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Governance and policy constraints of natural forest regeneration in the Brazilian Amazon

Published Article

Brazil

Publication date: September 10, 2024

File format: URL

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Brazil’s Native Vegetation Protection Law requires restoration of native vegetation, but Amazonian states differ in how they regulate and evaluate natural regeneration. This study reviews seven state Environmental Compliance Programs to assess implementation gaps, clarify how regeneration is defined and identify improvements needed to ensure effective, legally secure restoration across the region.

Subject Tags

  • Forest
  • Policy

Abstract

Environmental legislation requires well-defined concepts, criteria and indicators to support its effective implementation and provide legal security to the diverse stakeholders involved. The Native Vegetation Protection Law (NVPL) establishes the obligation to restore native vegetation in protected areas within rural properties. This federal law is regulated and implemented by each state through its own Environmental Compliance Program (Programa de Regularização Ambiental [PRA], in Portuguese). Landowners must register their land, indicate whether native vegetation needs to be restored (i.e., if there is an environmental debt) and submit a restoration plan to the state government for analysis, validation and approval. Due to the high cost of forest restoration, natural regeneration has most likely become a viable strategy for Amazonian landowners to meet their environmental debts. However, according to disturbance intensity, frequency and duration, natural regeneration will not always succeed. In this context, we analyzed the PRAs of the seven main Amazonian states to assess the status of their implementation, identify how natural regeneration is defined and approached in the law and evaluate whether improvements in the law are needed to ensure effective restoration to accomplish the NVPL.

Citation

Vieira, I. C., Giles, A., do Espírito Santo, M. M., Mesquita, R. C., Vieira, D. L., Massoca, P., ... & Jakovac, C. C. (2025). Governance and policy constraints of natural forest regeneration in the Brazilian Amazon. Restoration Ecology, 33(1), e14272. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.14272

TNC Authors

  • Milena F. Rosenfield
    The Nature Conservancy