Property rights, land conflicts and deforestation in the Eastern Amazon

Jose Antonio Puppim de Oliveira

Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration (EBAPE), Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), Brazil
Land Laboratory (LaboraTe), University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Received 12 March 2007; received in revised form 23 September 2007; accepted 28 November 2007
Abstract
In the Brazilian Amazon, insecure property rights are among the main causes of land conflicts and deforestation. Through an in-depth empirical
case study in Maranhao in the Eastern Amazon, this research analyzes how distorted agrarian, forest and environmental policies, laws and
regulations originated insecure property rights not only over land, but also over timber, which allied to social and political factors, such as uneven
distribution of land and strong organization of landless peasants, led to land conflicts and deforestation. This paper also shows that the causes of
and the several actors involved in the deforestation of the Amazon were not independent, rather they were related and interact to each other.
Compatibility between environmental goals and agrarian policies, regulations and laws are necessary to provide secure and clear property rights to
allow a better enforcement of environmental regulations and to give actors incentives to avoid deforestation.
2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Amazon; Deforestation; Agrarian conflicts; Property rights; Brazil; Maranhao
1. Introduction
Changes in property rights regimes are perceived throughout
the world. We have seen these great transformations which
change enormously the property relations between individuals
and societies over time, such as changes from feudalism to
capitalism, from colonies to independent states, or from common
to private property. In the recent policy arena, hot issues of
changes in property rights are at the core of the development and
forest policy debate, like the breakdown of the communist
regimes in Eastern Europe (Williamson, 1994) or the dismantling
of some traditional systems of common property (Kabubo-
Mariara, 2003; Ensminger and Rutten, 1991; May, 1990), or even
allowing communities to trade communal rights (Engel and
Palmer, 2006). Especially for the field of economics, and other
social sciences related to political economy, this debate is crucial
because property rights are assumed to be one of the bases of a
well-functioning market economy. What are the causes and how
to explain changes in property rights and their consequences
are the subject of significant work and debate in the New
Institutional Economics (NIE) and other areas of social sciences
that study institutions (Behera and Engel, 2006; North, 1990;
Williamson, 1994; Alston et al., 1996; Demsetz, 1967; Libecap,
1989; Eggertsson, 1996). Particularly, there is a growing literature
that focuses on the impact of property rights regimes and their
changes on the natural environment (Ibarra and Hirakuri, 2007;
Nelson et al., 2001; Marcouiller et al., 1996; Bromley, 1991).
This paper examines the main causes of land invasions and
agrarian conflicts in the region of Buriticupu, Maranhao State,
in the Brazilian eastern Amazon frontier, and how, in some
cases, these conflicts can become related to uncontrolled
deforestation because of forest policy which did not favor
forest management, forest conservation or preservation.
1
Some
of the literature has mentioned that insecure property rights over
land are possible causes of land conflicts (Alston et al., 1995,
1996; Mueller et al., 1994) and deforestation (Casse et al., 2004;
Binswanger, 1991). This research shows how land invasions
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Forest Policy and Economics 10 (2008) 303315
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The author was at EBAPE/FGV during the reviewing process of this article.

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1
In 2007, the Ministry of the Environment started a new initiative to give the
concession of public forests to logging companies for controlled sustainable
logging, but it is early to evaluate the results of this policy.
1389-9341/$ - see front matter 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.forpol.2007.11.008
were caused not only by insecure property rights over land, but
also by social and political factors and insecure property rights
over timber, which result from poor enforcement of environ-
mental regulations. In the case of Buriticupu the problems of
insecure property rights over land and over timber, under certain
social and political conditions, generated incentives to land
invasions and, ultimately, deforestation.
The paper also takes a different look at the most common
explanations of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The
conventional wisdom in the literature generally assumes that the
process of deforestation and environmental degradation in the
region are caused by independent private actorsconstruction
companies, loggers, farmersstimulated by different govern-
ment policies (Soares-Filho et al., 2004; Almeida and Campari,
1995; Schmink and Wood, 1992; Binswanger, 1991; Hemming,
1985; Moran, 1981; Mahar, 1989). Examples are the construction
companies building large government-sponsored infrastructure
projects, agro-industrialists implementing extensive agro-indus-
trial projects subsidized by the government, timber loggers acting
without adequate inspection by the environmental agencies or
small producers fromfailed colonization projects practicing slash-
and-burn agriculture. In contrast with the common view, this
research shows that the various private actors responsible for the
deforestation in the Amazon may actually be interacting among
themselves in their search for scarce resources such as land and
timber. One of the main reasons for this interaction is the insecure
conditions of the property rights over land and timber caused by
distorted government policies, laws and regulations favoring
unsustainable use of forests and land. As this paper presents,
deforestation had only happened in this case as the result of the
interaction among the different actors: landless people, land-
owners, logging industry and loggers.
The research used the methodology of case study (Stake, 1995)
by collecting quantitative and qualitative information together
with open-ended interviews between 1996 and 2005. For this
study, data was collected in Sao Luis (capital of Maranho State),
Santa Luzia and Buriticupu. The distances of the studied areas
varied from 0 to 40 km from the center of the town of Buriticupu.
Around 50 open-ended interviews in the region were carried out
with state officials, local government officials and politicians,
community leaders, landowners, loggers, landless peasants and
other relevant actors. The case describes the history of land
occupations in the region between 1980 and 2000 approximately.
2. Changes in property rights
Property rights can be interpreted as the rights of an actor,
group of actors or organizations to control certain resources'
(adapted from Alchian, 1965), and are composed of a bundle of
characteristics such as, exclusivity, inheritability, transferability,
and enforcement mechanisms (Alchian and Demsetz, 1973). The
system of property rights in a certain society could be defined as
an institutional
2
arrangement (Feder and Feeny, 1991). Property
rights can reduce the uncertainties in human interaction, however,
this does not imply that property rights regimes in place are
economically efficient (North, 1990). As an institutional
arrangement, property rights regimes have three dimensions of
analysis: informal constraints, formal rules, and enforcement
(North, 1990). Informal constraints are rules of behavior that
people impose upon themselves to structure their relations with
other members of society. In general, they are transmitted by
tradition and are not formalized by written statements. In many
developing countries informal rules are the main determinant of
property rights over land and timber (Casse et al., 2004). Formal
rules are written and formalized by constitution and laws, backed
by the state. Enforcement is typically imperfect because there are
costs and uncertainties for measuring performance of the rule to
be enforced and because enforcement is performed by agents who
may not have the capacity or interest in enforcing the rules.
Therefore, to analyze changes in property rights, we have to look
at the process of change in the formal rules, in informal con-
straints, and in the effectiveness and kinds of enforcement.
One of the foci of the literature in diverse fields of social
sciences is to explore some factors that are important to explain
changes in property rights regimes. These factors include govern-
ment intervention (Engel and Palmer, 2006), resource scarcity
(Feder and Feeny, 1991), labor market (Nelson et al., 2001),
prices, externalities (Demsetz, 1967), population density and
migration (Otsuka et al, 2003; Feder and Feeny, 1991), political
power (May, 1990; Ensminger and Rutten, 1991) and technology
change (Libecap, 1989). For instance, Feder and Feeny (1991)
describe how the definition of property rights in labor and land
has changed over time in Thailand. In the nineteenth century,
labor was scarce and land abundant, so there were very well
defined property rights arrangements for labor, but not for land.
As population density increased and land became scarce, property
rights in land needed more definition to avoid conflicts.
In Brazilian Amazon, changes in property rights regimes
have transformed its agrarian structure (Otsuki et al, 2002). On
the one hand, regimes of common property resources have been
dismantled by agro-industrial interests and local elites, generat-
ing land degradation, emigration and conflicts (May, 1990;
Anderson, 1990). On the other hand, peasant social movements
occupied large land plots to accelerate agrarian reform. All these
changes have had an effect on deforestation. This research shed
light on how the process of deforestation occurred in Maranhao
State in Eastern Amazon, one of the most conflictuous region in
the Amazon, and its relation to changes in property rights.
3. Background of agrarian invasions and conflicts in Brazil
Agrarian land invasions in Brazil are precipitated by organized
landless people and their allies occupying public or large private
properties, claiming that they are unproductive land. Therefore,
those properties are susceptible to expropriation by the govern-
ment for agrarian reform purposes, according to the law.
3
The
2
North (1990) defines institutions as the humanly devised constraints that
shape human interactions, or the formal or informal rules of the game in a
society.
3
The Brazilian constitution of 1988 includes the possibility of expropriation
of unproductive latifundium for public and social interest, such as agrarian
reform.
304 J.A. Puppim de Oliveira / Forest Policy and Economics 10 (2008) 303315
invasions are a kind of political pressure from organized landless
groups on the government to accelerate the agrarian reform
process. Invasions can lead to conflicts and violence between
landless peasants and landowners, when the latter resist the
invasion. Agrarian conflicts have occurred frequently in Brazil
since the 1960s. They are often the result of the struggle of
Fig. 1. aMap of Brazil (State of Maranho is the area in black) (Adapted from: Abril, 1994). bEcosystem of Maranho and region of study (municipality of Santa
Luzia) (Adapted from: Arcangeli, 1987).
305 J.A. Puppim de Oliveira / Forest Policy and Economics 10 (2008) 303315
landless peasants to get access to land rights against the resistance
of large landowners to give up their land rights, in an unclear legal
environment over who has the right over the land.
3.1. The region of study
The area of study was the region around the town of
Buriticupu, which was part of Santa Luzia municipality until
1997, in the state of Maranho in the Brazilian eastern Amazon.
This region was chosen because it presented the highest
number (21 in total) of land invasions in the state in the 1990s
(Almeida, 1995) and related deforestation problems, which are
considered priority issues for the state government of Maranho
(SEMA, 1996), as well as other Amazon states. Indeed, the
Maranho state had had several conflicts related to disputes over
land and natural resources due to changes in property rights,
large government projects and peasant struggles (May, 1990;
Andrade, 1995).
Buriticupu is located in the eastern part of the Legal
Amazon,
4
300 km southwest from the capital of the state, So
Luis (see maps in Fig. 1a and b). The municipality of Santa
Luzia had a population of 116,195 inhabitants, 85% living in the
rural areas in 1991 (IPES, 1993). The urban center of Buriticupu
had an estimated population of 15,000 inhabitants in 1996. In
the 2001 Census, the municipality of Buriticupu had 50,839
inhabitants, 51,2% of them living in the town (IBGE, 2001).
In the 1960s, the municipality was almost totally covered by
the tropical forest, and its inhabitants were basically indigenous
people and small farmers who practiced slash-and-burn agricul-
ture, and a fewcattle ranchers (Arcangeli, 1987). In the 1970s, the
state government built a major road through the region and
attracted many big agro pastoral projects with subsidies. These
factors brought big changes, such as high population growth due
to migration as well as unequal landownership, which led to many
social problems such as generalized poverty, land invasions and
conflicts, and several critical environmental problems such as
deforestation (SEMA, 1996) and land degradation due to
unsustainable agricultural practices.
4. Conditions under which invasions took place
Some of the literature suggest that the problem of insecure
property rights over land in the Amazon frontier is one of the
main causes of land conflicts (Alston et al., 1995, 1996; Mueller
et al., 1994). The arguments is that the lack of effective land
titling and secure tenure over land can spur land conflicts when
some government action or policy takes place, such government
subsidies for agro pastoral projects or infrastructure building,
pushing land prices up. This increase in land prices gives people
incentives to try to obtain the land title, which in general is very
difficult, because of the government agencies' lack of
organizational capacity
5
for a large increase in the demand for
titling. This environment of insecure rights and increases in land
prices lead people even to use violence in the fight for land
rights. Infrastructure also creates access to exploit timber in
more remote areas and spur the development of the timber
industry (Soares-Filho, 2004; Stone, 1998).
Moreover, common property resources used by peasants with
no formal land registration were targeted to expropriation by
large agro-industrial groups or local elites (May, 1990; Andrade,
1995). This process can increase land concentration, spur
deforestation and augment social tension among peasantry, agro-
industrial interests and landowners.
An environment like the one described above was in place in
Buriticupu in 1980. In the discussion, besides the factors that
led to land conflicts described in the literature, this research
adds, as accentuating factors in driving land conflicts and
deforestation, the presence of insecure property rights over
timber and its market value, as well social and political factors,
such as uneven distribution of land and landless organization.
On the other hand, in some situations, the same factors can also
lead to interaction between the landless and settlers with local
loggers and landowners, in order to exploit timber.
In sum, this article points that the occurrence of a high
number of land invasions and agrarian conflicts in Buriticupu
was mainly related to the existence of four determinant factors:
a) Agrarian conditions: the existence of vast, apparently
unproductive land properties;
b) Social factors: a large number of landless rural workers;
distorted distribution of land resources;
c) Political factors: democratization and the existence of a large
momentum of social organization among workers and
landless; and,
d) Institutional factors (property rights): the existence of
unclear and insecure property rights over land and timber,
driven by conflicts between government agencies, by
unclear laws or regulations, or by lack of enforcement.
In the next sections these factors are described in more
details.
4.1. Agrarian conditions: Amazonian colonization and the
creation of large properties
The recent interest in the colonization of the Amazon Region
started in the 1960s during the military regime, which took power
in 1964 (Almeida, 1995; Schmink and Wood, 1992; Mahar,
1989). The main concerns of the military government were the
protection of the vast and under populated territory against the
occupation by neighboring countries and supposed movements
4
There are two terms to refer geographically to the Amazon Region in Brazil.
Legal Amazon is the term used for regional planning and policy (around
5.0 million km
2
). It comprises seven states (Acre, Amap, Amazonas, Mato
Grosso, Par, Rondnia and Roraima) and parts of another two (Maranho and
Tocantins). The Amazon Forest Region is where the original vegetation was
tropical rain forest or areas of transition between rain forest and other kinds of
ecosystems (3.5 million km
2
according to Ministerio do Meio Ambiente, dos
Recursos Hdricos e da Amaznia Legal (1995)).
5
Including lack of human resources (quantity and quality), equipment and
financial resources.
306 J.A. Puppim de Oliveira / Forest Policy and Economics 10 (2008) 303315
toward the internationalization of the Amazon. The federal
government started implementing several plans aimed at fostering
the occupation of the region, such as road building, telecommu-
nication improvements, colonization projects and fiscal incen-
tives for industrial and agricultural activities, especially large
ones. The Amazonian Development Agency (SUDAM)
6
and the
Bank of the Amazon (BASA)
7
were created to coordinate the
process of development in the region. All these efforts to occupy
the Amazon attracted millions of migrants into the region during
the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s (Almeida, 1995).
The region of study (Buriticupu) followed the same path of
development described above. In the 1970s, the state govern-
ment built a major road through the municipality of Santa Luzia/
Buriticupu (road BR-222, between Aailndia and Santa Ins).
This road connected the region to the main trunk roads and
regional markets.
In the beginning of 1980s, a huge mining project, called
Carajas Iron Project, started in the nearby state of Para. The
mining company CVRDVale do Rio Doce (at that time a state
company, later privatized) decided to build the infrastructure to
exploit a large iron ore deposit in the Carajas mines. This project
was within the federal government's larger Program Great
Carajas for the development of the mining opportunities in the
region, which is also rich in other minerals like bauxite and
gold. CVRD transported the iron ore to the port of Sao Luis
through a railroad that crossed the Buriticupu region. The
Carajas Iron Project had an influence on the development of the
region. Some authors, indeed, claim that Carajas was one of the
main causes of the widespread deforestation in the Eastern
Amazon (Andrade, 1995).
During the same period, the State Agency for Land
Colonization (COMARCO, which later became Maranho
Land Institute-ITERMA
8
) created one of the most ambitious
plans of colonization in the Maranho's Amazon. COMARCO
incorporated 2.1 million hectares (ha) of state government land
in the colonization plan in Santa Luzia/Buriticupu region. This
plan aimed at distributing the land for three purposes: initiating
a large colonization project for small farming for 10,000
families (315,000 ha), organizing approximately 3000 occupa-
tions already in existence (600,000 ha) and installing several
agro pastoral development projects based on large properties
(1185 million ha). Each of these projects had an average of
20,000 ha in area and received subsidized credit from the
government (Luna, 1985).
The plan did not yield the expected results. Only 1035
families were settled, and only 300 occupants had their land
organized and registered in the end of 1980s. Concerning the
big development projects, COMARCO attracted 61 companies.
Thirty-five of them still existed in 1982, occupying 700,000 ha
(equivalent to 56% of the area of Santa Luzia municipality).
Many of these projects closed down once the subsidized credit
and incentives dried up in the 1980s.
9
The failure of the settlements left an environment of poverty,
landlessness and concentration of subsidized unproductive
property in the region.
4.2. Social factors: population growth, landless peasants and
distribution of land
COMARCO's plan attracted thousands of migrants to the
region in the 1970s and 1980s. As the state government
advertised the colonization projects extensively, many migrants
came hoping to get a piece of land in the colonization projects
for small farmers. Others were attracted by possible job
opportunities in some of the big agro pastoral projects, though
in reality they were not offered in large numbers. Santa Luzia's
population soared during this time (Buriticupu was part of Santa
Luzia at that time). It doubled between 1970 and 1980, from
47,714 to 94,210 inhabitants.
The population growth of Santa Luzia in the 1970s and
1980s is even more spectacular when it is compared to the
growth in other regions, such as Maranho and Brazil. In the
1980s, the pace of population growth slowed down, but it was
still two times rate of the state population growth between 1970
and 1991: the annual growth was 4.3% for Santa Luzia,
compared to 2.4% for Maranho as a whole, and 2.1% for Brazil
(IPES, 1993).
The official colonization project for small farmers settled
only a relatively small number of migrants. Thus, most of the
incoming inhabitants pursued alternative routes for establishing
themselves in the region, such as temporary labor for the agro
pastoral projects, subsistence agriculture on public or private
land (occupation or rent), and migration to the urban areas
along road BR-222, especially the towns of Santa Luzia and
Buriticupu.
6
Superintendncia de Desenvolvimento da Amaznia (SUDAM) was created
in 1966 and shut down by the Federal government in 2001 after evidences of
widespread corruption practices and poor effective results in the development
of the region. Recently, there are initiatives to reopen it again.
7
Banco da Amazonia (BASA) is the main supplier of long term loans in the
Amazon region. It was created in 1942 as Credit Bank for Latex.
8
COMARCO (Companhia de Colonizao do Maranho, or Maranho
Colonization Company). ITERMA (Instituto de Terras do Maranho, or
Maranho Land Institute).
Table 1
Tenure conditions in Santa Luzia Municipality in 1985
Tenure condition Number of families Percent of the total
Owner (title holder) 4701 28.7%
Renter or sharecropper (a) 4443 27.1%
Squatter (b) 7223 44.2%
Peasants holding no title (a+b) 11,666 71.3%
Total 16,367 100%
Source: IBGE, 1985Agro pastoral Census of Maranho (pp. 196).
9
In 1979, SUDAM decided to disapprove livestock projects in the forested
area, owing to an environmental outcry and a parliamentary investigation. Also,
the volume of rural credit decreased after 1980, to tighten the balance of the
Brazilian economy after the 1979 oil crisis. The subsidy for rural credit was
eliminated in 1987 (Mahar, 1989).
307 J.A. Puppim de Oliveira / Forest Policy and Economics 10 (2008) 303315
The high population growth in the 1970s and 1980s distorted
the distribution of land resources in the region, due particularly to
extensive migration, and the attraction of people and companies
interested in buying large properties,. Although the government
distributed several titles to peasants in the settlements for small
farmers, most of the families in the region could not obtain a land
title. These skewed tenure conditions are illustrated in Table 1.
In 1985, 71.3% of the families living in rural areas held no title.
They were living on squatter plots, or renting or sharecropping a
parcel of land from landowners. Besides the tremendous mi-
gration, other factors also helped to increase the number of
workers looking for land. Some of these factors are the
abandonment of plots in the agrarian reform settlements already
established in the region,
10
high birth rates, and changes in the
traditional production relations on the farms.
11
Other evidence for the distorted distribution of land
resources in the region is observed in the division of the total
area of land plots, titled or not, by categories (Table 2). In 1985,
52 persons with plots over 2000 ha held almost five times more
land than the 14,250 persons whose land plots did not exceed
50 ha.
This uneven distribution of land accentuated the social
tension between have and have-nots. The landowners controlled
the politics and were organized to protect their properties. The
landless peasants had to rent land to produce or lived on the side
of the road. Several groups organized landless people to occupy
land.
4.3. Political factors: democratization and increase in the
number of rural labor unions
12
The federal and state governments allowed and gave
incentives to the expansion of the rural labor unions (RLUs),
and did this even during the military dictatorship (19641985).
In the beginning, the planned function of the RLUs would be
the management of social security (previdncia social), and
possibly later, the RLUs would serve as centers for medical and
social assistance (Almeida, 1989). However, many of the RLUs
also became involved in the organization of landless rural
workers in their claims for land, especially after the democra-
tization of the country in 1985. Not rarely, these RLUs were
linked to left-wing parties and other movements of labor
organization in the rural areas, such as Catholic church
organizations
13
and the Movement of the Landless Workers
(MST).
14
The number of rural labor unions (RLUs) in Maranho
increased considerably between the 1970s and 1990s. In 1972,
when the Federation of Rural Labor Unions of Maranho was
founded, only 12 municipalities in the state had RLUs. A year
later, there were 87 RLUs, and in 1981 this number had
increased to 128 (Almeida, 1989). In 1995, every municipality
in Maranho had established RLUs (136). Also, Maranho had
a relative large number of RLUs, when compared to other states
in the Amazon, in the 1980s before the beginning of the wave of
land invasions (Table 3).
Buriticupu had a representative to the RLU, whose head-
quarters was in the city of Santa Luzia. This representative
organized workers in rural communities and mediated the
acquisition of land for the landless workers. Besides the RLU,
there was a strong rural worker organization organized by the
opposition block to the directive of the RLU, which was linked
to the Workers' Party (PT).
15
Rural workers and landless people were highly organized in
Maranho, particularly in Buriticupu region. This organization
was the catalyst for the claim of peasants for obtaining their own
land through changes in property rights in land invasions and
agrarian reform movements.
4.4. Institutional factors: insecure property rights over land
and timber
4.4.1. Contradiction between government agencies
The National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform
(INCRA)
16
and Brazilian Institute for the Environment and
Table 2
Land distribution by category of size in Santa Luzia Municipality in 1985
Plots category Number of land holders Total area (ha)
Plots with more than 2000 ha 52 410,882
Plots with less than 50 ha 14,250 83,684
Source: IBGE, 1985Agro pastoral Census of Maranho, (pp. 252225).
10
Many settlers abandon their plots because of the lack of infrastructure
(water, roads etc.) and social structure (schools, doctors, etc.), environmental
and agricultural unsustainability (erosion, soil degradation or infertility), or just
to search for more fertile or convenient land (many times selling the plot).
11
Sharecropping and renting land were very usual in the past. The increasing
introduction of extensive cattle ranching in the region and the risk of land
claims by peasants changed the traditional production relations on the farm.
Many landowners preferred to end the sharecropping or rent contracts (Trovo,
1989; Luna, 1985).
12
Rural Labor Unions in Brazil are organized at the municipal level.
Municipalities also have representatives at the community level. At the state
level, there is a Federation of Rural Labor Unions, and at the national level,
there is a Confederation of Rural Labor Unions.
16
Instituto National de Colonizao e Reforma Agrria (INCRA) is a federal
agency in charge of coordinating the whole agrarian reform process. Its
activities are very diverse such as the expropriation of land, demarcation of
plots, organization of settlers, provision of infrastructure and credit, and
emission of land titles in settlements and colonization areas on federal land.
INCRA activities are coordinated at state level and it has several regional
offices all over the state.
13
The Catholic church has several organizations working actively in rural
community organization, such as the Pastoral Commission of Land (CPT) and
Ecclesiastic Movement (MEB).
14
Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) is a national
movement for organization of landless workers. It puts pressure on the political
and judicial arena for agrarian reform. MST mainly acts in the organization,
coordination and support of land invasions throughout the country.
15
PT, Partido dos Trabalhadores.
308 J.A. Puppim de Oliveira / Forest Policy and Economics 10 (2008) 303315
Renewable Resources (IBAMA)
17
had had conflicting policies
concerning land use in the Amazon, which could lead
landowners to confusion about their rights over land and
timber. One of the most polemical controversies between the
two agencies was long-standing: IBAMA's policy for preserva-
tion of forest versus INCRA's criteria for considering a farm
productive. Since the 1960s, when the national and international
concerns about Amazon deforestation started, IBAMA had been
in charge of enforcing a law that established that all properties in
the Amazon had to leave 50% of the property as a forest
reserve.
18
Also, all developments in these properties or timber
exploitation projects needed IBAMA's authorization for
deforestation. On the other hand, INCRA used a national policy
for expropriation for agrarian reform that was contradictory to
IBAMA's policy for forest protection in the Amazon during
many years. INCRA considered forested land as unproductive
land in its calculation of the productivity of the land in the
expropriation process. Therefore, the 50% of the property for
forest reserve, as environmental regulation determined, was
considered unproductive land for INCRA.
This contradiction could make many landowners in the
region uncertain about how to proceed for land development in
their properties. If they developed more than 50%, they would
be breaking an environmental regulation (and be susceptible to
fines); if they developed less than 50%, they could possibly be
susceptible to agrarian reform; an unsolvable dilemma. In the
field research, two landowners reported that they were very
confused about INCRA and IBAMA policies regarding land
development, though they could not explain exactly what the
agencies' policies were. One of them said in 1996: I know that
INCRA can expropriate unproductive land, though I do not
know the criteriaI have heard that people from IBAMA can
arrest me if I deforest much of my property at once, but I do not
know how they would know if I did this. They have never come
here
Another contradiction between the two agencies was the
interpretation of the timber exploitation projects. IBAMA
conceded to land owners authorization for timber exploitation
in the Amazon region, which was subject to regulations
concerning the area to be exploited each year, the area for reserve
(a minimum50%of the total area), the area for permanent reserve
(riversheds, steep terrain, etc.) and the area to be left fallow or
reforested. These projects, once approved, were subject to en-
forcement and evaluations. Although IBAMAand project owners
would consider an area under exploitation of timber a productive
activity, it seemed that INCRA (and land invaders) had not.
INCRA had expropriated many timber projects in the region,
considering them unproductive farms. A good example of this is
the farm CIKEL in Buriticupu, which was invaded in May of
1996 and then expropriated, even though the owners of the
property, who had a big sawmill in the city of Aailandia, had a
timber project approved by IBAMA operating according to the
established official norms.
4.4.2. Property rights over land
Several factors accounted for the confusion over land
property rights in the region. The government policy that
promoted settlements in the Amazon attracted many people who
hoped to get a piece of titled land. However, the capacity of the
government agencies (ITERMA and INCRA) to cope with the
distribution and registration of land fell well behind the demand
(Mueller et al., 1994). As a consequence, there were many rural
families without land title.
These families rented plots or occupied unclaimed govern-
ment and private land. Many of these squatters occupied land
that someone had already titled or had acquired the title after the
occupation. Often the title holders managed to expel the
squatters from the land, either negotiating or using violence or
intimidation.
19
The expelled squatters moved to other pieces of
unclaimed land or became renters. Some of them ended up
moving to urban areas.
Even though there was a process for obtaining secure rights
or title to unclaimed land through INCRA, this process was very
slow and costly for the peasants, if it was done individually.
Land claimants needed to gather several documents and travel
several times to the closest INCRA agency (which in the case of
Buriticupu was more than 100 km and at least 3 h away in the
1990s). Thus, the process of expulsion and the failure to secure
tenure over land with title left many peasants searching for land
and struggling to survive.
Peasants could more easily acquire secure rights to land if
they settle in one of INCRA's agrarian reform settlements.
INCRA seemed to have a known policy of regularizing land
Table 3
Number of rural labor unions (RLUs) in the Amazon States in 1981
State Number of rural
labor unions
(RLU)
Number of
municipalities in
the state
Percentage of
municipalities with
Rural Labor Unions
Maranho 128 136 94%
Par 72 105 69%
Gois
a
66 211 31%
Mato Grosso 27 95 28%
Amazonas 18 62 29%
Acre 10 12 83%
Source: Almeida, 1989 and Larousse, 1991.
a
Tocantins State was part of Gois State until 1988.
17
Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renovveis
(IBAMA) is a federal agency in charge of enforcing federal environmental laws
and regulations. IBAMA's activities are coordinated at the state level, and it has
several regional offices all over the state. By IBAMA, it means also the
previous agencies that were accomplishing its role, as the Brazilian Institute of
Forest Development (IBDF).
18
Law No. 4771 of September 15, 1965; article 16. This regulation changed
in the 1990s. The area for forest reserve increased to 80% of the property in
1996 (Provisory Measure MP 1.511/96). There are some exceptions such as
small holdings. However, this had a minimum of enforcement.
19
Sometimes the landowners paid the squatters to leave the land, or
landowners used their private militias to threaten squatters or, using a judicial
mandate, asked the police to expel the squatters.
309 J.A. Puppim de Oliveira / Forest Policy and Economics 10 (2008) 303315
rights over settlements or claimant groups more efficiently than
over individual plots. Having a INCRA land permit assured the
secure right to use the land,
20
which peasants sold frequently
(there was a quite dynamic informal market for this kind of
right). Moreover, INCRA had given priority to its scarce
organizational resources to pursue agrarian reform in disputed
areas, owing to political pressure to solve agrarian conflicts. In
the region of study, most INCRA settlements (more than 20)
were the result of land invasions, many involving violent
conflicts. As a result, landless (or titleless) peasants perceived
that land invasion was possibly the most accessible way of
obtaining a secure right over a plot of land.
Holders of land titles could also be subjected to losing their
rights over land. Big landowners were susceptible to having
their land expropriated for agrarian reform if INCRA considered
the land unproductive.
21
In this respect, the Brazilian agrarian
reform legislation was very debatable and dubious. The
Brazilian constitution stated that land that is not accomplishing
its social function is susceptible to agrarian reform, meaning
that to avoid agrarian reform, a property must be productive.
22
But the concept of productivity was subjective, and it was not
defined clearly. As a result, INCRA's decision whether or not a
farm was productive was sometimes controversial.
Some landowners considered farms that were invaded
productive, but they were expropriated by INCRA anyway to
avoid more social unrest and conflicts. In the field research, two
landowners who had their land expropriated affirmed that their
lands were productive when they were invaded by landless
peasants (they also mentioned other supposedly productive
properties that they said had had the same fate). They
considered the expropriation more an action driven by political
pressure, as one of them stated: the federal government does
not want problems over its political reputation with the land
invasions and conflicts. Because now the landless can get
attention from the media with their invasions, INCRA
expropriates any land invaded by them just to avoid more
problems. INCRA officials do not care if the land is productive
or not
23
Both landless peasants and big landowners had limited de
facto property rights over their plots. If we analyze the land
tenure in terms of a bundle of property rights held by the
different actors, we would reach the following conclusions: i)
squatters had the right to use the land only for an uncertain
period. When the piece of land was claimed by the title holder,
sometimes they had the right to sell or be compensated for the
improvements they had made on the land. Squatters may
acquire further rights if they registered the title through a slow
and costly process.
24
ii) Sharecroppers and renters had even
more limited rights. They had the right only to use the land,
paying a rent to the landowner through a formal or informal
contract.
25
They did not have the right to acquire the title and
could be expelled anytime. iii) Settlers in agrarian reform plots
had relatively secure titles, but they had to stay on the plot many
years to have permanent secure titles, and most of the times they
could not choose the plot (taking the risk to get an unproductive
plot). iv) Landowners had the widest bundle of rights. They
could use, sell and rent their land. However, if their plots were
invaded these rights could be lost, though they were
compensated.
26
With the increasing number of successful
27
land invasions, the uncertainties the landowners faced about
their rights had increased.
In sum, property rights over land in the region were not
firmly secure, regardless of who holds the rights. This insecurity
seems to be originated by several factors, such as INCRA's lack
of organizational capacity, excessive bureaucratization of the
process of titling and lack of clarity in the agrarian reform
legislation. Moreover, some social factors accentuated the
insecurity over land rights, such as high population growth, the
high number of landless people, and the existence of a number
of large properties.
4.4.3. Property rights over timber
Property rights over timber were attached to the control over
the land. These rights could be important to allocate labor and
create incentives to different activities in the property (Otsuka
et al, 2003). Since the control over land in the region was
insecure, property rights over exploitation of timber were
insecure as well. De jure property rights to exploit timber in the
Amazon region belonged mostly to IBAMA (Brazilian Institute
of Environment and Renewable Resources). Exploitation of
timber or clearance of forest for agro pastoral activities on
privately owned land needed IBAMA's legal authorization.
According to IBAMA's regulations, all properties in the
Amazon had to keep part of the property as reserve. However,
IBAMA had only around 80 field inspectors
28
in the Amazon to
control an area of more than 5 million km
2
, with a large number
of plots to check. Despite IBAMA's efforts to curb and control
20
The final title comes only after the emancipation of the settlement, which
can take several years.
21
INCRA used the its Normative Instruction IN 08 of 1993 to analyze the
Degree of Eficiency in Explotation (Grau de Eficincia de Explorao or GEE)
in order to decided wheter the farm can be expropriated. But these criteria were
often disputed in court by landowners, and frequently they won the cause
(getting more compensation for their land).
22
Brazilian Constitution, Title VII, Chapter III (Brasil, 1996).
23
However, in 2000, INCRA adopted a policy of not expropriating land while
landless groups were occupying it.
24
The incentives to register the title can be increased, for example, when the
value of the land increases (Alston et al., 1996).
25
Although sharecroppers had quite stable rights to use the land in the past,
this changed because of the increase in cattle ranching activity and the risk
landowners faced in having their land claimed by the landless.
26
The federal government used Titles of Agrarian Debt (TDAs) to
compensate landowners for the land and cash to compensate for the
improvements. The barrier to accepting this compensation was the lack of
credit of the TDAs and the slow process of compensation (this process could
last over a decade).
27
Successful land invasions are those which achieve their aims: obtaining
land for the invaders, and making INCRA expropriate the land.
28
In 1996, during the time of land invasions in Buriticupu.
310 J.A. Puppim de Oliveira / Forest Policy and Economics 10 (2008) 303315
deforestation in the Amazon, enforcement of the regulations
was very feeble and impracticable.
29
Moreover, corruption is a
common practice in environmental enforcement. For example,
25% of IBAMA's employees in the state of Rio de Janeiro were
arrested in 2006 (O Globo, 2006). It has been a critical problem
in IBAMA over time, especially in the Amazon (ENS, 2006,
Ecoagencia, 2007).
With such weak enforcement, de facto property rights for
timber exploitation mostly belonged to those who had control
over the land where the trees were, and informal logging rules
prevail. This happens even in small countries with more
established forest policy, such as Costa Rica (Ibarra and
Hirakuri, 2007). Landowners could exploit or sell the timber
potential of their properties without control. Squatters and
settlers could sell the timber on their plot. The areas that looked
unclaimed or were public land often became open-access for
timber, limited only by their accessibility. As result, loggers also
became interested in the land disputes, as it is described below.
Another factor encouraging the growth in the supply of
timber was the existence of a growing demand for timber. In the
early stages of settlement in Buriticupu, there was no market for
the commercialization of timber. Most of the timber from the
clearance of land was burned or used in the construction of
houses. As timber companies started to appear in the region in
1980s, a growing demand for timber was created, and its value
rose. The number of sawmills in Buriticupu increased from two
at the beginning of the 1980s to 42 at the beginning of the
1990s. Moreover, the improvement of the established roads and
the opening of access roads by loggers helped to diminish the
accessibility constraints. A market for timber appeared. Those
who had the property rights for the exploitation of timber could
sell or use them. Since these rights were attached to the control
over land, current control over land was de facto control over
the exploitation of timber. In a region where the control over
land was very vulnerable, these rights were susceptible to
losses, either by expulsion in the case of squatters' land or by
invasions in the case of landowners' land (a landowner is not
compensated for timber if his or her land is expropriated). Also,
because poverty was generalized, the discount rate for the
settlers was very high. This induced them to sell the rights of
exploitation very quickly and cheaply to whoever wanted to
pay.
Therefore, the insecurity over timber rights, the existence of
a growing market for timber and poor enforcement of forest and
environmental regulation gave people in the region incentives to
quickly exploit the timber resources under their control.
5. Land invasions in Buriticupu and their relation to
deforestation
This section describes how the factors explained above have
worked together to create an institutional and social environ-
ment that fostered invasions and deforestation in Buriticupu,
through the interaction between the various actors: landless
peasants, loggers, sawmill owners and landowners.
5.1. Landless organization in Buriticupu
In the mid-1980s, as explained before, the number of
landless peasants was very high in Buriticupu/Santa Luzia.
Many of them were concentrated in the small villages or towns,
along the main road of the region (BR-222). Buriticupu, as the
headquarters of the COMARCO's colonization projects and the
largest town in the region, contained many of these landless
workers. During that time, the Brazilian military dictatorship
was coming to an end,
30
and democratization was advancing at
a fast pace. In Buriticupu, few peasant leaders appeared and
started to organize rural workers and landless people. Local
organizations for this purpose had become stronger. These
organizations included rural labor unions and organizations
linked to the Catholic church and to left-wing parties.
At the beginning of 1985, the former Brazilian President Jos
Sarney
31
opened the discussions for implementation of a
supposed national plan to speed up agrarian reformand invited
rural workers and peasants to help him.
32
Local leaders used the
President's call as an incentive to engage workers to organize
themselves for the elaboration of a local agrarian reform project,
though they were completely skeptical about the chances of
implementation of this project. The rural workers were divided
into 120 groups of 20 families each for the discussion of the lines
of the project. The final project mentioned the name of 38 big
properties in the region that the workers thought were
unproductive, and therefore should be expropriated by
INCRA. At the end, they submitted the project to the President
and gave him a deadline
33
to evaluate its feasibility.
After the workers submitted the project, the leaders of the
movement scheduled general meetings every 3 months to
evaluate the government action regarding their project, keeping
the workers' expectation about an unrealistic positive outcome
very high. As the deadline approached, and as the leaders
expected, there was no answer from the President or any other
governmental authority. With the frustration of their expecta-
tion, landless people started sporadically invading some of the
big properties mentioned at that project. Conflicts started
because the landowners and managers of the properties knew
about the rumors and prepared themselves for possible fights.
29
IBAMA pushed its effort to control commercialization and use of timber.
IBAMA issued forms to loggers indicating quotas of timber for exploitation
with information such as volume, destination and origin (ATPFs =
Authorizations for Transportation of Forest Product or Autorizao para
Transporte de Produto Florestal. In 2006, ATPF was substituted by DOF
Documento de Origem Florestal or Document of Forest Origination).
Inspectors were delegated to periodically check trucks on the road and
sawmills, to see whether they had those forms. But full enforcement was
unrealistic most of the time because of the small numbers of inspectors for the
size of the Amazon.
30
Brazilian military dictatorship started after a coup d'etat in 1964 and lasted
until 1985.
31
Coincidentally, he was from Maranho.
32
Rural labor leaders say that this invitation was more for political than for
practical purposes.
33
The deadline was December 25, 1985.
311 J.A. Puppim de Oliveira / Forest Policy and Economics 10 (2008) 303315
All these movements culminated with the first big organized
invasion of a farm called Capoema, and many others followed.
The region became the most contentious area in the state, and
possibly in the country. There were more than 20 occupations in
10 years (198393), as well as many other small conflicts
(Almeida, 1995).
5.2. The appearance of the timber industry and its interaction
with landless and settlers
Meanwhile, the timber business gradually began to appear in
the region and make connections with land invasions. As
explained before, the property rights in the timber exploitation
were held by those who had control over the land, which many
times were not secure. Therefore, the discount rate of those
who held the land was supposed to be very high. In the past, the
constraint for the timber exploitation was the lack of a demand
for it, which was limited by the accessibility of the region to the
timber industry located at the nearby cities of Aailandia and
Imperatriz.
34
Some sawmills were located in the Buriticupu
region, but they had their own property and timber to exploit
(sometimes regularized for timber exploitation by IBAMA),
which was much higher than their sawing capacity.
In the beginning, all the owners and managers of these
sawmills were against the invasions, because some of them had
big properties themselves, or they had strong links with the
social elite of the region formed by landowners and farm
managers. On the other hand, the leaders of the invasions and
squatters themselves knew about the political position of the
sawmills in Buriticupu. As a consequence, in the regular
clearance of the squatter land and even in the first invasions, a
small part of timber was used for building, but most of it was
burned for preparing the land for planting, or was left unused.
As the timber became scarce in the neighboring Imperatriz
and Aailandia and the access fromthis region to Buriticupu was
improved, some madereiros
35
started traveling to Buriticupu in
search of timber. At the same time, squatters and settlers started
to perceive timber as an opportunity to earn income. Also, they
did not see the madereiros from other regions as a threat to them
and their situation, because these madereiros, different from the
traditional ones, were from outside the conflict region and had
almost no connection to the enemy (the local elite: big local
land holders). So, a fruitful relation between the growing timber
industry and settlers/squatters began.
As the number of occupations increased and the reputation of
the organized social movements spread, different people from
the same region or from other regions started joining the
invasion movements. These people were not homogeneous. The
different kinds of invaders included landless people looking for
a piece of land for agriculture, local people interested in
obtaining a piece of land to sell or to have as an asset reserve
and people interested in exploiting the timber potential of the
big properties rather than land. This last group (this group is
called loggers or timber group) was composed of mader-
eiros, motoqueiros
36
and small timber merchants looking for a
nearby supply of cheaper timber for the Aailandia and
Imperatriz timber industries.
Because most of the people in the timber group were new in
the region and poor,
37
it seems that they did not receive any
opposition from the invasion movements. To the contrary, they
were very welcomed because the philosophy of the movement
leaders was as more people join the movement, the better.
They thought that more people would make the movement
stronger. Moreover, interaction links started occurring between
loggers and the rest of the invaders. Loggers gave logistic
support for the invasions such as transportation of people and
food supply. Loggers made agreements with invaders to buy
the logging concession to exploit their future properties (paying
a modest price). The landless peasants, many of them only
interested in having their own pieces of land, promptly accepted
these agreements, because timber did not have any utility for
them(aside fromusing it for fuel), and they needed cash and help
to support themselves in the beginning stages of the settlement
38
for building houses and subsistence until the first harvest.
Loggers also helped settlers in many aspects of daily life. I
noticed in my field research that, after invasion, loggers
provided transportation, opened roads, did some works (such
as building small dams or clearing land), brought water and
even served as middlemen for commercialization of farmers'
products. These activities were more positive externalities of the
logging activity. Once the timber becomes scarce, the loggers
stopped coming. As the process of establishing an INCRA
agrarian reform settlement was very slow and the improvements
uncertain, settlers established a quasi-dependent relation with
loggers sometimes. So, this relationship satisfied the interests of
both parties.
As the number of invasions grew, many loggers moved to
Buriticupu. They were involved in one invasion after another in
search of timber. Moreover, some of them become leaders in the
invasions. They also started to expand their action through the
properties invaded before.
39
Meanwhile, the establishment of
small and medium-sized sawmills soared in Buriticupu, as
mentioned before. Some of these sawmills started to move from
other regions where timber was becoming scarce, such as
Imperatriz, to Buriticupu. Others were just start-ups from people
34
Aailandia is 150 km and Imperatriz 250 km south of Buriticupu. They
were the centers of the timber industry in the 1970s and 1980s.
35
A madereiro is a Lumberman living from the extraction and transportation
of logs to timber merchants or sawmills. (Ros-Tonen, 1993). Some madereiros
are self-employed, while others work for timber companies.
36
Motoqueiro is a chainsaw operator.
37
In general, the timber group people had only their means of work: a old
falling-apart truck or a chainsaw. Many times they were landless. I met some
people who actually lived in the trucks or in the forest in improvised tents and
moved from place to place of work.
38
Once the invasions became agrarian reform settlements, INCRA started to
give financial and infrastructure support for them. But the support was
uncertain and can take many years.
39
Settlements remained forested for a long time, if no logging or extensive
production activity is introduced. This was because settlers continued with the
same kind of low land-use, slash-and-burn agriculture.
312 J.A. Puppim de Oliveira / Forest Policy and Economics 10 (2008) 303315
in the region who saw a good opportunity for business. Also,
some of the sawmills that opposed the invasions started buying
timber from the loggers, who were mostly from outside the
region and did not participate in the first invasions, and who
therefore did not see the old sawmill owners as opposition.
With the increasing number of sawmills and intermediaries
in the timber business, the demand for timber increased sharply,
and as explained before, the property rights for timber
exploitation were attached to the control over land. So this
structural change in the market for timber generated a new
scarce resource for pressuring the land invasions: timber.
5.3. Impacts of the invasions on landowners' behavior
For the big landholders in the region, the land invasions
represented a risk of losing not only the power over land, but
also the timber potential of their property. In the expropriation
process after a land invasion, the loss of the land and its
improvements were compensated by INCRA through an
evaluation and an agreement with landowners. But the timber
potential was not compensated. INCRA did not consider the
forest reserve as an improvement subject to compensation. So,
as IBAMA control was all but present, landowners had
incentives to log the valuable trees as quickly as possible in a
region under risk of invasion, as timber could be more valuable
than the land sometimes. According to the interviews, typical
value for a hectare of cleared land in the region valued between
100 and 200 Real (R$) (one Real was approximately $US 1 at
the time of the research) and a typical market value for the
hardwood found in one hectare of land could be sold for 1000
Reals (not including the logging costs). Moreover, as INCRA
considered pasture land as eligible for compensation, land-
owners had a double incentive to deforest and create pasture
land. They earned twice: from the timber and from the pasture.
This process of change in the use of land from forest to
pasture was further accelerated by the increasing number of
conflicts in the region, which was proportional to the risk of
having one's farm invaded. This process was noticed in two of
the farms studied: Cikel (already invaded) and Frechal. The
Cikel farm belonged to a big timber company. This company
had permission from IBAMA to extract timber legally
according to a contract. When small invasions and conflicts
started in Cikel and the owners heard rumors about a possible
future invasion of their land, they started to increase the rate of
exploitation.
40
When the farm was definitively invaded, a large
quantity of fallen trees was found (a few thousands of cubic
meters of timber), showing that the owners were trying to
extract as much timber as possible before the invasion took
place. In Frechal farm a similar process happened.
Another consequence of the above-mentioned policy was the
landowners' incentive to organize invasions on their own land.
As the public financial incentives for the Amazon dried up,
many companies began to suffer from economic difficulties.
Selling the land could be their salvation. But since land
invasions spread out over the region, the price for land had
fallen increasingly in the regional market, according to local
brokers. This was logical: someone who knew the region would
be unlikely to buy a big property there, since it could be the
target of a future land invasion. Moreover, land prices in Brazil
were falling all over the country due the control of inflation
(Gazeta Mercantil, 1996).
41
The solution that some big owners
had found was to induce land invasions in their own plots
through agreements with the leaders of the landless move-
ment,
42
and then to get compensation from INCRA. Although
the compensation process was slow and the compensation for
the land was paid using the devaluated Agrarian Reform Titles
(TDAs), in general INCRA's compensation price per hectare
was over market prices and improvements were paid shortly
after the expropriation.
43
Besides, TDAs had increased their
values in the market because they could be used as money in the
process of privatization of public firms, which the government
had started to sell in the 1990s. However, the invasions were
planned in such a way that the landowner had time to harvest
all the accessible valuable trees and to make fake improve-
ments in form of pastures to get more compensation.
6. Conclusions
In the Brazilian Amazon, distorted governmental policies,
laws and regulations generated insecure property rights over
land and timber. In turn, these insecure rights, allied to social and
political factors, spurred land invasions and conflicts, and
resulted in environmental degradation, especially where there
was a lack of enforcement of environmental laws. Moreover, the
same policies could induce the main private actors in the process
of deforestation (landless people, loggers and landowners) to
interact between themselves, as in the Buriticupu region.
The result of this research presented the distortions in some
Brazilian policies for agrarian reform and environmental
protection, such as lack of criteria for land expropriation,
difficulties in the process of land titling, conflicting policies
between INCRA and IBAMA and poor enforcement of envi-
ronmental laws, such as limitation on forest clearing. These
policies fostered an environment of insecure property rights
whose consequences included (i) the lack of incentives for
private investments on land improvements; (ii) rent dissipation
in organizing invasions (in the case of the landless) and in
protecting properties against invasion (in the case of the
landowners); (iii) waste of public resources in conflict reso-
lution and hurried (and sometimes unfair) land expropriations;
40
They used the clearing system called corrento (big-chain), which means
two tractors connected by a huge-thick metal chain pushing the trees down.
41
As inflation was apparently controlled, investors reduced investments in
real state as hedge against inflation, so land prices fell.
42
I found two cases in my field research: Frechal and Varig farms (already
occupied).
43
Besides, the values for land can be easily contested in courts. Sometimes
these values increase many-fold at the end of the process according to INCRA
specialists.
313 J.A. Puppim de Oliveira / Forest Policy and Economics 10 (2008) 303315
(iv) violence and social unrest in some cases; and (v)
uncontrolled deforestation and land degradation.
Compatibility between environmental goals, and forest and
agrarian policies, regulations and laws are necessary to provide
secure and clear property rights to allow a better enforcement of
environmental regulations and to give actors incentives to avoid
deforestation. In the case, traditional and informal land rights
existed and were indisputable and consensual, land titling was a
mechanism for registration of rights, allowing access to credit
and formal land markets (Feder and Feeny, 1991) or even
reduce conflicts and deforestation (Godoy et al., 1998). In these
cases, land titling generally would not cause much social
disruption.
However, land title and credit can lead to an increase in
deforestation in some models (Angelsen, 1999). In practice the
agricultural intensification may result in lower rates of forest
clearing in certain conditions, for example when agriculture
drives labor demand out of deforestation activities (Nelson
et al., 2001). Moreover land titling programs with redefinition
and redistribution of rights can cause unintended effects at local
level such as, social disruption or conflicts (Mueller et al.,
1994). Redefinition of land rights may be needed where the
traditional local system of land tenure changed, and in turn,
these changes may be one of the causes of land degradation
(Wachter, 1992). Also, redefinition of rights, in form of an
extensive land reform, may be inevitable to redefine disputable
or unfairly distributed land rights where they impede any efforts
toward land conservation and control of deforestation (Otsuki
et al, 2002). This seemed to be the situation in parts of the
Brazilian Amazon, where in many cases, land rights and titles of
big unproductive properties were obtained under unclear
circumstances (bribing, cheating, violence, political favor
etc.); and on the other side, millions of landless workers need
land to survive. This unbalance in the rights led many landless
people to move farther in the forest to look for a piece of
unclaimed land, causing further deforestation, or occupied large
plots of land asking for agrarian reform. Therefore redefinition
of these rights with clear rules seems to be needed to control
deforestation and land degradation, but this has to come with a
much stronger environmental law enforcement regime in order
to make clear property rights over timber. Recently, the
government in its different levels have tried to coordinate
development and conservation policies with promising results
(Fearnside, 2003). Moreover, market based initiatives, like
forest certification (especially FSC), are growing (Cashore
et al., 2006), so there is hope for change.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank the institutional support of the govern-
ment of Maranhao and the research grant of the Department of
Urban Studies and Planning of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology for the first field work. I would also thank the
support of the Brazilian School of Public and Business
Administration (EBAPE), Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV),
Brazil, for the last part of the field work. I appreciate the
comments in the early versions of this research by Larry
Susskind, Judith Tendler, Monica Pinhanez, Rodrigo Serrano,
Marcela Natalicchio, Judy Morrison, Ann Steffes and Tito
Bianchi. However, the data and opinions are of my sole
responsibility.
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