Abstract
Abstract: The Native Vegetation Protection Law - 2012 - (NVPL) is the main Brazilian regulation for protecting native vegetation (NV) on private land. The NVPL, currently in the implementation phase, reduced Legal Reserves (LR) requirements compared to its previous version, the 1965's Forest Act (FA), through several legal mechanisms. Among them, Article 68 (Art.68) exempts landholders from LR obligations if NV was converted without offending the legislation in place at the time of the conversion. The technical implementation of Art. 68 is controversial and its effects are still unknown. We developed a model to estimate the effects of Art.68 on LR using São Paulo State (Brazil) as case study. We analyzed former environmental laws to identify key periods in which NV preservation requirements had changed. After, we searched for past spatial data on NV cover with sufficient accuracy for each legal benchmark. Combining legal benchmarks with spatial data, we created two scenarios for Art.68 effects, plus a baseline scenario. The first scenario considered a single legal benchmark, the 1965's FA (scenario "1965"), while the other included the 1989 Cerrado's protection Federal Law as a second benchmark (scenario "1965/89"). The baseline scenario did not include Art.68 effects. Scenario "1965" reduced LR deficits in 49% compared to the baseline scenario, waiving landholders from restoration or offsetting needs in 423 thousand hectares (kha) of NV. Scenario "1965/89" waved 507 kha of NV from restoration needs and represented a 59% reduction in LR deficit compared to the baseline scenario. The LR reduction by scenario "1965/89" assumed particular importance considering that the additional cutback was concentrated on Cerrado, an already very fragmented and impacted region. Together with reductions from other NVPL rules, the additional effects of Art. 68 unfolded great concerns about the role of LR as a tool for NV preservation on private land, threating governmental restoration commitments, and pointing that conservation command and control approaches should be complemented with incentive policies to achieve the desired and committed standards.
Highlights
Native vegetation (NV) on private land is worldwide recognized as essential for biodiversity conservation, climate regulation and maintenance of ecosystem services (Norton 2001, Doremus 2003, Tikka & Kauppi 2003, Nunes et al 2016)
We developed a model to estimate the potential effects of Art.68 on Legal Reserves (LR) using São Paulo State, Brazil, as a case study
For the scenario “1965”, we considered a single legal benchmark: the 1965 Brazilian Forest Act (FA) (Table 1), acknowledging that LR requirements were applied to all types of NV and, since 1965, NV outside Areas of Permanent Protection” (APP) should represent at least 20% of the farm (Table 2)
Summary
Native vegetation (NV) on private land is worldwide recognized as essential for biodiversity conservation, climate regulation and maintenance of ecosystem services (Norton 2001, Doremus 2003, Tikka & Kauppi 2003, Nunes et al 2016). The “Native Vegetation Protection Law” (NVPL) (Brasil 2012) is the main national regulation for protecting NV on private land (Soares-Filho et al 2014, Brancalion et al 2016, Garcia et al 2016). The NVPL replaced the previous Brazilian Forest Act (FA) (Brasil 1965) through a long process of disputes among multiple stakeholders until its approval by the National Congress in 2012 (Metzger et al 2010, Nazareno et al 2012, Sparovek et al 2016). PRA defines several rules that reduce protection of NV to promote easier compliance comparing the 2012 NVPL with the previous FA (1965). Some States have not defined the PRA regulations so far (SFB 2018)
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