Land, property rights and privatization in Brazil

Abstract

The settlement of the Amazon has attracted considerable attention due to its environmental and economic consequences. It is, however, not an entirely new phenomena, but the last stage of a long process of frontier settlement which started in other regions almost 500 years ago. The section on privatization of land describes the historical process through which land was occupied in Brazil and identifies a pattern which has been repeated in each new frontier region involving the interrelationships between land prices, property rights and agricultural investment. This pattern has recurred in the Amazon frontier, whose settlement ever since the sixties has been directly influenced by governmental policy. Land policy in the Amazon examines governmental policy and some of its consequences with emphasis on the supply of property rights in land. As has been the case throughout Brazilian history, land policy in the Amazon has rarely achieved its objectives. This has occurred not only because of the difficulties in enforcing and monitoring policy, but also to a lack of understanding of the role of property rights and other forces which shape incentives for the use and disposal of land. Property Rights in the Amazon shows how the lack of secure property rights in land has been connected to many of the problems which have arisen throughout the settlement of the Amazon.