Brazilian public land destination:

a case study of the Terra Legal federal initiative and the province of Mato Grosso’s Land Institute.

Fernandes, V.B. – University of CampinasReydon, B.P. – University of Campinas

Bueno, A.P.– University of CampinasBenatti, J.H. – University of Pará

Simiqueli, R.R. – University of CampinasTreccani, J.- University of Pará

Introduction

Public land destination in Brazil: historically distorted, benefits land speculation, maintain and recreates land inequality and causes environmental degradation.

Lack of land governance causes insecurity in land rights.

We use 2 different cases to illustrate this:

1. the territorial appropriation in the state of Mato Grosso

2. the expectations and results of a federal land regularization effort called Terra Legal (Legal Land).

With this in mind, we propose a set of pragmatic policy proposals to tackle the main land governance problems in Brazil.

1. The historical lack of land governance in Brazil

The Land Law (1850)

Purchase as the only way to get access to public land. However, the old sesmarias titles and land already informally occupied would still be valid if they had effective use.

Objectives: a) organize land access;

b) make access to unoccupied land unviable;

c) establish a land cadaster for the definition of public vacant areas and

d) transform land into a reliable asset for use as loan collateral.

Problems: Definition of public land via exclusion (i.e.: public vacant land can only be determined

after all private land is demarcated, which never happened)

Thus, possibility of occupation of public land continued.

This blocked the establishment of an effective cadaster.

1. The historical lack of land governance in Brazil

Proclamation of the Republic (1889): public lands domain transferred from federal to state-level government.

Civil code (1916) and Public registries law (1973): defines that for registration of property it is required (and sometimes sufficient) to prove ownership and right of domain, without need of a cartographic map.

Law 10,267 (2001): regulates the systematic exchange of information between the cadaster and the property register (combines literal, descriptive information with physical, georeferenced information).

Nevertheless, the implementation of this law has been slow paced.

1. The historical lack of land governance in Brazil

Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF) results for Brazil:

Lack of control over public lands;

Private land property registry is not reliable (inclomplete and not up to date);

Lack of spatial information (georeferencing) on the registry of private land properties;

Lack of a reliable and integrated registry of public and private land;

Low level of land property taxation;

Neglectful governance over large-scale land and forest acquisitions.

2. Land destination in the province of Mato Grosso

Largest oilseed output (esp. soybean and corn) in the country

Biggest cattle herd in the country

Included in the Legal Amazon territory

2. Land destination in the province of Mato Grosso

Land regulation favor private interests of a minority in the state.

Transference of public lands to private owners through government institutions as political favors is commonplace.

Department of Land and Colonization (DTC), created in 1945: closed many times due to great number of frauds, final closure in 1966.

From 1966-1977 there were no specific government agency to regulate land destination.

2. Land destination in the province of Mato Grosso

1970s: creation of the CODEMAT (Mato Grosso Development Company) and INTERMAT (Land Institute of Mato Grosso).

Issuing of overlapping titles (many owners to the same area) all around the state of Mato Grosso until today.

During the military regime (esp. in the 1970s and 1980s): huge colonization attempt on the outskirts of the Amazônia:

INTERMAT and the federal government raised administratively about 10 million hectares of vacant land to be sold to colonization enterprises in a process far from transparent.

2. Land destination in the province of Mato Grosso

Conclusions:

Every single land management agency (DTC, CODEMAT, INTERMAT) sold land without clear description of the area in the titles.

Impossibility of good land governance practices due to:

Lack of transparency in land-related agencies,

No clear delimitation of public and private lands,

Overlapping titles and no complete land cadaster.

3. Land Destination and the Terra Legal Regularization Program

Legal Amazon: 59% of Brazilian territory, only 12.34% of the Brazilian population.

Enough to supply the Brazilian demand for economic development, environmental services and land reform.

The lack of land governance leads to:

uncontrolled private appropriation of public lands,

insecure property rights,

deforestation and depletion of environmental resources,

social conflicts and unbounded land speculation.

3. Land Destination and the Terra Legal Regularization Program

The Terra Legal (Legal Land) federal program was designed to tackle these problems, via land regularization and titling of private land holds in federal public land in the Legal Amazon.

Regularization of landholders without legal titles (adverse prescription) up to a maximum of 1,650 hectares.

Basic requirements for beneficiary: Cannot have other land titles

Must have its land under productive use.

3. Land Destination and the Terra Legal Regularization Program

Initial forecast

Titling of 300,000 rural and urban land occupants during a 3 year period (2009-2011), located in 463 municipalities located on the Legal Amazon

This represents 67 million hectares of public land that could be destined to landholders via regularization Equivalent to the area of Germany and Poland

together or 13.5% of the Legal Amazon area (Oliveira, 2013:69).

Federal public lands in the Legal Amazon

Source: Brito, Barreto (2010)

3. Land Destination and the Terra Legal Regularization Program

Results up to 2014:

11 million hectares of land were titled, representing almost 17% of the initial forecast (56 million hectares).

Major advance in georeferenced public land: georeferenced 10 million hectares (2009-2014), which bring the total federal public land georeferenced to 51 million hectares (45% of total federal public land in the Legal Amazon).

Even with the great increase of titles emitted in 2014, we can see that titling is underperforming through the total number of titles emitted contrasted with the initial forecast.

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 TotalNumber of georeferenced parcels - 835 17,583 23,887 23,638 41,866 107,809Area of georeferenced parcels (ha) - 128,784 1,551,071 2,166,971 1,572,288 4,504,704 9,923,818 Number of regularization titles 245 274 636 2,392 4,649 10,535 18,731Area of regularization titles (ha) 70,699 274,095 36,634 177,243 353,262 10,109,249 11,021,182

Georeferencing and titling of federal public land in the Legal Amazon

Source: Serfal, 2015.

3. Land Destination and the Terra Legal Regularization Program

Terra Legal was created to bring land regularization to the Legal Amazon and improve the security of land rights, thus decreasing rural violence and conflicts and environmental degradation.

Nevertheless, land conflicts in the Legal Amazon increased in the period and the initial forecast could not be achieved.

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 20130

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

Land conflicts in Brazil and Legal Amazon

BrazilLegal Amazon

Year

Confl

icts

Source: CPT, 2014

4. Way forward and policy proposals

Being so, to tackle the lack of good governance the policy proposal is as follows:

1. developing an integrated cadaster and public land information system,

2. improving Notaries and Registry transparency and public monitoring,

3. re-arranging and simplifying the institutional framework related to land administration in such a way to develop clear inter-agency cooperation and synergies to improve efficiency,

4. local capacity building and decentralization of land management,

5. enforce land taxation to tackle land speculation and incentive efficient land use.

References Brasil, 2014. Superintendência do Desenvolvimento da Amazônia (SUDAM), Amazônia Legal.

Website. Link: http://www.sudam.gov.br/amazonia-legal/recursos-natuaris.

Brito, B; Barreto, P, 2010. Primeiro Ano do Programa Terra Legal: Avaliação e Recomendações. Imazon.

CPT, 2014. Relatório Anual de Conflitos no Campo, 2013.

Emprapa, 2012. Variação Geográfica do Tamanho dos Módulos Fiscais no Brasil. Link: http://ainfo.cnptia.embrapa.br/digital/bitstream/item/77505/1/doc-146.pdf.

Fernandes, V.B., 2014. Passado não resolvido: a histórica falta de regulação na ocupação de terras no Brasil após 1964. Dissertation thesis. Campinas: IE/Unicamp, 2014.

IPAM (Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia), 2006. A grilagem de terras públicas na Amazônia brasileira. Brasília: Ministério do Meio Ambiente, 2006.

MDA, 2014. Lista de posseiros cadastrados no programa Terra Legal. Link: http://portal.mda.gov.br/terralegal/dados/aggregator-view?data_id=3292164 .

Oliveira, G.L.T., 2013. Land Regularization in Brazil and the Global Land Grab. Development and Change, 44(2): 261-283.

Reydon, B.P., Telles, T.S., Fernandes, V.B., 2014. Land tenure in Brazil: The question of regulation and governance. Land Use Policy, 42 (2015), p. 509-516.

Serfal, 2015. Relatório de Desempenho 2009/2014 e Plano de Metas 2015/2017.

World Bank, 2011. Legalizing Brazil: Brazil’s New Push for Land Regularization, Land Governance and Land ManagementWhat it Means for Affordable Housing, Urban Development and the Last Frontier of the Amazon. Washington: World Bank, 2011.