pedro R. R. Rochedo & Britaldo Soares-Filho & Roberto Schaeffer & Eduardo Viola & Alexandre Szklo & André F. P. Lucena & Alexandre Koberle & Juliana Leroy Davis & Raoni Rajão & Regis Rathmann, 2018. "The threat of political bargaining to climate mitigation in Brazil," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 8(8), pages 695-698, August.
    2. Azevedo-Ramos, Claudia & Moutinho, Paulo, 2018. "No man’s land in the Brazilian Amazon: Could undesignated public forests slow Amazon deforestation?," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 125-127.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Conceição, Katyanne V. & Chaves, Michel E.D. & Picoli, Michelle C.A. & Sánchez, Alber H. & Soares, Anderson R. & Mataveli, Guilherme A.V. & Silva, Daniel E. & Costa, Joelma S. & Camara, Gilberto, 2021. "Government policies endanger the indigenous peoples of the Brazilian Amazon," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    2. Tacconi, Luca & Rodrigues, Rafael J. & Maryudi, Ahmad, 2019. "Law enforcement and deforestation: Lessons for Indonesia from Brazil," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 1-1.
    3. dos Santos Massoca, Paulo Eduardo & Brondízio, Eduardo Sonnewend, 2022. "National policies encounter municipal realities: A critical analysis of the outcomes of the List of Priority Municipalities in curbing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    4. Fábio T. F. Silva & Alexandre Szklo & Amanda Vinhoza & Ana Célia Nogueira & André F. P. Lucena & Antônio Marcos Mendonça & Camilla Marcolino & Felipe Nunes & Francielle M. Carvalho & Isabela Tagomori , 2022. "Inter-sectoral prioritization of climate technologies: insights from a Technology Needs Assessment for mitigation in Brazil," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 27(7), pages 1-39, October.
    5. Géremi Gilson Dranka & Paula Ferreira, 2020. "Electric Vehicles and Biofuels Synergies in the Brazilian Energy System," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(17), pages 1-22, August.
    6. Muradian, Roldan & Cahyafitri, Raras & Ferrando, Tomaso & Grottera, Carolina & Jardim-Wanderley, Luiz & Krause, Torsten & Kurniawan, Nanang I. & Loft, Lasse & Nurshafira, Tadzkia & Prabawati-Suwito, D, 2025. "Will the EU deforestation-free products regulation (EUDR) reduce tropical forest loss? Insights from three producer countries," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).
    7. Debora Sotto & Arlindo Philippi & Tan Yigitcanlar & Md Kamruzzaman, 2019. "Aligning Urban Policy with Climate Action in the Global South: Are Brazilian Cities Considering Climate Emergency in Local Planning Practice?," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-31, September.
    8. Reginaldo Carvalho Santos & Carlos Antonio Silva Junior & Leandro Denis Battirola & Mendelson Lima, 2022. "Importance of legislation for maintaining forests on private properties in the Brazilian Cerrado," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 3356-3370, March.
    9. Franco-Solís, Alberto & Montanía, Claudia V., 2021. "Dynamics of deforestation worldwide: A structural decomposition analysis of agricultural land use in South America," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    10. Camila Callegari & Tarik Tanure & Ana Carolina Oliveira Fiorini & Eduardo Haddad & Edson Domingues & Aline Magalhães & Fernando Perobelli & Alexandre Porsse & André F. P. Lucena & Eveline Vasquez-Arro, 2023. "The Role of Cities: Linking Integrated Assessment Models to Urban Solutions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-18, March.
    11. Azhar, Badrul & Nobilly, Frisco & Lechner, Alex M. & Tohiran, Kamil Azmi & Maxwell, Thomas M.R. & Zulkifli, Raja & Kamel, Mohd Fathil & Oon, Aslinda, 2021. "Mitigating the risks of indirect land use change (ILUC) related deforestation from industrial palm oil expansion by sharing land access with displaced crop and cattle farmers," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    12. Ruth Delzeit & Robert Beach & Ruben Bibas & Wolfgang Britz & Jean Chateau & Florian Freund & Julien Lefevre & Franziska Schuenemann & Timothy Sulser & Hugo Valin & Bas van Ruijven & Matthias Weitzel &, 2020. "Linking Global CGE Models with Sectoral Models to Generate Baseline Scenarios: Approaches, Challenges, and Opportunities," Journal of Global Economic Analysis, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University, vol. 5(1), pages 162-195, June.
    13. Minghui Zhang & Gabriel Abrahao & Sally Thompson, 2021. "Sensitivity of soybean planting date to wet season onset in Mato Grosso, Brazil, and implications under climate change," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 168(3), pages 1-28, October.
    14. Miranda, Raul & Simoes, Sofia & Szklo, Alexandre & Schaeffer, Roberto, 2019. "Adding detailed transmission constraints to a long-term integrated assessment model – A case study for Brazil using the TIMES model," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 791-803.
    15. da Motta Bustamante, Juliana & Stevanov, Mirjana & Krott, Max & Ferreira de Carvalho, Edson, 2018. "Brazilian State Forest Institutions: Implementation of forestry goals evaluated by the 3L Model," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 531-546.
    16. Cloos, Janis & Greiff, Matthias, 2021. "Combating climate change: Is the option to exploit a public good a barrier for reaching critical thresholds? Experimental evidence," MPRA Paper 107144, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Sugandha Srivastav & Ryan Rafaty, 2023. "Political Strategies to Overcome Climate Policy Obstructionism," Papers 2304.14960, arXiv.org.
    18. Bastiaan Reydon & Gabriel Pansani Siqueira & Delaide Silva Passos & Stephan Honer, 2022. "Unclear Land Rights and Deforestation: Pieces of Evidence from Brazilian Reality," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-17, December.
    19. Porro, Roberto & Porro, Noemi Sakiara Miyasaka, 2022. "State-led social and environmental policy failure in a Brazilian forest frontier: Sustainable Development Project in Anapu, Pará," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    20. Wang, Xia & Feng, Wei & Letschert, Virginie & Khanna, Nina & Ke, Jing & Zhou, Nan & You, Kairui, 2025. "A techno-economic analysis of net-zero transition in Chile's building sector," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 334(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:87:y:2019:i:c:s0264837719304077. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joice Jiang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/land-use-policy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.