(New York, December 18, 2025) – A proposed constitutional amendment would significantly erode Indigenous rights in Brazil by sharply limiting demarcation of Indigenous lands, Climate Rights International said. The proposed amendment follows on the heels of recent, sweeping, legislative changes that have already weakened environmental protections and Indigenous rights in the country.
On December 9, the federal Senate approved a constitutional amendment that would require Indigenous Peoples to prove either occupation of their lands, or an active legal dispute over the lands, as of October 5, 1988 (the day the Constitution came into force), in order to have their territories legally recognized.
On November 27, Congress overrode critical presidential vetoes of provisions of law 15.190/2025 — widely known as the “devastation” bill — a major overhaul of Brazil’s environmental licensing framework. The law rolls back decades of environmental and social safeguards and could have far-reaching consequences for Indigenous, Quilombola, and traditional communities, as well as for Brazil’s forests and other ecosystems.
“Since COP30, Brazilian lawmakers have doubled down on their assault on Indigenous rights and the environment,” said Sarah Sax, researcher at Climate Rights International. “These latest Congressional actions could spell disaster for Brazil’s climate goals, Indigenous rights, and the future of the Amazon rainforest.”
The proposed constitutional amendment PEC 48/2023 would constitutionalize the so-called ‘temporal framework’ (Marco Temporal) for Indigenous land demarcation, requiring Indigenous Peoples to prove occupation of their lands as of October 5, 1988, or an active legal dispute at that time. Currently, Indigenous land rights are constitutionally recognized as original rights that pre-date the state, and land demarcation is not conditioned on proof of occupation on a fixed historical date. The proposal was fast-tracked directly to the Senate plenary without review by the Committee on Constitution and Justice and approved in two rounds on the same day, an unusually accelerated process. It now moves to the Chamber of Deputies.
The consequences of passing the constitutional amendment would be devastating for Indigenous communities across Brazil, including the Krikati Indigenous Territory, documented in CRI’s report on cattle and leather supply chains. Parts of the Krikati territory were occupied by ranchers before 1988 through land grabbing and violence, preventing continuous Indigenous occupation despite longstanding historical and cultural ties to the land. Other Indigenous Peoples forcibly expelled from their lands before 1988 could also permanently lose parts of their territories. A law using the temporal framework doctrine to limit demarcation of Indigenous lands was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2023, though related appeals remain pending.
Indigenous organizations have strongly condemned the Senate’s move. The Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB) warned that passing the amendment would intensify land conflicts, environmental destruction, and violence against Indigenous Peoples.
The Senate’s action comes less than three weeks after Congress voted to override President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s vetoes of 63 of the devastation bill’s most harmful provisions. The law creates broad licensing exemptions for agriculture and livestock, retroactively regularizing enterprises operating without authorization, fast-tracking so-called “strategic” projects in mining, agribusiness, energy, and infrastructure, and dramatically expanding self-licensing mechanisms that allow companies to declare compliance without prior environmental review. It also sharply restricts consultation requirements to only fully recognized and titled Indigenous and Quilombola lands, excluding by some estimates the roughly one-third of Amazon Indigenous territories and around 80 percent of Quilombola territories that have not yet received formal recognition by the state.
The law will come into force in February 2026. Congress approved new rules on December 3 expanding the Special Environmental Licensing (Licença Ambiental Especial, LAE), which allows projects classified as “strategic” by the federal government to bypass standard multi-stage environmental review and proceed under an accelerated licensing regime. The new environmental licensing law is expected to face constitutional challenges from civil society and the government.
“The new licensing law removes an important legal brake on deforestation and land grabbing, while the Marco Temporal amendment would severely limit what counts as Indigenous land, ignoring decades of forced displacement and violence,” said Sax.
The implications of the Congressional actions also extend to Brazil’s climate commitments. Indigenous territories in the Amazon are among the most effective barriers to deforestation, and multiple studies have shown that forests within Indigenous lands — including those that have not yet received formal state recognition — experience significantly lower rates of forest loss than surrounding areas. Weakening land rights and environmental licensing risks accelerating deforestation at a moment when Brazil has pledged to curb emissions and halt illegal forest loss.
“Brazil has made meaningful progress in recent years in strengthening the protection of the country’s forests and the rights of Indigenous Peoples. This legislative push in Congress could reverse this momentum, accelerating the destruction of the Amazon and undermining Brazil’s climate goals,” said Sax. “The Chamber of Deputies should vote against the amendment and reject further rollbacks of critical environmental and human rights protections.”
Photo Credit: A Krikati Village. Photo by Fernando Martinho
