Brazilian Amazon's Death By 1,000 Cuts, Part One - Land Grabbing Made Easy
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is a man of incendiary words and big gestures. As such, he has attracted the attention of global media who cover his major outbursts and policy initiatives, as he pledges to open indigenous reserves to mining and agribusiness, and as he dismantles environmental and social agencies, firing those who oppose him. But over recent months Bolsonaro has quietly announced a flurry of measures that, while flying under the media radar, are making it easy for land grabbers to acquire large tracts of land in Amazonia — paving the way for the elite owners of garimpos (artisanal mines), and transnational mining companies to move into indigenous reserves and other protected areas.
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After months of rumor that a major land tenure measure was imminent, Bolsonaro finally issued executive decree MP 910 on December 11. The decree, which Bolsonaro pledges will end land chaos, especially in the Amazon, is cloaked in a promise to benefit the thousands of peasant families who have long occupied public land, some arriving in the 1970s with the encouragement of the military government. Finally, they will find it easy to register their small plots, Bolsonaro said, which means they’ll be able to obtain bank loans so as to increase agricultural production.
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The large-owner loophole built into the new decree is, according to experts, an open invitation for land speculators to register large swathes of public lands that they illegally grabbed before December 2018. Building on land tenure decrees issued first by President Lula in 2009 and then by President Temer in 2017, MP 910 permits land grabbers to seize land, deforest it and then register it as theirs. At the heart of the loophole: a term known as “self-declaration.” Before the decree was published, Luiz Antônio Nabham Garcia, a leading ruralist and the powerful federal Secretary of Land Affairs, noted that the new land rule would be based on “self-declaration” or autodeclaração, a process that allows would-be landowners, based only on their say-so, to declare the size of their properties, without need for independent verification on the ground.
The only way the government will check these claims is through satellite imaging, accepting as “proof of occupation” deforestation carried out before December 2018 — deforestation on public land which was completely illegal at the time. Put simply, MP 910 legitimizes the theft of public lands by asking land grabbers for proof of an illegal act they committed in the past as grounds for the legalization of a land claim today.
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https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/bolsonaros-brazil-2019-brings-death-by-1000-cuts-to-amazon-part-one/
