Land Titling and Other Land Issues in Livestock-Related Deforestation

One of the major determinants of livestock-related deforestation in the humid tropics has been land tenure regimes under which clearing forest for pasture has been the easiest way to claim legal title to it. In different countries of Latin America, this has been the case both where land tenure has been ill-defined and anarchic, and where codified land laws have been in place, formally allowing the occupation of unoccupied forest land. In some cases land law has specifically permitted title to larger areas of pasture than of crops. De jure or de facto title to land has been sought for a number of overlapping reasons:

Real land prices have consistently risen over the long term in many (but not all) parts of the humid Latin American tropics, partly reflecting increasing access through road building. Nominal prices have risen even more strongly because of inflation. This has led to land speculation, which in some circumstances has become self-perpetuating.

In some areas, clearing land has been a strategy for large landowners to prevent squatting, or pre-empt government programmes to expropriate "idle" land.

Clearing a portion of forest for pasture has in some cases allowed settlers to claim timber or mineral rights over adjoining areas.

Research/Appraisal Methods

Firstly, the precise nature of incentives for forest clearing presented by the laws should be established through review of those laws. Where the right to legislate on or regulate land claims and land transfers is devolved to local bodies, geographical variations must be documented. Direct research among producers, both through structured survey and PRA-type methods can be useful in establishing producer motives for claiming and transferring land, but both methods must be treated with caution where informal land markets are concerned. The comparison of local trends in land prices against the consumer price index is a crude measure of whether speculation is likely to be a motive for land clearing. If land registration systems exist and are in good order, the frequency of land transfers is another useful measure.

Policy Options

It is imperative that land tenure systems be reformed to make it more difficult and less attractive to claim tenure through forest clearing (click here for land tenure reform). Related policy options include:

Establishment of protected areas
Land taxation
Critical appraisal of road building

Key references

Kaimowitz, D. 1995. Livestock and Deforestation in Central America in the 1980s and 1990s: A Policy Perspective. EPTD Discussion Paper, IFPRI, Washington DC, 1995. Click to view as Word document . (further information including copies of the report can be obtained from IFPRI at http://www.iimi.org/ifpri)

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