Rethinking the Brazilian Amazon

Sustainable development for a thriving future

Research paper Updated 15 September 2023 ISBN: 9781784134969

Workers arranging boxes of fish on the quayside outside a historic market building

Ana Yang

Director, Environment and Society Centre

Ana Toni

Executive Director, Instituto Clima e Sociedade

Roberto Waack

Associate Fellow, Sustainability Accelerator, Environment and Society Centre

Joaquim Levy

Former Minister of Finance, Government of Brazil

The Brazilian Amazon, which has long been a symbol of abundant natural and cultural wealth, is at risk of becoming savannah following years of deforestation and degradation.

The region could support a bioeconomy of unrivalled richness: however, this cannot be achieved without land-use planning that reflects the priorities and aspirations of the Amazon’s diverse populations and maintains a balance between environmental, social and economic goals.

An effective strategy for the Amazon will acknowledge the complexities of the region and further the conservation and development goals of the region’s stakeholders. Brazil’s international development partners must work alongside the country’s state and municipal governments, business, civil society and indigenous populations to ensure the conservation of the rainforest and its biodiversity.

This research paper is the outcome of a series of dialogues hosted by Chatham House with stakeholders from the Amazon region and in the international community, whose contributions enabled in-depth exploration of the diversity of opinion on the region and shaped the paper’s recommendations for the most effective interventions.

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02 Principal challenges and solutions

New technologies and pioneering initiatives could address the interconnected development challenges, and promote sound policies that protect the future of the Amazon and prevent further deforestation.

The journey towards a stable and more productive economy which complies with the best environmental, social and governance practices remains long and difficult. However, there are encouraging developments. New technologies,22 such as satellite imaging with increased frequency and granularity, may transform some of the existing economic activities. For example, together with artificial intelligence, such technologies are now helping to improve the traceability of cattle to ensure they are not raised in recently deforested areas. Imagery has also been instrumental in monitoring deforestation, and isotope testing is increasingly used to verify whether timber matches its declared origin.

Outside the areas of the Intact Amazon, a combination of forest management, agriculture, cattle ranching and legal mining may be sustainable. Investment can increase productivity and break the ‘slash, burn and abandon’ pattern of land occupation,23 freeing degraded pastures for reforestation, possibly with help in the form of payments for environmental services or carbon credits.

To prevent further deforestation in Pará, surrounding forests have to be formally set aside as conservation areas, and their protection has to be rigorously enforced, while minimum forest coverage is maintained in the developed areas. Fighting illegalities and providing adequate financing for producers who operate sustainably are crucial to making this strategy work.

Fighting illegalities and providing adequate financing for producers who operate sustainably are crucial to making deforestation strategy work.

Countering the abandonment of land in Rondônia after deforestation could follow one of two pathways: either restoration and regeneration into forests, or conversion into a new frontier of agriculture development.24

In the east, where cultivation of pepper and other commodities has been successful in the last 40 years, other activities, such as the production of palm oil (e.g. for aviation fuel) on degraded land or legalized mining, could strengthen the economic fabric of the region, which is also anchored in important cities (including Paragominas, Altamira and Tailândia). There is still debate as to whether increasing productivity25 will improve conservation outcomes.26 Increasing agricultural productivity27 and social inclusion could be the best approach for these areas, and would help reduce migration into the arc of deforestation and beyond.

In urban areas, tourism, information and knowledge economy activities are crucial to the success of the services sector. This requires a strong focus on improving educational levels, which remain below the average in Brazil.28

Responding to these challenges requires strong law enforcement and an end to the culture of impunity, as well as effective land-use policies. It may also require payments for environmental services and incentives for low-impact forest management. The development of a bioeconomy supported by science could lead to the creation of new markets for forest products. The experience of long-standing and successful conservation projects in protected areas, such as the Amazon Region Protected Areas Programme (ARPA), a joint initiative sponsored by government and non-government agencies including the World Bank, can contribute to such endeavours.

Given the interrelated nature of these challenges and their solutions, this research paper focuses on six specific areas where intervention has the potential to achieve lasting solutions. These are as follows: compliance and combating impunity; land-use planning, land titling regularization and transparency; economic development, in different areas such as timber, cattle ranching, agricultural commodities, mining and the forest bioeconomy, including through innovations in science and technology; funding architecture; infrastructure and communications; and the social agenda, including education.

Compliance and combating impunity

The social, economic and environmental challenges in the Amazon are exacerbated by weak governance.29 There is widespread impunity30 for all types of crime, including deforestation, illegal mining, land-grabbing, biopiracy and animal trafficking. Individuals and companies often cultivate permissive relationships with authorities. This situation drives away those investors and entrepreneurs who wish to operate under the rule of law and according to sustainability criteria.

Inequalities tend to create tolerance towards informal and even illegal activities, right across the economic spectrum. Those with greater economic resources claim that the complexity and inadequacy of laws make compliance with them impossible. Although this situation is not exclusive to Brazil, its implications for land-use planning and economic activities in the Amazon are broad and, at times, potentially devastating. It promotes impunity for illegal or criminal actions, sometimes under the excuse of fostering economic development, and encourages legal and regulatory changes that weaken social control and facilitate the grabbing of public property and the destruction of the environment.

Law enforcement has deteriorated since 2019. Environmental protection agencies have seen their already limited budgets being further reduced, and their enforcement actions restrained. A rhetoric that normalizes abuses and non-compliance with the law has also gained ground.

This scenario can be reversed. Brazil is recognized for the excellent environmental legal framework it created in the mid-1980s. New technologies allow greater transparency and better monitoring, and could facilitate the enforcement of environmental laws while reducing the cost of compliance with them. Civil society organizations have built important databases about the region and created mechanisms for local people to take part in decision-making that affects them.31

Land-use planning, land titling regularization and transparency

Land-use planning is necessary to enable the Amazon to fulfil its potential. Such planning needs to reflect the priorities of Brazilian society inside and outside the region. It has to coordinate and balance environmental, social and economic goals and constraints to ensure the fair, robust and efficient allocation of land to various uses across the Amazon. Allocations must reflect the need to protect the forest together with the rights and needs of traditional populations and indigenous peoples, as well as providing the legal security required to stimulate new investment.

Strategic land-use planning of the Amazon has not been implemented or actively pursued, although it is envisaged by the Federal Constitution of 1988 (Article 21, 9).32 A land-use policy would establish guidelines for the organization and execution of a plan to implement the social, economic and environmental agendas, inform decisions on who has authority and enforcement capacity, and guide the creation of cross-cutting structural elements, such as investments in infrastructure, communication and technology.

In Brazil, a policy is usually more flexible and easier to approve than a national plan. Yet attempts to establish a national policy have so far resulted in only a few discussions and events, held in the first decade of this century. The widely differing expectations of different stakeholders have made it impossible to build consensus and progress the debate.

Giving people titles to land boosts confidence and provides a means for economic independence.

In the absence of a national policy, a number of protected areas, designated as Conservation Units, had been established by the mid-2010s. Several indigenous territories have also been demarcated, giving indigenous peoples full rights over the area. However, this approach to conservation is weakened by the fact that large areas of public land still do not have any specific designation. Undesignated areas are particularly vulnerable to land grabs, land speculation and deforestation, because they are viewed by many as ‘free’ and unused. Much of the current deforestation is occurring in areas that have not been clearly designated.33 Indeed, 5 per cent of the area classified as undesignated public forests had already been deforested between 1997 and 2018.34

Land titling, which is of interest to many in the region, is a potential lever for more investment and higher agricultural productivity. It has to be addressed in accordance with land-use planning and be underpinned by very clear principles and objectives. Giving people titles to land also boosts confidence and provides a means for economic independence. But it cannot be approached in a narrow way, and it has to recognize the numerous forms of ownership in the region. It must respond to the specific needs of private as well as of collective ownership, including those arising in land settlements from land reform programmes and in quilombos. Land titling also needs to prioritize small producers and be backed up with penalties proportional to the size of the plots for failure to comply with conditions, especially with respect to environmental criteria. One of the starting points should be to address the gaps, overlaps and conflicts of ownership, especially in the Anthropized Amazon.

Effective and transparent land titling will require changes in the cartório or registry system for real estate, which is archaic and often fragile, despite the use of technology by some registries and the legal reforms that have been promoted during the last 45 years to modernize what is often a private service chartered by the state. Registrations are precarious, fragmented, incomplete and frequently conflicting, as well as being dispersed geographically, without comprehensive systematization or accessibility.

The digitization of registry data and a solid, transparent and agile infrastructure of registries, integrated with the data banks of the Environmental Rural Registry and the federal land settlement institute, INCRA (Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária) and local land authorities, would help address some of these shortcomings. Satellite information can help with the verification of compliance filings and provide data about the conservation status of areas for which regularization is being sought.

Box 3. Land tenure categories, Forest Code and the Environmental Rural Registry

Land tenure categories include indigenous lands, quilombola lands, Conservation Units, private properties and public forests.35 Brazilian public forests, in turn, can be classified as:

1. Designated forests – with specific destination as Conservation Units, indigenous lands, rural settlements or military areas, among others;

2. Undesignated forests; and

3. Vacant lands – untitled federal lands.36

The National System of Conservation Units (Sistema Nacional de Unidades de Conservação, or SNUC), established in 2000, provides a framework for coordinated management and implementation at different levels of government for both public areas and units proposed by private actors. There are 12 categories of Conservation Units, which can be divided into two broad groups: strict protection areas, with the primary objective of biodiversity conservation restricting direct use or consumption of natural resources; and sustainable use areas, primarily aiming at conservation but allowing human settlements and several uses of natural resources. This second category encompasses national forests, extractivist reserves and sustainable development reserves.37

The Forest Code, updated in 2012, regulates private land management. It is another important piece of legislation, requiring a minimum percentage of the land area in private properties to be set aside as native vegetation. Such areas are denominated as Legal Reserves and the percentage is defined according to the biome. In the Amazon biome, landowners are required to set aside 80 per cent of their holdings in this way.

The Forest Code created the Rural Environmental Registry system (Cadastro Ambiental Rural – CAR), requiring landowners to register the georeferenced limits of their property and report on the areas dedicated to production and conservation. However, the CAR mechanism has been used by many to claim ownership over public lands.38

There are 49.8 million hectares (mha) of so-called undesignated public forests (UPF), where neither the federal nor the state government has assigned a specific tenure status. These forests are highly susceptible to land-grabbing and therefore to deforestation.

A recent study found that between 1997 and 2018, 2.6 mha of the 49.8 mha of UPF had been deforested, releasing emissions equivalent to 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO₂). The same study highlighted that 11.6 mha of UPF have been illegally registered in the CAR system as private property.39

Economic development

A range of options can be explored to promote the development of more sustainable economic activities in the different Amazon biomes.

Fiscal and economic incentives granted by federal and state governments usually have little to do with environmental conservation or the promotion of natural capital, and need to be reconsidered.40 Policies and initiatives aimed at protecting or promoting the region’s environmental, social and cultural assets need to be evaluated, together with the effects of interventions by commercial, as well as multilateral partners, and by foreign governments, with the intention of encouraging best environmental practices in the region. The following sections provide a brief overview of how this might apply to different economic sectors.

Timber

The immense potential of sustainable timber production, including as feedstock for bio-based materials that can displace plastics and other fossil fuel-based materials, is still mostly untapped. Although Brazil has developed an advanced Forest Concession Law, and detailed, high-frequency monitoring for forest cover change is possible and inexpensive, the degree to which this law has been implemented remains negligible compared with the level of illegality in the sector. Regulatory instability and the failure of public agencies to enforce the law undermine the incentives for efficient processing of wood and its use in the production of higher-value goods. Renewed pressure on domestic and international timber buyers to improve the supply chain is essential to achieving progress in this area.

Cattle ranching

Ranching, one of the most important economic activities in the Amazon, is increasingly geared towards international markets: domestic consumption of meat has stagnated in the last decade, owing mostly to increased international prices.

Making cattle rearing sustainable will require more intensive production, on better pastures, preferably as part of integrated crop-livestock agroforestry systems. This approach will free up land less suitable for farming for natural regeneration and forest restoration, while diversifying into different economic activities in a more efficient and intensive manner. It will require zero deforestation and full traceability of the supply chain, starting with calf producers, moving up to fattening farms and to final suppliers at meatpacking units. This is possible with current technology, and the cost of compliance, even for small producers, is relatively low, as the sector is taxed lightly. Since phytosanitary controls are already in place to satisfy international markets, every animal is already registered with the health authorities, although full registration information is not available along the supply chain. It is encouraging that the largest meatpackers have recently announced ambitious plans to reduce the carbon footprint of their product and ensure the legality of their whole supply chains, as noted earlier.

Agricultural commodities

There is great potential to diversify the agricultural commodities economy. Income from forest products such as cocoa, Brazil nuts, cupuaçu (a rainforest tree related to cacao) and açaí (a palm tree cultivated for its fruit, leaves and wood) is still insignificant as a share of the region’s economy. Despite their incipient success, these chains need to be better analysed to enable exploration of their potential for scaling up, industrialization and favourable access to international markets, while good waste management practices are developed and followed. The trajectory of more established commodities, such as pepper, should be studied and the production of biofuels (including jet fuel from palm oil) pursued in degraded areas, under socially inclusive arrangements.

The relationship of supply chains of soft commodities with their partners, clients and investors has developed over time. Compliance requirements in some markets and consumers’ sustainability expectations have changed, as has the purchasing power of different regions around the world. Unfortunately, the incentives for best practices driven by consumers are not always consistent, especially when they are focused on excluding unsustainable producers from the market, with mechanisms to divest from and sanction producers. Incentives more focused on inclusion, addressing the complexity of the region and seeking solutions that assure compliance with the highest environmental criteria, typically gain greater local support, and can keep small producers within the supply chain without pushing them into unregulated practices. The two approaches are important, and are not exclusive, but they need a degree of coordination to be effective and to minimize the negative and unintended effects on the livelihoods and well-being of the local population.

Mining

The extraction and industrialization of mineral products informed early strategies to create high-productivity activities in the Amazon, yielding an enduring production of iron ore and the vertical integration of the bauxite-to-aluminium process. Although results have been uneven, this approach holds some promise for the region.

The careful development of mineral activities, following good practices such as those supported by the Responsible Mining Foundation, and primarily taking place outside protected and indigenous areas, will continue to be important. It will respond to the growing demand for several minerals in the new low-carbon global economy, supplying producers of sustainable energy infrastructure as well as data-processing and communication equipment. This development will require official agencies to resume both their research for new mineral assets and improvements in the current mining legal framework. Mining in forested land is a sensitive issue, and indigenous peoples and other vulnerable groups need to participate in decisions about it. The repression of illegal mining, as well as the design of adequate compensation schemes for legal mining – including fair taxation – are integral to nature-friendly progress in the sector.

Local processing of minerals will be dependent on a greater supply of cheap energy, which may be difficult to obtain in Brazil’s competitive and integrated electricity market.

Forest bioeconomy

There is potential for Brazil to create a forest bioeconomy, harnessing its great natural wealth to develop pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food, fabrics and other products. One vision for this is the so-called ‘Amazon 4.0’ project, which sees technological innovation being linked to social and economic development to make Brazil an environmental powerhouse. It aims to combine knowledge of Amazon’s biodiversity with the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution – the ongoing automation of manufacturing and industrial practices, using modern smart technology.41 Significant investment in academic and technological research and time will be needed for this to become a viable alternative for the region.

The term ‘bioeconomy’ refers to economic activities involving the use of biotechnology and biomass in production, process and use. Its exact definition is still being debated and shaped. In the context of the Brazilian Amazon, the authors of this research paper propose the following working definition, based on a debate led by the Bioeconomy Working Group of the Amazon Concertation Network (Uma Concertação pela Amazônia).

Table 1. A proposed working definition for the Amazonian bioeconomy

	Bioeconomy based on sociobiodiversity	Bioeconomy based on forest stewardship	Bioeconomy based on intense (biomass) production
Predominant activities	Extractivism Neoextractivism Subsistence agriculture	Sustainable low-impact forest management	Planted forests Commercial agriculture
Intensity of productive intervention	Low	Medium	High
Relationship with biodiversity	High dependency and high contribution to its maintenance	Medium dependency and contribution to its maintenance	Low dependency Monoculture plantations and crops contribute little and can threaten biodiversity if not balanced with careful land/biome management
Relationship with climate change	Captures and stores atmospheric carbon dioxide. High resilience to the effects of climate change	Captures and stores atmospheric carbon dioxide	Products potentially reduce emissions since they substitute fossil-based fuels and materials; however, large-scale production away from degraded lands exerts pressure for the conversion of forests as well as on other resources

Source: Adapted by the authors from the ‘Framework for a bioeconomy in the Amazon’ proposed by the Bioeconomy Working Group of the Amazon Concertation Network (Uma Concertação pela Amazônia). See Uma Concertação pela Amazônia, Bioeconomy Working Group (2021), ‘The value of diversity for the bioeconomy’, Página 22, 9 February 2021, https://pagina22.com.br/2021/02/09/the-value-of-diversity-for-the-bioeconomy (accessed 6 Aug. 2021).

Funding architecture

Payments for environmental services are one obvious way to ensure the protection of forests. The concept has existed for many years, but schemes are often small-scale and incipient. If scaled up, they could help to avoid carbon emissions and to conserve biodiversity and soil, as well as protecting water resources and traditional knowledge.

In January 2021 a National Policy on Payment for Environmental Services was established by Law 14.119/2021; it follows the service provider/funding receiver and service user/funding payer principles to incentivize conservation and recovery of ecosystems throughout the national territory.42 It will be important to define the criteria for the eligibility of projects and activities to receive these payments, especially in the case of public payments. This agenda has a strong connection to international payments for environmental services arrangements, including the REDD+ mechanism for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (developed by the Conference of the Parties – COP – to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – UNFCCC), and future carbon credits within the framework of the Paris Agreement, which have raised great expectations in Brazil.

In the areas of the Urban Amazon, the economy is still highly dependent on resources provided by the federal government. These include states’ and municipalities’ Participation Funds, which help pay for the subnational civil service, and programmes such as the Bolsa Familia (Family Grant) conditional cash transfers paid to households with very low income, as well as subsidies for the health and education systems.43

Federal transfers also underpin the ZFM.44 The strategy behind the zone’s creation in 1957 – and its development over the following decades – was to provide the region with an industrial hub that could support high-productivity employment with the help of tax incentives. The role of the ZFM in the region remains important, but its survival will require an increasing volume of subsidies. It is a model that needs to be improved from the point of view of governance and efficiency, requiring a wider distribution of the income it generates for companies, and achieving a greater connection with the forest economy. Achieving a better alignment of the ZFM’s industrial activities with net zero policies, and channelling a larger share of its profits to finance investments in science and technology – including biotechnology – should be fundamental and urgent priorities.

Despite the relatively large transfers from the central government, a substantial proportion of the population in the largest cities in the Amazon lives in ‘peri-urban’ areas (adjacent to the cities) without basic public services or opportunities for well-paid work. Although these are challenges common to all regions in Brazil, in the Amazon they are compounded by the great distances to major domestic markets, and the abundance of water which affects basic concerns such as sanitation and housing.

Infrastructure and communications

Investment in infrastructure is another crucial factor in promoting the economic development of the Amazon. Characterized by enormous distances and natural obstacles, such as the torrential rains that affect roads, the region faces sizeable challenges in transport, logistics and telecommunications.

As is typical in areas with a predominance of extractive activities, the logistics and infrastructure in the Amazon very often do not favour local development and local populations, but rather external demands. It is useful to distinguish between the infrastructure in the Amazon and that for the Amazon. While the former focuses on transporting products (including energy) to the rest of the country and abroad, often with negative socio-environmental impacts, the latter focuses on serving the local social and economic agenda, taking the environmental impacts into greater consideration.

The Trans-Amazonian Highway and the BR-319 federal highway, both of which were first constructed in the early 1970s, have led to the creation of so-called ‘fish bones’ (see Figure 3, ‘How highways drive deforestation’) – roads that branch out from the main highway into the forest, degrading the surroundings. It is estimated that there are between 50,000 and 75,000 kilometres of informal roads in the Amazon, which are used by illegal loggers and ranchers.45 Decisions about planned road (and rail) routes continue to be made without integrated assessments of their costs and benefits, or of transport alternatives existing or being built in the country – or, in some cases, of major partners’ logistic preferences regarding routes to their markets.

The logistics and infrastructure in the Amazon very often do not favour local development and local populations, but rather external demand.

A number of other major infrastructure construction projects have created a host of problems that have been poorly addressed. The Belo Monte hydroelectric plant, for example, had a severe impact on the indigenous peoples and on the hydrological regulation of the Xingu river basin. It also attracted thousands of migrants, swelling nearby cities, which have seen a surge in violence and little improvement in infrastructure, despite large payments made by the plant’s builder to local governments.46

Examples of infrastructure for the Amazon would be improvements in internet systems, satellite communication and also in river transport to take advantage of the profusion of watercourses in the region. Addressing the challenges for sanitation infrastructure caused by the abundance of water is crucial to the success of the large cities of the region and the preservation of the environment.

The social agenda

The precariousness of much of the Amazon’s agriculture and cattle rearing activity, combined with the poor living conditions and sanitation in cities, infrastructure that does not always meet the region’s needs, and generalized failures in public management, all mean that the nine states comprising the Legal Amazon have lower standards of living than the national average. According to data from 2017, the Legal Amazon had a Human Development Index score below 0.750, compared with 0.778 for Brazil as a whole. The index measures the local quality of life, taking into consideration education, income and longevity.47

In 2018, the Legal Amazon also scored lower than the national average on the Social Progress Index – 56.52, compared with 67.18. This index includes 43 indicators covering three dimensions: basic human needs (nutrition and basic medical care, water and sanitation, shelter and personal safety); foundations of wellbeing (education, access to information, communications and environmental quality); and opportunity (personal rights and freedom of choice, inclusiveness and access to higher education). The region scored lower than the national average on almost all of the indicators.48

A similar pattern is seen across several other indicators. Life expectancy in the Legal Amazon rose from 70.5 years in 2010 to 72.8 years in 2019, but over the same period life expectancy increased from 74.4 to 77.1 years for the rest of Brazil.49 With regard to homicide rates, only the northeast fares worse; and in terms of education quality, the Legal Amazon scored lowest in the Basic Education Development Index.50

Improving primary and secondary education is a priority, and is essential for training the workforce to meet the challenges of the local and global economy. There are numerous initiatives to improve the management of education and its methods, many involving civil society. For instance, Nosso Ensino Médio51 is a training scheme for high-school teachers and school managers, aimed at promoting the professional development of educators and the implementation of new secondary education curricula in public state schools; and Jovem de Futuro52 – a partnership between education departments and the Brazilian foundation Instituto Unibanco – aims to strengthen school management through technical assistance, training, mobilization and knowledge management. These efforts need to be supported and scaled up. Improving technical training is another vital component of any economic improvement strategy. The network of technical schools and federal universities expanded around 2010 and can now play an increasingly important role in providing a trained labour force.

The indigenous peoples are among the most severely affected by poor living conditions, especially since President Jair Bolsonaro pledged, soon after taking office, not to demarcate any more indigenous lands during his term. Furthermore, these populations have been highly vulnerable to the virus causing COVID-19.53

The regulatory uncertainty is having a negative impact on efforts to address the social needs of the region. This also extends to the issues around land titling, which in recent years has been inclined towards private ownership, handicapping the regularization of small farmer and quilombola settlements. This trend highlights the importance of establishing a clear land management strategy and a solid, transparent and agile infrastructure of registries.

Do Pasto au Prato [From Pasture to Plate] (2020), ‘Um aplicativo criado para aumentar a transparência na cadeia da carne e apoiar o consumo consciente no Brasil’ [An application created to increase transparency in the meat supply chain and support conscious consumption in Brazil], https://dopastoaoprato.com.br/index.html; Previsia (2020), Previsia Initiative https://previsia.org (both accessed 31 Aug. 2021).

Assunção, J. J., Gandour, C., Pessoa, P. and Rocha, R. (2017), ‘Property-level assessment of change in forest clearing patterns: The need for tailoring policy in the Amazon’. Land Use Policy, 66, pp. 18–27, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.04.022 (accessed 23 Aug. 2021).

Carvalho, C. (2021), ‘Projeto de polo de agronegócio no Amazonas, Amacro se transformou em nova frente de desmatamento na Amazônia’ [The Agribusiness cluster in the State of Amazonas, Amacro, became the new deforestation frontier], O Globo, 26 June 2021, https://oglobo.globo.com/brasil/meio-ambiente/projeto-de-polo-de-agronegocio-no-amazonas-amacro-se-transformou-em-nova-frente-de-desmatamento-na-amazonia-25068537 (accessed 25 Aug. 2021).

Increasing the efficiency with which farmers use inputs (such as land, labour, capital, materials and services) to produce outputs (such as crops, livestock and wool). This has important consequences, for instance, on farm profitability and competitiveness.

Pearce, F. (2018), ‘Sparing vs Sharing: The Great Debate Over How to Protect Nature’, Yale Environment 360, 3 December 2018, https://e360.yale.edu/features/sparing-vs-sharing-the-great-debate-over-how-to-protect-nature (accessed 31 Aug. 2021).

Filho, F., Bragança, A. and Assunção, J. J. (2021), ‘Um Novo Modelo de Negócios é Necessário para Aumentar a Produtividade da Pecuária na Amazônia’ [A new business model will be necessary to increae cattle productivity in the Amazon], Climate Policy Initiative, https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/pt-br/publication/um-novo-modelo-de-negocios-e-necessario-para-aumentar-a-produtividade-da-pecuaria-na-amazonia (accessed 31 Aug. 2021).

Plataforma Amazônia Legal em Dados (2020), Radiografia da Amazônia Legal: Visão integrada dos estados da região [An X-Ray of the Legal Amazon: Integrated vision from the states in the Amazon region], https://concertacaoamazonia.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Radiografia-da-Amazo%CC%82nia-Legal.pdf (accessed 9 Aug. 2021).

Werneck, F., Sordi, J., Araújo, S. and Angelo, C. (2021), ‘Passando a boiada’: o segundo ano de desmonte ambiental sob Jair Bolsonaro [‘Pushing the whole lot through’: The second year of environmental havoc under Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro], Observatório do Clima, https://www.oc.eco.br/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Passando-a-boiada-1.pdf (accessed 24 Aug. 2021).

Human Rights Watch (2019), ‘Rainforest Mafias: How Violence and Impunity Fuel Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon’, 17 September 2019, https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/09/17/rainforest-mafias/how-violence-and-impunity-fuel-deforestation-brazils-amazon (accessed 24 Aug. 2021); Abdenur, A., Ferguson, B., Szabo de Carvalho, I., Risso, M. and Muggah, R. (2020), Crime Ambiental na Bacia Amazônica: Uma Tipologia para Pesquisa, Política Pública e Ação [Environmental Crime in the Amazon Basin: A Typology for Research, Public Policy and Actions], Instituto Igarapé, Artigo estratégico 47 [Strategic Article 47], https://igarape.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2020-08-19_E-47_Crime-Ambiental-Amazonia-Tipologia-PT.pdf (accessed 24 Aug. 2021).

Morgado, R. (2020), ‘The Use of Open Data to Tackle Illegal Logging in Brazil’, Chatham House Forest Governance and Legality, 29 July 2020, https://forestgovernance.chathamhouse.org/publications/open-data-in-brazil-the-challenges-and-opportunities-for-tackling-illegal-logging (accessed 31 Aug. 2021).

World Intellectual Property Organization (2008), República Federativa de Brasil, Constitución Política de 1988, con reformas de 1996, em inglês [Federative Republic of Brazil, 1988 Constitution, with 1996 reforms, in English], https://www.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/br/br117en.pdf (accessed 31 Aug. 2021).

Kruid, S. et al. (2021), ‘Beyond Deforestation: Carbon Emissions from Land Grabbing and Forest Degradation in the Brazilian Amazon’, Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 4, 645282, https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2021.645282 (accessed 3 Aug. 2021).

Azevedo-Ramos, C. et al. (2020), ‘Lawless land in no man’s land: The undesignated public forests in the Brazilian Amazon’, Land Use Policy, 99, December 2020, 104863, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104863 (accessed 3 Aug. 2021).

Azevedo-Ramos et al. (2020), ‘Lawless land in no man’s land’.

Moraes, I., Azevedo-Ramos, C. and Pacheco, J. (2021), ‘Public Forests Under Threat in the Brazilian Amazon: Strategies for Coping Shifts in Environmental Policies and Regulations’, Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 4, 631756, https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2021.631756 (accessed 9 Aug. 2021).

Government of Brazil (2000), Law No. 9.985 of 18 July 2000, Diário Oficial da União [Official Diary of the Union], http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/leis/l9985.htm (accessed 9 Aug. 2021).

Azevedo-Ramos et al. (2020), ‘Lawless land in no man’s land’.

Ibid.

Frickmann Young, C. E. (2013), ‘Green economy policies in Brazil: challenges and opportunities’, Revista del CESLA, 16, pp. 261–77, https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=243329724015 (accessed 25 Aug. 2021).

Nobre, I. and Nobre, C. (2019), ‘Amazon 4.0 Project: Defining a Third Way for the Amazon’, Medium, 25 September 2019, https://medium.com/funda%C3%A7%C3%A3o-fhc/amazon-4-0-project-defining-a-third-path-for-the-amazon-f0412305f066 (accessed 6 Aug. 2021).

Government of Brazil (2021), Law No. 14.119 of 13 January 2021, Diário Oficial da União [Official Diary of the Union], https://www.in.gov.br/en/web/dou/-/lei-n-14.119-de-13-de-janeiro-de-2021-298899394 (accessed 6 Aug. 2021).

Alfenas et al. (2020), Mercado de trabalho na Amazônia Legal [The labour market in the Legal Amazon].

Schutze, A., Holz, R. and Assunção, J. J. (2021), Aprimorando a Zona Franca de Manaus – Lições da experiência internacional [Improving the Manaus Free Trade Zone: Lessons from the international experience], Amazônia 2030 Project, https://amazonia2030.org.br/aprimorando-zona-franca-manaus (accessed 24 Aug. 2021).

Ribeiro, J., Nunes, S. and Souza, C. Jr, (2018), Estradas Não Oficiais em Áreas Protegidas [Unofficial roads in Protected Areas], Imazon, https://imazon.org.br/PDFimazon/Portugues/outros/OEstadoAPs_ESTRADAS.pdf (accessed 25 Aug. 2021).

This phenomenon is documented in Altamira, the largest city around Belo Monte, in Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (IPEA – Federal Research Institute) and Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública (2019), Atlas da Violência 2019 Retratos dos Municípios Brasileiros [The Map of Violence 2019: Portrait of the Brazilian municipalities], https://www.ipea.gov.br/portal/images/stories/PDFs/relatorio_institucional/190802_atlas_da_violencia_2019_municipios.pdf (accessed 4 May 2021).

AtlasBR (undated), ‘Atlas do Desenvolvimento Humano no Brasil’ [Atlas of Human Development in Brazil], http://www.atlasbrasil.org.br (accessed 4 May 2021).

Santos, D. et al. (2019), Executive Summary – Social Progress Index in the Brazilian Amazon: IPS Amazônia 2018, Imazon/Social Progress Imperative, https://s3-sa-east-1.amazonaws.com/ipsx.tracersoft.com.br/documents/2018/publicacoes/EXECUTIVE_SUMMARY_versao_final_1_5.pdf (accessed 6 Aug. 2021).