New trends in land tenure and environmental regularisation laws in the Brazilian Amazon

The main challenge on Brazil’s environmental agenda today is illegal deforestation in the Amazon, which to a large extent is a result of the state being unable to fully control the use of its natural resources. To improve the situation, new pieces of legislation have been enacted, but not as part of an integrated policy for the region. This article analyses the legal evolution of land tenure laws and environmental regularisation laws enacted to reduce illegal deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The study of the legislation discussed here uses the legal interpretative method. The primary sources used in the analysis are legal documents, combined with state and non-governmental organisations’ reports on land regularisation and environmental implementation programmes in the region. It concludes that although land tenure and environmental regularisation were designed to be applied independently, agrarian activities have always been subject to environmental regulations. Recent deforestation monitoring indicates that deforestation rates are lower in areas that were subject to land tenure regularisation. For this reason, the strategy of the Brazilian Government since 2016 has been to formally integrate both regularisation activities through legal and policy modifications.