Sure, Why Not?!? Brazilian Congress Pushing Bills To Give Land To Those Who Seize It, Level Forests
Imagine you have invaded a public land in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest, cut the forest down and, after all that, you get the papers that certify you as the rightful owner of that area. According to experts, that’s what’s going to happen with the passage of two bills currently before the Brazilian Congress. Both proposals have a common root: Executive Order 910, known as MP 910 or MP of Grilagem, from the local term for a land grabber. The executive order was signed in 2019 by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. As it wasn’t approved on time by Congress, however, the rule expired in May last year. Legislators came up with two new pieces of legislation to replace it: bills 2633 and 510.
The new legislation would apply to so-called federal public forests, areas that belong to the Union and haven’t been designated for any specific purpose yet, such as for conservation units, Indigenous territories or land reform settlements, for instance. According to IPAM, the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, almost 19 million hectares (47 million acres) of land in the Amazon fits this description — an area nearly twice the size of South Korea. Almost 80% of it is already illegally claimed by private owners through the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), a self-declared land register that anyone can fill out online.
According to Philip Fearnside, an ecologist at the National Institute for Research in Amazonia (INPA), this is the first step toward legalizing land invasions. “These are illegal operators who claim large areas of usually government land and then, by various means, often illegal, they manage to get the title to it. And whether or not they get the title, they subdivide and sell the land to ranchers, migrants or whoever is interested in buying it,” he said. Usually, these lands are deforested to clear pasture for livestock.
Senate bill PL 510, from Senator Irajá Silvestre Filho, is almost as permissive as the executive order it derives from. It would allow the regularization of lands up to 2,500 hectares (6,180 acres) occupied until 2014; under the current law, the cutoff is 2011. To receive the title to the land, there wouldn’t even need to be an on-site inspection; the verification would be made only through satellite imagery. Under the current law, such an exemption of on-the ground inspections only applies to areas smaller than 400 hectares (990 acres).
EDIT
https://news.mongabay.com/2021/04/bills-before-brazil-congress-slammed-for-rewarding-amazon-land-grabbers/
