Proposals, experiences, and advances in the legalization of land tenure in the Várzea

Abstract

This study is about land tenure and the use of natural resources in the Amazonian várzea. The main objectives of this research were to adjust and to formulate legal instruments to enable the conservation, sustainable use, and integrated management of the várzea. The possession and management of natural resources imply control. In other words, it is only possible to manage what is possessed, partially or totally. In the case of common property, this control occurs when a social group somehow retains some power over a determined area. The form of possession found in the Amazonian lowlands alongside watercourses is possession of lakes and pasture areas as common spaces, considering that each riparian inhabitant has a lot of land in the marsh where he develops his agriculture of subsistence and his habitation. Thus, the lot is the area appropriated individually, and the lake and the natural pasture play the role of common area. In the back of these lands, where there are fields and lakes, the use of these environments are collective. Although there is a notion of width based on the distance between properties and the limits with neighbors, the fields and lakes are considered an extension of the property's limits, not as private spaces, but collective ones; generally, there are no fences in native fields and the natural pastures are used commonly by the cattle, which are identified by each riparian family. The rights of the Federal Constitution of 1988 established new grounds for the relationship between society and environment.