Recent changes in the legislation favoring land grabbing (grilagem) and non-fulfillment of the socio-environmental function of land in Brazil

Abstract

The scenario of democratic instability and dismantling of public policies, which has marked Brazil since 2016, is also made up of changes and disruption of agrarian and socio-environmental policies. A remarkable change took place with the edition of Provisional Measure No. 759, in December 2016, by President Michel Temer, converted into Law 13,465, on July 11, 2017. Changes and dismantling, caused by Law 13,465, were deepened with the editions of the Decrees, regulating aspects of the settlement policy (titling and recognition, for example) and the regularization of illegal tenure of public lands throughout the country. The analysis of this dismantling is based on a historical review of aspects of Brazilian agrarian legislation, from Portuguese colonization to the establishment of the socio-environmental function of land in the 1988 Constitution. The analyses, explaining the destruction of policies and land grabbing, extend to legislative and executive proposals in progress. Discussions of MP 910, edited in 2019, but expired in 2020, include aspects of the Bills 2.633/2020 and 510/2021, and other legal measures and Normative Instructions, such as IN 105/2021, which instituted the Program Titula Brasil (Brazil Titling).