An important instrument for environmental regularization, the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) may be being used for illegal declarations of possession of public lands in the south of the state of Amazonas, according to new research.
The study, published in the Land Use Policy magazine, pointed out that approximately 90% of the area present in the region’s records does not comply with Brazilian environmental laws.
The geographer Gabriel Carrero, who led the research, explains that this action can facilitate land grabbing in the future. This is because one of the CAR’s functions is to allow small farmers to register land they occupy, even if they do not have official title. The idea is that the registry can help to obtain the possession document in the future.
For Carrero, land grabbers end up taking advantage of this situation by registering public lands as if they were theirs. They then use the CAR to claim ownership of these areas.
THE Sheet contacted the SFB (Brazilian Forest Service), an agency linked to the Ministry of Agriculture responsible for the CAR, which responded after the report was published.
The agency stated that the records are analyzed by Organs state agencies of each unit of the federation.
“If there is an irregularity and the state agency confirms, the problem will be identified and corrected,” the note said.
He also stated that the fact that CAR exists on public lands and in conservation units does not mean that this area has already been legally owned. The SFB said that when irregularities are identified, the government will take steps to correct the situation. “There will be no legalization of land grabbing in any way.”
Also according to the agency, the CAR analysis speed is currently “not adequate”. Therefore, the agency said it has already made available to the states a new platform that can speed up the process.
The Ipaam (Amazon Environmental Protection Institute), the state government agency responsible for the CAR, was also contacted, but did not respond until the report was published.
The registry was created in 2012 and must be done by anyone who owns a rural property. It compiles a series of data and helps in the fight against deforestation, for example, by allowing the public authorities to know who occupies an area that is being destroyed. It is from it that an owner obtains the environmental regularity of the property.
The researchers responsible for the new study used public data to analyze a region of 300 thousand square kilometers in the south of Amazonas, which involves seven municipalities.
The group then compared CAR registrations on public land areas with other existing registrations, and found a number of irregularities.
In total, 90.6% of the area of ​​records observed is considered illegal, says Carrero. Some, for example, claimed protection areas, which cannot belong to individuals. This is the case, for example, of indigenous territories, conservation units and military areas — these are responsible for 45.8% of the total area of ​​land considered illegal.
Other CARs were even registered on public lands that allow for private ownership, such as conventional rural settlements and unallocated public lands. In these cases, they were irregular because they exceeded the limit established by law for these types of property, of 2,500 hectares, explains the researcher.
In addition to a possible irregular occupation, the analyzed area also suffers from deforestation. The region accounts for 20% of the total size of Amazonas, and last year it accounted for 63% of deforestation in the state — the equivalent of more than 1,700 square kilometers.
In 2020, the seven municipalities had concentrated 80% of deforestation in the state.
“Our study showed that 35% of all deforestation accumulated in the south of Amazonas occurred within those CAR areas that overlap with public lands and that half of that, that is, about 17%, was within registries considered illegal”, says Carrero.
“Deforestation occurs there because it is a region with access by roads, where the government has also created some settlement projects and has encouraged the expansion of agriculture. In addition, it is closer to Rondônia and Mato Grosso, where the migration of an agricultural culture is facilitated”, says the researcher.
