1. Who owns Brazilian lands?
- Author
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Ane Alencar, Caio Hamamura, Bastiaan Philip Reydon, Toby A. Gardner, Felipe Cerignoni, Flavio L. M. Freitas, Claudia Azevedo-Ramos, Vinicius Guidotti de Faria, Luís Fernando Guedes Pinto, Gabriel Siqueira, Raoni Rajão, Gerd Sparovek, Tomas Mauricio Almeida Lima da Costa Carvalho, and Vivian Ribeiro
- Subjects
Land use ,Natural resource economics ,Corporate governance ,Geography, Planning and Development ,0211 other engineering and technologies ,Public policy ,021107 urban & regional planning ,Forestry ,02 engineering and technology ,010501 environmental sciences ,Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law ,01 natural sciences ,Land market ,POSSE DA TERRA ,Business ,Land tenure ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences ,Nature and Landscape Conservation - Abstract
Land tenure in many parts of Brazil remains uncertain and controversial. These problems have recently been exacerbated by changes in the legal framework regulating protected areas and the land market. A particular challenge facing attempts to improve land tenure security and governance in Brazil is the lack of a single, integrated assessment of all types of lands. Here we address this problem and present a first, integrated map of Brazilian land tenure encompassing all official data sources pertaining to both public and private lands. Of the total (8.5 million km2) 36.1% of all lands are public (with 6.4% officially undesignated), 44.2% are private, and 16.6% are unregistered or with unknown tenure. Strikingly, overlaps among land tenure categories sum to 50% of the registered territory of Brazil. A clearer understanding of uncertainties in land tenure, and the spatial distribution of those uncertainties can help guide research and public policies focused on minimizing land conflicts and strengthening governance and territorial planning to improve economic, environmental and social outcomes from land use in Brazil.
- Published
- 2019
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