Land tenure regularization in the brazilian amazon: perspectives on identifying social, economic and environmental variables for assessing its impacts

Historically the control of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has been related to several different drivers such as law enforcement (Assunção & Rocha 2014; Schwartzman, Moutinho & Hamburg 2012); social control of supply chains – soy moratorium (Gibbs et al. 2015, Azevedo et al. 2015); restriction on access to credit (Schwartzman, Moutinho & Hamburg 2012, Assunção et al. 2013b); efficiency of deforestation monitoring systems (Assunção et al. 2013a); expansion of protected areas (Nepstad et al. 2014; Soares-Filho et al. 2010); environmental policies (Soares-Filho et al. 2014; Assunção et al. 2012);commodity price fluctuations (Assunção et al. 2012) and land tenure regularization (Fernandes, 2018). Among these drivers, the lack of land tenure regularization represents a critical issue to control deforestation. Consequently the Brazilian Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon1 (Plano de Ação de Prevenção e Controle do Desmatamento da Amazônia Legal – PPCDAm) states that land grabbing is one of the main drivers of deforestation and therefore it is necessary to implement effective land tenure governance in the Brazilian Amazon to contribute to deforestation reduction.