CRI Brazil Report

“Chainsaws, Smoke, and Silence”

How Brazil’s neglect of community conservation areas fuels deforestation, violence, and the loss of sustainable livelihoods

October 2025

Summary

“We face constant threats and attacks from land grabbing, mining, agribusiness, and the expansion of soy monoculture … The communities are going to disappear, and we don’t know our future.” – Darlon Neres dos Santos, forest defender, PAE Lago Grande

“We still live here with our practices, with our knowledge, which we have always done. But we are suffering a lot of impacts from illegal mining and deforestation. How can we talk about preservation, within our conservation units, with what is happening with this devastation? It is us that live here; it is us who take care of nature, we are the guardians of nature, we are suffering the impacts, and nobody is paying attention. Nobody is doing any kind of work to combat what is happening here.” – Maria¹, resident, Riozinho do Anfrísio Extractive Reserve

“At first, I thought I was fighting to save the rubber trees; then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.” – Chico Mendes, before his assassination in 1988

Scientists warn the Amazon is heading towards a tipping point: nearly 15 percent of the forest has already been lost, and more than a third of what remains is degraded—pushing it toward potential irreversible collapse.² Brazil, which contains about 60 percent of the Amazon, has seen the highest forest loss in the basin, largely driven by cattle ranching, which is responsible for roughly 80 percent of the deforestation. Within Brazil, the state of Pará has been an epicenter, leading all states in forest loss for nine consecutive years.³

As part of its broader efforts to protect the rainforest, Brazil has pursued two innovative community conservation models that link secure community tenure to the conservation of standing forests. The first are “extractive reserves” (RESEX), part of Brazil’s formal protected areas network. These reserves allow traditional communities to sustain their livelihoods through forest-based activities while safeguarding against large-scale deforestation.

The second community conservation model consists of “environmentally differentiated settlements.” These are a more recent subset of land reform settlements designed for landless farmers and traditional communities committed to forest conservation. These include Agroextractive Settlement Projects (PAE) that support traditional communities practicing sustainable agroextractivism, and Sustainable Development Projects (PDS) that settle landless farmers committed to agroforestry and other low-impact forest use.

These community conservation models represent a bold attempt to combine environmental protection with land rights for local communities and the promotion of forest-based economies. In both models, land remains publicly owned but is collectively managed under rules that limit deforestation and promote sustainable forest use. These areas are key to protecting the remaining Amazonian rainforest, promoting sustainable economic development, and protecting the rights of traditional communities.

Despite their promise, these community conservation areas are fragile and under assault. Based on interviews with 40 community members in Santarém, Altamira, Rurópolis, and Anapu, as well as 21 experts, this report documents how systemic failures in land governance have created a perfect storm of environmental destruction and human rights abuses in these community conservation areas. Incomplete land regularization for traditional communities and other local residents, severe underfunding of enforcement agencies, lack of government programs, and impunity for those committing violence and environmental crimes, have facilitated illegal deforestation, invasions, land grabbing, and violence against residents and environmental defenders.

This report contains four emblematic cases that show how government neglect and criminal violence in community conservation areas are impacting both the forest and those defending it.

Under Brazilian law, those living in extractive reserves and environmentally differentiated settlements are entitled to formal land use certificates; however, these certificates are often delayed, sometimes for decades. Without them, communities lack access to rural credit and technical assistance for sustainable agricultural production and forest management, as well as facing legal hurdles to defend their territories against external pressures.

These community conservation areas are often situated in or near intact forests in remote regions with poor infrastructure and minimal state presence. Chronic underfunding and understaffing of oversight agencies have left residents without basic protections, while the absence of essential services — schools, healthcare, transport — undermines their rights and pushes many families to abandon both their conservation work and their homes. Combined, this makes them highly vulnerable to land invasions, pasture expansion for cattle, illegal logging and mining, as well as other threats.

Violence is a chronic problem: armed invaders mount large incursions to destabilize collective management, while environmental defenders face intimidation and attacks. In some cases, informal land sales to outsiders fracture communities and fuel further conflict. Many residents avoid those forest areas where illegal loggers and outside invaders are present out of fear, limiting their ability to maintain traditional activities central to their livelihoods and identity.

In short, the Brazilian state that created these community conservation lands has largely abandoned the people charged with protecting them – leaving communities to face illegal deforestation, land invasions, and violent criminal networks alone.

Community Conservation Areas Under Threat in Pará

Pará state in northern Brazil is at the epicenter of these problems. Together with Amazonas state, Pará is home to some of the largest remaining intact parts of the Amazonian rainforest. Extractive reserves and environmentally differentiated settlements collectively cover around 10 million hectares—nearly one-tenth of Pará’s territory—and play a vital role in maintaining forest integrity.

Pará is the most populous state in the Brazilian Amazon and the second largest by area, covering over 120 million hectares. In addition to more than 40 Indigenous Peoples (Brazil has over 300), it is home to over 528 recognized quilombos (communities of quilombolas, Afro-Brazilian descendants of enslaved people who escaped plantations and formed independent communities), and dozens of different types of other traditional communities.⁴ The state also has a rich history of peasant and rural movements that reflect the diversity of small farmers who have migrated to the Amazon and live and work in it.

The importance and effectiveness of Indigenous Peoples in conserving the Brazilian Amazon has been well established in scientific journals and academia, and by policymakers and environmental NGOs.⁵ However, far less attention has been paid to the mosaic of diverse land management practices employed by quilombolas,⁶ and other traditional communities like seringueiros (rubber tappers), ribeirinhos (riverine peoples who fish, farm small plots along rivers, and gather forest products), and açaí collectors who depend on seasonal harvests in seasonally flooded low-land forests.⁷

Under Brazilian law, traditional communities are recognized as culturally distinct groups who maintain ways of life closely tied to their territories and natural resources, have their own forms of social organization, and transmit knowledge through oral traditions and daily practices.⁸ These traditional and often forest-based land use systems also present an important deterrent to the proliferation of cattle ranching, soy production, and timber harvesting — the industries most associated with deforestation of the Amazon.⁹

Pará state has dozens of extractive reserves, which protect large swaths of rainforest and biodiversity and form an important buffer against the encroachment of logging and ranching. Extractive reserves emerged from the grassroots movement of the 1980s led by Chico Mendes and the National Council of Rubber Tappers, which sought to defend traditional communities’ rights and halt forest destruction. These reserves later became part of Brazil’s protected-areas system and have since proven to be effective barriers against deforestation. These are managed jointly by local governing councils of traditional communities and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), the federal agency responsible for managing Brazil’s federal conservation units.

Environmentally differentiated settlements arose from the broader land-reform programs managed by the National Institute for Colonization and Land Reform (INCRA). Developed to secure land rights for traditional and smallholder families and to promote sustainable agroforestry systems such as cacao, açaí, and Brazil nuts, Brazil’s environmentally differentiated settlements represent about 19 percent of all settlements in the Amazon (481 out of 2,599) but contain 59 percent of the remaining forest in settled areas—11 out of 18.6 million hectares.

These community conservation models reflect Brazil’s attempt to reconcile the seemingly contradictory imperatives of economic development and conservation. When they function as intended, they serve both to protect the forest and contribute to sustainable economic development. For example, PDS Paraíso, which makes up part of Pará’s vast Calha Norte mosaic of protected lands, spanning around 27 million hectares, families have quadrupled cumaru (tonka bean) sales in 2018 while maintaining forest cover within the settlement.¹⁰ In the Rio Iratapuru Sustainable Development Reserve, the cooperative COMARU adds value to Brazil nuts by processing oil sold to a Brazilian multinational cosmetic company while preserving intact forest areas.¹¹ In Acre’s Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, families continue to earn income from wild rubber through partnerships with an international footwear company.¹² By 2018, roughly 84 percent of forest cover remained inside the reserve, compared with only about 34 percent in surrounding unprotected lands—evidence that collective management has significantly slowed deforestation.¹³

These lands and their forest products can provide the foundation for a robust sociobioeconomy—an inclusive economic model that promotes the sustainable use of biodiversity and traditional knowledge, generating income from products like cacao, nuts, oils, and other forest goods while supporting traditional and local communities. According to one estimate, expanding the network of socio-biodiversity products and ecosystem services in Pará could generate R$170 billion (USD$32.9 billion) in annual revenue for Pará state by 2040 if properly supported.¹⁴

Yet both extractive reserves and environmentally differentiated settlements are under threat. Many face illegal logging, fishing, mining, cattle expansion, and land invasions, with some losing significant portions of forest cover. Land reform settlements cover only 8 percent of the Brazilian Amazon yet have accounted for 28 percent of forest loss since 2008, including around a quarter of all deforestation in 2023. While environmentally differentiated settlements have generally seen less deforestation than conventional settlements, some have been heavily targeted by illegal loggers. Nearly half of all deforestation in settlements between 2017 and 2023 occurred in Pará, and in many cases commercial-scale land clearing, driven by commodity agriculture interests, has overrun areas originally slated for conservation.

Human Rights Abuses Against Local Residents and Environmental Defenders

The people defending these innovative land use models are often the only line of defense against environmental destruction. Yet they face systematic human rights violations.

People who stand up for their rights or attempt to protect forests face threats, intimidation, and violence from individuals and organized criminal networks that exploit the state’s absence to clear forest illegally for timber or cattle. For example, in the settlement PDS Esperança, the government withdrew support for watchguards monitoring the entrance of the settlement for illegal loggers, leading to a surge in invasions. A resident who has received multiple threats told Climate Rights International:

Just when the families need it most, the authorities leave and illegality takes over. The absence of the state and the presence of illegality is the opportunity that illegality needs to prevail.¹⁵

In the Renascer Extractive Reserve, local leader Rosa Maria Moraes Viegas has faced physical assaults against herself and her family for opposing outside logging interests. Impunity, combined with the absence of consistent government and police presence, has led to incidents such as one in which a car driven by people she suspected were loggers tried to run over her daughter.

I always fought a lot, fought for the creation of this area, have fought a lot for its implementation, was very threatened, suffered many things, answered several lawsuits, suffered several death attempts. Then they tried to kill my daughter…. It was horrible. Here in the middle of the community and everyone watched.¹⁶

In the Riozinho do Anfrísio Extractive Reserve, Maria, a young activist reported that,

Tons and tons of wood leave our RESEX [extractive reserve] every day. We hear the tractors tearing by our house … Locals don’t even know how they’ll collect Brazil nuts anymore, because the nut groves have all been taken over by those operating inside, who claim the land as theirs, along with the loggers who are taking the wood. Nobody goes there now—it’s all been taken over.¹⁷

Maria told Climate Rights International that, after reporting these invasions at a Congressional hearing, she received threats via WhatsApp and online harassment. No one has been held accountable for the illegal logging or the threats.

In the agroextractive settlement PAE Lago Grande in Pará, 20 leaders have been threatened, and at least four leaders have been forced to move away from the settlement due to violence and threats they received after denouncing illegal logging and mining in their territories.

Darlon Neres dos Santos, a youth activist in PAE Lago Grande, explained the risks involved in trying to protect the rainforest. After publicly denouncing illegal logging at events in 2023 and posting about them online, unknown men showed up in his community with his photo, asking for his whereabouts. Fearing for his life, Neres dos Santos left his home and moved to a nearby city.

When I received the threats, the mother of one of my colleagues called me up, saying, “Look, they’re looking for you… they came to the house and want to know where you live.”¹⁸

Eliana da Silva, another leader in PAE Lago Grande, has spent more than two decades resisting illegal logging and land invasions in her territory. Her defense of the forest has come at a high cost, as she has endured repeated threats and intimidation. Recently, she has been concerned about what she sees as illegal encroachment by an outsider.¹⁹

I already feel threatened… he’s been clearing the forest, setting fires, damaging the forest, and blocking the road used by people in the community. He says no one can work the land because he won’t allow it. This has changed my life — I can’t go out or be visible like I used to. Four years ago, I was stabbed twice here in the community by someone from here.²⁰

People like Neres dos Santos and others mentioned in this report aren’t just trying to protect rainforests. They are also trying to protect alternative models of land use in the Amazon that enable people to live sustainably.

When the state fails to provide security for the people with the right to live on and preserve these areas, it not only violates its international legal obligation to protect their human rights, including cultural rights that are tied to specific environments, but also undermines an effective tool for environmental protection and Brazil’s efforts to address climate change. These community-managed territories are a big part of the solution to conserving the Amazon. While still far less studied than Indigenous lands, a growing body of literature shows that land managed by traditional communities, such as the community conservation models discussed in this report, hold more carbon and maintain significantly more forest cover than conventional settlements and privately owned land, making them key players in efforts to meet Brazil’s climate and conservation goals. As Neres dos Santos said:

We are protecting this territory so that you in the world can have life. We are protecting so you can continue to exist. Without forests, there are no cities. We are protecting you because you need water. We are protecting you because you need oxygen to breathe.²¹

The Way Forward

By acting to protect and support community conservation models, federal and state authorities can demonstrate a genuine commitment to environmental protection, human rights, and climate action. To do so, the federal government must take concrete action: complete formal land regularization processes for environmentally differentiated settlements and extractive reserves, grant secure, collective land use documents to the communities who steward them, and develop and implement comprehensive management plans with the communities. Federal and state governments must investigate and prosecute threats and attacks against forest defenders, provide adequate protection for those at risk, and strengthen enforcement against illegal deforestation. Federal and state governments should also commit to providing these communities with the full range of quality public services they have a right to—including health care, education, financial services, and technical assistance—so they can thrive while protecting the forest.

Foreign governments, multilateral agencies, and climate finance institutions should provide financial and political support to help Brazil implement these priorities, including through direct technical assistance, funding for land regularization programs and enforcement operations, and diplomatic backing for human rights and environmental defenders on the front lines.

As the world gathers for COP30 in Belém, Pará, next month, one major focus should be on the protection of the Amazon, the people who live there, and the environmental defenders who courageously challenge major economic and criminal actors driving deforestation. Securing land rights and protecting environmental defenders is not just a human rights imperative, but also a prerequisite for most nature-based climate solutions.

Key Recommendations

Brazilian Federal Government:

Secure land rights: Complete land regularization in extractive reserves and environmentally differentiated settlements, with priority for community conservation areas under strong deforestation risk.
Enforce and protect: Increase funding for INCRA, IBAMA, and ICMBio capacity; prioritize prosecution of land grabbing and violence.

Pará State:

Resolve land conflicts and protect tenure: Fully operationalize the Land Solutions Commission with resources to mediate disputes in extractive reserves and environmentally differentiated settlements, and strengthen oversight of fraudulent land titles fueling invasions.
Guarantee protection on the ground: Establish rapid-response teams to halt invasions and illegal deforestation when reported by communities and integrate defender protection into state law and policy.

International Community:

Finance frontline protection: Funds for climate and forest conservation should be increased and specific funds directed towards measurable progress in land regularization, protection of environmental defenders, and economic support for community conservation areas.

Glossary

Agroextractivism: a form of land use practiced by Indigenous and traditional communities in Brazil that combines small-scale agriculture with the sustainable extraction of forest products such as nuts, fruits, oils, and fibers. Rooted in customary knowledge and seasonal cycles, it is designed to maintain biodiversity, regenerate ecosystems, and sustain local livelihoods.

IBAMA: Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources): the federal environmental enforcement agency under the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change. Its responsibilities include monitoring environmental compliance and enforcing environmental laws; issuing fines and penalties for illegal deforestation, logging, and mining; conducting environmental impact assessments for development projects; and supporting conservation efforts by overseeing protected areas and combating illegal activities like poaching and pollution.

ICMBio: Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade (The Chico Mendes Institute for Conservation and Biodiversity): the federal agency responsible for managing and protecting Brazil’s federal conservation units (e.g., national parks, extractive reserves) and other protected areas. Its responsibilities include monitoring and enforcing laws to ensure the sustainable use of natural resources, preserving biodiversity, and safeguarding the rights of traditional communities.

INCRA: Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (The National Institute for Colonization and Land Reform): the federal agency responsible for land reform and rural development in Brazil. Its main tasks include identifying and redistributing underutilized or unproductive land for land reform; establishing assentamentos (settlements) for landless workers; providing technical assistance, infrastructure, and support to settlers; and issuing land titles and land use certificates.

IPAM: Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (Amazon Environmental Research Institute): a nonprofit research institute focused on sustainable development and conservation in the Amazon.

IMAZON: Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazônia (Amazon Institute of People and the Environment): a nonprofit research institution dedicated to promoting sustainable development and conservation in the Amazon through scientific studies, policy analysis, and monitoring of deforestation.

MP: Ministério Público (Public Prosecutor’s Office): the constitutionally independent body responsible for upholding the rule of law, defending public interests, and protecting fundamental rights in environmental and human rights contexts. It is responsible for investigating and prosecuting environmental crimes; holding public authorities and private actors accountable for violations of environmental or human rights laws; ensuring compliance with constitutional protections for Indigenous peoples and traditional communities; and overseeing legal disputes related to land conflicts, deforestation, and illegal resource exploitation.

PAE: Projeto de Assentamento Agroextrativista (Agroextractive Settlement Project): a sustainable land-use model that combines small-scale agriculture and extractivism to support traditional communities.

PDS: Projeto de Desenvolvimento Sustentável (Sustainable Development Project): a settlement model aimed at promoting sustainable land use and conservation while supporting small-scale farming and traditional livelihoods.

PPDDH: Programa de Proteção aos Defensores de Direitos Humanos (Program for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders): a federal program that provides protection and security measures for activists, environmental defenders, and other at-risk individuals.

RESEX: Reserva Extrativista (Extractive Reserve): a type of conservation unit designed to protect the livelihoods and cultural traditions of traditional extractive communities while ensuring sustainable resource use and forest conservation.

SEMAS: Secretaria de Estado de Meio Ambiente e Sustentabilidade (State Secretariat for the Environment and Sustainability): a state-level environmental agency responsible for implementing and enforcing environmental policies and regulations.

SNUC: Sistema Nacional de Unidades de Conservação da Natureza (National System of Conservation Units): the legal framework that establishes, regulates, and manages Brazil’s federal, state, and municipal protected areas, defining categories of use and protection, management guidelines, and the rights and responsibilities of those living in or using these areas.

STTR: Sindicato dos Trabalhadores e Trabalhadoras Rurais (Rural Workers’ Union): a labor organization representing rural workers, including small farmers and agricultural laborers. Their mission includes advocating for land reform, fair wages, labor rights, and social protections.

Methodology

This report is based on in-depth interviews in person or via telephone or video calls with 40 community members and 21 experts, including NGO representatives, legal professionals, and government officials. Interviews were conducted between June 2024 and September 2025, with the majority conducted during a three-week field visit in December 2024 in Santarem, Altamira, and Belém, during which CRI visited nine different communities. All interviews except two were conducted in Portuguese. No financial incentives were provided to interviewees. Meal expenses and transportation were provided to an associate of a rural workers union who assisted in bringing us to settlements in the region. To protect the safety of our sources, we have anonymized identities where necessary, recognizing the significant risks faced by local residents and environmental defenders in the region.

I. Deforestation and Climate Change in Brazil

Brazil is home to two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest, which spans nine of its states and about half of its national territory.²² The Amazon is among the world’s largest carbon sinks, absorbing CO₂ from the atmosphere in its trees, vegetation, and soil. Thirteen percent of the Brazilian Amazon has been cleared in recent decades.²³ Cattle ranching is the single largest driver of deforestation, accounting for around 80 percent of forest loss, followed by soybean production, infrastructure development, and illegal logging.²⁴ Between 1985 and 2023, cattle pasture in the Brazilian Amazon expanded more than fourfold — from about 13.7 million hectares to roughly 76 million hectares.²⁵ As a signatory of the Paris Agreement, Brazil has committed to reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by 59 – 67 percent below 2005 levels by 2035.²⁶

Reducing Amazon deforestation is essential to meet these commitments. During the Bolsonaro administration from 2019-2022, deforestation soared across the Brazilian Amazon, increasing by 60 percent compared to the previous four years, representing “the largest percentage rise under a presidency since satellite monitoring began in 1998.”²⁷ Changes in land-use (including deforestation) was the single largest source of GHG emissions in Brazil in 2022, contributing nearly 50 percent of emissions.²⁸ Deforestation in the Amazon initially declined sharply after Lula da Silva took office in 2023. Satellite data shows a nearly 50% reduction between August 2022 and July 2023, and the lowest annual loss since 2015 by mid‑2024.²⁹ However, this positive trend reversed dramatically in 2024 and into 2025: primary forest loss increased 13.6% in 2024, with more than 629,000 hectares of rainforest cleared, largely by catastrophic wildfires.³⁰ Deforestation continues at an alarming rate.³¹

Ongoing deforestation has significantly weakened the Amazon’s ability to absorb CO₂ and, in some areas, it now emits more carbon than it stores. Between 2001 and 2023, Brazil’s forests removed the equivalent of 1.76 gigatons of CO₂ annually while emitting 1.64 gigatons, making it just a modest net carbon sink.³² If deforestation continues at its current rate, the Brazilian Amazon could lose an additional 59 million hectares of native vegetation by 2050, causing emissions from deforestation to exceed the country’s limits for achieving global climate goals by a factor of five.³³ Moreover, scientists have raised alarms that ongoing deforestation is driving the Amazon toward a “tipping point” at which large swaths of rainforest will dry out, releasing massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, with devastating consequences for global warming.³⁴

Most deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in recent years has been illegal.³⁵ Under Brazilian law, a permit is required to clear forests in the Amazon.³⁶ The permit is generally issued by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) or state environmental agencies, with some exceptions for traditional communities and small-scale farmers. However, studies estimate that upwards of 90 percent of deforestation in recent years has occurred without a valid clearing permit.³⁷ A recent analysis by Instituto Centro de Vida estimated that Pará had 123,000 hectares of authorized deforestation between August 2023 and July 2024, but it had almost 245,300 hectares of unauthorized clearing—meaning two-thirds of forest clearing in the state during that period occurred illegally.³⁸

Illegal deforestation is often part of the process of grilagem, or land grabbing. Land speculators illegally clear forested land, often public land without defined land tenure status, with the aim of asserting control and selling. Later, ownership is often “legalized” through forged documents or loopholes in land regularization programs.³⁹

Much of this deforestation involves clear-cutting followed by burning. As a local union leader in Pará explained during field visits in December 2024, “the tools they have are chainsaws and fire.”⁴⁰ This leads, among many other things, to increasing levels of smoke and poor air quality, with consequent impacts on health.⁴¹

Pará is on the leading edge of what IPAM calls the “arc of deforestation,” which it defines as “the region where the agricultural border advances towards the forest and also where the highest rates of deforestation of the Amazon are found.⁴² According to the Brazilian environmental NGO Imazon, Pará lost 126,000 hectares of forest in 2024, representing a three percent increase from 2023.⁴³

II. Origins of Community Conservation Models in the Amazon

The roots of today’s community conservation models trace back to the struggles of forest peoples in the late 1970s and 1980s, geared toward protecting the diverse traditional communities that live in Brazil, such as rubber tappers and Brazil nut gatherers.⁴⁴ Chico Mendes, a rubber tapper and union leader from Acre, along with the National Council of Rubber Tappers (CNS), fought to defend traditional communities from land grabbing and deforestation, championing the idea of collectively managed protected areas where traditional populations extract renewable forest resources, such as latex, nuts, and fruits, while maintaining the ecological integrity of the Amazon.⁴⁵ This idea spread to the growing environmental movement, influencing ultimately the creation of extractive reserves and environmentally differentiated settlements.

Extractive Reserves (RESEX)

The first extractive reserve was created in 1990, two years after Mendes was assassinated. Extractive reserves explicitly recognize the communal rights of forest-dependent people who had historically occupied the land, granting them long-term usage rights, while prohibiting practices that could lead to large-scale deforestation.⁴⁶

In 2000, extractive reserves were incorporated into Brazil’s National System of Nature Conservation Units (SNUC), alongside Sustainable Development Reserves (RDS) and National Forests (Florestas Nacionais), as categories of sustainable use protected areas. These differ from strict protection categories such as National Parks and Biological Reserves and are managed by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), the federal agency responsible for Brazil’s conservation units.⁴⁷

Today, extractive reserves cover millions of hectares in the Amazon and serve as a critical buffer against deforestation. As of January 2025, there were 25 extractive reserves (RESEX) in the state of Pará, covering a combined area of approximately 4.5 million hectares.⁴⁸ Extractive reserves are often much larger, more forested, and more isolated than environmentally differentiated settlements.⁴⁹ However, the presence of large tracts of forest have made them the target of illegal loggers, with some of Brazil’s largest seizures of illegal timber coming out of extractive reserves.⁵⁰

Land Reform Settlements

Meanwhile, under a different policy framework, land reform settlements (Projeto de Assentamento or PA) were being created in the Amazon beginning in the 1970s. First introduced under the military dictatorship (1964-1985) as part of the National Integration Plan, their aim was to reduce rural unrest in other regions of Brazil and populate the Amazon region by settling small, landless farmers on public land, under the slogan “Terra sem homens para homens sem terra” (Land without men for men without land).⁵¹ Settlers were allocated small plots of land in pre-determined areas in exchange for colonizing the Amazon and growing crops such as rice, beans, and vegetables for regional consumption.⁵² The National Institute for Colonization and Land Reform (INCRA) was created in part to facilitate the creation of these settlements, which were often situated along sections of the new Trans-Amazonian Highway, completed in 1972.⁵³ Stretching over 2,000 miles, the highway was intended to connect ports in the east of Pará to agricultural centers in the interior.⁵⁴

Many of the initial settlements faced numerous challenges.⁵⁵ Promised infrastructure, such as schools and medical outposts, was delayed or never built, while residents of settlements received little state support or protection from people invading their land.⁵⁶ The Trans-Amazonian Highway was unpaved and impassable for most of the rainy season. By 1975, the government had abandoned its commitments to small farmers, shifting subsidies to large-scale cattle ranching, forestry, and mining, and leaving settlements even more vulnerable to violence, illegal evictions, and land grabbing.⁵⁷

In the mid-1990’s, a new push for land reform, strongly supported by Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST) and other social movements, resulted in renewed interest in the creation of settlements in Pará, often along major infrastructure works such as the Trans-Amazonian Highway.⁵⁸ There are now more than 3,000 land reform settlements in the Legal Amazon, home to about 526,000 families, or at least 2.6 million people. Together, they cover 36.6 million hectares, roughly 7 percent of the region, and account for 81 percent of all settlement land in Brazil. Nearly half of the rural population of the Amazon lives in these settlements.⁵⁹ Now relegated to the ends of feeder roads, these settlements along the Trans-Amazonian Highway have often become de facto frontiers of agricultural expansion, serving as a point of access for ranchers and loggers to more protected conservation areas.⁶⁰

Environmentally Differentiated Settlements

Brazil’s first steps toward “environmentally differentiated” settlements began in the mid-1980s, when INCRA created the first Agroextractive Settlement Project (Projeto de Assentamento Extrativista, or PAE). These projects were designed for families whose livelihoods depended on rubber, Brazil nuts, fishing, and other forest resources, rather than on conventional farming. They were influenced directly by the mobilization of rubber tappers and other traditional populations and later gained stronger legal grounding with the 1988 Constitution, which recognized the rights of such communities.⁶¹

Building on these experiences, INCRA introduced new categories in the late 1990s and early 2000s, most notably the Sustainable Development Project model (Projeto de Desenvolvimento Sustentável, or PDS), which were designed both to secure land for small landless farmers and traditional populations and to respond to growing demands for forest conservation and sustainable forest management.⁶² Together with PAEs, these models came to be grouped under the umbrella term of environmentally differentiated settlement projects (Projetos de Assentamentos Ambientalmente Diferenciados or PAADs).⁶³ The purpose of PAADs was to reconcile land reform with conservation: granting landless families access to land while promoting sustainable forest use and protecting biodiversity. Most extractive reserves and environmentally differentiated settlements were created after 2003 (Figure 4).⁶⁴

Unlike conventional settlements, which focus primarily on family agriculture, environmentally differentiated settlements have explicit environmental or conservation mandates and focus on the sustainable exploitation of timber and non-timber forest products, fish, and wildlife. Because of this focus, many were created in public forests or areas with low historic deforestation, unlike conventional settlements, which were often created on expropriated, already deforested land.⁶⁵

Around one third of current land reform settlements are now environmentally differentiated settlements. Pará has created 298 agroextractive settlement projects (PAE) and 39 sustainable development projects (PDS) since 2004, covering around 5 million hectares.⁶⁶ (See Figure 2).

III. Creation and Documentation of Community Conservation Models

Extractive Reserves (RESEX)

To create an extractive reserve (RESEX), traditional communities, NGOs, or government agencies submit a proposal to the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) or the state government, a process that typically involves public consultations and technical assessments.⁶⁷ If the proposal is approved, the area is declared as government land, and conflicting claims to the land are negotiated. The President of Brazil (for federal RESEX) or the relevant state governor (for state RESEX) then issues a decree to formally establish the extractive reserve.⁶⁸

A management plan detailing resource use, conservation strategies, and community involvement in managing the extractive reserve is established. The reserve is governed by a deliberative council composed of community members, local stakeholders, and government representatives, and its land use is guided by Traditional Use Plans (Planos de Utilização) created by the community.⁶⁹ The council is granted a Contract of Concession of Real Right of Use (CCDRU), which gives fixed-term land use rights to the traditional communities, ensuring they can use it for specific purposes consistent with the Management Plan.⁷⁰

Environmentally Differentiated Settlements

An Agroextractive Settlement Project (PAE) is created through INCRA ordinances published in the Official Gazette.⁷¹ The creation process specifically targets areas already occupied by traditional populations, and communities must demonstrate that they have traditional forms of social, cultural, and economic organization based on customary practices that can involve forest management, fishing, and agroextractivism.⁷² The focus is on cultural preservation alongside environmental conservation, maintaining traditional ways of life while providing legal security for community territories.

A Sustainable Development Project (PDS) is created through INCRA ordinances published in the Official Gazette.⁷³ PDSs are designed for areas with high forest conservation potential and focus primarily on sustainable management of forest resources in areas suitable for sustainable forest production. The creation process emphasizes the property’s suitability for residents that base their subsistence on agroextractivism, family agriculture, agroforestry, and other low environmental-impact activities. A PDS can be established in areas not necessarily occupied by traditional populations, targeting landless rural workers who commit to sustainable forest management practices.⁷⁴

Unlike conventional land reform settlements where settlers eventually receive land titles, the definitive land document for residents in environmentally differentiated settlements is a Concession of Real Right of Use (Concessão de Direito Real de Uso or CDRU). A CDRU maintains federal ownership of the land while securing community use rights; it also includes restrictions against deforestation and prohibitions on land sales. A CDRU cannot be converted to individual property titles, ensuring permanent tenure that protects against land speculation and maintains traditional governance systems.⁷⁵

The communities themselves decide their preferred organizational structure from the available options: condominial, associativist, or cooperative.⁷⁶ Communities then work with INCRA to develop Traditional Use Plans (Planos de Utilização or PUs) in the case of a PAE or Settlement Development Plans (Plano de Desenvolvimento do Assentamento or PDAs) in the case of a PDS.⁷⁷ These plans set out sustainable resource-use guidelines, define environmental restrictions, and serve as normative instruments that regulate land use and settlement activities under the settlement’s legal regime.⁷⁸

For condominium arrangements, families receive ideal fractions of the land and temporary concession use contracts (Contratos de Concessão de Uso or CCUs) that convert to individual CDRUs after meeting settlement requirements.⁷⁹ For collective arrangements (association or cooperative), the CDRU is issued directly to the chosen organizational entity, and individual families do not receive separate CCUs. The collective organization then manages land access for its members according to community rules and the binding Use Plans.⁸⁰ Collective arrangements provide additional protection against informal land transfers and external pressure from land grabbers, and help maintain the settlements’ environmental and social objectives through community governance.⁸¹ Enforcement of rules and delivery of services in settlements falls to federal entities.⁸² Primary responsibility lies with INCRA, IBAMA (the federal environmental enforcement agency under the Ministry of the Environment), and the federal police.⁸³

Current Challenges in Securing Land Documentation

Once official agencies such as INCRA or ICMBio establish a settlement or extractive reserve, it can take years or even decades for individuals or communities to receive the land-use certificates to which they are entitled. For example, in three of the four illustrative cases documented in this report, the communities have been waiting for over a decade to receive their documents, hampering their ability to secure their traditional livelihoods, legally challenge land invasions, and access some government support programs.⁸⁴ This leaves smallholder farmers and traditional communities vulnerable to land grabbers, illegal evictions, and violence. The lack of land documents makes it more difficult to access legal remedies, as Brazilian courts typically require proof of legal ownership or recognized usage rights to grant injunctions against invaders or to pursue criminal charges for environmental crimes committed on their lands.⁸⁵

Documentation is also a requirement for accessing many of the programs and benefits aimed at land reform settlers, such as credits for agriculture and housing.⁸⁶ As a result, many families do not have access to these benefits. These include initial support credits up to R$8,000 (USD$1,450), development credits up to R$16,000 (USD$2,900), housing credits, and access to the National Program for Strengthening Family Agriculture (PRONAF).⁸⁷ Other downstream exclusions also include private bank credit and some forms of payment for environmental services.⁸⁸

IV. Deforestation in Community Conservation Areas

Extractive reserves were designed to slow deforestation by linking forest protection with community rights, and studies show they can reduce clearing compared to surrounding lands when management rules are recognized and enforced.⁸⁹ Over time, however, many reserves have come under mounting pressure from illegal logging, cattle ranching, and weak governmental enforcement and assistance, leaving them vulnerable to the same destructive forces they were meant to resist.

This is exemplified in Pará, where two of the extractive reserves we investigated—Riozinho do Anfrísio and Renascer—rank among the top 10 most deforested of the state’s 25 extractive reserves, according to data analysis by Center for Climate Crime Analysis (CCCA) for this report.⁹⁰ The Riozinho do Anfrísio Extractive Reserve lost around 6,800 hectares of cumulative deforestation from 2008 to 2024, while the Renascer Extractive Reserve has lost almost 20,000 hectares.⁹¹ These cases underscore both the promise and the fragility of the extractive reserve model: with strong enforcement, reserves can remain effective barriers against forest loss—as shown by a 70 percent drop in deforestation alerts in federal conservation units in early 2023 when enforcement increased—but without it, they risk becoming new frontiers of destruction.⁹²

Land reform settlements also stand out as a hotspot of deforestation activity. While they cover eight percent of the Brazilian Amazon, since 2008, they have accounted for 28 percent of the forest loss, including almost a quarter of all deforestation that occurred in 2023, according to a study by the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) and the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC).⁹³ The amount of forest lost within settlements varies widely throughout the country. Between 2017 and 2023, almost two thirds of all deforestation in settlements occurred in three regional superintendencies, two of which are in Pará: Santarém and Southern Pará.⁹⁴

Extensive cattle ranching is the largest driver of deforestation in settlements.⁹⁵ According to the CPI/PUC study, the size of the deforestation events – in patches of 25 hectares or more – suggests that commercial interests pursuing commodity agriculture are the dominant drivers of vegetation loss, as subsistence farmers lack the equipment, workforce, and financial means necessary to rapidly clear and productively use such large tracts of land.⁹⁶

Environmentally differentiated settlements have been shown to protect much more forest than conventional settlements. As of 2024, environmentally differentiated settlements covered over 12 million of the 34.7 million hectares taken up by settlements but contained 11 million of the 18.6 million remaining forests.⁹⁷ Environmentally differentiated settlements (PAEs and PDSs) make up 19 percent of all Amazon settlements and have maintained, on average, five times more forest cover per family than have other types of settlements.⁹⁸

However, forests in environmentally differentiated settlements still face intense logging and ranching pressure. In some cases, settlements slated for conservation and sustainable development have been largely destroyed by illegal logging and ranching, with residents suffering continuous threats.⁹⁹ For example, PDS Brasília was established in 2005 in Pará to support around 500 families practicing small-scale agriculture and sustainably harvesting forest products. However, scant governmental and financial support, in addition to threats from ranchers and land grabbers, has drained the population. As of 2025, only 200 families remain. The rest have illegally sold their plots, and now around 75% of the 19,800-hectare settlement is cattle pasture.¹⁰⁰

A report by Agência Pública analyzing data from MapBiomas found that, between 2005 and 2023, 94 environmentally differentiated settlements (PDSs) in the Brazilian Amazon lost at least 496,000 hectares of forest. During the same period, the area occupied by cattle ranching and agriculture within those settlements rose from 4.38 percent to 22.27 percent—well above the limit allowed by the Forest Code for the biome.¹⁰¹

By failing to restrict deforestation and support sustainable use of these areas, the state enables significant deforestation and carbon emissions from illegal deforestation, as well as human rights harms linked to these activities.¹⁰²

V. Threats and Violence against Environmental Defenders

Deforestation and violence are inextricably linked in Pará and throughout the Brazilian Amazon. Community leaders, residents, and environmental defenders who resist or report illegal deforestation and land invasions routinely become targets for retaliation, including acts of intimidation, threats, and violence.¹⁰³

Since 1985, the Pastoral Land Commission (Comissão Pastoral da Terra or CPT), a Catholic Church affiliated non-profit organization that focuses on social justice and human rights in the Brazilian countryside, has been gathering data on rural land conflicts. According to CPT, in 2024, there were 1,768 land conflicts in Brazil, the highest number in a decade.¹⁰⁴ Pará had 234, the second highest reported number of conflicts (involving groups or individuals) among the states.

Conflicts often lead to acts of violence and sometimes to deaths. Since 2015, almost 400 people have been killed in the context of rural conflicts over the use of land and resources in the Amazon, including many by people linked to illegal deforestation, according to data collected by the CPT.¹⁰⁵

Pará has consistently ranked as one of the most dangerous places for environmental defenders in Brazil. According to CPT data, in 2024 over a third of all individual victims of rural violence in Brazil were in Pará state, with many linked to land conflicts.¹⁰⁶ Data from Brazilian NGOs Justiça Global and Terra de Direitos collected between 2023-2024 shows that Pará accounted for 103 of the 486 cases of violence against defenders in Brazil—one-fifth of all recorded violence nationwide.¹⁰⁷ Particularly striking is that 97 of Pará’s 103 individual cases (94%) involved violence against defenders fighting for land, territory, and environmental rights.¹⁰⁸ This concentration of violence reflects Pará’s position at the frontier of agricultural expansion in the “arc of deforestation and high numbers of ongoing land conflicts.

In the municipality of Anapu, for example, there were more than 20 killings linked to unresolved land conflicts between 2015 and 2022, according to a report by the Federal Public Defender’s Office (DPU).¹⁰⁹ The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, after visiting the region in 2024, concluded that “without fair land reform and resolution of land disputes, human rights defenders will be threatened, attacked and killed one after another.”¹¹⁰

Threats and acts of intimidation take many forms.¹¹¹ Often they involve anonymous phone calls or texts with explicitly threatening or offensive messages. Sometimes they involve public denunciations or defamatory and incendiary claims on social media or radio. They include visits to the victim’s home or community by strangers asking for their whereabouts or implying that they are being surveilled. Sometimes the strangers are armed or allude expressly or implicitly to potential violence. Acts of vandalism and burglaries are also used to intimidate those defending their land.

In Pará, activists live in a climate of fear. They are all aware of high-profile acts of violence, such as the 2005 assassination of Sister Dorothy Strang in connection with her work advocating for the creation of PDS Esperança,¹¹² the 2011 assassination of Zé Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espírito Santo for their work defending PAE Praialta-Piranheira,¹¹³ or the threats to two environmental defenders in the Areia land reform settlement in Trairão, Pará, who in 2018 found two simulated graves dug in their yard with wooden crosses affixed on top.¹¹⁴

Local leaders, activists, and authorities in Pará told Climate Rights International that such threats remain common.¹¹⁵ For example, Ivete Bastos, the local president of the STTR (Rural Workers Union) headquarters in Santarém, who has been active in the creation of PAE Lago Grande, told us that she lives with constant threats. She is currently in the Program for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (PPDDH), a federal program that provides protection and security measures for activists, environmental defenders, and other at-risk individuals in Brazil.¹¹⁶ Bastos said that, starting in 2005, landowners had verbally threatened her while next to a gunman with a visible pistol in his belt.¹¹⁷ Ranchers have threatened to burn her alive and shoot her.¹¹⁸ In 2021, the STTR office was damaged when members of a logging company attempted to break in.¹¹⁹ In the Mata Preta and Dorothy Stang land reform settlements in Anapu, schools, flour mills, and houses have been set on fire, allegedly by men hired by local landowners.¹²⁰

Such threats and intimidation tactics instill profound fear precisely because they have repeatedly served as precursors to physical violence in documented cases. The high-profile killings of Chico Mendes in 1988, Dorothy Stang in 2005, and José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espírito Santo in 2011 were all preceded by threats against the victims. A 2019 Human Rights Watch report that examined 28 killings linked to illegal deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon found that at least 19 of the killings were preceded by threats.¹²¹

Other cases in Pará have followed the same pattern of threats culminating in killings or assassination attempts:

PDS Virola Jatoba (2025): On April 18, 2025, Ronilson de Jesus Santos was shot in the head in his backyard. Four days before he was killed, de Jesus Santos had posted a video on social media denouncing loggers who were allegedly setting up camps inside the area designated for land reform. He had reportedly been threatened and had been the target of intimidation acts by a large landowner in the area.¹²²
A Divino Pai Eterno Settlement (2008-2024): Following years of threats and intimidation, seven rural workers and community leaders—Rogério de Jesus Ferreira, Jocelino Braga da Silva, Francisco Leite Feitosa, Félix Leite dos Santos, Osvaldo Rodrigues da Costa, Ronair José de Lima, and Lindomar Dias de Souza—were killed over a period of 16 years while fighting against the illegal occupation of public lands by cattle ranchers who were clearing forest to establish pastures.¹²³
Lote 141 (2016 – 2019): In Anapu, a community of 36 families who occupied public land designated for settlement between 2016-2019 faced escalating threats from a local rancher and logger who claimed ownership without documentation. The violence culminated when a young community member was shot in the head and ribs. Following this shooting, the entire community fled their homes, abandoning the land they had worked for three years.¹²⁴
PDS Terra Nossa (2018): After announcing plans to report illegal logging to authorities, one resident was killed and another disappeared. The investigation cost two more lives: the brother of one victim who sought answers, and a small farmers’ union leader who planned to report the illegal activities.¹²⁵

In June 2023, Brazil’s National Human Rights Council (CNDH) stated that the serious risks of physical harm to human rights defenders in Western Pará underscores the urgency of addressing the structural violence and impunity faced by human rights defenders.¹²⁶ In 2023, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) also explicitly warned of “the serious risk of fatality against human rights defenders in PAE Lago Grande,” noting the paradigmatic cases of violence against Dorothy Stang and other environmental and human rights defenders.¹²⁷

VI. Emblematic Cases

The following cases illustrate the interconnected patterns of land invasions, illegal deforestation, and violence against environmental defenders that threaten extractive reserves and environmentally differentiated settlements across Pará state. They demonstrate how the systemic failures outlined in this report—incomplete land regularization, underfunded enforcement agencies, and institutional neglect—manifest in practice, creating conditions where criminal networks can operate with impunity while legally authorized residents face escalating threats for defending their territories.

PAE Lago Grande

A three-hour ferry ride westward up the Amazon River from the city of Santarem lies PAE Lago Grande, an immense 250,000-hectare agroextractive settlement project. INCRA created the settlement in 2005 after traditional and local communities living on the land formed an association (FEAGLE) and requested the creation of a PAE to be managed collectively as a way to protect against the growing threat of soybean plantations, mining, and logging.¹²⁸ Today, PAE Lago Grande is home to 35,000 people living in 155 communities, most of whom identify as traditional and others as Indigenous.

In the more than 20 years since PAE Lago Grande was established, INCRA has failed to precisely georeference and map the settlement on the ground, in part due to historical errors in the federal property registry.¹²⁹ This has resulted in delays in executing the Real Right of Use Agreements (CDRU) that would enable collective land management by the communities and give them access to some government support policies, such as housing assistance and technical support.¹³⁰ In 2017, INCRA contracted an outside company to delineate the settlement, but that mapping was only partially completed.¹³¹

According to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF), this ongoing administrative failure has had severe consequences for the residents.¹³² In a statement issued in July 2024, the MPF reported that, in addition to constant attacks and threats against leaders, “the excessively prolonged conclusion of the regularization and titling of PAE Lago Grande…stimulates the growth of social inequality and makes it impossible for rural workers to have access to government programs.”¹³³ The MPF specifically noted the importance of allocating agricultural credit, and development and support programs aimed at traditional rural communities.

Without the collective land use document (CDRU), community organizations lack legal standing to effectively defend and manage their territory. The prolonged administrative limbo has also created opportunities for outsiders to invade the territory, clear patches of forest, and either occupy the cleared land or sell it illegally to third parties. Some community residents have also reportedly illegally sold land to outsiders.

PAE Lago Grande has already lost 119,019 hectares of forest, or around 42 percent of its territory, according to data analysis by Center for Climate Crime Analysis (CCCA) for this report. According to the CCCA analysis, it is one of the four most deforested rural settlements in Pará. While some logging plans have been authorized, government monitoring shows no effective oversight of forest use, and enforcement through IBAMA embargoes has been minimal.¹³⁴

According to the MPF statement, INCRA’s regional offices have acknowledged that they lack the budget, materials, and staff needed to complete the regularization process for PAE Lago Grande. In the July 2024 statement, MPF recommended that INCRA prioritize land regularization in PAE Lago Grande and complete land regularization within one year.¹³⁵ After the issuance of the MPF statement, INCRA resumed georeferencing some areas in PAE Lago Grande.¹³⁶ As of the time of writing, however, that regularization was still not complete.

Uncertainties related to what is private and public land and the settlement’s boundaries have led to direct conflicts. The community of Boa Fé in PAE Lago Grande believes that nearby land to which it claims ancestral rights through generations of use falls within the settlement boundary and is being illegally deforested. According to Ivanilce Farias de Andrade, the elected community association president, a large landowner with a farm nearby is attempting to claim ownership over that same land, a previously forested area that the community had used for gathering and small-scale agriculture.¹³⁷ The community considers these actions an invasion of their collective territory—a view that is shared by the local workers union and resident association.¹³⁸

According to Farias de Andrade, the problem began in 2021 when five cars arrived with outsiders who claimed they were selling the land. When Farias de Andrade told them that they had an association and rights to the land, the putative owner laughed at them and said that their association meant nothing to him.¹³⁹

In the absence of formal land use documents, the community has limited ability to enforce their claims. By April 2024, the situation had escalated. Attempts to buy out community residents whose homes were next to the disputed land were complemented by threats of home demolitions of those who refused. As Farias de Andrade described:

Others already went to the residents’ houses, right there by the lagoon shore, with contracts to sign. They said they were compensating each family with R$20,000 [USD$ 3,300] but they had to leave immediately…. They kept saying that they were going to send [someone] to demolish the house.¹⁴⁰

Between April and June 2024, workers used heavy machinery to deforest land immediately adjacent to the community. In July and August, they burned the remaining vegetation, often at night, to prepare the land for pasture. According to Farias de Andrade, the fires posed immediate physical danger to the community, with blazes set so close to homes that they threatened the health and safety of residents.¹⁴¹

Data analysis by Center for Climate Crime Analysis (CCCA) for this report, based on official data from PRODES/INPE, shows that deforestation around the community of Boa Fé has surged. In 2024, 359 hectares were cleared around the community— the worst year on record.¹⁴²

According to de Andrade, the person claiming that he owns the land has not supplied proof of ownership or land documents for the land he is claiming, despite her requests. The fact that INCRA has not completed land regularization has muddled the situation for the local community, which has no documents to definitively prove that the occupation is illegal. De Andrade says she has reported the situation to environmental authorities including IBAMA, SEMAS, and INCRA, but there has been no government response to their complaints, leaving the community vulnerable to further invasions.¹⁴³

The land insecurity and presence of land grabbers make reporting environmental crimes difficult and often dangerous for residents. More than twenty community leaders in PAE Lago Grande have been threatened for opposing and reporting illegal deforestation, according to media and NGO reports.¹⁴⁴Among these are leaders of four communities interviewed by Climate Rights International who were either relocated to nearby cities through the Program for the Protection of Human Rights (PPDDH) or left voluntarily.¹⁴⁵

One is Darlon Neres dos Santos, a youth activist well-known in the area for leading a collective of forest guardians called the Guardiões do Bem Viver (Guardians of Good Living), which helps educate community members on their rights and environmental issues.¹⁴⁶ Neres dos Santos has used drones to film deforestation and posted the video on his collective’s Instagram account.¹⁴⁷ He has also raised the issue of deforestation before the PAE Lago Grande’ residents’ association, known as FEAGLE, where he serves as the director.¹⁴⁸

In August and September 2023, Neres dos Santos denounced the deforestation at two public events. One was a gathering of civil society leaders in the state capital, Belém, to discuss sustainable development in the Amazon. The other was a meeting in Santarem intended to amplify Indigenous and traditional peoples’ perspectives in climate policy discussions. He also posted an image of the illegal deforestation they had detected on his collective’s Instagram account.¹⁴⁹

Several days after posting the image, he received a call from the mother of his colleague, who said that three unknown men had come to her house with a photo of him and asked where he lived. He also learned that the men had approached other people with his photo, in a local bar and around their village, and had subsequently showed up at his home asking about him.¹⁵⁰ A few days after their visit, an unknown car was seen parked outside FEAGLE. Another car, which residents believe was associated with illegal logging, also passed by several times in front of a colleague’s house during the same period.¹⁵¹

According to Neres dos Santos, someone had shot at the house of a local leader who had also denounced illegal logging two years earlier, leaving bullet marks on the walls of his home. As the director of FEAGLE, he was also aware of the constant threats faced by other leaders in the settlement.

Neres dos Santos believed that he was now in grave danger, so he also entered the Program for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders. According to the PPDDH protocol, a police check-in is considered the first of three levels of protection; the next level is a police escort; the most extreme level is called reception, in which the threatened person is removed from their environment entirely to prevent physical harm.¹⁵² Neres dos Santos was put into reception and relocated in a nearby city. As he recalls:

My main fear wasn’t for myself, but more for my family who lives in the territory. My mother and father, who are elderly, are there… So, I spent six months without going to the territory, without a home and without contact with family.¹⁵³

Neres dos Santos continues to help organize and fight illegal deforestation. He told Climate Rights international:

When I decided to dedicate my life to fighting for this territory, I made a choice—a choice that affected my personal life, my family life, my professional life. I cannot see myself outside of this territory. And I cannot see this territory destroyed.

Eliana da Silva, another leader in PAE Lago Grande from the community of Nazário, has spent more than two decades resisting illegal logging and land invasions in her territory. She told Climate Right International:

We don’t just live here among trees, birds, and animals. There are people who care, who protect, who preserve this great nature. If this settlement and its defenders didn’t exist, none of this would still be standing—not the forest, not the trees.¹⁵⁴

Her defense of the forest has come at a high cost. She has endured repeated threats and intimidation, starting in 2009 when she was reportedly the target of death threats after she and leaders from another community attempted to stop a barge filled with illegal logs from being transported along the Apariuns river, which forms the southern edge of the territory.¹⁵⁵ Recently, she has been concerned about what she sees as illegal encroachment by an outsider she says is from a different state who is clearing large amounts of forest near her community.¹⁵⁶

RESEX Renascer

The Renascer Extractive Reserve (RESEX Renascer) lies along the southern bank of the Amazon River, a four-hour drive east from the city of Santarem. It is home to around 800 families living in 16 communities spread over 211,741 hectares.¹⁵⁸ The reserve was created by presidential decree in 2009.¹⁵⁹ Its creation was preceded by years of pressure, protests, and lobbying by local extractivist communities, the Prainha Rural Workers Union, and human rights and environmental organizations such as Terra de Dereitos and the World Wildlife Fund.¹⁶⁰

Rosa Maria Moraes Viegas was a member of the community association that fought to establish the reserve.

The creation of the reserve was intended to grant traditional communities exclusive use of the forests for sustainable extractivist activities. Moraes Viegas works as a teacher but also lives off the sustainable use of the forest, making handicrafts from natural materials and supplementing her food and income by small-scale agriculture and the production of tucupi (a fermented sauce extracted from wild cassava root and used widely in the region’s cuisine). She says that residents of the Renascer Extractive Reserve struggle to support their families through extractivist activities, in part because there has been no government investment in these activities. Government programs related to health, education, and sustainable agricultural production within the reserve are also limited, something that she ties to the fact that, 15 years after creation of the extractive reserve, they still have not received their land-use concession contract (CCDRU). Moraes Viegas told Climate Rights International:

Here, for example, the unit still needs to implement government policies. And one of the policies that’s super important is the CCDRU, which is the document that gives concession and use rights to residents. We still haven’t been able to receive this document. For this reason, many things don’t happen within the unit… INCRA doesn’t act, and we can’t implement various policies that we could if we already had this document.¹⁶¹

According to Brazilian law, private enterprises within extractive reserves are subject to expropriation and large-scale commercial cattle and logging operations are prohibited.¹⁶² However, in the Renascer Extractive Reserve, a large cattle farm was excluded from the boundaries of the reserve for some reason, despite being physically located inside its area.

We’ve never had any ICMBio action at any moment. We’ve already demanded, we’ve already asked. It’s necessary to kick out these people. They do whatever they want, including increasing pasture. And it ends up encouraging other people to also increase pasture.

According to Moraes Viegas, lack of state enforcement and economically viable alternatives has led some residents to move into cattle production and away from the sustainable extractivism that the reserve was intended to promote.

The presence of high-value timber species like ipê and maçaranduba in the reserve has also attracted outside loggers.¹⁶³ According to media reports and government investigations, it is not uncommon for logging groups to seek to gain influence over communities’ management of their forest reserves to launder illegal logging through them.¹⁶⁴

In 2020, working through a subset of local leaders, an outside logging group attempted to gain control over the Renascer Extractive Reserve’s forest management plan, which had been developed by the association that governs the reserve.¹⁶⁵ Moraes Viegas publicly challenged what she said were violations of the procedural rules governing changes to the existing forest management plan.¹⁶⁶ In 2021, her daughter was attacked by assailants who attempted to run her over with a car. In a statement given to the police, Moraes Viegas identified the assailants as loggers, stating that she felt threatened, together with her family, and that they feared for their lives.¹⁶⁷

I always fought a lot, fought for the creation of this area, have fought a lot for its implementation, was very threatened, suffered many things, answered several lawsuits, suffered several death attempts. Then they tried to kill my daughter…. It was horrible. [It happened] here in the middle of the community and everyone watched.¹⁶⁸

The following year, while Moraes Viegas was reading the meeting minutes during a public assembly to elect new community leaders, a man armed with a knife approached her and tore up the papers she was holding, shouting at her.¹⁶⁹ Moraes Viegas fled into the crowd and escaped. She told CRI that she later heard that men were waiting at a nearby bar with guns and rifles, “ready for a massacre.”¹⁷⁰

According to Moraes Viegas, she filed a police report, as did the leadership of the association. The police chief took statements from her and others who were present at the incident. She said that the police chief formally named the armed individual who approached her at the meeting, and two other individuals allegedly involved in the planned attack. She says the police chief opened an inquiry and forwarded the case to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. The case has been in the justice system since 2022, but she says, “I still haven’t seen anything happen.”

She says she also tried to report the incident to the Agricultural Crimes Police Station (Delegacia de Crimes Agrários or DECA), a regional police unit specialized in land conflicts, but says she was blocked from filing reports even with a lawyer present, as “they kept giving a thousand and one excuses.”¹⁷¹

After the incident, messages mentioning her started appearing in WhatsApp group chats that included other local residents, which Moras Viegas interpreted as veiled threats.¹⁷²

Everyone witnessed the incident, the attempt, and then comments appeared in WhatsApp groups saying that I should go “have coffee” at someone’s house who was waiting for me. It was a lot of things like this.¹⁷³

She claims that the government is doing very little to control illegal deforestation within the extractive reserve and, when enforcement does happen, it is sporadic and uneven. Without enforcement, she told Climate Rights International, deforestation and the intimidation of those who oppose it will continue.¹⁷⁴

Due to her involvement in the creation of the reserve, Rosa has been enrolled in the PPDDH ever since. The protection offered consists mainly of weekly visits by the police, which she says is not enough to make her feel safe in a region plagued with crime and violence linked to logging and land conflicts.¹⁷⁵ She lives 120 kilometers (about 74.56 miles) from the nearest civil police station, a trip that costs her $24, a very large sum for her, and takes several hours without guarantee that she will find an official to speak with.¹⁷⁶

RESEX Riozinho do Anfrísio

The Riozinho do Anfrísio Extractive Reserve (RESEX Riozinho do Anfrísio) is a 736,000-hectare reserve located south of the Trans-Amazonian Highway near Rurópolis. It forms part of a system of protected areas and forest reserves collectively referred to as Terra do Meio, or “middle earth.” The reserve was created in 2004 after local communities faced threats of expulsion from their territory due to illegal logging and land grabbing.¹⁷⁷ Today, the reserve is home to approximately 120 families who identify as ribeirinhos and rely on traditional livelihoods such as fishing, hunting, small-scale farming, and Brazil nut collection.¹⁷⁸

Maria, as we will refer to her here, is a young community member whose grandfather played a key role in the creation of the extractive reserve. She says illegal logging is a major problem and has been escalating since 2020.

Today our areas are taken over by loggers, by land grabbers. Now there are also invaders who say it’s their land and they’re not going to leave…tons and tons of wood leave our RESEX [extractive reserve] every day. We hear the tractors roaring by our house.¹⁷⁹

Maria says that the presence of loggers has fundamentally altered community life, restricting traditional activities. Maria said that these groups not only cut timber illegally, but also claim the land as theirs, threatening and coercing residents.

People see the loggers here on the riverbanks, moving around and walking openly in front of their homes. Up there, everything is devastated. Locals don’t even know how they’ll collect Brazil nuts anymore, because the nut groves have all been taken over by those operating inside, who claim the land as theirs, along with the loggers who are taking the wood. Nobody goes there now—it’s all been taken over.¹⁸⁰

According to Maria, some residents are forced to comply by illegal loggers who offer them an ultimatum: either work for the loggers or accept that timber will be taken from their land without compensation.¹⁸¹

In October 2023, Maria, who is also a member of the National Council of Extractive Populations (CNS), an organization that represents the interests of traditional extractive communities, traveled to Brasília to speak at a congressional hearing on education and health. When she saw a high-level representative of ICMBio in the audience, she decided to talk instead about what she saw as a more pressing problem for her community: illegal logging and the government’s failure to contain it.¹⁸² Her testimony was recorded, and the video was widely shared online. Two months later, IBAMA agents conducted an operation against illegal mining and logging in the reserve, as well as in two nearby Indigenous Territories. As part of the operation, they destroyed the machinery used by the land invaders—a common and legally-sanctioned enforcement tactic used by IBAMA and ICMBio throughout the Amazon.¹⁸³

Immediately following the IBAMA operation, Maria became the target of online and digital attacks, including videos circulated on social media that were edited to include images of her speaking interspersed with explosions of mining rafts (a floating platform used for illegal gold mining on rivers) thus framing her as responsible for the IBAMA action: “It was the most intense pressure I’ve ever experienced,” she told Climate Rights International.¹⁸⁴

Maria said she also received several threats from strangers via audio WhatsApp messages and on Instagram, sent directly to her and to family members. She filed a police report and was offered entry into PPDDH, but her father was afraid she’d be relocated too far away, so he took personal responsibility for her safety instead.

Maria has since reported the logging and land invasions to IBAMA, providing video and photographic evidence of the incursions. But other than the raids in December 2023 and another visit by agents from ICMBio, there has been no enforcement, she said.¹⁸⁵ Meanwhile the threats have continued, and more than a year later she is unable to visit certain areas of the reserve out of fear for her safety. But she has not given up.

I’m following the legacy that my grandfather left to me. Someone needs to be there to fight for the people, to fight for all of this.¹⁸⁶

PDS Esperança

PDS Esperança (Anapu I) is a sustainable development settlement that was established with some 60 families over 23,000 hectares in 2003 in the municipality of Anapu. It’s where the American missionary Sister Dorothy Stang, a strong advocate of the PDS model, was killed in 2005.¹⁸⁷ Two decades after the creation of the settlement, most families still lack definitive land-use titles (CDRUs), with some holding temporary concession contracts (CCUs).

Initially, families were successful in developing agroforestry cacao production, but the settlement quickly became the target of illegal loggers and land grabbing.¹⁸⁸ Community members have resisted these incursions, but are losing the battle.¹⁸⁹ Today, slightly more than half of the settlement’s original forest remains standing and it is failing to fulfill its purpose of promoting sustainable development.¹⁹⁰ Roughly 30 percent of the area has been converted to agriculture—primarily cattle pasture—while much of the rest has been degraded by selective logging and fire. According to one estimate, in PDS Esperança the deforested area increased by almost 550 percent between 2005 and 2023.¹⁹¹

Residents interviewed by Climate Rights International attributed this outcome to several factors. One is a failure by the government to adequately support their conservation efforts. As one resident we will refer to as Carlos said:

It’s not just an ordinance that creates a settlement. There must be continuous monitoring. The state cannot leave, right?¹⁹²

But the state did leave, according to Carlos and state and federal lawsuits. Around 2011, residents organized to physically occupy and monitor the entrances to the settlement, creating a community-led security system to prevent illegal timber extraction trucks from entering and leaving with stolen wood. They also pressured INCRA to develop a more permanent solution. INCRA eventually funded and staffed a guardhouse to keep the loggers out.¹⁹³ But in November 2015, the INCRA guard was assassinated at the guardhouse.¹⁹⁴ Beleaguered by budget cutbacks and reduced political support, by 2018 INCRA had withdrawn the funding that supported the guard house and pulled out its staff. Following INCRA’s withdrawal, the settlement was invaded multiple times by coordinated groups of illegal loggers and outside settlers who occupied portions of the land.¹⁹⁵

The community’s will to fight illegal logging has been further sapped by a pervasive fear of violent reprisals. Between 2015-2022, 17 people were killed over land conflicts in Anapu alone.¹⁹⁶ In 2020, the MPF, the Pará State Prosecutor’s Office, and the Public Defender’s Offices filed a joint lawsuit against INCRA, IBAMA, the Federal Government, and the State of Pará, citing severe institutional abandonment that had enabled environmental destruction in PDS Esperança and another nearby settlement, PDS Virola-Jatobá. They reported a “calamitous situation of institutional abandonment” at both settlements, noting that “the delay in the services provided by INCRA is exacerbating the land conflicts and the situation of violence, translated into threats and even deaths.”¹⁹⁷

The lawsuit cited INCRA’s own reports and legal filings, including videos, that showed illegal deforestation and illegal division of land in both settlements, including over 1,000 hectares of clear-cut deforestation in PDS Virola-Jatobá. The joint legal action seeks to compel authorities to implement continuous monitoring and enforcement plans. In 2021, INCRA, together with IBAMA and other agencies, entered the settlement, destroying several trucks and chainsaws and seizing 17,550 cubic feet of illegally sourced wood.¹⁹⁸ In 2024, IBAMA and the federal police initiated another action inside of PDS Esperança and Virola-Jatoba.¹⁹⁹ However, at the time of writing the situation remained unresolved and illegal loggers and other criminal actors remain undeterred, according to residents.²⁰⁰

One critical factor putting the settlement at risk is the government’s failure to complete the regularization of the land and provide the community and its members with land use documents.²⁰¹ According to Carlos:

Without land documents you can’t access credit. If you can’t prove you have a legal right to the property, you can’t access anything.”²⁰²

Faced with limited possibilities to improve their economic situation, many of the original farmers abandoned their commitment to conservation. Some residents began selling parcels of land that they were occupying—transactions that are illegal [or “not legally valid”] but nonetheless often accepted locally in practice—to farmers from outside the community. By 2021, INCRA reported that residents had been sectioning off and illegally selling 100-hectare plots.²⁰³

According to residents, the deforestation has accelerated during the past two years. Loggers freely enter PDS Esperança’s legal reserves to extract wood. They do so now, Carlos and another resident said, with the collaboration of some members of the community. In fact, by Carlos’s estimation, less than half of the approximately 60 original families in Esperança remain committed to conserving the settlement’s forest reserves.

A resident of PDS Esperança told Climate Rights International that they recently installed a security camera on the front of their house, which is on one of the settlement’s main through roads. A logger forced them to take it down, lest they use it to film the logging trucks rolling in and out of PDS Esperança.²⁰⁴

VII. Institutional Challenges

Brazil’s efforts to create and protect community conservation models and battle deforestation have been hampered by a complex and sometimes contradictory institutional framework for land regularization, as well as reduced human and financial resources for land regularization, environmental protection, and law enforcement.

Incomplete Land Regularization

There is a broad consensus among Brazilian officials, environmentalists, and experts that the lack of land regularization is the one of the most pressing issues underlying environmental degradation and violence in the Amazon.

Brazil lags behind many other countries in securing land rights: in 2023, it ranked 78th out of 129 countries on the International Property Rights Index (IPRI), which measures the protection of physical property rights and the legal and political environment.²⁰⁵ An INCRA official told Climate Rights International that “the number of requests for land regularization has increased by 1000 percent in the last 20 years,” creating a massive backlog of unresolved property claims.²⁰⁶

The absence of clear land tenure is a major factor fueling conflicts and violence. Officials with PPDDH in Belém told Climate Rights International that land conflicts are the greatest cause of demand for protection, and the biggest problem underlying land conflicts is the lack of land regularization.²⁰⁷

Incomplete land regularization is also a major factor contributing to deforestation. An Imazon study found that areas without defined land tenure status had been increasingly targeted for deforestation between 2019 and 2021.²⁰⁸ As documented above, the lack of land documentation makes it more difficult for environmental defenders and community members to prevent outsiders from clearing forests in and near settlements and reserves.²⁰⁹ According to an INCRA official, the lack of land documents is also one reason illegal land sales in land reform settlements continue. Without land documents that would grant them access to public services and credit, some settlement residents use the illegal sale of land as a means to gain access to capital.²¹⁰

Insufficient Resources and Capacity

The difficulty in advancing land regularization is largely due to a lack of institutional capacity.²¹¹ The Imazon study found that 88 percent of properties with applications for titling in INCRA could be processed under current law, without any legislative changes, if more resources were allocated to the state agencies responsible for land regularization.²¹²

Yet, since 2015, budget and staffing reductions have dramatically slowed land regularization efforts. In 2015, the Brazilian Congress approved R$2.5 billion (USD $753.5 million) for the Land Reform and Land Governance program, whose responsibilities include the acquisition of land for the settlement of families, as well as the management of the rural registry, regularization of the land structure, development of settlements and projects for social assistance, and education.²¹³ However, by 2019 the Annual Budget Law allocated only R$762 million (USD$ 233.2 million) for that purpose.²¹⁴

INCRA, the primary federal agency responsible for land regularization in Brazil, has experienced substantial budget cuts since 2013, as part of broader austerity measures that were initially implemented under President Dilma Rousseff in response to fiscal challenges.²¹⁵ These cuts led to significant reductions in staffing, which only worsened under subsequent administrations, culminating in draconian cuts under President Jair Bolsonaro.²¹⁶

In 2023, César Aldrighi, the then-president of INCRA, said that in the previous four years the organization had lost 40 percent of its staff and was operating at 5 percent of what its budget had been in 2010.²¹⁷ The result was the near stoppage of the process of settlement creation and regularization of lands within established settlements.²¹⁸ In INCRA’s Western Pará Superintendency—which manages 230 settlements, including the ones Climate Rights International visited, the staff has been reduced from 220 in the early 2010’s to less than 50 in 2024.²¹⁹ In December 2024, the Altamira office had only six permanent employees responsible for overseeing 10 municipalities in an area the size of the United Kingdom.²²⁰ The office has three cars and, at the time of the visit, had run out of its budget for gasoline for the year.

The geographic vastness of the areas covered in the Amazon compounds the challenge of operating with a reduced staff.²²¹ For residents of the settlements seeking support from INCRA, traveling to the office can take, depending on the season and transport options, six hours to an entire day each way.

The monitoring and enforcement capacity of IBAMA, the federal environmental enforcement agency, has also been severely impacted by staffing cuts, with the number of inspectors for the entire country reduced from 1600 in 2009 to 780 in 2019, and then suffering continued cuts under the Bolsonaro administration.²²² As of December 2024, for the western Para superintendency the agency had only 12 inspectors covering 24 municipalities. One IBAMA official told Climate Rights International:

The inspection team is too small to cover the region, which is very large. And the environmental offenses are always much greater than the number of people to monitor them.²²³

Like other federal environmental agencies, ICMBio has also been severely impacted by staffing reductions, with the institute and IBAMA together losing 2,800 employees over a decade due to retirements—representing more than 26% of their workforce.²²⁴ The situation became so critical that, in April 2016, ICMBio civil servants in western Pará publicly denounced possible dismissals of regional coordinators and leadership positions, stating that changes “without technical criteria, without transparency in their motivations and without any dialogue with servers and other social actors, will cause serious damage to the continuity of ICMBio actions in this region.”²²⁵ While President Lula authorized the appointment of 160 additional servers in July 2023 to help address staffing shortages, this represents only 10-15 percent of the agency’s estimated personnel needs.²²⁶

The challenges facing land and environmental agencies extend to law enforcement. In July 2025, in response to written questions by Climate Rights International, Pará’s specialized agrarian police (DECA Altamira) reported having just five officers and one vehicle to cover nine municipalities, including Anapu and Altamira, citing severe logistical and resource constraints.²²⁷

Institutional Fragmentation and Lack of Coordination

There are at least 22 agencies tasked with some type of land tenure regularization in the Amazon. Multiple agencies share jurisdiction over forests and land conflicts without clear coordination.²²⁸

While federal agencies like ICMBio manage extractive reserves and INCRA oversees land reform settlements, state environmental authorities such as SEMAS also play a role in environmental oversight and enforcement, particularly regarding deforestation and land use. Local authorities such as local police forces may contribute to conflict resolution and community safety, but resolving land tenure disputes within federally designated areas typically requires federal intervention and coordination. These overlapping responsibilities among multiple federal and state agencies, and the lack of effective coordination among them, creates a situation where even well-intentioned policies struggle to make an impact, creating confusion that illegal actors exploit, according to multiple officials. As one federal prosecutor put it:

[L]ack of communication between the different systems and government bodies and institutional fragmentation between different systems and government agencies prevents effective land regularization and environmental protection, creating opportunities for fraud and rights violations.²²⁹

In response to Climate Right International, Pará’s environmental agency (SEMAS) stated that no single agency has clear or continuous responsibility for illegal activities that cross jurisdictional lines. Instead, enforcement actions are divided among state, municipal, and federal authorities, and the state acts “subsidiarily,” when a municipality declines its jurisdiction, or “collaboratively,” when they are invited to participate in an action.²³⁰

Another critical challenge cited by officials is the lack of a centralized database on land tenure and title information, which has allowed for the proliferation of overlapping property claims that are the basis of many land conflicts.²³¹

Registry offices, INCRA, state and federal environmental agencies, and the courts all use separate databases that do not connect. This lack of interoperability forces officials to consult multiple, often inconsistent systems when reviewing land claims. As a result, there are significant delays in verifying ownership and adjudicating cases of land fraud. This fragmentation has created opportunities for the sale of public lands, overlapping claims, and illegal land titles to go undetected or unresolved for years, facilitating land grabbing and the laundering of deforested areas into the formal land market.

In response to Climate Rights International, the specialized agrarian police (DECA Altamira) acknowledged structural barriers to enforcement stemming from jurisdictional overlaps and fragmented data systems. DECA Altamira reported that its information system (SISP) does not allow filtering or cross-referencing of threats and environmental crimes by settlement or reserve, making it impossible to monitor patterns of violence or deforestation across institutions.²³²

In 2017, the Federal University of Pará piloted a digital land title verification system called SIG-Fundiário that integrates land, agricultural, and environmental information from the public entities such as the Rural Environmental Registry, (Cadastro Ambiental Rural or CAR), INCRA, the State Institute of Land, and the Terra Legal Program.²³³ However, despite its promise, SIG-Fundiário has not generated notable discussion or resistance—possibly due to low visibility or limited adoption—underscoring its status as a nascent technological tool not yet embedded in broader policymaking.²³⁴

State Support and Government Policies for Local Communities

The lack of implementation of government policies and state support for communities in the arc of deforestation was also mentioned as a key challenge by several experts.²³⁵ The lack of schools, medical facilities, and transportation infrastructure can lead settlement residents to sell or give up their land and migrate to cities.²³⁶

As one expert said:

It’s like a chain of dominoes, where one thing leads to another. You reach a point where you either lose the land or surrender it because staying becomes impossible—either due to the absence of government policies that would help you work the land and support your family, or because of land speculation and land grabbing.²³⁷

Studies have pointed out that the lack of government services, especially critical services like health and education in areas occupied by traditional populations, can also create incentives for rural and traditional communities to participate in illegal activities including deforestation.²³⁸

Looking Ahead

In the past few years, the authorities have taken some steps to try to address some of these issues. In 2021, the Commission on Land Solutions was established as a specialized organ within the Brazilian court system to handle land conflicts, particularly those involving collective occupations of properties and vulnerable populations.²³⁹ The Commission provides operational support to judges handling land conflict cases, conducts technical site visits to assess occupants’ vulnerability, holds mediation hearings with property occupants, public authorities, prosecutors, defenders, and other parties, and creates technical guidelines to standardize administrative procedures, among other things.²⁴⁰ However, none of the community members, lawyers, or prosecutors we spoke to had used the mechanism, and even prosecutors working directly on rural land conflicts in Pará described its reach as extremely limited.

Dr. Herena Neves, a prosecutor in the Land Prosecutor’s Office in Santarém, cited systemic barriers that blunt the impact of such initiatives. These include the lack of communication between government systems and agencies, the absence of a single territorial management policy, and deliberate obstruction of promising tools, such as the integrated land title verification system developed with the Federal University of Pará, that could help prevent fraud and accelerate land regularization. Without addressing these structural problems, she said, institutional innovations like the Commission risk existing largely on paper, with little tangible effect for the communities most affected by land conflicts.²⁴¹

At the federal level, in April 2024 the Lula government established the Terra da Gente (Land of the People) program, with the goal of helping 295,000 farming families acquire land or legalize their informal situation by 2026. As part of this program, INCRA received R$520 million (USD$88 million) to expropriate and allocate land.²⁴² However, the Terra da Gente program’s ambitious targets risk falling short unless structural barriers within INCRA and local land governance systems are addressed.

Pará Governor Helder Barbalho launched the state’s Bioeconomy Plan (PlanBio) at COP27 in 2022, aiming to transition Pará from Brazil’s largest carbon emitter into a carbon-neutral state. PlanBio acknowledges the critical role that Indigenous peoples, quilombolas, and traditional communities play in maintaining forest ecosystems and carbon stocks.²⁴³ It includes specific actions to stimulate production of non-timber forest products and sustainable forest businesses, promote specialized technical assistance, and value the knowledge and culture of traditional peoples while adding technology and value to production chains.²⁴⁴ According to research by The Nature Conservancy, these kinds of socio-biodiversity products in Pará could generate R$170 billion (USD$32.9 billion) in annual revenue by 2040 if properly supported.²⁴⁵ This would nearly double the state’s current GDP.²⁴⁶ The plan includes substantial funding allocations to support small rural producers, with R$400 million (USD$71 million) dedicated to financing these groups and R$72 million (USD$13 million) for establishing the Bioeconomy and Innovation Park of the Amazon.²⁴⁷

However, the same institutional weaknesses that have undermined previous environmental and social policies threaten implementation of both PlanBio and Terra de Gente. Without addressing fundamental challenges in land regularization, institutional fragmentation, and enforcement capacity, even these well-intentioned initiatives risk failing to reach the communities they aim to support. For both initiatives to succeed, they must be accompanied by concrete steps to complete land regularization processes, strengthen protection mechanisms for environmental defenders, address institutional fragmentation, and ensure that traditional communities have access to the basic services they need to remain on their territories. Only by addressing these foundational governance issues can Pará build an economy that truly benefits both people and forests.

VIII. Relevant Legal Standards

Advisory Opinion of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

On July 3, 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued an advisory opinion on the obligation of states with respect to climate change. In reaching its decision, the court relied on both the American Convention on Human Rights and international law more broadly. The opinion makes clear that Brazil, as a party to the American Convention on Human Rights and other international treaties, should, among other things:

mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by adopting policies and regulations that set clear mitigation targets, monitor their implementation, and regulate both its own actions and those of highly GHG polluting corporations.
adopt legislative and administrative frameworks that require business enterprises to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for climate-related human rights risks.
require companies to conduct human rights and climate due diligence across their value chains, mandate public disclosure of emissions, enforce emission reduction actions, require alignment with national climate targets, and address greenwashing and undue political influence.
supervise and control high-impact climate activities, including land-use changes, agro-industrial activities, and deforestation, through mitigation policies and concrete measures.
engage in enhanced due diligence before authorizing activities that could significantly harm the climate system/
investigate and punish violations by climate polluting corporations and ensure reparations for harms, with higher scrutiny for companies with greater historical and current GHG emissions, including fossil fuel companies.
protect the rights of nature, since nature should not be seen exclusively as an object of property and a source of exploitation.
ensure a safe and enabling environment for defenders to operate without threats, restrictions, violence, or the criminalization of their work. This includes preventing and investigating threats or attacks, and
protecting defenders against arbitrary detention, online threats, and SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation).
recognize and support Indigenous Peoples’ self-determination in climate-related decision making, while integrating the knowledge of Indigenous Peoples into climate and environmental strategies, ensuring fair benefit sharing, and protecting the full exercise of their procedural rights, including the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent.

Brazil’s Climate Commitments

Brazil has pledged to eliminate illegal deforestation as a cornerstone of its climate commitments under the Paris Agreement.²⁴⁸ The Brazil Supreme Court has held that Brazil’s commitments to international climate treaties, including the Paris Agreement, are binding on the government under the Brazilian Constitution.²⁴⁹

The Right to a Clean, Healthy, and Sustainable Environment

Both the Inter-American Court of Human Rights²⁵⁰ and the International Court of Justice²⁵¹ have recently found, in landmark advisory opinions, that all people have the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Brazil is a signatory to the 1988 Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights (the Protocol of San Salvador), which states that “everyone shall have the right to live in a healthy environment.”²⁵²

The opinions confirm what was a growing consensus. In 2022, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring access to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment to be a universal human right. The resolution highlighted the way in which a healthy environment is critical to the enjoyment of numerous other human rights.²⁵³ Brazil voted in favor of the resolution. The UN Human Rights Council has also called on all member states to take steps to “respect, protect, and fulfil” the right to a healthy environment.²⁵⁴

The right is also protected in the Brazil Constitution, article 225 of which provides that:

Everyone has the right to an ecologically balanced environment, which is a public good for the people’s use and is essential for a healthy life. The Government and the community have a duty to defend and to preserve the environment for present and future generations.

The same article goes on to say that

Conduct and activities considered harmful to the environment shall subject the violators, be they individuals or legal entities, to criminal and administrative sanctions, irrespective of the obligation to repair the damages caused… The Brazilian Amazonian Forest, the Atlantic Forest, the Serra do Mar, the Pantanal of Mato Grosso, and the Coastal Zone are part of the national patrimony, and they shall be utilized, as provided by law, under conditions assuring preservation of the environment, including use of natural resources.²⁵⁵

The Brazil Supreme Court has held that the failure to take action to mitigate climate change violates the constitutional right to a healthy environment and Brazil’s international commitments under the Paris Agreement.²⁵⁶ According to the court, “there is no legally valid option of simply omitting to combat climate change.”²⁵⁷ In ruling that Brazil’s failure to operationalize its National Climate Fund violated the Constitution, the court cited increased deforestation rates as evidence that Brazil was failing to adequately combat climate change, noting that “in the case of Brazil, land use change and deforestation are among the main activities responsible for GHG emissions.”²⁵⁸

The Right to be Protected from Foreseeable Environmental Harms to Human Rights

Governments have an international human rights obligation to protect populations from foreseeable environmental harms to their human rights, including those linked to climate change. As the International Court of Justice stated in its recent advisory opinion:

In order to guarantee the effective enjoyment of human rights, States must take measures to protect the climate system and other parts of the environment. These measures may include, inter alia, taking mitigation and adaptation measures, with due account given to the protection of human rights, the adoption of standards and legislation, and the regulation of the activities of private actors. Under international human rights law, States are required to take necessary measures in this regard.²⁵⁹

Similarly, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights stated, in its recent advisory opinion, that:

States are obligated to guarantee human rights when they are, or should be, aware of the possibility that the acts or omissions of their agents or of private individuals may create a risk of severe and irreversible damage, within or outside their territory, even when they lack absolute certainty in this regard.²⁶⁰

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has similarly noted:

States must comply with their international obligations to protect and guarantee the enjoyment and exercise of human rights by all persons who, as a result of environmental impacts, including those attributable to climate change, are significantly affected both individually and collectively.²⁶¹

Focusing on climate change, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) has warned that “a failure to prevent foreseeable human rights harms caused by climate change, or a failure to mobilize the maximum available resources in an effort to do so, could constitute a breach” of their human rights obligations.²⁶²

Governments thus have a clear obligation to take legal, regulatory, or legislative steps to prevent foreseeable threats to human rights by businesses and other private actors, including threats due to deforestation, fossil fuel emissions, pollution, and other environmental harm.²⁶³

Protection of Environmental Defenders

Protecting environmental human rights defenders is crucial to the protection of the environment and the human rights that depend on it. The Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1999, makes clear that, “everyone is entitled, individually and in association with others, to be protected effectively under national law in reacting against or opposing, through peaceful means, activities and acts, including those by omission, attributable to States that result in violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as acts of violence perpetrated by groups or individuals that affect the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”²⁶⁴

The UN defines environmental human rights defenders as “individuals and groups who, in their personal or professional capacity and in a peaceful manner, strive to protect and promote human rights relating to the environment, including water, air, land, flora and fauna.”²⁶⁵

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in its recent advisory opinion on state obligations with respect to climate change, noted that states owe a “special duty of protection” to environmental defenders, which requires them to:

(i) recognize, promote, and guarantee the rights of environmental defenders, affirming the relevance of their role in a democratic society and seeking to provide them with the necessary means to adequately exercise their functions. This entails the need to refrain from imposing obstacles on environmental defenders that hinder the effective performance of their activities, stigmatizing them or questioning the legitimacy of their work, harassing them, or in any way facilitating, tolerating, or consenting to their stigmatization, persecution, or harassment;

(ii) guarantee a safe and enabling environment in which human rights defenders can act freely, without threats, restrictions, or risks to their lives, their integrity, or the work they do. This entails a reinforced obligation to prevent attacks, aggression, or intimidation against them, to mitigate existing risks, and to adopt and provide appropriate and effective protection measures in the face of such risk situations, and

(iii) investigate and, where appropriate, punish attacks, threats, or intimidation that human rights defenders may suffer in the performance of their work and, where appropriate, repair any damage that may have been caused. This translates into a reinforced duty of due diligence in the investigation and clarification of the facts that affect them, which, in the case of women defenders, results in a doubly reinforced obligation to conduct investigations with due diligence, by virtue of their dual status as women and defenders.²⁶⁶

Protection of the rights of participation and environmental defenders are at the heart of the Escazù Agreement, the first environmental treaty in Latin America and the Caribbean, which came into force in 2021.²⁶⁷ Brazil signed the agreement in 2018 but has never ratified it.²⁶⁸

Rights of Future Generations

Decisions being taken by those currently living can affect the lives and rights of those born years, decades, or many centuries in the future. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has stressed that, while the rights of children who are present on Earth require immediate urgent attention, the children constantly arriving are also entitled to the realization of their human rights to the maximum extent.²⁶⁹ Beyond their immediate obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, States bear the responsibility for foreseeable environment-related threats arising as a result of their acts or omissions now, the full implications of which may not manifest for years or even decades.²⁷⁰

The Maastricht Principles on the Human Rights of Future Generations, adopted in 2023 and endorsed by nearly sixty leading legal and human rights experts from around the world, seek to clarify the state of international human rights law as it applies to future generations.²⁷¹

According to those principles, states have obligations to respect, protect, and fulfil the human rights of future generations, who have the right to equal enjoyment of all human rights. States and other duty bearers must refrain from any conduct which can reasonably be expected to result in, or perpetuate, any form of discrimination against future generations.²⁷²

Rights of Traditional Peoples and Communities

The rights of traditional peoples and communities have been recognized in both domestic and international law. In 2007, the Federal Government of Brazil established the “National Policy for the Sustainable Development of Traditional Peoples and Communities” (PNPCT) under the Ministry of the Environment, which recognizes and protects the rights of traditional populations, including caboclo, caiçara, extractive, jangadeiro, fisherman, riverside, and rubber tapper, in addition to Indigenous and quilombola.²⁷³

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, approved by the UN General Assembly on November 19, 2018, supports the rights of both indigenous and traditional communities.²⁷⁴ The Declaration, from which Brazil abstained,²⁷⁵ applies to, among others:

any person who engages or who seeks to engage, alone, or in association with others or as a community, in small-scale agricultural production for subsistence and/or for the market, and who relies significantly, though not necessarily exclusively, on family or household labour and other non-monetized ways of organizing labour, and who has a special dependency on and attachment to the land.
any person engaged in artisanal or small-scale agriculture, crop planting, livestock raising, pastoralism, fishing, forestry, hunting or gathering, and handicrafts related to agriculture or a related occupation in a rural area. It also applies to dependent family members of peasants; and
indigenous peoples and local communities working on the land, transhumant, nomadic and semi-nomadic communities, and the landless engaged in the above-mentioned activities.²⁷⁶

It enshrines a broad range of rights critical to traditional communities’ survival, such as land title regularization, access to natural resources, the right to form organizations, participation in policy creation, and comprehensive protections for cultural, economic, and social well-being.

Domestic Laws Related to Land

Brazil’s land use laws and policies have evolved from a system to distribute land to one that reflects the country’s attempts to balance expansion of export-oriented industries, such as cattle and soy, with land use models geared towards maintaining domestic food security, forest protection, and the rights of Indigenous peoples, traditional communities, and smallholder farmers.

The military government adopted the 1964 Land Statute (Law 4504) as a legal framework for land reform.²⁷⁷ This established a new series of legal requirements conditioning private property, known as the “social function of property.” The social function is met when the property meets four criteria: it promotes the welfare of the owners and the workers who toil on it; it maintains satisfactory levels of productivity; it assures the conservation of natural resources; and it observes the laws governing fair working relationships between those who own the land and those who cultivate it.²⁷⁸ Importantly, the Land Statute also gives the government power to expropriate land that does not fulfill this ”social function” for redistribution to smallholders and landless peasants.²⁷⁹ Landowners are entitled to fair compensation for their land, unless they were failing to comply with social, environmental, or labor laws.²⁸⁰

In line with the then-military government’s plan to colonize the Amazon, the National Institute for Colonization and Land Reform (Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária – INCRA) was created in 1970 to implement the Land Statute, oversee the creation of settlements and assist in the division of land along the new Trans-Amazonian Highway.²⁸¹

In 1988, the government’s ability to expropriate property that is not fulfilling its social function was enshrined in the Federal Constitution, affirming the government’s commitment to land reform.²⁸² Article 184 of the Constitution authorizes the state to expropriate a rural property “which is not performing its social function, against prior and fair compensation.”²⁸³

The Forest Code further regulates land use by requiring landowners to maintain a percentage of their land as forested areas, known as Legal Reserves, and to preserve riparian zones.²⁸⁴ In the Amazon that percentage is 80 percent.²⁸⁵ This law aims to reconcile agricultural development with environmental protection, promoting sustainable land use and helping to curb deforestation. It supports the broader legal framework for rural land rights by ensuring that land use meets both ecological and social responsibilities.²⁸⁶

IX. Recommendations

Land regularization and environmental law enforcement are essential to protecting the Amazon’s remaining forests, reducing violence and land conflicts, and upholding the rights of smallholder and traditional communities. This is especially urgent in environmentally differentiated settlements and extractive reserves that are facing acute threats from land invasions, illegal deforestation, and rural violence. As this report documents, communities in legal limbo—without formal land-use documents—are far more vulnerable to land invasions and land grabbing, forced evictions, and intimidation. Delays in land regularization and insufficient state presence undermine both climate and human rights goals, allowing organized criminal networks to operate with impunity in many areas of the Amazon.

Ensuring legal certainty for communities and enforcing Brazil’s environmental laws are among the most effective strategies to combat deforestation and strengthen territorial governance in the Amazon. The Brazilian federal government should urgently prioritize land regularization and environmental enforcement in settlements and reserves at high risk of deforestation, violence, and illegal land speculation, with priority given to the recognition of Indigenous territories, quilombola communities, traditional communities, conservation and sustainable use of forest areas, as well as for land reform, according to Brazilian laws.²⁸⁷ These areas should receive the necessary institutional attention and resources to address documentation backlogs, prevent further forest loss, and guarantee community security.

Wealthy countries should fulfill their financial and technical commitments to help Brazil protect the Amazon, as well as encouraging market access for sustainably harvested products, and technical assistance to strengthen local livelihoods. They should press Brazil to urgently uphold its legal obligations to safeguard environmental defenders, uphold the rights of Indigenous, quilombola, and traditional communities, including to secure tenure of land, recognizing that these measures are essential to conserving the rainforest and guaranteeing the rights of traditional peoples.

Brazil is proposing a new global finance model for forests, the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), designed to reward countries for keeping forests standing. Such initiatives will only succeed if some of the core issues exacerbating vulnerability to land conflicts and invasions are addressed, including land regularization and the chronic institutional abandonment of community conservation areas. TFFF support should be tied to measurable progress on land regularization and ensuring that funds flow directly to extractive reserves and environmentally differentiated settlements, where communities already conserve vast areas of forest under constant threat.

Equally, wealthy nations must confront their own domestic shortcomings. Their continued high emissions, dependence on fossil fuels, inadequate forest protection, and persistent failure to impose robust due diligence requirements on companies importing goods from deforestation-prone regions reflect deep domestic failures. For example, the United States under the Trump administration has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, an international agreement on climate change, and has consistently fallen short of its Amazon Fund pledges, including under the Biden administration.

In Europe, the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR)—designed to ban imports tied to deforestation—has been subject to delays and attempts at weakening its scope. Lawmakers approved a one-year postponement of its start date, while some member states and industrial groups are pushing to introduce a new “no-risk” country category, which would exempt many countries from meaningful scrutiny. These rollbacks would not only compromise the regulation’s integrity—they would erode trust in global climate cooperation. And as this report shows, deforestation is often tied to serious human rights abuses, making strong enforcement not only an environmental imperative but also a human rights obligation.

China, as Brazil’s largest consumer of cattle and soy, has a decisive role in shaping the future of the Amazon. Both governments have already pledged—through the 2023 joint statement on illegal deforestation and reaffirmed in the 2024 COSBAN minutes—to eliminate illegal deforestation from their trade. Yet these commitments have largely gone unmet, even as cattle-driven forest loss, land grabs, and attacks on environmental defenders persist. To move beyond promises, China should ensure its commodity imports are subject to robust safeguards against illegality and rights abuses. It should also channel a portion of its climate and development finance directly toward forest protection—supporting Brazil’s conservation funds and community-led initiatives—and expand business investments beyond large-scale infrastructure and extractives to include non-timber forest products and cooperatives.

To the Brazilian Federal Government

I. Land Rights and Tenure Security

Complete land regularization in community areas by expediting issuance of CDRUs and boundary demarcation in extractive reserves and environmentally differentiated settlements, publishing a backlog-clearance timetable, and preventing new conflicting registrations in regularized areas.
Scale up and fully implement a unified land-registration system integrating SIGEF, SNCR/CNIR, and CAR and require systematic audits to nullify fraudulent titles/deeds; strengthen cartório oversight and enforce digital integration; and ensure two-way interoperability with state systems (e.g., SIGFundiário) to prevent overlaps and illegal land sales.

II. Environmental Law Enforcement and Protection

Ratify and implement the Escazú Agreement, ensuring participation rights and stronger protections for defenders.
Restore and increase funding, staffing, and operational capacity of IBAMA, INCRA, and ICMBio, prioritizing high-deforestation-risk municipalities.
Improve coordination between INCRA, ICMBio, IBAMA, the Federal Police, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office to identify priority areas for intervention in community conservation areas, including mapping high-deforestation-risk settlements and extractive reserves using PRODES/INPE satellite data combined with INCRA settlement data and IBGE socioeconomic indicators.
Encourage federal prosecutors to prioritize investigation and prosecution of land grabbing, environmental crimes, and violence against defenders in community conservation areas.

III. Support for Economic Development and Community Resilience

Incorporate strong social and environmental safeguards into national bioeconomy strategies, ensuring that community conservation areas have priority for incentives and subsidies.
Use sustainable public procurement and school meal purchases to expand market access for community products and to prioritize purchases from cooperatives based in extractive reserves and environmentally differentiated settlements.
Expand federal funding lines, credit, and procurement programs that specifically support cooperatives based in environmentally differentiated settlements and extractive reserves that process, certify, and add value to non-timber forest products.
Publish settlement-level deforestation and conflict profiles by superintendency and target enforcement and public policy interventions toward the most critical areas.

To the Para State Government:

I. Land Rights and Tenure Security

Fully operationalize Implement the Judiciary’s Commission on Land Solutions (Comissão de Soluções Fundiárias) at regional levels in Pará. Ensure dedicated funding, staff, and training within the courts on use of the mediation/technical-visit tools to address conflicts in priority community areas (extractive reserves and environmentally differentiated settlements).
Create oversight mechanisms for notary offices (cartórios) to help ensure that they do not issue or certify fraudulent ownership documents and titles, which contribute to the problem of land grabbing (grilagem) and illegal land sales.
Map and prioritize high-deforestation-risk settlements and extractive reserves, using PRODES/INPE satellite data combined with INCRA settlement data and IBGE socioeconomic indicators.
Publish settlement-level deforestation and conflict profiles by superintendency and target enforcement and public policy interventions toward the most critical areas.

II. Environmental Law Enforcement and Protection

Improve coordination between environmental and criminal investigation units.
Establish rapid response teams to investigate and halt illegal deforestation activities when reported by communities in community conservation areas.
Strengthen SEMAS staffing, analytics, and field capacity; conduct joint operations with IBAMA, ICMBio, and Federal Police focused on critical settlements flagged in the high-risk mapping.

III. Support for Economic Development and Community Resilience

Expand sustainable public procurement (compras públicas sustentáveis) to prioritize products from community conservation areas.
Guarantee basic services (schools, health, digital access, transport) in forest communities to sustain conservation-compatible livelihoods.
Provide infrastructure, technical support, and logistics for community production chains (aggregation centers, processing units, certification, transport), so that products from community conservation can reach broader markets.

To Foreign Governments, Donors, and International Financial Institutions

I. Land Rights and Tenure Security

Support Brazil’s efforts to accelerate land regularization and improve environmental law enforcement in the Amazon through dedicated funding, technical assistance, and capacity building programs.
Provide capacity building for local organizations that provide legal support to threatened communities.

II. Environmental Law Enforcement and Protection

Ensure that all climate, forest, and conservation financing to Brazil includes safeguards that protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples, traditional communities, and smallholder farmers, particularly in areas of high conflict or contested land claims.
Press Brazil to ratify and implement the Escazú Agreement and to protect environmental defenders as a condition for climate and development finance.

III. Support for Economic Development and Community Resilience

Provide long-term, predictable climate finance to Brazil to scale socio-bioeconomy initiatives.
Encourage TFFF funding to be used towards collective land-use certificates in extractive reserves and environmentally differentiated settlements, and require Brazil to earmark a meaningful portion of TFFF inflows for community conservation areas.
Encourage market access for sustainably harvested community products; prioritize products from community conservation areas that benefit local communities, not just large-scale projects; align trade rules with forest conservation.
Ensure strong enforcement of due diligence laws and trade agreements:
- The U.S. should re-enter the Paris Agreement and meet its Amazon Fund pledges.
- The EU should implement and enforce the EUDR without weakening risk categories.
- China should operationalize its 2023–2024 pledges with binding safeguards and direct support to community-led forest economies.
Support infrastructure development for small producers, including appropriate transportation and storage facilities
Fund programs to document and protect traditional knowledge and practices.
Ensure climate finance reaches local and traditional communities protecting forests.

Acknowledgements

This report was researched and written by Sarah Sax, Researcher. Juliana Brandão contributed substantially to the initial drafts and research. Edinaura Silva de Carvalho supplied essential research support in the field. The report was reviewed by Linda Lakhdhir, Legal Director, Brad Adams, Executive Director, and Daniel Wilkinson, Senior Policy Advisor. Sakeena Razick, Program Associate, contributed to the logistics and production.

Special thanks to the expert reviewers for their time and excellent additions, especially Gabriel Suchodolski, Paulo Barretto from IMAZON, as well as Rodolfo Gadelha, Bruno Morais, Leonardo Godoy, and Rairon Sousa Rodrigues from the Center for Climate Crime Analysis. We are grateful also to the residents of the settlements and extractive reserves in Para who shared their experiences with us.

Appendix I: Agency Reponses

Letters sent to agencies:

DECA – Delegacia Especializada em Conflitos Agrários (Specialized Police Unit for Agrarian Conflicts)
IBAMA – Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources)
ICMBio – Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation)
INCRA – Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform)
PPDDH – Programa de Proteção aos Defensores de Direitos Humanos (Human Rights Defenders Protection Program)
SEMAS – Secretaria de Estado de Meio Ambiente e Sustentabilidade (State Secretariat for the Environment and Sustainability)

Responses:

Appendix II: Graphics

Figure 9: PAE Lago Grande – Deforestation (INPE/PRODES 2024). Courtesy of The Center for Climate Crime Analysis. The map on the left shows deforestation in PAE Lago Grande. The bar graph on the right shows deforestation in hectares per year. Deforestation in PAE Lago Grande surged in 2024, with about 1,000 hectares cleared—the highest annual total since 2008. Clearing is concentrated along access roads and near settlements, indicating expanding land occupation and cattle ranching pressure.

Figure 10: PAE Lago Grande – Forest Degradation (INPE/DETER 2024). Courtesy of The Center for Climate Crime Analysis. The map on the left shows areas of forest degradation within PAE Lago Grande. The table on the right quantifies the extent and type of degradation. In 2024, more than 10,000 hectares of forest in PAE Lago Grande were degraded, mostly by fires. The burn scars suggest repeated burning, likely linked to land clearing and pasture maintenance.

Figure 11: PDS Esperança – Deforestation (INPE/PRODES 2024). Courtesy of The Center for Climate Crime Analysis. The map on the left shows deforestation in PDS Esperança. The bar graph on the right shows deforestation in hectares per year. Depiction of deforestation in PDS Esperança on the left. Bar graph showing deforestation in hectares per year on the right. Nearly 700 hectares of forest were cleared in PDS Esperança in 2024, continuing the high deforestation levels seen since 2019. The clearing patterns show expanding pastures and increasingly fragmented forests.

Figure 13: RESEX Renascer – Deforestation (INPE/PRODES 2024). Courtesy of The Center for Climate Crime Analysis. The map on the left shows deforestation in the Renascer Extractive Reserve (RESEX Renascer). The bar graph on the right shows deforestation in hectares per year. In RESEX Renascer, deforestation reached 453 hectares in 2024. Most recent clearings are concentrated in the northern portion of the reserve, near roads and external agricultural fronts.

Figure 14: RESEX Renascer – Forest Degradation (INPE/DETER 2024). Courtesy of The Center for Climate Crime Analysis. The map on the left shows areas of forest degradation the Renascer Extractive Reserve (RESEX Renascer). The table on the right quantifies the extent and type of degradation. Around 870 hectares of forest in RESEX Renascer were degraded in 2024. The majority was classified as non-fire degradation, indicating selective logging.

Figure 15: RESEX Riozinho do Anfrísio – Deforestation (INPE/PRODES 2024). Courtesy of The Center for Climate Crime Analysis. The map on the left shows deforestation in in the Riozinho do Anfrísio Extractive Reserve (RESEX Riozinho do Anfrísio). The bar graph on the right shows deforestation in hectares per year. In 2024, about 458 hectares were cleared in RESEX Riozinho do Anfrísio. The data show that deforestation pressure has remained high over the past five years despite the area’s protected status. While most deforestation has occurred in the northern sector, increases in the inner core in recent years are notable.

Figure 16: RESEX Riozinho do Anfrísio – Forest Degradation (INPE/DETER 2024). Courtesy of The Center for Climate Crime Analysis. The map on the left shows areas of forest degradation within Riozinho do Anfrísio Extractive Reserve (RESEX Riozinho do Anfrísio). The table on the right quantifies the extent and type of degradation. Forest degradation in RESEX Riozinho do Anfrísio totaled 4,290 hectares in 2024, driven mostly by fires, along with signs of mining and logging.

Cover photo: Felled hardwood logs block the entrance to PDS Esperança, a sustainable development settlement in Pará state. Their size, lack of identification tags, and location within a settlement suggest illegal logging activity, a recurring problem reported by residents. Photo credit: Sarah Sax for CRI.

“Chainsaws, Smoke, and Silence”

How Brazil’s neglect of community conservation areas fuels deforestation, violence, and the loss of sustainable livelihoods

Table of Contents

Summary

Key Recommendations

Glossary

Methodology

I. Deforestation and Climate Change in Brazil

II. Origins of Community Conservation Models in the Amazon

Extractive Reserves (RESEX)

Land Reform Settlements

Environmentally Differentiated Settlements

III. Creation and Documentation of Community Conservation Models

Extractive Reserves (RESEX)

Environmentally Differentiated Settlements

Current Challenges in Securing Land Documentation

IV. Deforestation in Community Conservation Areas

V. Threats and Violence against Environmental Defenders

VI. Emblematic Cases

PAE Lago Grande

RESEX Renascer

RESEX Riozinho do Anfrísio

PDS Esperança

VII. Institutional Challenges

Incomplete Land Regularization

Insufficient Resources and Capacity

Institutional Fragmentation and Lack of Coordination

State Support and Government Policies for Local Communities

Looking Ahead

VIII. Relevant Legal Standards

Advisory Opinion of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Brazil’s Climate Commitments

The Right to a Clean, Healthy, and Sustainable Environment

The Right to be Protected from Foreseeable Environmental Harms to Human Rights

Protection of Environmental Defenders

Rights of Future Generations

Rights of Traditional Peoples and Communities

Domestic Laws Related to Land

IX. Recommendations

Acknowledgements

Appendix I: Agency Reponses

Appendix II: Graphics

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