The founding partner and president of ISA, Márcio Santilli, analyzes the challenges of allocating public lands and proposes the creation of a federal body on the subject
Article originally published on the Mídia Ninja website, on 23/4/2024. Text updated at 16:35 on 23/4/2024.
We made mistakes: the number of quilombola communities titled to date in the country is 382, not around 390, as originally reported.
Last week, President Lula approved two Indigenous Lands (TIs): Aldeia Velha, of the Pataxó people (BA), and Cacique Fontoura, of the Iny Karajá people (MT). Homologation – the penultimate stage of the demarcation process – is very important for these populations. The conclusion of the processes is expected for decades and paves the way to resolve conflicts and stabilize the land situation in their regions.
But Lula knows – and admitted – that the announcement about the two areas would frustrate the indigenous movement, which was also hoping for the approval of four others, but which the president decided to postpone: Toldo Imbu, from the Kaingang people, and Morro dos Cavalos, from the Guarani Mbyá and Guarani Nhandeva (SC); Xukuru-Kariri, from the Xukuru-Kariri (AL); and Potiguara de Monte-Mor, from the Potiguara people (PB).
The PT member alleged “bureaucratic problems”, the presence of non-indigenous occupants, the need to give the governors of these states more time to resolve these occupations and the risk of judicial decisions to the contrary. But there are unlikely to be any bureaucratic difficulties. Furthermore, the approved lands also require compensation or resettlement of non-indigenous people and any demarcation is subject to judicialization. Lula did not clarify what he expects governors to do to make the evictions viable.
Settlements and quilombos
Just last week, the MST promoted 28 occupations of unproductive land, in 10 states and the DF. Around 20% of the 105 families camped in the country participated in the mobilization. “Patience is the enemy of hunger and abandonment for those who are under a black tarp,” said the MST in an open letter. Agrarian reform is making little progress and the government has not expropriated new areas for settlements.
At the same time, the federal government launched the “Terra da Gente” program in Brasília. At the event, the president and the Minister of Agrarian Development, Paulo Teixeira, announced 17 legal ways to obtain and make land available for agrarian reform, the so-called “land shelves”. The announcement had the merit of guiding the topic and reflects the search for alternatives to expropriation.
The titling of quilombos is also slow, almost stopping, although it has constitutional status, as does the demarcation of TIs, and can also be done by the states and not just the Union. Only 382 quilombola communities have been titled so far by the federal and state governments , with a pending issue of at least around 3,1 communities. The numbers consider the more than 3,5 communities already certified by the Palmares Cultural Foundation, of the Ministry of Culture, but there are thousands of others not yet recognized.
Conservation units
There is not even an estimate of how many traditional extractive communities live in areas without legal protection. There are thousands of them, for sure, and they are in all regions, from the coast to the ends of the Amazon. They are frequent victims of land grabbers, gunmen, companies and real estate projects. In general, they do not have the infrastructure to store and transport their products, leaving them subject to middlemen, who control and appropriate the income generated by the trade in forest products and our other natural landscapes. These populations rarely access public policies, such as purchasing food for school meals.
Therefore, there is still a great demand for the creation of new Extractive Reserves, including marine ones. But its success depends, like indigenous and quilombola production, on programs at the three levels of government to welcome and allocate these products to markets. Regulating payment for environmental services and the carbon market will be relevant to increasing the income of traditional communities.
It is also important to assess the current level of effective protection of each biome in the country, in addition to the creation of other areas of restricted use. As climate change worsens, all forms of life are subject to its impacts, which need to be monitored, mitigated and, if possible, compensated. The National System of Conservation Units (SNUC), in addition to protecting biodiversity and traditional communities, will have increasing importance in regulating climate and rainfall regimes.
Lands without destination
A recent study, published two weeks ago by the Amazon Institute of Man and Environment (Imazon), the Amazon Entrepreneurship Center and the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI/PUC-Rio), estimated 143 million hectares – six times the State of São Paulo – the extension of undesignated public lands in the Amazon, subject to land grabbing and devastation.
This estimate considered private areas and those designated by official acts of various government levels, both for social, environmental, productive and administrative purposes. But it was done remotely, without field checks, which would require an expensive and complex structure. Parts of this area correspond to TIs and quilombos that have not yet been recognized, or are occupied by traditional communities, squatters and land grabbers.
Undesignated public lands are areas in dispute. Gone are the days when Brazil was a no man's land. It never was, actually. And now, it is even much less. Overlapping and conflict situations already far exceed the land actually available. The occupation processes already go beyond the borders and, soon, there will only be what to regularize, and no more what to allocate.
Executive agency
At the beginning of this month, Lula issued a decree to guide the allocation of federal lands. "We begin by giving the land the correct destination, as it sustains life, man and the forest. In the Legal Amazon, the Union has no less than 50 million hectares of public land. It is the equivalent of an entire Spain in the middle of the forest. It doesn't make sense that the Public Power doesn't give a clear destination to this true country within another country", stated the president, in announcing the measure.
Last year, the government had already resumed operation of the Technical Chamber for Destination and Land Regularization of Rural Federal Public Lands, under the coordination of the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Family Agriculture (MDA). In addition to the MDA, the body is made up of the ministries of the Environment (MMA) and Indigenous Peoples (MPI), the Secretariat of Union Heritage (SPU), the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra), the Brazilian Forest Service (SFB), the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) and the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (Funai). The Ministries of Justice and Public Security and Racial Equality are consultative members.
However, the complexity and urgency of the mission require more than just one instance of federal interinstitutional coordination. It would be better to map the real occupation situation of these areas in a centralized manner, without prejudice to ongoing actions within each body. It turns out that they act according to specific competencies and do not have the structure, resources and versatility of tasks to create the complete map. The sum of the actions would result in a fragmented survey. The president should consider the possibility of creating an executive agency, with an agile structure and temporary mission, to close this account, coordinate efforts and mediate overlapping interests, identifying the vocation of each area to be addressed by each body.