Governments of the Legal Amazon loose resources due to lack of investments in forestry concessions

A week ago, the Senate approved changes to the Public Forest Management Law, expanding the list of sustainable economic activities allowed within public forest concessions (Provisional Measure 1.151/2022), increasing their economic attractiveness.

Now, Instituto Escolhas deepens the debate in its policy brief The wasted potential of state forestry concessions in the Legal Amazon. Issued on this Monday, May 15, 2023, the publication organizes data that show how the states of the region have neglected concessions and the resources that they could generate.

Over 96% of the state public forests in Brazil – equivalent to 76 million hectares – are located in the Legal Amazon. Of the amount eligible for concession, only 551 thousand hectares are under concession with an effective contract – nine management units in Pará and one in Amapá. The current situation of each state is detailed in the policy brief.

“Forest concessions are an important ally to combat deforestation, since the public forest areas under concession can be managed for productive activities or provision of sustainable services, while generating resources for state conservation actions and local employment and income. By not creating the conditions to implement forest concessions, the states commit a strategic error or, as we showed in the policy brief, a waste of resources”, states Jaqueline Ferreira, portfolio manager of Instituto Escolhas.

Provided for by the Public Forest Management Law, forest concessions were created in 2006, when Marina Silva was in her first term as Minister of the Environment, to encourage the development of economic activities based on sustainable forest management by companies, community associations or cooperatives. The legal mechanism applies to federal or state public forests.

In that territory, the only states that developed their Annual Forestry Concession Plans, the so-called PAOF, were Acre, Amazonas, Amapá and Pará – with emphasis on the last two that, in fact, implement the concession policy. Mato Grosso, Maranhão, Rondônia, Roraima, and Tocantins have not yet begun to implement the concessions policy. Together, these five states hold 7.4 million hectares of state forests that have not even been analyzed as eligible or not for concession.

Read the document here.