DevPolitics

Addressing inequalities in Brazil’s system of land tenure: the example of the Amazonian state of Pará

To date, Brazil has made perhaps less progress with state-led land reform than any other Latin American country. The impetus for most of the land distribution in the Amazon, in fact, has come not from the government but from communities of squatters organized through grassroots movements. In general, public land in Pará can pass to large private owners through occasional offers of land for sale through sealed tenders while small plots of land are sold to colonists in government-sponsored settlement areas. In practice, however, these legal avenues to land ownership are rarely pursued and illegal invasions are the rule in the Amazon.

The combination of unenforceable property rights and a largely destitute landless class has been a major threat in the Amazonian state of Pará, where the formerly landless peasants that successfully fought with the government and large landowners for plots of their own now must face down newly-arriving migrants from neighboring areas as the poor state of Maranhão that are employing the same tactics that they themselves used.  This cycle presents an unsustainable model for the Amazonian economy by making the ultimately finite stock of land the focal point for long-term development while degrading the rain forest, a vital resource for the entire planet.

Because the region is plagued by a web of complex problems, any reform that addresses some problems but not others will likely be doomed to failure.  An attempt to stanch migration from neighboring areas without developing Pará’s own economy will consign the state to a dependence on largely subsistence agriculture from a transient class of farmers that fail to unlock the land’s productive capabilities.  Developing Pará’s economy without addressing the high rates of migration into the state will further exacerbate the influx of settlers and likely lead to an increase in violence.  Doing both without strengthening property rights will ensure that the squatting/expropriation model of land acquisition will persist with no end in sight to the current violence or rapid deforestation.

Property rights in the region can be strengthened through the development of a nationwide land registry and the completed implementation of an already-passed law that mandates the georeferencing of rural land ownership.  In order to stem migration from the neighboring state of Maranhão, the Brazilian government should work to create economic opportunities there while discouraging the incentivization of its residents to seek settlement in Pará.  Finally, the government should invest in Pará’s own development by building local capacity rather than new highways that will do nothing but invite increased colonization and further deforestation.  An integrated approach to development that simultaneously addresses these three main barriers to Amazonian development will have a far greater chance of succeeding than if policies were pursued in the haphazard manner that has characterized Brazilian land reform over the last century.  

 

Give or Sell to the Poor?

On November 29, 2010, I attended the NYU Reynolds Program in Social Entrepreneurship’s “Social Entrepreneurship in the 21^st Century” speaker series with Martin Fisher, Co-Founder and CEO of Kickstart. Fisher gave a presentation on his non-profit organization that sells irrigation pumps to poor farmers (it’s a little more complicated that my one sentence simplification – see the website for more details).

Fisher felt strongly about selling to the poor as opposed to just giving to the poor. He gave the example of water pumps for clean water that were donated and installed by NGO’s – these pumps ended up eventually breaking and the village(s) that the pump was serving would go back to their old ways of getting water instead of fixing the pump. No one claimed ownership of the pump – in Fisher’s words, the “tragedy of the commons”. He argued that selling to the poor creates ownership & can make a greater impact. The only potential problem would be that families in poverty might not have $98 to buy a pump, or see the value in the pump to save enough to buy the pump. Good marketing and payment plans, such as layaway, are part of his solution.

I think it’s an interesting idea and one that has potential. I believe there is room for for-profit/non-profit sector overlap (such as microfinance, and investing in social impacts); I just don’t think we’ve completely figured out a working model yet. Social entrepreneurship is still a relevantly new field and, I think, an exciting one.

Food Production: UN Recommendations

I came across an article in the N.Y. Times addressing current food shortages and the resulting unrest, and thought it was relevant to our recent class discussions.  In particular, the article states, "Wheat prices have risen by 130 percent since March last year, and soy prices have risen 87 percent, the United Nations said, with food now representing from 60 percent to 80 percent of consumer spending in developing countries. In general, the World Bank has said that food prices have climbed some 83 percent worldwide over the last three years."

I would encourage you to read the full article--it is a very interesting compliment to our class readings(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/world/europe/16food.html?ref=world).

Land Reform and Ethnic Homogeneity

A belated follow-up to the discussion on land reform in Latin America which we'll return to in the week on asset reforms..the real discussion in response to that question is long and complicated and deserving of a more complete hearing.

I think Ramona's argument that land reform is most likely in countries that are ethnically or racially homogenous Iie, Asia versus Latin America) may be a useful hypothesis (it's an argument that's often made about any kind of large-scale social or economic policy reform --ie, why welfare state policies are more generous in Scandinavia that in more ethnically pluralist societies).

But here's why I would raise some overall doubts about it as at least incomplete or mis-specified. First, it doesn't help explain why no substantive land reform in countries that are more ethnically homogenous (ie, the Philippines), suggesting it may be something other than the homogeneity issue. Second, I think one can make the argument that land reform in Latin America has been substantial at various times -- Mexico, Peru under Velasco, Colombia, Nicaragua, Cuba, and land reforms that transferred substantial territory to indigenous communities in both Bolivia and Ecuador in the 1990s. Even Brazil's land reforms have been not insignificant, if smaller.

I think the reality that many Latin American land reforms were either the outcome of revolution or in response to significant rural mobilization/unrest (or as a means to consolidate a new regime as in Velasco in Peru) is paralleled in Asia -- South Korea and Taiwan were respodning to threats to the regime, threats lead by peasant mobilization. I would argue more that it was the scale and scope of rural threat prior to industrialization that would determine the degree to which large-scale land reform occurred..(and why many of the Latin American land reforms involved transfer of public lands rather than confiscatory land reforms as in Asia or post-revolutionary situations).