In the region where Rosângela (original name changed to protect her identity), a retiree from Araguaia, lives in the municipality of Luciara (MT), land grabbing is encroaching on traditional territories. "They come with machines and cut down trees. They put up fences and hire henchmen to guard, claiming that the land is theirs," she reports.
Something similar is happening in western Bahia, in the territories of fundo and fecho de pasto (traditional pasture areas), where land grabbing, environmental destruction, and violence in the countryside frighten residents. "Only 3% of our original lands remain, and that's where the conflicts are happening," says Eldo Barreto, a family farmer and community leader in the region, an eyewitness to this process.
Both the Araguaia riverbank dwellers, traditional populations living along the banks of the Araguaia River, and the communities of fundo and fecho de pasto share a common way of life with the Cerrado biome and cattle management. They are part of the group of 28 segments of traditional peoples and communities (PCTs) recognized by the Brazilian state.
Represented by the National Council of Traditional Peoples and Communities (CNPCT), they are demanding from the Federal Government a specific land regularization decree for traditional territories capable of addressing the land insecurity they face. Unlike indigenous and quilombola peoples, who have their own legal instruments for demarcation and territorial protection, traditional peoples and communities still lack a specific legal mechanism to ensure the formal recognition of their territories.
The process is led by CNPCT, with support from the Network of Traditional Peoples and Communities, the Cerrado Network, the Institute for Society, Population and Nature (ISPN), Terra de Direitos, FASE, the Campaign in Defense of the Cerrado, and the Association of Lawyers for Rural Workers (AATR).
“This debate has been conducted with broad government participation. After all, without the government there is no decree. What we really wanted was a law, but that is not feasible in the current Congress,” stated the president of the CNPCT, Samuel Caetano, a member of the Geraizeiro community, during a virtual meeting held on Monday, February 9th, with representatives of traditional peoples, the federal government, and the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office.
The draft decree has already been validated by the Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA), with a favorable opinion from the ministry's own Legal Counsel, and is now being processed by the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (MMA) and the Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services (MGI). Finally, it will go to the Civil House.
“The decree seeks to guarantee, through the recognition of traditional land ownership, access for Traditional Land Ownership Communities (PCTs) to public policies that cannot currently be demanded without territorial recognition. It does not annul or weaken existing regularization methods,” explains Fábio Martins, legal advisor for the Cerrado Network.
As a member of the Afro-Brazilian religious communities, educator Doté Olissassì argues that each traditional segment should prepare technical, academic, and legal reports that demonstrate the importance of the decree in guaranteeing traditional ways of life. "We need to speak the language of the white world," he states.
The legal basis for this claim is Decree No. 6.040 of 2007, which established the National Policy for the Sustainable Development of Traditional Peoples and Communities (PNPCT). This regulation represented progress by adopting self-identification as a central criterion and recognizing territory as an essential dimension of these peoples' lives. However, it left a gap: the lack of a specific instrument to guarantee land ownership for the 28 recognized segments, which include peoples of African descent, Roma people, Pantanal inhabitants, island communities, and traditional grazing areas, among others.
The resumption of this debate in the current government was marked by the seminar "Regulatory Frameworks for the Recognition and Regularization of Land Tenure in Indigenous Territories," held in Brasília in 2023 at the headquarters of the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF). Now, with the draft ready, the race is on to have the decree published in the first half of 2026, before electoral tasks absorb the agendas of ministers, parliamentarians, and secretaries.
The Minister of Agrarian Development (MDA), Paulo Teixeira, will himself step down from his post in March to run for election, according to Julia Dalla Costa, advisor to the Executive Secretariat of the ministry, who stated that he is committed to delivering the decree before his departure. "We only need an additional instrument that reinforces principles already present in other regulations, such as self-determination and community participation," she says.
Several federal agencies are working on different fronts of land regularization in the country:
- Incra is responsible for environmentally differentiated settlement projects, such as PAE, PDS and PAF;
- ICMBio proposes the creation, implements, and manages Conservation Units, such as Extractive Reserves, Sustainable Development Reserves, and National Forests;
- The Secretariat of Federal Property (SPU/MGI) manages federal lands;
- while MDA and MMA operate in forest territories.
The diversity of traditional peoples and communities defies rigid classifications. There are nomadic and semi-nomadic groups, urban communities, riverside communities, wetland communities, communities living in traditional grazing areas, and communities that rely on enclosed pastures, among many others. Some of these ways of life do not fit the criteria used to create Extractive Reserves, Sustainable Development Reserves, or Settlement Projects.
The decree under discussion proposes a practical innovation within the scope of Incra and opens three main fronts. The first is collective definitive land titling, by providing streamlined procedures for allocating federal public lands to traditional communities, both in rural and urban areas, recognizing the community as a subject of law.
The second is the protection of traditional urban and peri-urban territories, through instruments of the City Statute, protecting communities of African origin, terreiros (Afro-Brazilian religious sites), and other occupations against real estate speculation, the growth of favelas (slums), and the actions of militias. The third is the consolidation of rights, by systematizing principles already foreseen in other norms, such as free, prior, and informed consultation, respect for worldviews, and a territorial approach.
For Patrícia Silva, who follows the agenda for the Institute for Society, Population and Nature (ISPN), the proposal was never about replacing existing instruments. “On the contrary, the idea is to reinforce them and open new paths. Today, we have done very little in this regard,” she assesses. She observes that, recently, only three Extractive Reserves were created in the Amazon, two Sustainable Development Reserves in Paraná, and, in the Cerrado, only one natural monument aimed at protecting caves, in western Bahia.
“Meanwhile, the Cerrado continues to be marked by an extremely violent process of expropriation,” laments Patrícia. Data from the Atlas of Conflicts in the Brazilian Countryside, by the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), indicate that, between 1985 and 2023, 17.946 conflicts over land and water occurred in the biome, involving 5.333 locations.
The protection of vegetation in the Cerrado is significantly lower when compared to other biomes, such as the Amazon, where protected areas correspond to almost half of the legal territory. In the Cerrado, conservation units cover 8,3% of the biome, with 3,1% in categories of full protection and 5,6% of sustainable use (with overlap in some areas). 4,1% of the Cerrado territory is composed of indigenous lands.
“The communities continue to be pressured by mining, agribusiness, and land grabbing, in a context of multiple mechanisms for land appropriation,” says Nenzão Geraizeiro, a resident of the traditional Vale das Cancelas territory in northern Minas Gerais. He advocates for permanent mobilization to ensure the swiftness of the process. “We will continue this fight with our soul, and together.”
Juan Felipe Negret, from the MDA's legal advisory office, explains that all the agencies involved were fully notified and participated in the debate. "Land disputes are war," he summarizes, highlighting that the process began in 2023 and that this is the time to resolve doubts and consolidate consensus.
According to federal prosecutor Wilson Rocha, the drafting of the decree demonstrated the government's sensitivity to the centrality of the territorial issue. "Territorial justice is the mother of all justices and needs to be built from the ground up," he stated.
