What happens to undesignated public lands?

One of the aims of the Ecological–Economic Zoning (ZEE) process was to help Pan-Amazonian governments allocate their public lands among different stakeholders and groups.

In recent years, the stakeholders with the greatest public visibility have been Indigenous peoples, who have campaigned—often successfully—to secure their territorial rights and to formalize ancestral land claims.

Tens of thousands of other local communities—riverside dwellers, quilombolas, rubber tappers, Brazil-nut collectors, and many others who depend on forest and water resources for their livelihoods—are also deeply involved in the land-rights debate.

In cattle country these groups compete for space with other socially powerful actors, including large- and small-scale farmers and logging interests.

Land conflicts likewise affect the interests of mining, oil, and gas companies: although they hold specific sub-surface rights, access to those resources can be blocked by whoever controls the surface.

A decades-long effort to zone public land and draw precise physical boundaries has slowed agricultural expansion—mainly in Brazil and Ecuador, and to a lesser extent in Bolivia and Peru.

Clear forest frontiers separating Indigenous territories from neighboring farm landscapes signal to settlers and land grabbers that they cannot legally claim such areas as private property.

Nevertheless, large-scale land appropriation continues in “expansion zones” and along road corridors, many of which received deliberately vague land-use designations in ZEE plans.

Environmentalists are correct to note (a) that deforestation in these landscapes is illegal and (b) that individuals are indeed misappropriating public land.

Even so, elected officials and government agencies often facilitate, actively or passively, the settlement of these legally restricted areas.

It is widely assumed that somebody will end up occupying the land—by legal or illegal means.

Unless public forests are formally designated and managed, they risk being transferred to the private sector, with ensuing deforestation or degradation.

How much unallocated land remains in the Pan-Amazon?
Government agencies keep running totals, classifying the various holdings they supervise.

The numbers are inexact, however, owing to gaps in land-tenure records and the ongoing seizure of public land.

Definitions also vary, especially when Indigenous or community territory is involved and may or may not be treated as conservation land.

Likewise, permitted economic activity and levels of protection differ; in some zones strict-use areas overlap with private property.

Still, the amount of land left for formal assignment offers a rough estimate of what is available for either conservation or development.

The accounting exercise used to obtain that estimate provides a snapshot of today’s land distribution among major actors:

• Private land includes large and small freeholds recorded in national registries (Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador) or designated for agriculture (Colombia, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana). It covers large forest holdings (hundreds of thousands of hectares) listed in Brazil’s National Rural Cadastre (SNCR) but excludes forest properties only in the CAR registry.
• Commons refers to collectively owned private land and to public land granted with permanent titles or usufruct rights to non-Indigenous communities in Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru. Examples:
  (a) INCRA-backed settlements for forest-dwelling families in Brazil (PAAD) or for pioneer farmers (PA);
  (b) Brazil-nut concessions and traditional pioneer farming communities in Bolivia’s Santa Cruz, Beni, and La Paz departments;
  (c) ribereño (riverine) communities in Peru.
• Indigenous Peoples covers community territories granted to specific groups, as well as government land legally or by decree set aside for one or more ethnicities for permanent use.
• These areas—large or small—are exclusive to Native groups that hold a particular ancestral heritage.
• They include two-tiered protected areas such as formally recognized Indigenous reserves and those established to safeguard peoples living in voluntary isolation.

Information source: brasil.mongabay.com

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