1 Implications of the climate change debate on land tenure in the Amazon Paulo Barreto Senior Researcher at Imazon

Climate change AdaptationMitigation Reforestation Aforestation Avoided deforestaton Biofuel Increased agricultural land price Displacement of cattle ranching Increased land use productivity Increased environmental enforcement Creation of protected areas Payment environmental services Increased deforestation in new occupations Reclamation of public lands Increased deforestaion in old ocupations Conventional2nd generation Non-agricultural land

3 The Brazilian Amazon  Total size: 5.2 million Km 2  Original forest: 4.1 million Km 2  ~17% deforested  ~ 23 million people  45% poor Deforestation data: Inpe, 2007

4 Messy land tenure situation in the Amazon  Lack of unified land cadastre  Overlap between public and private lands  Huge amount of informal possessions  Million of hectares illegally documented

5 Who owns the Amazon? Rough estimates of land tenure status (million hectares and %)

6 Unclear status of private holdings in the Amazon “Private land” tenure status in 2003 (million hectares and %) Source: National Institute of Agrarian Reform and Colonization (Incra)

Unclear future of mitigation Adoption of biofuels How much? How fast? Development of 2nd generation biofuels? Oil prices? Impacts on the environment and food price?

8 Projected area to be allocated to biofuels: 32 million hectares worldwide by million or more hectares in Brazil 2 1 Fraiture, C., Giordano, M. & Yongsong, L. Biofuels and implications for agricultural water use: blue impacts of green energy. International Water Management Institute. Colombo, Sri Lanka. 2 Assis, V; Elstrodt, H. & Silva. C. F.C Positioning Brazil for biofuels success. The McKinsey Quarterly. McKinsey & Company.

9 Agricultural price increase due to the adoption of biofuels Source of data: Msangi, S. et al Global Scenarios for Biofuels: Impacts and Implications. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). % increase by 2020 compared to 2005

10 Biofuels would escalate the displacement of cattle ranching to the Amazon Biofuel Displacement of cattle ranching to the Amazon Sugarcane in old pastsures outside Amazon Corn and soybeans in old pastsures inside and outside Amazon

11 Growth of cattle herd in the Amazon Cattle heads in the Amazon and remainder of Brazil Amazon´s share of the Brazilian cattle herd

12 Growth of sugarcane plantation in Brazil Hectares of sugarcane Brazil´s ethanol exports

13 Decrease of cattle herd in São Paulo State – the main sugarcane producer Million cattle head in São Paulo –

14 Growth of soybean plantations in Brazil and in the Amazon

15 Cattle ranching growth associated with deforestation in the Amazon

16 Growth of pastureland price in central Pará State Source of data: Anualpec 2002, 2004 and 2007.

17 Growth of agricultural establishments in the Amazon Mostly occupation of public lands Source of data: IBGE – Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics

18 Case: growth of cattle herd and landholdings in Novo Progresso Number and area of landholdings Cattle heads

19 Occupations to force land reform Number of families involved in occupations Source of data: Comissão Pastoral da Terra (Catholic Church Land Commission)

20 Examples of measures to deal with occupations and conflicts Growth of land reform settlements Creation of protected areas

21 But….  ~ 40 million hectares continues as informal possessions  Unfinished review of documentation of 76 million hectares of rural properties  Delay for creating unified land cadastre

22 Conclusions  Climate change pressure may escalate occupation pressure  Georeferenced cadastre necessary to monitor avoided deforestation  The Brazilian government is ill equipped  Significant investment necessary