Brazil Land Governance Assessment

This report on the assessment of land
governance in Brazil summarizes and discusses the results of
a series of standardized self-assessments of the land
governance situation in Brazil, conducted entirely by
Brazilian speakers. Therefore, these findings represent the
perception of local experts based on their experience of
news and data available. The main aim of this report are
federal and state authorities directly involved in land
governance in the evaluated states and other states. The
general objective of the development of this assessment is
to measure reliably the skills and the performance of land
governance in a cross section of the country. This
assessment is highly relevant and timely, as the land and
real estate of natural resources linked to the land are the
central core of the current competitiveness of Brazil and
its strategically valuable position in the changing world
economy. The evaluation methodology was the Assessment
Framework of Land Governance (LGAF) developed by the World
Bank. It focused on five key areas of good land governance
and three additional topics. Key areas were: legal,
institutional and associated policies to land rights;
planning of land use and taxation; identification and
ownership of land management of the state; provision of
public land information; and dispute settlement. The
optional modules used in some evaluations focused on the
large-scale acquisition of land, forestry and the
regularization of land tenure. Based on the LGAF in related
workshops and review of some publications, the review has
identified four areas of relative force on the Brazilian
land governance. They include the guarantee of property
rights, transparency in allocation of public land, public
accessibility of information on registered land and
transparency of increasing concern emerging from the
influence of democratic and social movements. In addressing
these and other areas of reform of land governance, the
efforts of the newly created Inter-ministerial Working Group
on Land Governance (IMWG) will be vital. That is
particularly so because some of the reforms depend on the
consistency of improving legal and institutional framework
for land governance, which is necessarily a collaborative
and cross-sector enterprise. This report therefore calls on
the IMWG to join the Presidents Office to create an annual
and transparent work program, for a period of at least three
years with a regular mechanism of agreed reporting to the
IMWG Office and Civil Office of the Presidency.