BRAZIL'S FOREST CODE WILL NOT CONTRIBUTE TO RESTAURATION OF MORE THAN 50 MILLIONS HECTARES OF DEFORESTED AREAS

[Reproduced from Science, 25 April 2014: 
Vol. 344 no. 6182 pp. 363-364 
DOI: 10.1126/science.1246663]

• POLICY FORUM

LAND USE

Cracking Brazil's Forest Code

1. Britaldo Soares-Filho1,*, 
2. Raoni Rajão1, 
3. Marcia Macedo1,2, 
4. Arnaldo Carneiro3, 
5. William Costa1, 
6. Michael Coe2,
7. Hermann Rodrigues1, 
8. Ane Alencar4

+Author Affiliations

1. ¹Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG 31270-901, Brazil.
2. ²Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, MA 02540, USA.
3. ³Secretaria de Assuntos Estratégicos da Presidência da República, Brasília, DF 70052-900, Brazil.
4. ⁴Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia, Brasília, DF 71.503-505, Brazil.

1. ↵*Corresponding author: britaldo@csr.ufmg.br

Roughly 53% of Brazil's native vegetation occurs on private properties. Native forests and savannahs on these lands store 105 ± 21 GtCO₂e (billion tons of CO₂ equivalents) and play a vital role in maintaining a broad range of ecosystem services (1). Sound management of these private landscapes is critical if global efforts to mitigate climate change are to succeed. Recent approval of controversial revisions to Brazil's Forest Code (FC)—the central piece of legislation regulating land use and management on private properties—may therefore have global consequences. Here, we quantify changes resulting from the FC revisions in terms of environmental obligations and rights granted to land-owners. We then discuss conservation opportunities arising from new policy mechanisms in the FC and challenges for its implementation.