Undesignated public land One of the objectives of the ZEE process was to assist the nations of the Pan Amazon to allocate their public lands among different constituencies and stakeholder groups. The group with the highest public profile, at least in recent years, is the Indigenous people who have organised a highly successful campaign to assert their territorial rights and formalise their claims to their ancestral territories. They are joined in their quest for land rights by tens of thousands of local communities, known variously as Caboclos, Ribereñas, Quilombolas, Maroons, Seringueros and Castañeros, that also rely on the forest and aquatic habitats for their livelihoods. They are competing for land with other societal groups that have economic, demographic and political power, including the ranching sector, large and small farmers and the timber industry. The competition for land is influenced by the interests of mining companies and the oil and gas industry, who have separate rights to below-ground resources, but are concerned that access to those natural resources can be constrained by whomever controls the surface rights. The multi-decade campaign to prepare ZEEs and formally designate the precise physical borders of public land has succeeded in limiting the expansion of agriculture, particularly in Brazil and Ecuador, and to a lesser extent in Bolivia and Peru. The sharp forest boundaries between Indigenous territories and adjacent agrarian landscapes (with several notable exceptions) demonstrates that settlers and land grabbers will not occupy territory they cannot eventually claim as private property. The ongoing scramble for…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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