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This paper analyses the potential implications of the proposed European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and the recently adopted United Kingdom (UK) legislation on deforestation-free supply chains (henceforth 'the legislation') for different stakeholders in Brazil. These regulations intend to address global commodity-driven deforestation and forest degradation by ensuring that targeted commodities and products placed on (or exported from) markets are of minimal risk of being associated with - in the EU - deforestation and forest degradation or - in the UK - illegal deforestation. The paper examines potential compliance readiness in cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soybean and tropical timber supply chains in Brazil, indicating specific challenges that may arise. Through the construction of a "Compliance Likelihood Index", our research provides comparable indications to policymakers on sectors and stakeholders that may need stronger support to meet the requirements, in order to maintain Brazil's access to EU and UK markets. The paper indicates that coffee is the sector with the highest level of incentivization and smallest hurdles for compliance, while the cattle sector may face stronger challenges to rapidly adjust its production system towards a deforestation-free value chain and prove compliance. Results of our analysis also highlight the need for collaboration between the EU/UK and Brazil in order to promote alignment between domestic and demand-side legislations so that they are mutually reinforcing. Results of this exercise, which has a focus on the producer-country view of demand-side legislation, will contribute to discussions on the merits of different approaches to strengthen the governance of deforestation-risk commodity trade. [Display omitted] • Brazil's coffee sector may currently have the greatest likelihood of ready compliance. • Cattle may be the sector to which the regulations may pose the greatest challenges. • The EU and UK should focus on providing financial means and technical assistance for smallholders. • The EU and UK legislation will need to be accompanied by domestic policies and regulations in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental degradation and economic development are two of the most pressing issues facing the world today, and public policy that aims to address one of these may unintentionally affect the other. I study the effect of an increase in environmental law enforcement on local economic conditions in rural Brazil. In the first part of this paper, I use data on more targeted anti-deforestation law enforcement activities, guided by satellite alerts, and link that to local forest conversion. I then exploit the staggered introduction of a policy that increases monitoring and enforcement in municipalities with a history of high deforestation, and link this to a range of economic development outcomes. I find that more targeted law enforcement reduces conversion rates of forest to farm land. Furthermore, economic conditions in municipalities with stricter monitoring improve, indicating that environmental enforcement and economic development need not be at odds. • Targeted law enforcement in Amazon Biome of Brazil reduces deforestation. • Economic conditions in municipalities with stricter deforestation-monitoring improve. • GDP per capita is higher, and number of recipients of income support lower in targeted municipalities. • Environmental enforcement and economic development need not be at odds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Deforestation-induced rainfall changes negatively impact soybean and maize yields in Brazil. • Soybean and maize yields could have been 6.6 % and 9.9 % higher per year if rainfall patterns hadn't been altered by deforestation. • Agricultural efficiency improvements insufficient to counteract rainfall-changes effects on yields. • Study underscores the vital role of forest preservation for agricultural resilience and food security. • Forests' critical role in regulating the water cycle highlighted in the face of climate change. Whereas the global demand for food, fiber and energy is increasing, the capacity of ecosystems services to sustain agricultural production is being compromised worldwide. Brazil is a global food supplier that has benefitted from agricultural intensification in the past decades. At the same time, expansion of cropland has led to deforestation that, in turn, is increasingly affecting rainfall patterns thereby influencing crop yields. This study examines how loss in forest cover has impacted agricultural yields through change in rainfall. To do so, we use modelled data on changes in rainfall patterns due to deforestation as input to a crop model. We assess yield changes within the soybean-maize double cropping system, the country's most relevant agricultural system, in five states within the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. Findings revealed that soybean and maize yields would have been respectively 6.6 % and 9.9 % higher per year in the last decade if rainfall patterns hadn't been altered by deforestation from 1982 onwards. Although agricultural efficiency improved between 2011 and 2020, it was insufficient to offset the negative effect of altered rainfall on yields. Our paper reveals the link between deforestation and crop yields, emphasizing the need to preserve forest cover for agricultural resilience and food security. It reinforces the critical role of forests in regulating the water cycle, particularly in the face of climate change-induced warmer and drier conditions that can impact agricultural production and other human activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After forest governance reforms by the Brazilian government, Amazon deforestation rates dropped by almost 80% between 2004 and 2012. Since then, however, deforestation has slowly increased again, casting doubts on the long-term sustainability of past conservation policy achievements. Clearly, deforestation rates and the associated local drivers of land-use and land-cover change differ considerably across the region, and adapting public policies to dynamic local contexts and actor constellations remains a major challenge for decision-makers. This paper seeks to contribute to the related science-policy debate by applying frontier theory insights to map, quantify, and compare land-cover dynamics in the Brazilian Amazon between 2004 and 2015. Our theoretical framework performs well in explaining broad variations in scope, nature, and agents of land-use and land-cover change across different frontier regions. We observe two types of transformative processes at deforestation frontiers in the Amazonian context. First, recent frontier development is characterized by an intensification of cattle ranching, and an increasing share of agricultural activities in the production portfolio, which could be the result of better access to modern technologies and markets, combined with forest governance induced scarcity of land for expansion of historically dominant extensive pasture systems. Second, the share of medium and large-scale deforestation declines at first, but rebounds during the observation period in all frontier types after 2012. Further research is needed to better understand the role of the changing political environment in driving these medium and short-term transformations in land-use and land-cover change. Furthermore, policy-makers, international cooperation, and civil society must seek strong integration between value chain based governance measures and effective environmental law enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cattle ranching in Brazil is a key driver of deforestation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The Brazilian government plans to reduce national GHG emissions by at least 36%, partly by reducing emissions in the livestock sector through strategies such as intensification, pasture improvement, and rotational grazing. In response, sustainability programs promoting these practices have begun operation. Though studies have previously investigated aspects of GHG emissions and sequestration in improved pastures, they have not linked improvements with programmatic interventions. We surveyed 40 cattle ranchers located in the Brazilian Amazon biome to investigate how GHG emissions differed between farms participating in livestock sustainability programs with intensified production and farms not participating in these programs. We found that participating farms produced 8.3 kg of CO 2 e/kg of carcass weight (CW) less than did non-participating farms, which represents 19% fewer emissions. Farms that had participated in a sustainability program for at least two years showed larger differences in emissions: 19.0 kg of CO 2 e/kg CW less for program farms compared with their counterparts, or 35.8% fewer emissions. Key drivers of the total CO 2 e/kg CW in all farms were enteric fermentation and manure management. This paper provides farm-level data supporting intensification as a possible strategy to reduce emissions per kilogram of beef produced, and suggests that future research efforts should focus on long-term impacts of intensification and expand metrics for success beyond GHG calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between human welfare and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazonia has traditionally been thought to follow a boom-and-bust pattern. According to this pattern, forest clearing triggers rapid increases in human welfare levels (“the boom”) due to short-term economic gains; these levels then drop to below national or regional averages (“the bust”) after the forest stocks have declined, thus causing the local populations to become deprived of ecosystem services. However, recent studies have questioned the validity of this boom-and-bust pattern. In this paper, we use panel data and simultaneous autoregressive models to evaluate the effects of deforestation, urbanization, public investments, agriculture, and state policies on temporal changes in human welfare that occurred across multiple municipalities in the Brazilian Amazonia from 2005 to 2012, a period during which governments implemented a set of strategies aimed at controlling deforestation across the region. We found that: (a) signals of a boom-and-bust pattern are weak at the regional level, and therefore this pattern cannot be generalized across the entire region; (b) human welfare is increasing more rapidly in low-development municipalities than in high-development cities, and all municipalities are converging on at least one regional average rather than on a national average; (c) urbanization does not lead to positive changes in human welfare, which indicates that the infrastructure available in regional urban centers is limited; (d) public investments are negatively associated with human welfare growth, thus signifying that if public investments are not used to leverage the potential of other sectors of the local economy, human welfare will not improve; (e) agriculture is negatively associated with positive changes in human welfare at the local level, possibly due to the dominance of cattle-ranching as the predominant economic activity of this sector; and (f) state-level policies matter, and future analyses of regional trends in the realm of development and conservation across this region should take such policies into account. Finally, we suggest that although human welfare and deforestation retain a weak statistical relationship, we cannot contend that they have been fully decoupled. Forest loss across the region is still pervasive, and institutions are too weak to sustain the transition from a frontier development model to a conservation-centered model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brazil was the first country to submit a reference level (RL) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) aiming to claim results-based payments for reduced emissions from deforestation in the REDD+ mechanism. This voluntary RL submission has passed an official technical assessment process by the UNFCCC on the accordance of the data and method applied, which was finalised in December 2014. After years of international negotiations this has become possible by the REDD+ framework finally agreed. Although never formally adopted, the rules of procedure of the UNFCCC foresee consensus among the 196 parties to the convention. Due to the wide heterogeneity in national circumstances and capacities between these parties, the decided REDD+ framework represents a compromise, and in some points space for interpretation remains due to a lack of clear definitions. E.g., no internationally standardised method exists for the design of RLs under UNFCCC; rather each country has the possibility to apply its own approach within a given range of requirements. We argue that these nationally designed RLs involve the danger of raising a ‘cherry-picking’ mentality, which would reduce cost-efficiency of the payments. Especially in the light of the ongoing pressure to fight anthropogenic global climate change, the overall objective of REDD+ should be climate effectiveness. Therefore, apparently contradictory objectives—of integrating as many developing countries as possible, by keeping the barriers low, and of effective emission reductions by persisting on strict rules for national carbon accounting—had to be balanced. According to the technical assessment by the UNFCCC, the submitted Brazilian RL fulfils all formal requirements. However, as implication of the negotiated framework, there remain some questions on the climate effectiveness and the cost-efficiency of the submitted approach, which this viewpoint paper aims to critically reflect. Brazil chose for its present RL design the eligible options of a subnational coverage, with consideration of the activity of deforestation only. But only comprehensive accounting of all activities on national scale can ensure that all potential emissions are accounted for. By the present accounting gap, doubts on climate effectiveness arise. Furthermore, Brazil chose a fixed starting year for historic emissions and did not consider national circumstances, which results in reference emissions of about 1100 Mt CO 2 /a between 2006 and 2010. This potentially profitable RL setting for Brazil raises doubt on the cost-efficiency of the implied REDD+ payment. Whether these problems arising from the four eligible but critical RL options applied by Brazil emerge in other RLs as well, was checked for further five RL proposals submitted up to now. None of these country submissions has passed the technical assessment yet. The submitted approaches for RL design differ among the considered countries but one can see a tendency towards profitable individual RL definitions, similar to the Brazilian RL. From our findings we conclude that individually determined RLs without standardised methods bear the risk of national ‘cherry-picking’ which can compromise climate effectiveness and cost-efficiency of the whole REDD+ mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way vegetation is officially named, classified, and identified has critical implications for ecosystems and biodiversity conservation. Yet little attention is given to how such issues hinder the efficacy of laws mandating environmental conservation on private land. In the Brazilian Amazon where half of the land is now already under private tenure or is available for future land-uses, differences in vegetation mapping and interpretation directly affect the level of protection in private rural properties, especially in transition areas where forest and savanna areas intermingle. Since Brazil's Native Vegetation Protection Law (NVPL) attaches a higher percentage of protection to forest-located properties, landowners may be tempted to use conflicting mappings and different vegetation classifications to claim their properties are located in areas other than forests to reduce their conservation requirements. In this paper, we compare three official vegetation databases and examine different law interpretation scenarios to assess the extent to which the level of private conservation may fluctuate. We found a difference of up to 430,000 km2 of protected vegetation (an area the size of Iraq) according to the database and vegetation characteristics chosen. This technical ambiguity may lead to make additional deforestation legal or reduce sharply the amount of vegetation to be restored for these areas, if left unaddressed. Clarifying the database and criteria used to define forest is critical, especially as Brazilian states may make different choices in that regard, and cases in which loopholes are exploited occurred in the recent past. Given the importance of this region for global biodiversity conservation and climate, we highlight the urgent need to: (1) support additional research to clarify vegetation characteristics and location; (2) agree on a harmonized methodology to determine forests for NVPL implementation, and (3) explore alternative criteria for defining forests when databases conflict. • Accurate native vegetation mapping is key to private forest conservation. • Uncertain vegetation classification weakens compliance with Brazil's forest law. • Study provides scenarios exploring the implications of multiple vegetation databases. • 430,000 square kilometers of the Brazilian Amazon are at risk of reduced protection. • Both deforestation and native vegetation restoration are affected by this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper maps the availability of deforested and degraded land in the state of Pará in the eastern Amazon and discusses the feasibility of using this land for the expansion of palm crops for biodiesel production. The ultimate objective is to highlight land that is suitable for palm oil and its availability/distribution, so that the palm oil expansion envisaged by the Brazilian Government’s Sustainable Palm Oil Program can be achieved in a sustainable way. The analysis is developed with the support of geoprocessing techniques that pull data together from different sources, including the Agroecological Zoning (ZAE) developed for palm oil in Brazil and degraded land data. The analysis identifies some of the challenges faced when planning and monitoring the expansion of palm oil in the Amazon, including the need for an operational concept to identify and use degraded land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper analyzes frontier expansion in the Brazilian Amazon as a process that depends on multiple exogenous and endogenous factors operating at diverse scales, but whose trajectory depends on the dominant actor type (smallholders or medium- or large-scale landholders) occupying the frontier landscape. Despite the broad growing trend of pasture expansion for adoption of cattle ranching as the main land use associated with frontier expansion, some differences persist across actor types. In relative terms, medium- and large-scale landholders place most of their cleared forestland under pasture, and in absolute terms, largeholders have deforested more than smallholders because they hold larger tracts of land. Recently, however, deforestation activity has been increasing in frontiers occupied by smallholders who tend to convert a greater proportion of the forestland in their landholdings to agricultural land uses than larger-scale landholders, mainly to expand cattle ranching operations. Furthermore, smallholders tend to maintain higher cattle stocking rates than medium- and large-scale landholders, which tend to adopt extensive systems of cattle production. Both economic and human development indices in each frontier type vary according to actor type. While in absolute terms, higher per capita agricultural income levels are found in frontiers where largeholders predominate, the corresponding incomes are higher in smallholder frontiers when prorated by unit of land under crops and pasture. In addition, the Human Development Index is higher in frontiers with greater presence of large-scale landholdings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The red ceramic industry in Brazil, consisting of over 7000 companies, requires large amounts of thermal energy, currently being met mainly by native fuelwood, which causes serious deforestation and soil erosion problems. The use of firewood does not allow achieving good energy performance in industrial ceramic kilns, causing high energy losses, low productivity and low quality products (bricks and roof tiles). Thus, to implement higher added value products, besides mitigate environmental problems caused by deforestation, the use of natural gas by the sector seems to be a promising alternative. Brazil’s natural gas market has grown at a fast pace in recent years. Its share in the country’s primary energy consumption increased from 3.7% to 9.3% between 1998 and 2007, compared to almost 21% in the world. The development of the Brazilian natural gas industry was grounded on stepping up supplies through integration with Bolivia from where natural gas is imported, together with fiscal incentives for promoting the demand. This paper estimates that the natural gas market that could be developed in the Brazilian red ceramic industry corresponds to less than 5% of the total industrial natural gas consumption, meaning that a major technological transformation of the country’s red ceramic industry will not severely affect the natural gas market equilibrium, contributing to reduce the country’s high rates of deforestation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper examines the interactions between state-led land reform, agrarian structures, and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Land reform tends to promote land redistribution through regularization of smallholder land invasions of large-scale landholdings, and by redistribution of public lands to smallholders in existing colonization frontiers. The implications of state-led land reform on deforestation are heterogeneous. I argue that impacts of agrarian reform are strongly related to the pre-existing social and economic configuration of the frontiers where it takes place. While it leads to lower rates of deforestation in landscapes dominated by smallholders with diversified land use, its impact on forest conversion is higher in landscapes where extensive land use, mainly prompted by large-scale cattle ranching, tends to dominate. I provide an assessment for the whole Brazilian Amazon, and examine two research sites in the state of Pará, namely Uruará and Redenção. The study is based on informant interviews, secondary information, agricultural census data, and remote sensing data. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• We explore stakeholders perceptions on REDD+ finance in Brazil, Indonesia and Vietnam. • Actors agree that the lack of finance is not the most significant challenge. • Addressing funding gaps alone will not help to advance REDD+ policies. • Effective REDD+ implementation requires improved forest governance. • Recognizing and addressing drivers of deforestation are essential for REDD+ success. Financing REDD+ is complex, due to the need to seek answers not only to the question of who should finance REDD+, but also who should benefit from it. This paper examines the perceptions of REDD+ stakeholders in Brazil, Indonesia and Vietnam on different aspects of financing: who should finance REDD+ and who should receive REDD+ benefits for what. Our findings show these issues are political, driven by economic considerations at national level and – despite the narrative of inclusive, participatory decision making – are largely determined by governments. Lack of finance was thereby not always considered by national policy actors to be the most significant challenge during 2010–2019; rather other issues – like lack of knowledge on REDD+ by relevant actors; ineffective coordination between state agencies, the private sector and civil society; unclear tenure rights; ineffectively addressing the main deforestation drivers; low law enforcement capacity; and unclear benefit-sharing mechanisms – have also been perceived to impede REDD+ implementation and payment distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The use of sustainable harvest practices in the tropics is often proposed as a way to maintain the environment and address the poverty issues that dominate many tropical regions of the world. In theory, the adoption of these methods can provide win–win solutions to tropical deforestation because they address the environmental consequences of deforestation while increasing the welfare of forest inhabitants. However, there is little reliable data that can be used to test this hypothesis since many of the goods produced in sustainable systems do not have well-defined markets and are most often consumed at home. This paper examines the benefits of collecting and harvesting non-timber forest products in the tropics through various methods using household panel data collected in 1996 and 2000 in the Ouro Preto do Oeste region of Rondônia, Brazil. We estimate the use-value of land under forest, agriculture, and pasture and complement these estimations with census data and regression analysis. Our estimations reveal that households utilizing sustainable practices in the forms of agroforestry and the collection of non-timber forest products have significantly higher levels of diversification. We conclude that directing policy towards “win–win” strategies may not be desirable for reducing both poverty and deforestation in this region since we find no clear evidence that these can successfully be addressed simultaneously. Sustainable development policy should focus on increasing the value of the forest, or reducing the opportunity cost of leaving standing forest on the household lot, if sustainable production strategies are to be more attractive to households in the future. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper analyzes the possibility of producing bio-fuel in the Amazon degraded lands. The aim here is to combine environmental concerns with an improvement of local people well-being. Firstly, a historical analysis is conducted in order to figure out the major deforestation driving forces in Amazon and to help to arrive at a feasible energy choice.Secondly, the geographical area is chosen. It is the spatial boundaries of Caraja´s Iron Ore Program in the southeastern Amazon where most of the deforestation has taken place in the last few decades. For this specific context, palm oil is chosen as a technological energy alternative due to its social production structure, its environmental benefits and its productivity.A quantified analysis is realized in terms of income generation (2000–3000 US$/family/yr), job creation (200,000–300,000 families settled), land required and restored (2–3.2 million ha), and carbon emission from fossil fuel avoided (13.1 Mt C). Some recommendations related to institutional and economic barriers are proposed in order to encourage the technology penetration in the market. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

As cropland and pasture have replaced forest and cerrado in Brazilian Amazoˆnia, concern has mounted over the effects of changing the biogeochemical and hydrological properties of one of the world's great storehouses of biomass and biodiversity. Although much recent effort has focused on the location, effects, and causes of deforestation and cerrado conversion, much less is known about the basin-wide spatial distribution and density of the land use following conversion for crops or pasture.In this paper, we use census and satellite records to develop maps of the distribution and abundance of major agricultural land uses across 4.5×108 ha of Brazilian Amazoˆnia in 1980 and 1995. Results indicate an overall expansion of 7.0×106 ha in total agricultural area in Brazilian Amazoˆnia between 1980 and 1995. The net change during this period is estimated for three different land-use types: croplands (an increase of 0.8×106 ha), natural pastures (a decrease of 8.4×106 ha), and planted pastures (an increase of 14.7×106 ha). These estimates, the first spatially explicit quantifications of agricultural land-use activities in 1980 and 1995 across Brazilian Amazoˆnia, are shown to be consistent with the results of applying a land use change and secondary regrowth model to published deforestation rates for the period.The resulting time slices, presented for each land-use category at 5-min (∼9 km) spatial resolution, allow for the quantification of land-use changes in this region for biogeochemical, demographic and economic models. Several foci of agricultural change existed within Brazilian Amazoˆnia during this period: in the state of Para´, cropland was lost and planted pasture increased markedly; in Mato Grosso, both cropland and planted pasture increased; in Rondoˆnia, planted pasture replacing forest was the primary route to agricultural expansion. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Accurate mapping of land cover at continental to global scales is currently limited by our ability to exploit the spatial, temporal, and radiometric characteristics of the available satellite data. Many ecologically and biogeochemically important landscape features are spatially extensive, but occur at scales much smaller than the ∼1-km footprint of wide-swath, polar orbiting radiometers. This is especially true for land cover changes associated with human activities. Satellite instruments that offer the appropriate spatial detail have much smaller swaths and longer repeat times, resulting in compositing intervals that are too large to resolve the time scales of these changes. In addition, the cost and effort associated with acquisition and processing of high-resolution data for large areas is often prohibitive. Methods for taking advantage of information contained in multiple-scale observations by combining data from high-resolution and moderate resolution sensors are thus of great current interest.In this paper, we retrieve land cover distributions in two different parts of the Brazilian Amazon region by estimating relationships between land cover fractions derived from 30-m resolution ETM+ and reflectance data from ∼1-km resolution MODIS and MISR. The scaling relationships are derived using a Bayesian-regularized artificial neural network (ANN) and compared to results using linear unmixing (LU). We explore the simultaneous use of two significant independent variables in terrestrial optical remote sensing, wavelength, and sun-sensor geometry, by combining nadir-adjusted MODIS reflectances in seven bands (VIS-SWIR) with multiangular (−71° to +71°) bidirectional reflectance data from MISR. This research was motivated by evidence from modeling and field studies demonstrating that: (a) the angular dependence of reflectance (e.g., from MISR) contains information about the structural composition of canopies that is complementary to the wavelength dependence; and (b) the SWIR portion of the spectrum (e.g., from MODIS) is sensitive to canopy moisture and shading conditions and, therefore, to the successional status of the ecosystem. This case study, using the Bayesian artificial neural network with combined MODIS-MISR data to estimate sub-pixel land cover fractions, yielded a quantitative improvement over spectral linear unmixing of single-angle, multispectral data. Our results suggest potential for broad-scale applicability despite a number of challenges related to tropical atmospheric conditions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Terra Legal had no overall impact on deforestation as of 2012. • Deforestation levels increased following Terra Legal in highly registered counties. • Spatial spillovers from Terra Legal were minimal in the short term. • Temporary crop cultivation decreased with greater registered area. • Investment loans increased in counties with more area registered by small and medium farms. This paper estimates the early impacts of Terra Legal , a large property rights reform, on deforestation and farming in the Brazilian Amazon. Twelve and a half million hectares, more than 2.5% of the Brazilian Amazon, have been registered under this program. The establishment of property rights may increase a farmer's incentive to invest in his land and expand his farm due to a lower risk of expropriation. On the other hand, the enforcement of conservation requirements may be easier when farmers have legal titles to their land. We use county level data from 2007 to 2012 on farm registrations, deforestation, crop choice and bovine management to test the impact of the Terra Legal land reform. While we find no overall impact of the program on deforestation during the period in our sample, we do show that there is substantial heterogeneity in impacts across counties. Counties with the largest area registered do have an increase in the level of area deforested, but they also have a decrease in the rate of deforestation. We investigate the extent to which changes in deforestation are related to the amount of registration that occurs among small, medium and large farms, and find limited support for less deforestation among counties with more area registered by small farms; more area registered by large farms is associated with a higher level of deforestation, but a decreased deforestation rate. Our results suggest that land tenure reform can create incentives to decelerate deforestation. Farm size has a strong impact on the farm management changes generated by improved property rights; coupling land tenure reforms with incentives to intensify production rather than expand could lead to reduced deforestation, particularly among small farms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]