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Expert warns of government concessions in the land area

Bastiaan Philip Reydon sees regression in land ownership and use

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Studying the land issue in Brazil since the 1970s, professor Bastiaan Philip Reydon, from the Agricultural Economics Center (NEA) at Unicamp, is concerned about the political moment in the country, when the government offers a series of concessions within the scope of land ownership and use, for example, to foreign capital. “The setback with the current government is evident, which is granting a lot of reserve land to private individuals and taking measures in the worst possible way. We have seen dark times before and the scenario is the same now, nothing changes. I think this political moment is important because, if we go one way, we go to the roaches; If we go the other way, we have the chance to build a sustainable country.”

Photo: Amtonio Scarpinetti
Professor Bastiaan Philip Reydon, from the Agricultural Economics Center (NEA) at Unicamp: “I think this political moment is important because, if we go one way, we go to the roaches; If we go the other way, we have the chance to build a sustainable country”

Bastiaan Reydon and his Land Governance Group, from the Institute of Economics, organized a seminar from 7 to 9 June bringing together experts, public and private agents and civil society to discuss mainly land regularization, with six tables: land governance in Brazil, the problem of selling land to foreigners, public lands, MP 759/2016, urban land regularization and registration. (See, on this page, testimonials from other seminar participants in videos produced by TV Unicamp). At the opening of the event, the book was launched Land Governance: Solution to the Brazilian land problemo, organized by the IE professor and by Vitor B. Fernandes and Ana Paula Bueno. The Distance Learning Course on Land Governance in Brazil was also launched, and the documentary “Whose land is it?” (20 min), produced by Quebra Cabeças Filmes and which can be seen here (https://vimeo.com/217099579).

According to Reydon, the book contains a collection of articles produced by his research group and begins by discussing land governance, a concept that does not apply in Brazil. “I only came to understand what the Brazilian bottleneck is during my postdoctoral work, linked to the Land Trend Center at the University of Wisconsin, which included a year studying land management in Afghanistan. Here, we were building a legal and institutional framework that was not integrated as a whole. For example: those who guarantee the right to property, in theory, are the registry offices, and each municipal registry office has regulations. To public land, within the urban area, the municipality grants the right; If it's outside, it depends: it's Incra, if it's federal land, or the Land Institute of each state, if it's state land. In the transition from rural to urban land, there is a lack of a regulatory body, with city halls defining the entire territory as urban, aiming at IPTU.”

The Unicamp professor considers that the issue of land governance is a basic premise for Brazil, with a single legal framework, rather than different laws for each aspect of land ownership and use. “It’s not about having a single body, but about bringing together all these bodies in an articulated way. Our thesis is that we only have legal ownership, in fact, since Law 10.267, of 2001, establishing that all owners need to georeference their property. Good governance is that which manages to establish limits, which clearly defines the ownership and use of land. With this, we have the basic conditions, although not sufficient, for economic development.”

A fundamental basis, in Bastiaan Reydon's opinion, is the creation of a good registry, as there are ten in the country, which do not talk to each other. “If we want to build a serious country, we are at the moment, and the registry allows us to even discover money laundering. Brazil, historically, was built on the basis of raping, expelling indigenous people and occupying, occupying, occupying... this mentality did not end, what ended was the land. It is true that we have made great progress with Law 10.267, which obliges notary offices, in the case of property registration (mortgage, sale, purchase), to carry out georeferencing and obtain certification from Incra. As a result, each property represents a polygon and forms a mosaic. This and other efforts carried out in recent governments have allowed the georeferencing of around 65% of the national territory”.

The Unicamp professor sees land regularization as another major obstacle, due to the confusing legal and institutional framework, with many people living illegally. “We are completing a survey in Campinas and have reached a rate of more than 50% of informal residences, that is, those that are not formalized with the property registry office, for various reasons. We have some good experiences in the country, such as the Terra Legal program, to regularize all federal areas, through Serfal (Extraordinary Secretariat for Land Regularization of the Legal Amazon). The goal is to regularize 57 million hectares, but these are lands that were already registered as Union assets. There are vacant lands, without registration, that no one knows how to measure”.

Another central topic highlighted by Reydon is the Rural Land Tax (ITR), but in his view it is treated with total disregard. “If the IPTU works reasonably well in some large cities, the ITR is practically not charged. The problem is very old and more recently, during the Lula government, the possibility of an agreement between the municipality and the federal government was created, so that the city hall collects the tax and retains 100% of the resources. There was an improvement in some municipalities that adhered to the agreement, but also complications, due to city halls that raised the tax amount higher, charging too much. The fact is that very little is raised. A man wearing a cowboy hat and belt, coming from Pará to Brasília, asked to speak during a seminar: 'I pay less ITR on my land than I spend on cable TV. This is nonsense!’ he protested.”

To foreigners

The sale of land to foreigners is a point where Brazil has worsened, according to the IE professor, who remembers that in 1971, during the military dictatorship, a very restrictive rule was created. “Foreigners could not hold more than 40% of the territory or 10% in the case of a single owner (if they wanted more, they needed authorization from the Senate). The acquisition of areas along the entire national border was also prohibited. When Fernando Henrique Cardoso promoted the privatization of the State, the law was reinterpreted and transformed into an opinion by the AGU (Advocacy General of the Union), which synthetically determined: if there is a Brazilian partner, the land is not considered to belong to a foreigner.”

Reydon adds that in the period from 2004 to 2009, due both to the 2008 crisis and to large demands for agricultural products and other factors, a movement called LandGrab (grab the land), and the countries where foreigners bought the most land were Brazil, several in Africa, Argentina and Colombia – regions with land still available. “When this movement was noticed, in 2010, there was a protest, including from Brazilian owners, and the old interpretation of the 1971 law prevailed again; This is in theory, because it is known that foreigners continue to buy land in various ways. As we do not have records, we do not know what the proportion is, but we know that they are placing properties in the name of Brazilian 'oranges'.”

According to the IE professor, the solution to this, before discussing what the law should provide, is to create a good registry, which he considers easy in “times of drones”. “Everything is filmed, checking who owns the land and, if it belongs to no one, it belongs to the State. The issue is not operational, it is one of political will. In Holland you sit at the computer, pay a euro and ask “what are the king’s lands”; or indicate on the map: “whose land does this belong to?” We have an electronic voting system in elections that, until proven otherwise, is immune to fraud. We have a registry of all cars, whose owners we know just by typing in the Renavam [National Motor Vehicle Registry] – and see that the land is fixed, it doesn’t change location like a car.”

Public lands

Bastiaan Reydon estimates, based on data from 2013, that of the 800 million hectares of Brazilian territory, 76 million private properties and 37 million public properties are certified with georeferencing registered at a notary's office. “But we have uncertified lands: indigenous reserves, Incra settlements, quilombola areas, federal and state preservation areas. All of this adds up to around 415 million hectares – more than half of the territory – of public lands, which are already occupied. But a family that has lived on a property for five generations could lose its right to land because an anthropologist found traces of indigenous objects there. It's fair? Yes, from the point of view of the debt we owe to the indigenous people in Brazil. But at the same time it is not, as the subject spent five generations on land acquired in good faith.”

The Unicamp professor points out another point that is unfavorable to good governance, which is the existence of vacant lands, both federal and state, which, because they are unknown, become the target of possession by individuals through land grabbing. “The basic proposal that I have been defending is not to create a single body to manage the land issue, but to follow the proposal of economist Elinor Ostrom, 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, for water management: bringing together all the bodies involved and show that no one is right or wrong, that we need to join forces to create a set of rules that is common to everyone. Land governance needs to have good registration and titles involving use, property value and ITR collection. It is the combination that can generate sustainable development.”

 

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Bastiaan Philip Reydon I IE-Unicamp

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