Government regulates and assigns Amazon land use

The government assigned Wednesday (June 24) 12.7 million hectares of Amazon land for land tenure, agrarian reform, conservation units and indigenous reserves. The area extends over nine states that make up the Amazon Basin – Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima and Tocantins. Most of this area, 12.3 million hectares, consists of agrarian reform and land tenure allocations.

The Minister for Agrarian Development, Patrus Ananias, said the different potential uses of the area should exist together. He pointed out the region has agricultural potential and is a major food producer. “We can't afford to turn such a vast and rich region as the Amazon into an untouchable sanctuary. Environmental protection should be reconciled with economic and social development,” he argued.

Ananias regards land allocation a priority and a crucial issue for the vast, low-populated Amazon region. “On the one hand, there's unoccupied land that belongs to the State, and, on the other hand, aggressive squatters take advantage of this to become owners of empty land that belongs to Brazil,” he said.

According to the minister, the government is trying to balance environmental issues, which it sees as critical for future generations, against productive interest in the region. This is why the Agrarian Development Ministry's Terra Legal (“Legal Land”) program has been extensively studying the region looking for land that it could give to smallholder farmers as part of the agrarian reform, for example. The survey includes mapping of land currently occupied by traditional populations, such as extractive communities, indigenous people, riverside dwellers, and maroon communities.

Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said the initiatives in the Terra Legal program help advance toward settling conflicts in the Amazon region, many of which are caused by land disputes.

Sérgio Lopes, who heads the Land Tenure Secretariat for the Amazon housed under the Ministry for Agrarian Development, noted that in the 1970s and 1980s, the federal government, then owner of 120 million hectares, encouraged occupation in the Amazon, but many cases were left pending legalization. He said that, when the program began, half the area had already been occupied and assigned – whether for a new town, as a conservation area, or an indigenous reserve. “The Terra Legal program is focused on the unassigned half,” said Lopes.

Translated by Mayra Borges

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