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Curb land grabbing to save the Amazon

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 3, page 1497 (2019)Cite this article

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The institutional and legal framework surrounding land claims explains these repeated failures. In common with Brazil and countries in the Amazon–Andes region, ‘improvements’ to land — clearing the forest — are the basis of legal claims to property titles7,8. Protected areas and the national forest reserve are technically excluded from such claims. However, at the frontier, clearing the forest for pasture and then introducing cattle is the surest way to access credit and obtain institutional support by notarizing plot extent and tenure.

How can we break the cycle of frontier land grabbing and speculation at the expense of the forest and smallholders, and instead spur productivity and investment on existing agricultural landscapes? We propose reforms that should be indispensable to curbing deforestation and preventing both irreversible biodiversity loss and the transformation of the Amazon into a net carbon source. First, the completion of the national land registry should be a top priority. Without it, land grabbing and speculation will continue as urban areas and roads expand. Second, a substantial tax proportional to the size and productive potential of properties is a key instrument to spur productivity across the vast landholdings currently devoted to pastures and low-investment ranching. Third, a shift from land titling to term concessions for smallholders can help regulate land tenure without generating the incentives for hoarding or excess demand that titling programmes currently raise.

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Fig. 1: Proportion of number of productive units or farms (bars) and land per property size class (lines) in Colombia.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Dolors Armenteras, Liliana M. Davalos.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratorio de Ecología del Paisaje y Modelación de Ecosistemas ECOLMOD, Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia

    Dolors Armenteras

  2. The School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Pablo Negret

  3. Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Luis F. Melgarejo

  4. Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Tobia M. Lakes, Jaime García & Tobias Krueger

  5. Geography Department, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Tobia M. Lakes & Matthias Baumann

  6. Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos, Alexander von Humboldt, Bogotá, Colombia

    María C. Londoño

  7. Department of Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    Liliana M. Davalos

  8. Consortium for Inter-Disciplinary Environmental Research, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    Liliana M. Davalos

Authors
  1. Dolors Armenteras
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  2. Pablo Negret
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  4. Tobia M. Lakes
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Correspondence to Dolors Armenteras.

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Armenteras, D., Negret, P., Melgarejo, L.F. et al. Curb land grabbing to save the Amazon. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 1497 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-1020-1

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