Implementing Brazil’s Forest Code: a vital contribution to securing forests and conserving biodiversity

As a mega-diverse country, with two of the world’s biodiversity hotspots (Myers et al. 2000) and the world’s largest remaining expanse of tropical rain forest, Brazil has helped to set global objectives on halting biodiversity loss. However, many Brazilian species and ecosystems are under increasing pressure, with agricultural expansion and related land use change being major threats here (de Mello et al. 2015; Moura et al. 2013; de Castro Solar et al. 2016), as they are globally (Newbold et al. 2015). In 2019 annual rates of deforestation in the Amazon reached their highest level in a decade (PRODES 2019). Although the majority of land owners abide by deforestation laws, not all do and this contributes to the overall rate of deforestation (Rajão et al. 2020).

Brazil’s national biodiversity targets, which mirror the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Aichi targets, aim to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss, reduce direct pressures on biodiversity, promote sustainable use, and improve the status of biodiversity (MMA 2016). The national targets to be achieved by 2020 include significantly reducing the risk of extinction of threatened species (target 12) and at least halving the rate of loss of native habitats (relative to 2009 rates; target 5; MMA 2016).

Brazil has also set ambitious objectives for contributing to climate change mitigation by reducing land-use related and other greenhouse gas emissions. Its nationally determined contribution (NDC) to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement includes policies and measures for achieving zero illegal deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon by 2030 (Federative Republic of Brazil 2015).

Given anticipated increases in population size, demand for agricultural goods (OECD/FAO 2016), and pressure for agricultural expansion, meeting these biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation objectives requires effective design, implementation and enforcement of policies, laws and regulations. Brazil’s main tool for regulating land use change on private lands is the Natural Vegetation Protection act, (Law n° 12,651, commonly known as the ‘Forest Code’, FC), which was revised in 2012 and establishes region-specific legal limits to the amount of deforestation that can occur on a private property (Table 1). Growing pressures and threats to Brazil’s fauna triggered the Brazilian government to list those species facing the highest degree of threat, and work to develop conservation action plans and strategies for all listed species (MMA 2016). However, recently, Brazil’s government has decreased environmental protections (Rochedo et al. 2018).

Making good decisions on the design, implementation and enforcement of policies, laws and regulations, requires clear understanding of potential risks, benefits and trade-offs. Previous modelling studies (e.g. Soares-Filho et al. 2014; Soterroni et al. 2018) and reviews (Brancalion et al. 2016) have explored the potential impacts of the effective implementation of the FC on land use change, or the impact of land use change on Brazilian species (Soares-Filho et al. 2006; Bird et al. 2012; Strassburg et al. 2012; de Castro Solar et al. 2016). Other studies have assessed the impact of the FC on biodiversity in particular biomes (Brandão et al. 2020; Strassburg et al. 2017; Vieira et al. 2018). However, comprehensively determining the potential contribution of FC implementation and enforcement to achieving conservation targets for threatened species, and any potential trade-offs between the impacts on different biomes and targets, requires assessing the implications for land use change across all of Brazil and the associated impacts on species. This is especially true for biomes other than the Amazon, including the Caatinga (Santos et al. 2011) and non-forest ecosystems, which have often been omitted from previous assessments (Overbeck et al. 2015). Furthermore, since the annual rate of deforestation in the Amazon has been increasing since 2012 (PRODES 2019), and there have been recent reductions in environmental regulations (Rochedo et al. 2018), we urgently need to assess and compare the potential risks of not fully implementing or enforcing the provisions of the FC with the benefits of doing so.

To this end, we are using the GLOBIOM-Brazil model (Soterroni et al. 2018; Soterroni et al. 2019) a regional version of the global land use partial equilibrium model GLOBIOM (Havlík et al. 2011, 2014). GLOBIOM-Brazil simulates the competition for land among the main sectors of the land use economy (agriculture, forestry and bioenergy) by maximizing the sum of consumer and producer surpluses subjected to resource, technology and policy restrictions. The demand is driven by gross domestic product (GDP) and population growth, and dietary trends derived from the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) (O’Neill et al. 2014). On the supply side, production is endogenously adjusted to meet the demand for all 30 regions represented in the model, including Brazil. As a result of the maximization of the welfare, the equilibrium quantities and prices are obtained for each region and product. The model projects the extent and spatial distribution of land use change that these demands for agricultural goods may result in. It allows changes between all different land uses (e.g. pasture to agriculture, and forest to pasture) in order to meet the agricultural demands in the most economically efficient way. GLOBIOM-Brazil reflects Brazil’s specificities and captures the major trends of land use including deforestation and agriculture expansion during the historical period, which gives confidence in the model projections. We used the scenarios from Soterroni et al. 2018 to explore land use changes associated with some of the provisions included in the FC (Table 1), linking this to potential economic, productivity and emissions impacts. These scenarios show the effect of the different provisions of the forest code by imposing or relaxing restrictions on land use transitions. Here, we assess the potential impacts on biodiversity of Soterroni’s GLOBIOM-Brazil land use change projections across the country’s 6 terrestrial biomes and in relation to priority areas for biodiversity conservation. We show where projected land use change threatens biodiversity and highlight the relative impacts of different provisions included in the FC.

The FC was enacted to help meet biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and sustainable development objectives. Our analysis shows that, on the whole, full implementation and enforcement of the FC would benefit biodiversity by reducing habitat loss for many species and supporting the conservation of forest-dependent biodiversity especially in the Amazon and Cerrado, although other areas may face additional pressures. Effective prevention of illegal deforestation is essential to help achieve the FC goals. Recent deforestation trends most closely follow the imperfect deforestation control policy scenario (IDC_Imperfect, Soterroni et al. 2018). Although the majority of farmers comply with deforestation laws, illegal deforestation does occur with large impacts on total deforestation rates (Rajão et al. 2020). Our results show that increasing enforcement of deforestation restrictions could reduce habitat loss for many species, but also that any further reduction in enforcement greatly increases the risk of more species losing a large proportion of their habitat. With sufficient national and international will and resources, the land registries developed as part of the FC and Brazil’s extensive monitoring programmes mean that national public monitoring systems that enforce environmental compliance at property level are possible and could substantially reduce deforestation within Brazil’s major supply chains (Rajão et al. 2020). However, further measures beyond the current FC would be needed to prevent ongoing biodiversity loss.

Our analysis highlights the importance of assessing policy impacts across the widest possible scale. The Caatinga, Cerrado and Pantanal are potentially subject to greater impacts from full implementation of the FC than elsewhere in Brazil. The Caatinga and Cerrado biomes have lost substantial amounts of natural vegetation in the past three decades (Beuchle et al. 2015; Strassburg et al. 2017). The GLOBIOM-Brazil projections suggest that such pressure will continue, threatening the biodiversity of non-forest ecosystems (Overbeck et al. 2015; Strassburg et al. 2017). We show that, for biodiversity objectives, discourse on, and effective implementation of, the FC clearly needs to go beyond forests.

The Cerrado biome has the richest flora among the world's savannas (>7000 species) and high levels of endemism (Klink and Machado 2005). The region’s fauna depends on the maintenance of its wide range of habitat types (Pacheco and Vasconcelos 2012; de Mello et al. 2015). While the model does not differentiate among the more local and specialized habitats, our results suggest that attention to the less-forested Cerrado ecosystems may be warranted, as has been highlighted by other recent studies (Brandão et al. 2020; Durán et al. 2020). The case of the Caatinga is particularly worrisome as little conservation action has so far targeted this biome (Santos et al. 2011). Despite some recognition of the need to increase legal protection (Leal et al. 2005), the proportion of the Caatinga included in protected areas remains low. Although the model limits the agricultural expansion in the Caatinga to its historical trends to take account of water availability constraints (a short and irregular rainy season and propensity to frequent droughts), introduction of irrigation techniques and new agricultural technologies could foster agricultural expansion here. Thus, special provisions may be needed to protect the Caatinga and its endemic biodiversity.

How specific regulations within the FC are implemented is also critical to its biodiversity impact, in particular on how well species colonise areas of regenerating forest. Such areas often support different species and communities compared to primary forests, and it can take up to 300 years for biodiversity to recover when forest regenerates (Liebsch et al. 2008). Therefore, it is unlikely that all species will quickly recolonise reforested areas. Overall, forest regrowth can compensate greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, but biodiversity loss is not as easily reversed. Techniques that facilitate recovery of natural forest (e.g. soil management, planting native species and maintenance of, and connectivity with, natural remnants) may promote forest species colonization of restored forest (Chazdon 2013). Therefore, efforts at ecological restoration are likely to be essential to maximising the positive biodiversity impacts of the restoration requirements within the FC.

Although the analysis did not identify a large difference in the number of species losing or gaining habitat with the CRA mechanism, it suggests that fast and effective implementation of the CRA (i.e. enabling farmers to reduce their restoration requirements by conserving areas of mature forest in other locations) could protect existing habitats, including high biodiversity forest areas. Our analysis may have underestimated the impact on species of protecting existing habitat due to the resolution of the analysis. The analysis was not able to differentiate between old and new growth forest, nor between abandoned farmland and other natural land, and so is likely to have underestimated the impact of land use change on species which require old growth forest or undisturbed other native vegetation. Future work is needed to explore the likely added benefit to species of prioritising CRA credits in areas of highest biodiversity priority. Additionally, land use planning at smaller scales than that evaluated by GLOBIOM-Brazil (e.g. local watershed) can help maintain biodiversity while meeting production needs (Kennedy et al. 2016).

This model-based assessment addresses only some of the impacts of agriculture and forestry related land use change on biodiversity. The relatively coarse resolution of GLOBIOM-Brazil meant that another important driver, forest fragmentation (Almeida-Gomes et al. 2016), could not be considered, and neither were infrastructure development (Laurance et al. 2015; Lees et al. 2016) or hunting (De Souza and Alves 2014) accounted for. Over the longer term, land use change and other threats are likely to interact with climate change (Brodie et al. 2012), with important implications for Brazilian biodiversity.

While no single specific model or scenario exercise can cover all threats faced by species and ecosystems, models and scenarios are key tools for guiding development and implementation of policies. Like other land use related polices, the FC was developed to help meet a range of objectives. Our work helps in developing a holistic understanding of the potential benefits of fully implementing and enforcing the FC, and the risks of not doing so.

Overall, the full and effective enforcement of the FC can be good for biodiversity, especially if additional measures are put into place to protect areas such as native vegetation in the Caatinga and Cerrado, which may be under increased pressure due to FC implementation and enforcement elsewhere.