Governance of Forest Concessions in the Amazon

The document examines the implementation of the Public Forest Management Law (LGFP) in the Amazon, noting that federal and state concessions have fallen short of targets. Focusing on Pará, the study identifies governance failures—including annulled bids, non-conceded areas, and terminated contracts—driven by administrative errors and restrictive legal limits on concession size and quantity. It recommends enhancing the training of public officials and removing legal caps on the area a single company can manage to attract more qualified operators.

• Federal forest concessions in the Amazon have significantly underperformed against initial targets; while the government aimed to concede four million hectares by 2010, they currently cover only about 1.3 million hectares across 22 projects.
• State-level implementation of forest concessions in the Amazon is lagging, with only 551,000 hectares in operation across Pará and Amapá, despite 96.3% of state public forests (76 million hectares) being located in the region.
• In Pará, governance fragilities have led to a high rate of bid failures; half of the bids held in the state were annulled due to administrative errors in the call for proposal documents, such as failing to require legally mandated documents or omitting criteria for evaluating proposal feasibility.
• The long-term success rate for conceding Forest Management Units (UMFs) in Pará is 53%, when measured by the number of existing contracts against the number of vacant areas due to non-concession or termination.
• Several factors contribute to the non-concession of areas in Pará, including candidates failing to meet minimum requirements, procedural delays beyond proposal deadlines, and restrictive legal limits that prevent companies from managing more than 10% of available state public forests.
• Contract terminations in Pará's state concessions have occurred due to concessionaires breaching clauses related to labor laws, environmental impact prevention, forest management norms, and the failure to pay minimum annual amounts to the state.
• Private sector agents report that government sample inventories are inadequate because they do not accurately reflect the distribution of economically attractive timber species, which varies greatly across the Amazon.

APA

Cozendey, G., & Chiavari, J. (2023). Governance of Forest Concessions in the Amazon. Climate Policy Initiative. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Governance-of-Forest-Concessions-in-the-Amazon.pdf

Chicago

Cozendey, Gabriel, and Joana Chiavari. Governance of Forest Concessions in the Amazon. Climate Policy Initiative, 2023. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Governance-of-Forest-Concessions-in-the-Amazon.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Cozendey |first1=Gabriel |last2=Chiavari |first2=Joana |title=Governance of Forest Concessions in the Amazon |publisher=Climate Policy Initiative |date=November 2023 |url=https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Governance-of-Forest-Concessions-in-the-Amazon.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{cozendey2023governance, author = {Cozendey, Gabriel and Chiavari, Joana}, title = {{Governance of Forest Concessions in the Amazon}}, institution = {Climate Policy Initiative}, year = {2023}, month = nov, url = {https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Governance-of-Forest-Concessions-in-the-Amazon.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }