Land tenure regularization and state land grabbing in the municipality of Paragominas, Eastern Amazon

Abstract

In the Amazon, the regularization of public and private lands is under discussion to reduce deforestation. However, this scenario is difficult due to land disorganization and divergent federal and state policies. The objective of this study was to analyze the importance of land data in federal and state public lands and private lands for the municipality of Paragominas, Eastern Amazon. In this study, we try to propose a diagnosis of land tenure structure, quantifying the Value of the Bare Land of the overlapping lands, state public lands on federal lands, as well as deforestation and forest conversion. The results showed that the area of federal publicly listed lands has drastically reduced. The reduced area is equivalent to the territory of Palestine, in the same database managed by the federal management agency. State public lands overlapped 16,153.32 ha on federal public lands, with a loss of US$5,529,927.57 for the federal government. Deforestation has increased on state public lands, driven by conversion to soy cultivation areas, and there is a trend towards stabilization of deforestation and agriculture on federal public lands