In the Amazon, what happens to undesignated public lands?

Undesignated public land

One of the objectives of the ZEE process was to assist the nations of the Pan Amazon to allocate their public lands among different constituencies and stakeholder groups. The group with the highest public profile, at least in recent years, is the Indigenous people who have organised a highly successful campaign to assert their territorial rights and formalise their claims to their ancestral territories. They are joined in their quest for land rights by tens of thousands of local communities, known variously as Caboclos, Ribereñas, Quilombolas, Maroons, Seringueros and Castañeros, that also rely on the forest and aquatic habitats for their livelihoods. They are competing for land with other societal groups that have economic, demographic and political power, including the ranching sector, large and small farmers and the timber industry. The competition for land is influenced by the interests of mining companies and the oil and gas industry, who have separate rights to below-ground resources, but are concerned that access to those natural resources can be constrained by whomever controls the surface rights.

The multi-decade campaign to prepare ZEEs and formally designate the precise physical borders of public land has succeeded in limiting the expansion of agriculture, particularly in Brazil and Ecuador, and to a lesser extent in Bolivia and Peru. The sharp forest boundaries between Indigenous territories and adjacent agrarian landscapes (with several notable exceptions) demonstrates that settlers and land grabbers will not occupy territory they cannot eventually claim as private property. The ongoing scramble for land is largely occurring on landscapes that have been tacitly identified as expansion zones and highway corridors, many of which were assigned a category of land-use in a ZEE that is purposely vague (see Table 4.8 and Figure 4.8)

Environmental advocates are factually correct when they (a) state that deforestation on these landscapes is illegal and (b) accuse the individuals involved as misappropriating state lands. Regardless, elected officials and government functionaries, either by action or inaction, facilitate settlement on these landscapes which have been zoned for development. It is widely assumed that these lands will be occupied by somebody using some kind of legal or extralegal mechanism. Public forest must be formally designated and managed — or it will pass to the private sector, which increases the probability they will be cleared or degraded.

How much undesignated land is left in the Pan Amazon? Government agencies maintain a running tally by compiling the various land tenure categories managed by their agencies. Those estimates are imprecise, however, because of the deficiencies in land tenure registries and the ongoing appropriation of public land. Moreover, what is perceived as public land varies, particularly when it comes to Indigenous or communal territory, which may or may not be considered as a protected area. Likewise, the degree of protection differs depending upon the type of economic activity, which may or may not be allowed, and some protected areas coexist private inholdings.

The amount of land that remains to be formally designated provides an approximate estimate of the land available for conservation and development (Figure 4.11). The mathematical exercise used to make that estimate also provides a snapshot of the existing distribution of land among major stakeholder groups (Figure 4.12).

Private denotes large and small landholdings registered in a national cadaster (Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador) or landscapes zoned for agricultural activities (Colombia, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana). It includes large-scale forest estates (Amazonas and Acre) included in the national cadaster of private properties (SNCR) but excludes forest holdings in the Cadastro Ambiental Rural (CAR).

Communal denotes private lands held by a communal title and public lands where tenure or the permanent right-of-use has been deeded to non-ethnic communities in Brazil, Bolivia and Peru. This includes: (a) INCRA-sponsored settlements that benefit forest dwelling communities (PAAD-type) and (b) pioneer farmers (PA-type) in Brazil; (c) Castañera forest communities in Northern Bolivia and Campesino/ Interculturales pioneer farmers in Santa Cruz, Beni and La Paz; and (d) Ribereña communities in Peru.

Indigenous denotes communal landholdings deeded to specific communities, as well as state lands where permanent use-rights have been granted by law or decree to one or more ethnic peoples. These can be small or large, but are specific for Indigenous groups with a specific ethnic heritage. It includes protected areas that enjoy a dual status as Indigenous reserves and those created to protect Indigenous groups living in voluntary isolation

Protection denotes national and regional protected areas established with the primary goal of conserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems, typically referred to as ‘indirect use’ (IUCN Categories I, II and II). Those with dual status as Indigenous territories are excluded to avoid double accounting.

Sustainable-Use denotes public lands allocated to the sustainable management of timber and non-timber resources and include both national and regional protected areas, as well as forest concessions in Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname. Excluded from this category are multiple-use protected areas with privately held inholdings (e.g, Areas Natural de Manejo Integrado and Áreas de Proteção Ambienteis) and communal landholdings dedicated to sustainable management.

Other denotes urban areas and public lands that have been registered within cadasters; they include military properties, infrastructure and their associated rights-of-way, rivers, lakes and water ways and urban areas.

Encumbered denotes putatively state lands in areas with unresolved land tenure; many (perhaps most) are occupied by a possessor (poseiduero) who has yet to have his or her title validated and registered in the national cadaster. These were identified by subtracting the total area from registered properties in cadasters from the total area within polygons defined as ‘Human Modified Landscapes’ (see Chapter 1).

Undesignated denotes all other public lands, estimated by subtracting the above categories from the total area of each jurisdiction as defined by administrative criteria (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela) or by the approximate tree-line on the eastern slope of the Andes (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru).

This large-scale accounting shows there are still significant areas of public land that await to be allocated as protected area, Indigenous reserve or open to some type of sustainable development. It also highlights the dimension of the challenges in resolving land tenure on frontier landscapes. Insecure and uncertain land tenure are directly linked to the deforestation crisis. The ability of land grabbers and settlers to appropriate state lands is made possible by the incomplete nature of land registries. The forest frontier will only be closed when all legal properties enjoy fully certified titles and all public lands are clearly demarcated and assigned a management category.

Read the other excerpted portions of chapter 4 here:

To read earlier chapters of the book, find Chapter One here, Chapter Two here, and Three is here.

Banner image: The Bolivian Amazon has been affected by illegal mining and oil incursion. Image by Iván Paredes.