Land grabbing is the seizure of land through false property titles. This old crime threatens the socio-biodiversity of Brazilian biomes, including the Amazon. In the region, half of the deforestation between 2019 and 2021 took place on public lands through land grabbing.
As a research institution that seeks solutions for Amazon’s conservation, IPAM has proposals to combat these frauds. They can be found in the booklet recently launched by the Amazoniar initiative “For an Amazon free of land grabbing” and available online for free.
Click here to read the booklet “For an Amazon free of land grabbing”.
Learn about the origins of land grabbing, how it has changed in modern times, and proposals to combat it.
Where does land grabbing come from?
The term land grabbing originates from the time of Brazil’s Empire (1822-1889), when people would put a false property document inside a box with crickets to give the paper an antique look.
The insects gnawed at the edges of the sheets and their droppings gave them a yellowish color. Once “aged” by the crickets, the document gave the impression of being real, which made it easier to recognize. This allowed the illegitimate and illegal occupation of a given area.
Crickets are no longer used these days, but have given way to the fraudulent use of SICAR (the National Rural Environmental Registration System). Land grabbers misuse the CAR (Rural Environmental Registry), a self-declaratory document, to try to validate public land as private property.
The CAR, however, is not a land instrument but an achievement of the Forest Code to monitor environmental conservation in the country. The booklet “For an Amazon free of land grabbing” shows the illegal path followed by scammers to carry out land grabbing.
What is the impact of land grabbing
Land grabbing threatens Amazon’s sociobiodiversity and contributes significantly to the climate crisis, and the loss of forest resilience leads to the so-called tipping point.
In addition, this crime contributes to increased food insecurity and damages the agricultural production, increasing the frequency and intensity of fires and burn-offs in the region.
Check out the first episode of the Amazoniar project’s series on land grabbing.
What strategies can be taken to put an end to land grabbing
To combat this type of crime, coordinated action between the public sector, the private sector and civil society is essential, and you don’t have to be in the territory to contribute. Below are some of IPAM’s proposals for eliminating fraud, especially on public lands.
1. Cancel and prevent the creation of irregular registers of rural properties that overlap with areas of public forests that have not been set aside.
An essential tool for environmental regularization in Brazil, the CAR (Rural Environmental Registry) has been misused by land grabbers. Banning fraudulent registrations from the SICAR (National Rural Environmental Registry System) database is the most immediate way to combat land grabbing.
A study by Amazônia 2030 indicates that more than 100,000 rural properties registered in the national system overlap undesignated public forest areas in the Amazon. In practice, an area almost the size of Uruguay could be protected from land grabbing in the region by canceling these registrations.
2. Define a use for all public forests that have not yet been set aside
The Brazilian Amazon has 56.5 million hectares of undesignated public forests, an area equivalent to the size of Spain. For a definitive reduction in land grabbing, it is essential that the state and federal governments quickly resume the processes of allocating these public forests.
This means designating these areas, according to their characteristics, into categories that allow for their conservation or sustainable use, as determined by the Public Forest Management Law. Examples of earmarking are conservation units and indigenous lands, which store around 56% of the carbon in the Brazilian Amazon.
3. Strengthen enforcement and punish land grabbers
The increase in illegal deforestation rates in the Amazon is largely linked to the weakening of environmental command and control bodies between 2018 and 2022. Strengthening enforcement and punishing those who commit and finance environmental crimes is fundamental to combating land grabbing and reducing illegal deforestation.
The PPCDAm (Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon) proves the effectiveness of a strong environmental enforcement policy. Between 2004, when it was implemented, and 2012, Brazil managed to reduce deforestation in the Amazon by 83%. Interrupted in 2018, the PPCDAm was only implemented again in 2023. Since then, its outcomes have translated into a rapid reduction in deforestation rates in the region.
4. Promote cooperation between sectors to support actions by the Judiciary and Public Prosecutors against land grabbing
Research institutes and civil society organizations have been supporting the Judiciary and Public Prosecutors’ offices to control socioenvironmental damage in the country. Among the examples of cooperation mentioned in the booklet is the partnership between IPAM and the MPF (Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office), which seeks to calculate the amount of carbon emitted due to illegal deforestation in the Amazon to repair climate damage. A public civil action that estimated the emission of 1.5 million tons of carbon as a result of illegal deforestation, projected compensation 181.3% higher than the amount required for local environmental damage.
5. Create a task force in the Amazon states against land grabbing
The fight against land grabbing could be strengthened by greater cooperation between the state governments of the Amazon. An effective action against this crime could be the creation of a specialized task force in the region, within the framework of the Interstate Consortium for the Sustainable Development of the Legal Amazon. Formed by the nine Amazonian states, the Legal Amazon Consortium‘s mission is to “accelerate the sustainable development of the Brazilian Amazon in an integrated and cooperative manner, taking into account regional opportunities and challenges”.
6. Implement and improve traceability mechanisms
Traceability mechanisms to literally “track” and identify the link between products and deforestation (legal or illegal) are one of the great demands of the international market. Two fundamental elements in combating land grabbing and deforestation in the Amazon are existing measures to be implemented and their continuous improvement. In this way, it would be possible to end the incentive for land grabbing on the part of markets and investors and eliminate crime from the production stages of goods such as agricultural commodities and livestock – soy, corn and meat, for example.
7. Support grassroots initiatives to combat land grabbing
The booklet highlights various initiatives by non-governmental and civil society organizations working on climate justice for the conservation of the Amazon. Among them is the PLIP (People’s Initiative Bill) Amazônia de Pé, which has IPAM’s support. Any Brazilian citizen can contribute by signing the PLIP at collection points in person. On the initiative’s website, you can find the addresses of all the collection points, or propose setting up a new one in your city. For it to be presented by the Brazilian people to the National Congress, 1% of the electorate must support the project – that’s around 1.5 million people.
