Pro Lucas Guaraldo*
Legal Reserve liabilities on rural properties – areas of vegetation within properties that should be conserved but have been deforested – already total 18 million hectares, an area larger than the state of Acre. Liabilities in APPs (Permanent Preservation Areas) amount to 3.2 million hectares throughout Brazil, according to a new survey by the Forest Code Thermometer, developed by IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute) and presented in Belém during COP30.
In addition to the liabilities, the tool also identifies a total of 78 million hectares declared in the CAR (Rural Environmental Registry) as private properties, but which overlap with protected areas, such as conservation units and indigenous lands. Because it is a self-declaratory system, the CAR has been used irregularly for land grabbing. In all, 122,000 registrations were canceled in 2025 for violating land-use regulations. Marabá and São Félix do Xingu, agricultural hubs in Pará, are the municipalities with the highest number of denied CARs in Brazil.
“The Rural Environmental Registry is dynamic. That’s why it’s important to have this active control of changes in compliance with the Code so that we can differentiate between what has increased due to deforestation and what is the result of previous under-reporting, which we are now identifying. By knowing where these areas of liability are, we can apply what is provided for in the law, which includes various possibilities for productive restoration so that producers can become regularized and earn an income,” says Jarlene Gomes, researcher and coordinator of IPAM’s Public Policy projects.
Legal Reserve areas, APPs and CARs are defined by the Brazilian Forest Code, approved in 2012. According to the law, properties in the Amazon must keep 80% of their native vegetation conserved; in the Cerrado, the minimum percentage is 20%, or 35% in the case of properties located within the Legal Amazon. The APPs, in turn, protect areas of environmental interest, such as hilltops, springs and riverbanks.
In total, the Amazon accounts for 52% of the country’s Legal Reserve liabilities, with 9.5 million hectares, as well as 25% of APP liabilities, around 800,000 hectares. The Cerrado, Brazil’s second largest biome, has 5.5 million hectares of areas that should be Legal Reserves and are irregularly occupied, as well as 962,000 hectares of degraded APPs – 15% more than the Amazon, despite the savannah having half the area. Pará, Mato Grosso, Maranhão and Rondônia are the states with the largest irregularly occupied areas.
Legal Deforestation
In addition to the liabilities, Brazil has 70 million hectares of surplus native vegetation – areas within rural properties and settlements that could be legally deforested, but are still standing. The Cerrado and Caatinga account for 62% of this surplus, but they have been declining since 2020, especially in regions on the agricultural frontier. Although these are areas whose deforestation is permitted by law, the loss of large areas of surplus also generates severe environmental impacts, especially in regions that have already been destabilized by decades of deforestation.
In Mato Grosso, for example, the area preserved within rural properties beyond the minimum required by law amounts to 5.6 million hectares, while in Pará this extension corresponds to 2.5 million hectares. In this context, projects such as Conserv seek to encourage the protection of these areas by paying producers for the conservation of plots that could be legally deforested. Since 2020, the project has made payments to 23 producers, helping to preserve more than 20,000 hectares of native vegetation and maintain a stock of 600 tons of carbon.
“The Forest Code can be seen as an enforcement law, but also as an opportunity for the producer. If I have an area that I could legally deforest, but I haven’t cleared it, I can negotiate this as a Legal Reserve quota or receive payment for environmental services. There are various options for these areas, which can even be managed with agroforestry systems and fruit plantations, for example, guaranteeing new income options without destroying the vegetation,” Jarlene explains.
In a country that depends on rainfall to irrigate crops and generate energy, the protection of native vegetation, which is essential for maintaining springs, stabilizing rainfall and protecting the soil, is even more important. According to a study carried out by IPAM at the Tanguro Research Station, 30% of rural properties in the Midwest already operate outside the climate ideal due to deforestation and climate change, and this figure could rise to 50% by 2030.
“Zeroing out the Legal Reserve would mean more rain in Brazil. That means there would be less risk of crop failure, for example. The application of the Code is to protect nature, but it is also to protect water and food production in the country,” points out Raoni Rajão, a researcher at UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais) and a member of the technical committee of the Forest Code Observatory.
Environmental disasters
The increase in passive areas has also been a determining factor in the severity of extreme weather events, such as floods, storms and droughts. The deforestation of hillsides and riverbanks, areas that should be protected by APPs, for example, results in the silting up of watercourses, facilitates the flooding of cities, unprotects the soil and makes regions more vulnerable to windstorms and storms.
“Once the Forest Code is properly implemented, it also becomes a climate change mitigation and adaptation agenda. It mitigates because if I have a conserved area, I’m storing carbon and keeping environmental services working. On the adaptation side, it protects against the direct effects of the crisis, preserving water, soil and people by creating natural barriers and regulators against extreme weather events,” Jarlene argues.
The destructive effect of the floods that hit Rio Grande do Sul in 2024 was exacerbated by the fact that the state has more than 158,000 hectares of unpreserved APPs, equivalent to 28% of its permanent protection area. In Santa Catarina, a region hit by storms and tornadoes at the beginning of November, APP liabilities amount to 201,000 hectares (34% of the total protected), while Legal Reserves total 45,000 hectares.
IPAM journalist, lucas.itaborahy@ipam.org.br*