Rural real estate markets in the Pan Amazon are regulated by institutions that are a legacy of the agrarian reform movements that played a prominent role in domestic politics during the last half of the twentieth century. Prior to World War II, the region was characterised by a quasi-feudal land tenure system, with ownership concentrated […]
The adage ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law’ is not legally true, but the concept reigns supreme on frontier landscapes in the Pan Amazon. Land grabbers and peasant pioneers share a modus operandi: they occupy land that does not belong to them. Historically, this process was condoned by the state, and conflict occurred only when […]
Occupying a plot of land is the first, and perhaps easiest, step in the process of creating a legally constituted private property. In all eight Amazonian nations, a title or a certification of a title must be issued by an agency of the central government, which in most cases is a lineal descendant of the […]
New roads open wilderness landscapes to development, and commodity markets drive the expansion of the agricultural frontier. These two causes of deforestation are at the centre of deforestation policy discussions. A third factor – land values and their tendency to appreciate over time – is a synergistic product of these two phenomena. Understanding the dynamics […]
There is only limited potential for finance to change agricultural practices in the Andean Amazon, because landscapes are largely populated by smallholders who are notoriously risk-adverse in how they manage their finances and cropping systems. They are cautious because the consequences of a crop failure are catastrophic for their families; consequently, they are less likely […]