Land tenure drives Brazil's deforestation rates across socio-environmental contexts

Abstract

Many tropical forestlands are experiencing changes in land-tenure regimes, but how these changes may affect deforestation rates remains ambiguous. Here, we use Brazil's land-tenure and deforestation data and quasi-experimental methods to analyze how six land-tenure regimes (undesignated/untitled, private, strictly-protected and sustainable-use protected areas, indigenous, and quilombola lands) affect deforestation across 49 spatiotemporal scales. We find that undesignated/untitled public regimes with poorly defined tenure rights increase deforestation relative to any alternative regime in most contexts. The privatization of these undesignated/untitled lands often reduces this deforestation, particularly when private regimes are subject to strict environmental regulations such as the Forest Code in Amazonia. However, private regimes decrease deforestation less effectively and less reliably than alternative well-defined regimes, and directly privatizing either conservation regimes or indigenous lands would most likely increase deforestation. This study informs the ongoing political debate around land privatization/protection in tropical landscapes and can be used to envisage policy aligned with sustainable development goals.

Fig. 1. Forest conversion to agriculture (1985–2018) and spatial distribution of different land-tenure regimes in Brazil.

A Shows all forest cover (including natural forests, plantations, savannas, and mangrove tree cover) converted to farming (pasture, agriculture, annual perennial, and semi-perennial crops, including mosaics of agriculture and pasture). B Shows the spatial distribution of six different land-tenure regimes, collated from Imaflora’s Atlas of Brazilian Agriculture. C Shows total areas of forest that were converted to agriculture (red) or other land uses (gray) between 1985 and 2018, and remaining forest cover in 2018 (green), across all Brazil-wide parcels under each tenure regime. Percentages of total original (1985) forest cover per tenure regime that were converted to agriculture by 2018 are indicated above each bar.

Fig. 2. Effects of alternative land-tenure regimes on forest-to-agriculture conversion rates in Brazil.

Circles indicate average effects sizes estimated using regression analysis (using matched parcels) at different spatial-temporal scales, compared to two alternative counterfactuals: A undesignated/untitled public lands with poorly defined tenure rights, and B private lands. Labelled effect sizes (larger circles) report effects across Brazil over the time period 1985–2018. Effects to the left of the zero line indicate a decrease in average parcel-level deforestation rate (to the right: increase). Filled circles indicate statistically significant effects (p < 0.05; nonfilled: not significant); upper/lower confidence intervals are plotted to the left/right of each circle centroid. Higher transparency of filled circles indicates high levels of imbalance in the matched dataset (multivariate imbalance measure L₁). See Supplementary Figs. 1–2 for detailed presentation of scale-specific results for all tenure regimes. Source data are provided as a Source Data file, where results from time-filtered robustness tests are also found.