Post-frontier governance up in smoke? Free-for-all frontier imaginations encourage illegal deforestation and appropriation of public lands in the Brazilian Amazon

Post-frontier governance in the Brazilian Amazon highlights the interaction of regulatory technologies, institutions and practices to combat illegal deforestation and appropriation of public lands. While the Amazon fires received tremendous media coverage in 2019, the dismantlement of environmental laws and regulatory agencies has supported the rise in deforestation as early as 2012. We discuss the impact of post-frontier governance in Southwest-Pará by analyzing the spatial distribution of deforestation, territorial management, law enforcement, and environmental regularization from 2000 to 2018. The integration of spatial analysis with qualitative field surveys in the blacklisted municipality Novo Progresso shows that deforestation control largely fails, specifically in undesignated public lands. While land tenure security remains the biggest challenge in the region, the persistent imagination of free-for-all frontier spaces encourages the uncontrolled appropriation of and speculation with public lands. Here, the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) has been identified as a key instrument to secure land claims.

巴西亚马逊地区的后边疆治理凸显了打击非法森林砍伐与公共土地侵占的监管技术、制度与实践之间的互动关系。尽管2019年亚马逊森林火灾曾获得大量媒体报道，但早在2012年起，环境法律与监管机构的裁撤就已推动森林砍伐率上升。本研究通过分析2000至2018年间的森林砍伐空间分布、土地管理、执法及环境规范化管理情况，探讨帕拉州西南部的后边疆治理所产生的影响。通过对被列入环境监管黑名单的新普罗格雷索（Novo Progresso）市镇开展空间分析与定性实地调研的整合结果显示，森林砍伐管控整体收效甚微，在未划定用途的公共土地上尤为突出。尽管土地权属保障仍是该地区面临的最大挑战，而"无主边疆空间"的固有认知仍在助长公共土地的无节制侵占与投机行为。在此背景下，农村环境登记（Rural Environmental Registry，CAR）被视为保障土地权属主张的关键工具。