Mato Grosso Restricts Creation of New Conservation Units

The second Brazilian state with the most fire outbreaks in 2024, Mato Grosso approved a regulation in December 2024 that limits the creation of new Conservation Units. The state has 3 significant biomes: Amazon, Cerrado, and Pantanal.

The Mato Grosso PEC (proposed constitutional amendment) was authored by Governor Mauro Mendes (União Brasil) and was approved by state deputies in the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday, December 11, 2024, by:

• 19 votes in favor ✅
• 1 vote against ❌
• 4 abstentions 👤

The approved text stipulates that new protected areas can only be created after land regularization of 80% of the Conservation Units already established in Mato Grosso.

Essentially, it's as follows: Conservation Units have been created, but land regularization hasn't occurred yet. Therefore, no other preservation area can be created until 80% of the regularization is completed.

Furthermore, the regulation establishes that the state government must have funds (in the Budget) to compensate properties overlapping these preservation areas. No money = no compensation = no regularization = no creation of new areas.

The story continues: the regulation extends the deadline for the state government to implement existing Conservation Units from 2 to 10 years.

Governor Mauro Mendes ironically stated in a video that environmental NGOs criticizing the regulation "will have the opportunity to contribute."

Here's the catch: the new rule authorizes the state government to receive donations. Mendes said that NGOs can donate their resources to compensate landowners and thus unlock the creation of new protected areas.

In this way, the state government delegates one of its tasks to non-governmental organizations: the compensation of landowners.

The text also presents another legal impasse: it is the Union's responsibility to propose rules on the creation of new units. In other words, there is a possibility that the regulation may be legally challenged.

Currently, the Mato Grosso State Conservation System counts 47 units, totaling 2.8 million hectares.

The state government argues that the lack of land regularization hinders environmental protection, as there is no legal definition of land ownership.

Mato Grosso: 2nd state that burned the most in 2024

Mato Grosso was the 2nd state in Brazil with the most fire outbreaks in 2024, according to data from INPE (National Institute for Space Research) updated until November this year. It was only behind Pará. Here's the ranking:

1. Pará: 6.97 million hectares, an area equivalent to 23% of the total burned in Brazil and 41% of what was burned in the Amazon between January and November.
2. Mato Grosso: 6.80 million hectares
3. Tocantins: 2.7 million hectares

Together, these 3 states account for 56% of all area burned in the 11 months of the year (January to November) in Brazil.November data showed the burning of 2.2 million hectares, an area equivalent to the state of Sergipe.

The highest concentration of fires in November was in the Amazon: 1.8 million hectares (81% of the month's total).

Almost half of this burned area (48%) in November was in Pará: 870,000 hectares. Maranhão, with 477,000 hectares, and Mato Grosso, with 180,000 hectares, ranked 2nd and 3rd for the month.

In partnership with IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute), Correio Sabiá published an article about the worst number of fires in Brazil since 2010.

Experts have attested that in Brazil, it is human action that causes fires. The good news is that we have control over this behavior.