Private properties are within 422,000 km2 of public land, indigenous lands and settlements

Private properties overlap more than 422,000 km² of public land, settlements and quilombola areas in Brazil. It is, approximately, as if the states of São Paulo and Paraná were superimposed on these lands.

The data comes from the Forest Code Thermometer, platform of the Forest Code Observatory (network with dozens of environmental entities), which was launched this Friday morning (16). This is an update of the first version of the tool, which was put into action in 2018.

Of this total overlap, approximately 254,000 km² of private properties are within conservation units, indigenous lands and public forests. Another approximately 168,000 km² of private areas registered in the CAR (Rural Environmental Registry) overlap territories with quilombola lands and settlements delimited by Incra (National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform).

The observatory’s analysis points out that such overlapping values ​​may be even greater.

The platform crosses CAR information with data from the country’s land categories.

Every landowner in Brazil needs to self-declare his rural property in the CAR, a process in which the boundaries of the property must be indicated, with details on its composition, such as rivers, permanent preservation areas and legal reserve —the slice of native vegetation that must remain intact.

Despite being self-declaratory, after registration the states must analyze what was computed, to verify the veracity of the information. Subsequently, landowners must carry out environmental regularization, that is, correct possible environmental liabilities —for example, a legal reserve smaller than legally required.

The CAR currently, according to data released by the Forestry Code Thermometer, already has more than 6.7 million registrations.

The problem, however, begins with the next step, validating the information. The new tool indicates that 23.8% of registered properties underwent some type of analysis and a mere 0.49% of rural properties were validated.

The low level of validation of the properties registered in the CAR causes problems and hinders the implementation process of the 2012 Forest Code.

The first problem may be the improper use of CAR in the land grabbing process, a strategy that has been known for years. Landowners can purposefully use the records in the national system to occupy and potentially deforest areas that they do not own, such as slices of unallocated public forests.

Without validation, there is no way to know the errors or bad faith present in the records.

In addition, as previously mentioned, if the states do not check the information, there is no way to advance in the so-called PRA (Environmental Regularization Program). It would be at that moment that properties that were not in compliance with the Forest Code would have to act to comply with the law.

Generally speaking, deforestation prior to July 22, 2008 was granted amnesty by the code. Any suppression of vegetation subsequent to this necessarily needs to be authorized by Organs environmental agencies.

The Forest Code determined that the properties reserve an area with native vegetation, the so-called legal reserve. In the legal Amazon, in general lines, the reserve needs to occupy 80% of the area of ​​properties that are located in forest areas, while in other biomes the index drops to 20%. In the reserve, sustainable management practices can be carried out.

Another regulated point is the APPs (Permanent Preservation Areas), such as the banks of rivers and lakes, and the hills, which must also be preserved with their natural vegetation.

Failure to comply with any of these elements leads to the need for action by the owner. For example, the recomposition, regeneration or even compensation of legal reserves of smaller sizes than the law indicates.

There are other mechanisms that, without validating the properties, end up in a difficult situation to execute. One of them is an Environmental Reserve Quota market.

In short, owners who have legal reserves greater than what is required by law can legally “transform” that extra piece into quotas. They can then be virtually acquired to compensate for rural properties in the same biome that have a reserve deficit.